Delahunty Catherine: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: General Debate[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5211. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Kia ora e te Whare. It is really really fantastic to hear that we are all so strong but actually it means nothing if we do not have this stuff the water. I want to talk just a little bit about two Ministers today in my general debate speech. One Minister the Minister for the Environment said last week that we need to clean up water that we can clean up water and that the way to do it is to reduce agriculture intensification and cut nitrogen. The other Minister the Minister for Primary Industries is opposing the Green’s call for a moratorium and supporting more pollution of water by allowing the conversion of the farms in the upper Taupō and Waikato areas. All of this wonderful blah blah blah workers’ party kōrero that we have just heard from the National Party members and how they support the workers they are fabulous with the farmers they are saving tourism and it is all great—is all pretty meaningless when 60 percent of our rivers are too polluted to swim in. I am not even talking about drinking or gathering kai. I am talking about swimming.When we get a strategy that the Minister for the Environment quite rightly went to Taupō last week and congratulated the Lake Taupō Protection Trust on—excellent work is happening around Taupō to reduce the pollution of that lake. It is long-term work because it takes many years to create an environmental disaster like this one but there is good work going on. The trust is actually persuading farmers to reduce stock numbers which is critical if you actually want to save the lake. So it is really important to listen to the Minister for the Environment—I just wish that Nathan Guy would do that. On one hand the Minister for the Environment is saying: “Let’s clean up the water and these are the strategies.” Nick Smith said last week that chemical caps could work for other lakes—we are talking about the hydro lakes that turned pink during last summer—but unfortunately Nathan Guy cannot hear him. Nick Smith is saying that we need nitrogen caps that in order to protect the waterways we really need to reduce animal numbers and that means buying up farms to transition away from dairy—read my lips—and set caps that actually limit the number of animals people can have on their farms. He said that if the plan can work for Taupō it can work for the rest of the country.Well what about just up the road? What about if you drive from Taupō just up the road and we find ourselves in the territory of Tūwharetoa and the headwaters of the hydro lakes and the Waikato River? If we do that we see a totally different story. This Government through its State farmer is promoting one of the worst environmental disasters this country has seen in a long time. It is converting forestry which is a carbon sink—and I am not a fan of the way many pine forests are managed but at least they store carbon. This Government farmer is cutting them down one tree a minute in order to create a new dairy farm which by 2020 will have according to its owner Wairākei Pastoral—for whom Landcorp the Government farmer manages it—43000 more cows with their waste going into the hydro lakes and the rivers. We are already spending $210 million trying to clean up the Waikato River. We have got a solution at Lake Taupō but instead of applying that the Government is going to allow 43000 more cows in that catchment. It is not about planting and fencing—it is great when people plant and fence waterways—it is about stopping the numbers of animals on the land. The Minister for the Environment nailed it in Taupō but they are denying it just down the road at the top of the Waikato River.This is an environmental disaster that is going to cost us as a nation just as Rotorua and Taupō are costing us now. We are creating a new one. This Government is creating a new environmental disaster from a climate perspective and from a water perspective. The farmers downstream are screaming because they are trying to live within their nitrogen limits while the Government farmer which is going to help to produce more methane is undermining the very thing that keeps our entire life force and economy alive—water. Without clean water there is no tourism no economy and no wine industry. There are none of the things that the Government is trumpeting about. If we cannot look after water we have got nothing. It is very obvious that the Government knows what the solution is but will not do it. So clearly the Minister for the Environment knows the answer but the Minister for Primary Industries will not listen. Through our petition for a moratorium 8102 people called for this and at the moment Nathan Guy still just cannot hear which is going to cost us a great deal in terms of water quality.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.