Browning Steffan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 31 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11499. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): It is Budget 2016 and where is the vision for sustainable agriculture? There was nothing in this Budget for primary industries around genuinely sustainable agriculture. Where is the support for the fastest-growing food category internationally which is organics? There was nothing. Go right through the Estimates—where are organics mentioned?This Government is still pouring millions into overseas-owned Agria PGG Wrightson for forage development. What is the nature of that forage? Is it something we should be budgeting for? I do not think so. A forage that requires something like three different herbicides a bee-killing insecticide and others to make it theoretically work—is that sustainable? Is that the sort of thing the Government should be budgeting for or should it be doing a Budget with vision for the fastest-growing sector internationally which is organics? Do our communities want pesticides in their food—in their food chain? No they do not. So why is National supporting what it calls innovation when it is actually not sustainable for New Zealand farmers? We do not want pesticides and toxins in our food chain; nor do our customers internationally. The fastest-growing sector of demand is organics.Progressive countries have also in their Budgets put in pesticide reduction strategies. They aim to take pesticides out of their food chains and out of the environments where their kids play where the pets are and where we are. They work on that. What does this Government do? Nothing like that. Where is the doubling or tripling or whatever is needed for our Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to do proper risk assessments of—have a proper inquisitorial look at—the multitude of pesticides that are in our environment?The National Government intends there to be a lot more. National has ticked through more than 270 new herbicide formulations in its time 125 new insecticides and 184 new fungicide formulations. Where is the strategy for balancing that up? There is no strategy at all. Do we want pesticides in our food? No we do not. Do we want them in our children’s parks? Do we want them in the other parks? Do we want them in the streets? Do we want them in the air? No we do not. We do not want them in the water either but there is no strategy.In this Budget there could have been vision because this vision affects not only us and our children but also the perception of New Zealand in the world. Multiplying the budget of the EPA might have gone somewhere towards that. It would have helped when those tourists come in and see those golden street edges of glyphosate and wonder why we are using so much. We would have had a potentially better look. The EPA is so underfunded that it uses chemical company data to make its assessments. The last time it did an assessment for glyphosate was 2009 when it used Dow AgroSciences’ data. In 2004 it was DuPont’s and before that it was Monsanto’s. We want independence. We would like to see a Budget that gives the EPA real independence to make good assessments and we want a clean green “100% Pure” vision for New Zealand. Thank you.