Adams Amy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: General Debate[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment):While other members are insisting on rolling around in the dirt this Government and this party got together last weekend to talk about what we have done for the environment and what we are doing for the environment. We have got a record that we can be proud of. I want to particularly highlight the work of my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith and local MP Colin King who have come together to develop the Hikurangi Marine Reserve the brand-new whale sanctuary and the fur seal sanctuary. It is the final culmination of a very successful community collaboration by the Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura group. I want to congratulate Minister Smith and the whole community of Kaikōura on their work in putting together the protection of those most important mammals in New Zealand.Although we are getting on with it delivering real results the actual record of Labour and the Greens when it comes to the environment is utterly woeful. It is woeful. Under the last Labour Government propped up by the Greens the reality is that we had more coal oil and gas energy produced than ever before. We had a 23 percent rise in our carbon emissions. We had 30000 hectares of forestry cut down in that Government’s last 3 years alone. We had absolutely no meaningful action on water management meaning that in the time those members were in Government water quality continued to deteriorate. You only have to pick the last report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment where she absolutely lays out the woeful deterioration through those years to 2008 which this Government is now getting on and fixing.Now we are seeing what a Labour-Greens Government 2.0 would look like. We have already seen of course proposals for the Kiwi tax on the Kiwi net. We have heard them roll out their intentions to have KiwiAssure adding the 97th insurance company to the New Zealand market. And today we have got Kiwi wood. Kiwi wood—finally a policy that Shane Jones can get behind. I can only assume that David Cunliffe is so sick of having brickbats thrown at him that he is now taking steps to ban bricks. But instead of the Labour Party telling the forestry industry how it should operate there is one lesson that Labour should be taking from the forestry industry and that is about trimming and culling dead wood—a lesson that the Labour Party has completely failed to learn. We have heard from my colleague Nick Smith. We have heard from Nick Smith exactly how much Australian voters punished Labor for getting into bed with the Greens. They saw how damaging that association was. They saw what it did to an economy very very similar to New Zealand’s as Nick has told you.In New Zealand what is really interesting is that the infighting and the divisions have already begun. They have not even got into bed yet; they are just arguing over which side they are going to sleep on. Already they cannot work together. We know that the Greens would ban a mining policy. The Greens would ban it. Labour has said “Oh it’s a significant part of the economy and we won’t be turning off the tap.” David Parker of course is on record describing the Greens’ monetary policy as unhelpful and unnecessary. On cannabis—the Greens have always wanted it to be legal and Labour of course takes the opposite view. We have got Metiria Turei questioning the integrity of Labour MPs in taking corporate gifts. We have got Phil Twyford describing the Greens as simply wrong on environment policy. Grant Robertson of course came out attacking Kennedy Graham’s blog as pure politics and just wrong. And while Metiria Turei has been complaining about Labour nicking policy from the Greens we have got Clare Curran complaining about white-anting going on with the Greens encroaching on Labour territory. So clearly they are happy bedfellows over there!My favourite though has got to be Russel Norman coming out and telling Trevor Mallard to “go back to closing schools and making housing unaffordable like you did in govt”. So is it not interesting that today we have had Russel Norman talking about housing affordability when he was on record not very long ago quite rightly pointing out that between 2002 and 2007 house prices doubled the current account ballooned and Labour did nothing? Wise words indeed from Russel Norman for once.So what do we know? We know they cannot work together. They contradict each other. They do not trust each other. They do not like each other. The one thing we know is if you cannot run yourselves you cannot run a country. We have seen it in Tasmania. It suffered under that for 16 years and now the Labor Party has been punished with the worst result it has had a result that will take a long time to recover from. That is the lesson to New Zealand. Do not make the mistake of Australia. Do not let a Labour-Greens coalition destroy this country.