Sage Eugenie: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19178. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Vote Environment for 2014-15 totals over $313 million and 61 percent of that relates to the Ministry for the Environment’s climate change responsibilities and my colleague Kennedy Graham will comment on that. But 39 percent of the vote is for other aspects of environmental management and a significant chunk of that covers fresh water. The Ministry for the Environment gets $14 million to provide advice and implement tools for water management.We live in a country that is shaped by more than 180000 kilometres of rivers. Some of them are deep and swift and others like the Waimakariri have wide beds that spread into many strands on the plains. Some like the Tarawera start in lakes and others have their headwaters in the snowfields of the Southern Alps. We New Zealanders love our rivers. They inspire us with their beauty and power as places to go fishing and kayaking as a source of kai or for their own sake. Nine high-profile New Zealanders including musicians Tiki Taane Maisey Rika artist Grahame Sydney photographer Craig Potton and comedienne Michele A’Court and 2000 other New Zealanders have signed an open letter to the environment Minister calling on her to get tough on water pollution. New Zealanders want the Minister and her ministry to introduce strong standards to protect water quality and reduce the pollution load that intensive land use puts on our rivers.I understand that tomorrow the Minister will release the Government’s final decisions on the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. That national policy statement is the major policy document under the Resource Management Act and it influences how our rivers streams lakes and aquifers are managed and how councils control land use that affects water quality. But National has no plan for clean rivers. Under this Minister and this National Government the Ministry for the Environment has proposed weak national bottom lines for water quality that will allow more water pollution. We have got high limits on pollutants such as nitrogen and faecal coliform. Why? So that irrigation and dairy intensification can continue to expand.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Why do you talk such nonsense?EUGENIE SAGE: Mr Finlayson is interjecting. Mr Finlayson last November when National released the proposed changes to the national policy statement they were widely criticised. The Fish and Game Council said the national bottom lines for water quality would allow New Zealand rivers to become some of the most polluted in the OECD. It described them as an abject failure that in its words legitimised the worst farm nitrate pollution we have in New Zealand now and allowed water pollution to increase by five to 15 times over current levels.Shane Ardern: Who said that?EUGENIE SAGE: It was not just the Fish and Game Council; it was also the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. She said that the National Objectives Framework did not go far enough to address the most widespread pervasive and immediate pressure which is the rapidly increasing nutrient loads from land use change.In the last 5 years the amount of irrigated land in New Zealand has increased by an area the size of Lake Taupō and Lake Te Ānau combined. An extra 60000 hectares in Canterbury have been irrigated covering an area the size of Lake Taupō. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Parliament’s environmental watchdog wants the Government to increase the measures in the national policy statement so that regional councils regulate land use change to prevent more nutrient leaching more faecal contamination and more water pollution. But National prioritises irrigation development and intensive land use over rivers that are clean enough to swim in. There is no limit to the novel food products and the jobs we can create if we use our intelligence if we focus on research and development and if we add value to the milk we currently produce but there is a limit on the number of dairy cows we can put on the land. The Green Party recognises this; National does not. In areas like Lake Taupō we have reached that limit.More than 90 percent of the 7000 submitters on the Government’s proposed changes to the national policy statement called for a health standard that ensured that rivers were clean enough to swim in. The Green Party would introduce standards that provided that. When the Minister announces her changes tomorrow I would love to see a change in that standard to ensure that our rivers are clean enough to swim in but given that National prioritises irrigation I doubt that we will see that.