Hughes Gareth: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 20 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Today in Brazil—20 years on—the Rio Earth Summit meets for its 20th anniversary. Now 20 years on I think it is important to take stock of how we are doing two decades on. When you look at the promises made 20 years ago and when you look at the promises made 10 years ago you can see that it is clear: successive New Zealand Governments have failed to protect the environment—failed to protect it for future generations. We know that emissions are up our waterways are more polluted than ever—Kiwi kids cannot swim in half of our rivers and streams—we have got species going extinct and our oceans are not protected. 
Firstly looking at climate change we know that our emissions are up. The Government promised to reduce them but instead what we see is our emissions increasing. But worse than that we are seeing this Government fork out more than $1 billion in free emissions trading scheme credits to pay for the polluters. So our emissions are going up and we are paying polluters to keep polluting. We know that the Government is blocking international climate deals. The Government has failed to develop a low-carbon development plan which it promised in 2010. 
When we look at our waterways our waterways are more polluted than ever 20 years on. The quality is declining markedly. Kiwi kids cannot swim in most of our lowland rivers streams and lakes. When you look at the waters we know that there are only 55 Maui’s dolphins left but the Minister for Primary Industries sits on his hands while this dolphin species goes extinct. 
We know that the Government is embarking on a risky deep-sea oil drilling plan opening up 40000 square kilometres of our oceans to risky deep-sea drilling. When it comes to marine protection the Government has sat on the Marine Reserves Bill which is currently with the Local Government and Environment Committee. This bill is now the second-oldest bill ever to languish in a select committee. So while the Government goes over to Rio and today Amy Adams put out a press release saying that she was signing New Zealand up to the Global Partnership for Oceans the only thing she could point to was her Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. The first thing is that this bill is not a conservation bill. This bill does not deal with protection. This bill is more of an “Exclusive Economic Zone Drilling Bill”. All this bill does is rubber-stamp risky deep-sea oil drilling. 
 The Minister signed up New Zealand once again—because of course we signed up to it in 2000 with the Labour Government—to a 10 percent marine reserve target. The last time we had this target and the last time the deadline was met New Zealand had achieved having only 0.41 percent of our waters protected. So what we know is that the Government is opening up thousands of square kilometres to deep-sea drilling. It will not protect any of it. It is sitting on the legislation that could protect it. Meanwhile across the Ditch Australia has just announced the world’s largest network of marine reserves. So when we talk about catching Australia why do we not talk about catching it in marine conservation? 
It is clear when you look across all the promises that successive Governments have made that we have failed to live up to those promises. There are tens of thousands of people off to Rio as the conference begins tomorrow but there are two people who are not going. The first is the Prime Minister. Where is the Prime Minister? Why is he not going to Rio? We are sending the world the wrong signal. We are sending the world the signal that we do not care about sustainability. Of course this is a strong signal but an even stronger one is the fact that over two decades we have completely failed to protect our environment. We are missing out on a huge opportunity. Secondly from this side of the Chamber it would be interesting to ask who from Labour is going to the most important Earth Summit in 10 years. Who from Labour is going to the Earth Summit in Rio? The fact is Labour is not sending anyone. 
It is good that New Zealand is signing up to a plan to reduce that $1 trillion in global fossil fuel subsidies but really much like the oceans partnership we should start looking closer to home. This Government has got $25 million to throw at oil explorers and it has numerous tax incentives and exemptions to throw at risky oil explorers. This Government is quite comfortable with the fourth-lowest Government take of any oil producer in the world. So what we know is that from that risky deep-sea oil we are going to see hardly any jobs hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties and all the profits are going to go offshore. 
There is a better way. Last week I met with Brittany Trilford a New Zealander who has been selected to address tomorrow the world leaders who are at Rio. Brittany is going to ask the world leaders to give Kiwis a future that I can look forward to and that is what the world is asking. This Government can embrace the green economy: clean energy and smart technology. It can give Kiwi kids a future they can look forward to.