Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. My expectations in this Budget for water quality were sky-high for a couple of reasons. Firstly because of all of the rhetoric prior to the election from Jacinda Ardern. Do you remember everybody when she said Clean water is the birthright of all of us. I want future generations to be able to swim in the local river like I did. Let's do this."? Given the good work of the previous National Government around fresh water these promises that the Labour Party came up with sent all of our expectations sky-high because when we were in Government we set up the Land and Water Forum. We implemented their suggestions. We monitored lakes and rivers and waterways. We set out a plan for a limit-setting process. We had the vision we had the plan we had the strategy and we had the funding—$30 million a year compared to funding under the previous Helen Clark Government of $3 million a year. For shame that did nothing—$30 million a year. The recent report from Land and Water Aotearoa shows that more of the 1500 monitored sites show improvement than deterioration. Things are on the up so we know that having a vision a plan and serious funding gets results. So when I read the quote from the Labour and the Greens Government that this was going to be the greenest Budget ever I was thinking to myself "This is gonna be good. This is gonna be amazing. This won't be another broken promise surely because Vote Environment is going to be dripping with initiatives. It's going to be dripping with projects and funding for fresh water." Firstly—weirdly—I did notice that there weren't any press releases from Minister Parker around fresh water. I thought "Huh that's very odd." So I started looking through Vote Environment line by line—"Surely it'll be in here somewhere."—nothing. Maybe there's an insert in here? [Shakes Budget document] Nothing. The New Zealand Herald in fact noted that Vote Environment had decreased by 15 percent and the more I looked into this the more I realised that Vote Environment was the biggest loser in this Budget. David Parker has done nothing in this Budget for fresh water to show that he's across his portfolio. There's no vision there's no plan and there is no funding for fresh water. How could this be? How could this be—how could there be no plans or projects or funding for improvements in fresh water? Maybe it's because we were doing such a good job they just thought "Actually things are going pretty well. We'll just keep doing that."—maybe that was one thing. Maybe—let's be fair to Minister Parker. He's the brains of the Labour Party caucus. The "Minister brought to you by the letters 'C' and 'P' " is the Minister for Trade the Minister for Economic Development and the Attorney-General. He's a busy guy travelling around the world. It's entirely understandable that he just doesn't have time to focus on issues that matter to New Zealanders. Or perhaps this lack of vision and funding for water quality has got more to do with that humdinger from Minister Hipkins in the House on Tuesday during question time—that "There's a clear difference between a broken promise and one that is yet to be delivered upon." And that moment—I was so happy to be in the House during that watershed moment that historic moment because this will go down in history because it's what he will be remembered for. It will be a must-watch and must-read text for any political science student in the country where the Labour Party renamed broken promises to "postponed promises". They will be the same students by the way who will be also enrolled in the new prerequisite paper "How not to be a kid completely disconnected from Reality 101" or maybe Minister Parker just didn't have the money for swimmable rivers because in this Budget the winner was not the environment; it was clearly Winston Peters. Prior to the election Winston Peters went around the country pontificating "Had enough?" Well I'll tell you—I'll tell you—Labour had enough for Winston Peters but they didn't have enough for the environment. When it comes to the environment to be fair the Greens want what's best for New Zealand; the Labour Party wants what's best for New Zealand First. Therein lies the problem because New Zealand First got 0.9 percent more of the party vote than the Greens—0.9 percent. This Budget clearly shows the exact price of 0.9 percent and that price is $4 billion because the Greens got a measly $100 million and Winston Peters got $4 billion. That's $165000 for each of the additional 24000 votes they got. It's because of the massive cost of the marriage between Labour and New Zealand First. Winston Peters is the Givenchy bride. He's teetering around in his Manolo Blahniks while the poor Greens are shivering in the corner in their upcycled hemp suits. I'll tell you what Vote Environment is the casualty of the 124000 votes that cost this country $4 billion."