Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It's not a good night.ERICA STANFORD: It's all right. It's been a long day. It's fantastic to have the Ministers in front of select committee to ask them detailed questions about their spending their plans so that we can work out what their priorities are because despite this being the most open and transparent Government of all time in their year of delivery their actual plans and priorities are very difficult to decipher. During these Estimates hearings it actually did become quite clear to us because despite being the self-appointed greenest Government ever in their year of delivery their priority is not the environment. They might like talking about the environment a great deal but actually doing anything about it is not their priority and the evidence of this is the past 12 months. Let's not forget that this Government have supposedly passed more legislation in the last six months than any other Government in the history of time according to one learned political historian on Twitter the other day. But let's take a look at what we spoke about in the Environment Committee about what they've actually done and let's take the last 12 months to be even fairer to them. Three environmental bills we spoke about in select committee that were passed: the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill—that was a small drafting error we fixed—there was the Conservation (Infringement System) Bill a National Party bill; and the last one was the immigration tourism levy bill which was a tax. That's all we've had in 12 months those three bills: a tax a National bill and a small amendment fix-up bill because of a drafting error. The only bill that we've had in the last 12 months that we spoke about in select committee was the litter bill from by learned colleague here Mr Scott Simpson and they voted it down. They voted it down. So four pieces of legislation one of which was good and they voted it down. Well I'd like to talk about Minister Sage. She for the second year running did not turn up to our select committee to partake in these questions we had for her and it was really unfortunate because actually she's the Minister with the delegation for waste. We are in a situation where we have stockpiles of plastic around the country that we don't have markets for any more that we are now sending to landfill because it's been so long—thousands of tonnes of plastic that I'm seeing being sent to landfill. It can't be recycled here. We've got breaching landfills and we've got contaminated sites and she doesn't show up to answer questions. So Minister Parker was there answering questions on her behalf and really the only thing that he could point to was the plastic bag ban the only thing this Minister's achieved in her portfolio in the last 12 months and when I say achieved" I'm saying that in the following context: by the time the ban came in we were 75 percent of the way there anyway because of the voluntary measures that the supermarkets had put in place. So that's what she's achieved in the last 12 months. I spend a lot of time with my colleague Scott Simpson. We travel the country looking at the waste sector and a month or so ago I was actually in Invercargill with Sarah Dowie. We were looking at the Southland disAbility Enterprises a fantastic recycling business. There they showed me a massive pile of plastic waste that we cannot recycle here and that we cannot ship overseas and he said to me "The Minister in banning plastic bags got her priorities wrong. This is the stuff that we need to be doing something with." There's a market for plastic bags. It's great she's banned it—it's no problem—but why was that a priority? Those are some of the questions that we asked in select committee. Minister Parker talked about how the Minister was thinking about waste thinking about product stewardship schemes and doing a lot of nasal gazing—navel gazing and thinking about things. That was a great spoonerism wasn't it? I'll remember that one. But the fact is we're 22 months into this greenest Government ever in their year of delivery and we've had almost nothing. Then of course we spoke about the Fox landfill disaster the biggest environmental disaster since the Rena. The Minister dragged her feet on this. She sat on her hands did nothing for months and months and giving a small nominal amount to the council down there and then complained when they spent it all quite quickly and she cast aspersions on the way that they spent it. It wasn't until my colleague Scott Simpson and others—and actually to be fair the New Zealand First MP Jenny Marcroft—went down there and put pressure on her until she had to do something about it. This is a Green Party Minister sitting on her hands doing nothing about one of New Zealand's biggest environmental disasters. Let's not forget their broken promises. Cameras on fishing boats—no. Royalties on bottled water—no. Urban water standards—no. Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary—nothing."