Mackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17657] 
MOANA MACKEY (Chairperson of the Local Government and Environment Committee): 
 I am happy to stand in this debate on Vote Environment. I thank the Minister for the Environment for the very good session that we had at select committee. It is true that the Ministry for the Environment has come under increasing pressure with its workload in particular because of the importance that this Government has placed on environmental issues. I thank the Minister for the very frank and honest discussion we had at select committee. I noted with amusement the comments from Dr Nick Smith that the Minister never takes responsibility for anything; I think that at select committee the Minister very much took responsibility for some of the things that had not gone right in the past in the ministry and said he was prepared to work on fixing those and making them better. So I do not think at all that that is a fair reflection and I look forward to the work being done in the Ministry for the Environment in the future to make sure it can deliver in this increasingly important area of Government policy. 
I have to say it is a bit rich being lectured by the National Party on environmental issues—a bit rich. If National will slash public servants across the board in all the ministries then I ask Dr Nick Smith: who will be doing this work in the Ministry for the Environment? Oh I am sorry; Judith Collins is right—National flip-flopped on that. It will not slash them any more; it will have a sinking lid—a sinking lid of public servants in ministries regardless of what is needed. We have yet to be told a single job title that is included in this area—a single person who will be slashed. Somehow they are basing all their spending promises for the election on public servants who may or may not be out there and now we have the sinking-lid policy. Well that is very interesting given that a number of the issues are due to the overextension of the Ministry and given that environmental issues in this country will only get greater and have a greater need for people working on them. 
I say to the National Party speakers who tried to somehow suggest that a National Government would be better in the area of environment than a Labour Government that theirs is the party whose leader did not believe in climate change and theirs is the party that has opposed every single piece of meaningful environmental legislation that has come through the House. My colleague Sue Moroney talked about the drinking-water standards bill. Apparently we have to be lectured by Nicky Wagner about the quality of water yet they voted against that bill. They are voting against the emissions trading scheme and they are voting against the Biofuel Bill—they find some reason to vote against every single piece of meaningful environmental policy that comes into this House. 
To stand up in this Chamber and somehow suggest that a National Government would be better for the environment is absolutely laughable. I want to know how good it will be for the environment to have a Government like National which says it will gut the Resource Management Act. Judith Collins says yes—they will gut the Resource Management Act and somehow they will protect our natural resources and our natural environment! Well that just shows the double-speak we are hearing from that party over there. If members talk to anyone who has had environmental concerns where industry has tried to run roughshod over the rights of individual people or to people who are concerned about their local environment they will see that the recourse they have is the Resource Management Act. The National Party should tell us exactly how much it will rip the guts out of that important environmental legislation. I think many of the National Ministers of the past who put that legislation into place and thought it was good legislation would be very unhappy at the prospect of it having its guts ripped out. I know there are many people in the community— 
Judith Collins 
: Why do you have to be so crude? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well I say to Judith Collins that that is what her party has said. That is what National has said. This is par for the course for the National Party—when we tell the truth and talk about policy they claim we are being rude and personal. I am not. The National Party has said that it will tear the guts out of the Resource Management Act. That is what it says when it is in front of its industry and farmer groups that want them to do it; when it gets in front of environmental groups that might not like it it probably softens the language a little bit. Crosby/Textor has obviously told them to do that to tailor their message to their group so it will get through a bit more and they will get everyone’s votes. I am sure that that is what they have been told. 
It is astonishing. We can even look at the case of Mapua where National members have voted against every single appropriation for the remediation of contaminated sites that has come before this Parliament. Then they get up in this House and criticise the work that this Government has been doing cleaning up the remediated sites. This is an area I used to work in. I was a team leader in a persistence organic pollutant lab. I worked on the remediation of Homebush Bay in Sydney so I know that this is not easy. I think sometimes people need to appreciate that the remediation is not nice and easy and that there are nasty chemicals involved. Everyone knows that but one makes a call that environmentally it may be better to do that than to have these awful chemicals lying in the ground and leaching into our water tables—that is a call one makes. But the point is that for National members to get up in this House and criticise this Government when they come from such a flimsy base as the National Party is absolutely—absolutely—abhorrent. 
Vote agreed to.