Sage Eugenie: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10702. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on the review of the appropriations in the primary sector. I think the speech we heard from the Minister for Primary Industries summed up the Government’s arrogance and its lack of understanding of the fact that when rain falls on the land and drains into rivers that sustains life. Rivers are not to be captured always for irrigation. The fact that the Minister was claiming that irrigation and big storage schemes are good for the environment shows what little understanding he and this National Government have about what rivers are really important for—for sustaining life for sustaining a lot of our indigenous plants and wildlife and for their recreational values.We cannot exist without water. This Government wants to direct it into big irrigation schemes and that is what I would like to talk about this afternoon in terms of the Irrigation Acceleration Fund which is a major part of the Ministry for Primary Industries’ promotion of more intensive agriculture. This Government has helped to create the perfect storm that we are now experiencing in dairying. With funding for things like the Irrigation Acceleration Fund and the handouts that it and Crown Irrigation Investments give to irrigation it has encouraged a very high-input high-cost model that has a high environmental impact. It relies on imported feed like palm kernel expeller and very high levels of debt. So when you have had the change in the dairy supply payouts that has helped to create the perfect storm.Under the Ministry for Primary Industries through the major investment in the Irrigation Acceleration Fund—$35 million over 5 years with another $25 million pumped in in last year’s Budget to be spent from 2016—this Government is making it very easy for these think-big storage projects to go ahead. To date we have had that fund spend $27 million in handouts to 18 irrigation projects. We have had $6.5 million go to Ruataniwha $8.7 million go to Central Plains $7.6 million go to Hunter Downs and another $1.8 million go to Hurunui. Even just one of those grants exceeds the amount that the Ministry for Primary Industries allocates for sustainable farming through its Sustainable Farming Fund.It just shows the Government’s priorities. It gives big handouts to irrigators and agribusiness and yet in 2015 it provided only $7 million for the Sustainable Farming Fund. It just shows how little weight the Government gives to sustainability and that is despite one of the ministry’s stated outcomes being to increase sustainable resource use. The focus seems to be more on increasing resource use rather than on improving sustainability. What we have seen with this whole growth in irrigation and intensive agriculture has been a disaster for our rivers our streams and our aquifers and that is what National is failing to take into account.We want to have a reputation overseas for producing safe food—food that people can trust because it comes from a clean and healthy environment—yet the Government with its very weak standards for the regulation of land and water use its very permissive National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management and these big handouts to think-big irrigation projects like Ruataniwha and Central Plains is encouraging more intensive agriculture and more water pollution. In Canterbury where a lot of this has happened and where a lot of these irrigation grants have gone we have got the medical officer of health warning midwives to warn pregnant mothers to ensure that if they are bottle-feeding their babies they do not take the water for that infant formula from their local bores because nitrate levels exceed the World Health Organization standards. Nitrate is not like E. coli. You cannot boil the water to get rid of it; it is there permanently.Hon Jo Goodhew: Scandalous—you want to scare pregnant women.EUGENIE SAGE: It is not scaremongering Minister. Environment Canterbury’s monitoring of water supply bores is showing an increasing spike in nitrate levels that exceeds World Health Organization standards. The medical officer of health has warned midwives. The Government is in denial about the impacts on our human health and the environmental health that its policies through the ministry’s handouts to irrigation are having.So the Irrigation Acceleration Fund is not about promoting sustainable land and water use. It is all about allowing agribusiness—