Sage Eugenie: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: General Debate[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9947. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. Tomorrow we will have a Budget that shows that National has forgotten that New Zealanders care about the environment. It will be a Budget that shows that National has forgotten that New Zealanders are proud of our country our stunning landscapes and our distinctive plants and wildlife from the melodic kōkako—[Interruption]—which is much more melodic than Mr Henare—to the kauri and that it has forgotten that New Zealanders want our lands our waters and our coasts well looked after. This Government has shown that it does not care about our environment. It has got very weak policies like the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management.This Government shows that it does not care by its attacks on one of our most important environmental laws the Resource Management Act. The Minister for the Environment claims that it is not about lowering environmental protection. That is not what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has said. With the emphasis on quick decisions rather than sound decisions the Government is reducing the ability of local communities to have their say. With its proposals to gut the heart of the Act by stripping out the environmental criteria that are supposed to guide decisions it is turning the Act into one that promotes economic development at the environment’s expense. The Government is weakening our environmental laws so that high-impact development projects get less scrutiny by councils get less scrutiny by the community and get a faster and easier ride through the resource consent process.At the same time as it is weakening the regulatory regime it is giving more handouts to intensive agriculture. Tomorrow’s Budget will subsidise irrigators by an $80 million grant to the Government’s new irrigation company to spend on large regional water schemes. This is despite the fact that nearly every study on water quality shows that land-use intensification leads to water pollution. The Government is proposing to provide further handouts to irrigators by spending some $400 million from the proceeds of selling our energy companies. The Mighty River Power share deal will mean that New Zealanders lose the dividends that that company provided so that dairy farmers—and in areas like Hawke’s Bay it will be dairy farmers because they will be the only ones who can afford the water—can take over on the Ruataniwha Plains rather than horticulture and other more varied land uses.This will not be a Budget about sustainable development because that is not a concept that this Government understands; it will be a Budget about debt. It will be about increasing the ecological debt on present and future generations because of this Government’s focus on exploiting nature for short-term gains. We have seen that inMinister Joyce’s Business Growth Agenda and the regional report he put out recently. We have got petroleum block offers in Northland and Taranaki; minerals exploration permits in Northland; irrigation development in Hawke’s Bay Canterbury and the Wairarapa; and the commercialisation of conservation land in Tasman Nelson and Marlborough as the route to economic nirvana for the regions. It is a Budget that burdens present and future generations with more water pollution with polluted waters and aquifers because the Government has not noticed that its promotion of irrigation has a huge cost to the environment and to people. In Selwyn District—the Minister for the Environment’s own electorate the centre of dairying with a big Fonterra factory—there have been dozens of problems with gastroenteritis in Darfield and communities in Arthur’s Pass Springfield Sheffield and Rolleston have had to or are having to boil their water.This is going to be a Budget that does not recognise that we need to invest in the environment as a basis for a healthy economy and a healthy society. We have seen the Franz Josef Development Society telling the Minister of Conservation that we need to invest in conservation because of the importance of conservation to the West Coast economy and that we need well-resourced Department of Conservation offices. Yet what we see is the Government finding $158 million for tourism promotion but a paltry $5 million for the Department of Conservation despite the protection of those conservation assets being central to the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. The Green Party believes that we need a Budget and a Government that look after our environment and look after all New Zealanders not just the top 2 percent.