Sage Eugenie: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 30 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2694. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Talofa lava. Tena koe Mr Speaker. The Government made it very clear that last Thursday’s Budget was a zero Budget. It had zero ambition for making our clean green image and brand a reality. The Minister of Finance did not even mention the natural environment in his Budget speech. The Budget has zero ambition to safeguard the health of our oceans or to significantly improve the survival chances for kiwi mohua whio and other species at risk of extinction. This is despite the fact that we have a billion-dollar tourism industry and the Department of Conservation with its management of national parks and conservation lands is one of the biggest providers for tourism in New Zealand. 
The National Government does not seem to realise that the economy depends upon planet Earth. No environment; no economy. No wild landscapes; no tourists. No water; no milk. This report  
Beyond Rio: New Zealand’s Environmental Record Since the Original Earth Summit 
 should be a wake-up call for Government because it shows how much more we need to invest in environment and conservation except that this Government as the last speaker Tau Henare demonstrated has blocked its ears. Its plan for the economy is firmly based around resource extraction: drilling for oil mining for coal damming or diverting rivers for irrigation and encouraging further growth in dairying regardless of the pollution load and the environmental damage and harm that that does. For the members opposite they do not seem to realise that the climate in New Zealand and the geology in New Zealand are very different from those of Australia. With our higher rainfall there is much more risk of tailings dams leaking and of toxic chemicals leaking into our waterways; it is completely different from the dryland environments of Australia.  
New Zealand was one of the first countries to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993. That was followed in 2000 by the adoption of the Biodiversity Strategy and one of the strategy’s primary objectives is to halt the decline in biodiversity. At the Rio Plus Ten Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 the Government committed to strengthening national regional and international efforts to control invasive alien species which we know are one of the major causes of biodiversity loss. Our 2004 state of the environment report identified biodiversity loss as our most pervasive environmental issue. We have a global and a national biodiversity crisis yet this Budget cuts funding for our main biodiversity manager the Department of Conservation. The department’s allocation of $335 million is equivalent to the budget of the Hamilton City Council yet the department manages a third of our land area. The Budget means an $11.6 million cut in departmental spending in the current year and an $8.7 million cut from 2013-14 onwards. It means that in the next year the department has to raid its land acquisition fund of $8.2 million. That means there is no money to purchase coastal forest and other lowland areas that are not well represented in the conservation estate. And it will mean more loss of conservation expertise and skill as departmental staff are forced to leave in the next round of restructuring.  
So despite the evidence of the biodiversity crisis this Budget offers no hope no vision and no indication that the Government wants to achieve the goal in the Biodiversity Strategy of halting the decline in biodiversity. As the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society has said it is “galling” when you look at Vote Conservation to see that the department will spend just $156 million on the protection of our wild places and wildlife in these islands of Aotearoa. The Government’s priorities are wrong. It gave tax cuts to the well-off so had $1 billion less to spend elsewhere. It expects to spend $100 million in investment bank fees to sell off our energy companies and get a one-off windfall yet it refuses to invest even $10 million more in conservation. It subsidises the mining industry to the tune of $24 million for its seismic surveys yet it cannot properly fund conservation. This is despite the fact that the department has world-leading expertise in conservation. It achieved a world first in eradicating rats from Campbell Island. And as Associate Professor Dianne Brunton of Massey University said in response to the  
Beyond Rio  
report “DOC are very good at controlling predators and pests when [they] have sufficient resources to do so …”. Yet this Budget means that in the next financial year the department will be able to undertake sustained possum control on only 1.2 million hectares of the 8.5 million hectares it manages. It will be able to do sustained weed control on only 1.8 million hectares. A Green Budget would invest in conservation instead of the short-term thinking and the callous cuts to environment and conservation spending to our native plants and wildlife that are in this Budget which sees the department’s funding slashed by $54 million over 4 years.  
The Department of Conservation has a statutory responsibility to advocate for conservation beyond the conservation estate but one of the main consequences of the funding cuts and the associated restructuring and loss of 150 staff—planners lawyers ecologists and others with technical expertise—is that increasingly the department is absent from major resource consent applications. It was not there on the plan change for Crystal Valley which takes some of the Craigieburn Range and turns it into an alpine village and subdivision. It has not been involved in TrustPower’s application to change the Rakaia water conservation order. The water conservation order exists to protect the outstanding habitat values of the Rakaia catchment for birdlife yet the Department of Conservation has not been involved. Nor is the department involved in Solid Energy’s application to mine at Mount William despite the outstanding biodiversity of the coal plateau. So the fact that the Department of Conservation is not involved because of these funding cuts puts the burden on NGOs and the community. It means that there is less information presented to decision makers and that of course tilts the playing field in favour of resource exploitation and environmental harm. And yet the Government plans to tilt the playing field even further with its plans to allow the Minister of Energy and Resources joint decision-making power with the Minister of Conservation when there are applications to mine on conservation land. It will tilt it further with the EEZ legislation which will make it “eee-zee” to drill for oil offshore.  
We certainly live in austere financial times but the Green Party would make very different choices. A Green Budget would increase conservation funding because we recognise the intrinsic values of the species that live on our protected lands. We recognise the added value that investment in conservation provides to making our clean green image real to assisting the tourism industry to promoting our quality of life and to providing for ecosystem services because it is often these protected uplands that provide the water that irrigators and others use downstream. A Green-led Government would promote a much more strategic approach to energy generation and energy planning—one that emphasised renewables solar and wind and the gains from energy efficiency. It would keep our energy companies in public ownership because sound energy planning demands that.  
A much more strategic approach would provide certainty to generators energy users and the wider public. It could involve using a national policy statement to provide guidance on where wind turbines go and it could mean that we would not then have the conflict that we have seen about sites like the Lammermoor Range and like Mount Cass. A more strategic approach would also be more collaborative. It would mobilise the expertise the skills and the resources that we have seen spent in classic conflicts between the environment and the economy in the Mokihinui River. It would ensure that rivers like the Mokihinui were given proper protection. A Green Budget would be about ensuring that we have a smart economy that protects our natural assets that shares prosperity fairly and that ensures we have a good quality of life.