Delahunty Catherine: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9808. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The environment under this Government is a nice-to-have: something for the privateers and the corporates to sponsor to make them look good. The environment under this Government is a contradiction. We have polluted the rivers—they are not swimmable—but the Government insists that its collaboration strategy is working. If commodity prices had not collapsed the Government’s treacherous strategy of “drill it mine it frack it and milk it” might have succeeded for some people. But actually what it has done is polluted 62 percent of our rivers.The environment is a space where 6 million cows and half a billion dollars’ worth of subsidised irrigation gets to make use of rivers justified by the faux arguments that river flows do not need to vary. Whatever Mr Key—the man who thinks that rivers are just wasted if they flow out to sea. A bit of fencing around the nitrate-contaminated waters will be seen as the solution and the window dressing when that 62 percent of rivers remain unswimmable under this Government. But not to worry the children of the wealthy can be taken on recreational visits to clean rivers while the children of the poor sit by dirty drains listening to the stories of their grandparents about what a swimmable river used to be like. Fish in our rivers—ever heard of them? Anyone seen a native fish in a river lately? Not likely. What we have instead is rivers choked with cow urine seasonal algae blooms human waste and invisible chemicals many of which have yet to be identified.No one owns water says the Government. Meanwhile while it parrots this bottled water is being sold to countries like China and being exported from the Hawke’s Bay. People spend $3 on this bottle of water while these companies export free water and pay nothing except a few bucks for a resource consent. The catchments of sacred and iconic springs at Porotī and Waikoropupū are now up for grabs for export—tangata whenua kaitiakitangarights ignored and trampled on.The environment is a nice-to-have. The emergency aid ships are ploughing their way to drowning Pacific atolls and cyclone terror descends on the Pacific but how about some real action and commitment on issues such as water and climate change? The environment in a Government with strong green progressive leadership will not be a nice-to-have because it is the economy it is the community and it is the future. It is the source of everything we need as well as everything we produce. It is the only stability in this crazy world of greed: good soil clean water clean air and clean energy.We have the chance in this country to pull back from the brink of our self-sabotage. We can have a leadership role by committing to clean and swimmable rivers. It is what everyone wants for their kids except apparently this Government: rivers not drains. We can have great farming models that sustain farming communities not boom-and-bust monocultures of milk powder export to lactose-intolerant populations who now have the technology that we taught them to make their own milk powder.A strong Green voice in Government would value Te Tiriti o Waitangi and put quality water at the heart of all negotiations for allocation as well as use. We would believe the freshwater scientists—actually believe what they tell us—when they say it is a crisis of multiple stressors on lakes and rivers including nitrate pollution at unprecedented levels and temperatures of 30 degrees which have never been recorded before in some of our waterways and lakes. We would stop the dairy conversions because it makes sense. Landcorp Farming Ltd gets it; Tourism New Zealand gets it.Rivers can be swimmable for our mokopuna. I do not know about you but I have had enough of this sign: the sign that says “this river is too sick to swim in” is all over this country. It is in media alerts every single day. Rivers are there for our mokopuna. We can have swimmable rivers; we can have clean water—we just have to commit to a goal and work towards it. But this Government has walked away from that responsibility. Swimmable rivers are our future not this disgrace. Kia ora tātou katoa.