Tanczos Nandor: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Tanczos Nandor: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:3070] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 Dr Smith has been talking about climate change and he is quite right—it probably is the single biggest environmental threat facing humanity today. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at 380 parts per million are higher now than they have been in the last 650000 years which include five glacial and interglacial ice ages. The West Antarctic ice sheet is breaking up at an unprecedented rate. Arctic sea ice is disappearing and the ocean exposed is absorbing heat and accelerating the process. Glaciers are in retreat around the world. The Gulf Stream the warm current that keeps Western Europe inhabitable has weakened by 30 percent and we are seeing the gradual melting of the tundra in Siberia and northern Canada and the release of thawed methane. 
As Dr Smith noted this weekend the Government’s response to climate change has been pathetic. It has abandoned the only economic mechanism it was prepared to consider in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—the carbon charge. It has abandoned the animal emissions levy and it is now presiding over the destruction by Landcorp of 250 square kilometres of forest in order to turn it into a dairy farm. That is an area 40 percent the size of Lake Taupo. 
Members should remember that for every hectare converted from forest to pasture greenhouse gas emissions are increased by about 800 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. So the 25000 hectares we are talking about will contribute 20 million tonnes over the 20 years of the conversion. Unbelievably that is a 1.4 percent increase in our total emissions from this country every year and in 20 years we are talking about a 27 percent increase over our current levels. That is unbelievable—an extraordinary amount. 
Why on earth would a State-owned enterprise be doing that? Landcorp is already the largest farming operation in New Zealand with 1.54 million stock units on 112 farms which total 370000 hectares in size. We have to ask whether this is just one more manifestation of the Government’s absolute obsession with economic growth and damn the environmental consequences. Landcorp of course has an agreement not to acquire any more land unless it sells an equivalent amount but the lease arrangement that relates to that land gives the corporation effective control over a greatly increased area. 
Two subsidiary companies Landcorp Developments and Landcorp Pastoral Ltd will convert 25000 hectares over 20 years. That will involve intensive stocking which is associated with very high nitrogen inputs both as fertiliser and as urine from those animals. It would be nice to see Landcorp lead the nation by example and institute devices to measure contamination by leachates and to see it agree to adjust stocking rates and fertiliser applications if they exceed thresholds. But I fear we are very unlikely to see anything so progressive. On the permeable volcanic soils of the area there is likely to be significant leaching of nitrogen and other nutrients from farms which will perpetuate the problem of nutrient enrichment of lakes and rivers—another significant environmental problem that New Zealand faces today. 
 Sensibly the water use application was denied by Environment Waikato which said that the leachate from the Landcorp property would negate all of the work it is doing to prevent nutrients ending up in streams and lakes through its clean streams initiatives. It is absolutely bizarre that this State-owned enterprise seems to be actively hostile—not just neutral—to any prospects of this country meeting our Kyoto commitments or cleaning up our polluted waterways. It is an absolute disgrace.