Adams Amy: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Adams Amy: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 28 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6868. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 This week over the course of the news cycle and through Parliament we have seen clear examples of how the Opposition in this country has become increasingly delusional and dysfunctional. The speaker who has just resumed her seat Metiria Turei is an excellent example of that. There seems to be a belief that if you are a minor party in this Parliament you can come down here you can appear in the media say anything you want and if you say it often enough that must make it true. Well let me tell the speaker who has just resumed her seat that the reality is that after 4 years in office this Government has turned this country round. Instead of facing a Crown debt of somewhere near 50 percent in 2020 as Cullen’s legacy left us we are now in track for a mere 18.5 percent. The reality is that over the last 2 years this Government has created 54000 new jobs we have a growth rate that is the envy of the Western World unemployment benefit numbers are down and continue to fall and health and education outcomes are as good as they have ever been. So I would say to the previous member who has resumed her seat Metiria Turei that saying it alone does not make it true— 
Dr David Clark 
: Worst economic record in 50 years though. 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: —and you can continue to have your head in a delusional and dysfunctional space Mr Clark but that is the reality. 
The truth is—if we are dealing in facts; as it seems to be the phrase of the week let us deal in some facts—MMP Government gives us a system where minor parties who have never had to deliver on a single thing can stand in this House and promise everything to the country and pretend there are no consequences of their actions. That is simply a fallacy. The real world tells us that all our decisions have consequences. The truth of the matter is that more red tape higher costs and more bureaucracy means fewer jobs less Government spending less opportunity for Kiwi families to get ahead and reductions in health funding law and order funding and education funding and even fewer academics having the privilege of commenting on it all. 
In this Government we take our responsibility seriously and we know that everything we do has consequences. It is incumbent on us to balance the decisions we make with the outcomes of those decisions and to be mindful always of the impacts the decisions we make have on the jobs of real New Zealanders who are out there every day working hard to feed their families. We take that seriously and we are not going to trifle with the jobs of New Zealanders. 
That is as true in the environment space as it is in any space. We take our environmental responsibilities incredibly seriously. I will stand here today and back our record on what we have actually done in the environment space against the record of any other party in this House and I am absolutely confident we will come out on top. This is a Government that acts on the environment that does not just talk about it. This is a Government that puts water reform at the front of our programme and that for the first time in New Zealand’s history is taking the reform of our water management system seriously. But what we have unfortunately is an Opposition that would rather score politically motivated points—scaremongering and destroying our international reputation if it scores it a couple of points domestically. I think that is reprehensible. I think it is cowardly and I think it is absolutely disloyal to the country that it claims to represent. 
We have seen Green Party members this year travelling around their country through their self-confessed vandal advocate Jolyon White and ramping up hysteria about the practice of hydraulic fracturing. They run around telling people that it will cause earthquakes it will pollute their water supply and it will poison their children. They demanded an inquiry—they demanded an inquiry—and we agreed: let us have a look at the practice. Let us see what the truth is. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment carried out the inquiry. The difference is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment bases her opinions on facts on substance on science and on objectivity—a few criteria that frankly the Green Party could learn a little bit about. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment considered the practice. She considered it in some depth over some period of time and she found no basis—no basis—to call an end to the practice. Were the Greens satisfied? Of course not. There is no win for them in that—let us carry on the scaremongering and let us just attack the inquiry attack the commissioner and demean it all on the simple basis that in the Greens’ world on “Planet Green” if you do not agree you must be wrong and the system must be broken. If it does not come out with the outcome that we have been preaching from our privileged basis it must be wrong. So I would say to the Green Party: stop attacking your country stop being careless with the jobs of real New Zealanders pay attention to the facts and grow up.