Fitzsimons Jeanette: Appropriation (2002/03 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Second Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Appropriation (2002/03 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Second Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:609;Page:6370] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I rise to the challenge of saying something interesting about the supplementary estimates. For those who are listening I point out that we are debating the small adjustments that the Government wants to make to its 2002 Budget appropriation in order to reflect changing priorities and needs during the last year. However part-way through this financial year the Government did announce an important new policy which we would expect to see reflected in the supplementary estimates. As part of its Sustainable Development Programme of Action announced in January the Minister said that sustainable development must now be at the core of all policy-making. So I looked carefully to see whether that new emphasis was reflected in the supplementary estimates. 
Sustainable development is about integrating policy across economic social and environmental aims so that they are mutually reinforcing rather than in conflict. It is a very worthy objective it is long overdue and the Greens are hugely supportive of that approach. The Government has announced four areas of particular focus in its work on sustainable development: energy fresh water cities and young people. Those are well-chosen issues. Energy is at the heart of our economy—if energy is not sustainable nothing can be. Water is the most essential requisite for life. If we do not have an adequate quantity and quality of water then our well-being is seriously affected. Cities are an issue because that is where most of us live and young people are mentioned because they are the future. So it was to those areas that I turned first in the Supplementary Estimates hoping to find some evidence of that new shift. 
Vote Energy shows a number of changes that underline pointedly the growing unsustainability of our energy system and the damage that that unsustainability is doing to our economy. If ever there was proof that environmental sustainability has economic impacts it is in the energy sector right now. The first thing one notices when one looks at Vote Energy in the Supplementary Estimates is the loss of $6.5 million of revenue. That revenue was expected at the beginning of the year but it will not be realised because it is the energy resources levy on Maui gas and that gas is no longer there to levy. It is interesting is it not how little the Government knew for so long? There was a 30-year depletion profile for the Maui gasfield. The Government had the right to seek information at any time about how it was going. It did not really do so for most of those 30 years and then suddenly about last November we learnt that the gas will run out a bit early. Not only will it run out a bit early but it has seriously started to do so now and the amount that we have in the current year is very significantly less—impossible I must say to find out at the moment how much less—than we expected. 
As a result of that of course we are running the Huntly station on coal so we have an increase to the Government revenue of $400000 from energy resources levies and of $300000 from royalties to the Crown from the extra coal burnt at Huntly. That does not really compare with the $6.5 million previously expected from Maui Gas  but it is a little bit more revenue. Of course if this had happened 5 years from now when the Kyoto Protocol will be in effect we would have had to make budgetary provision for the extra carbon credits we would have to buy on the international market in order to cover the extra coal that we are using as a result of not managing our gas well over the last 30 years. 
Sticking with Vote Energy I say to members that we all know that there has been a huge amount of churning in the Minister’s office and a huge amount of frantic activity across the Government to figure out what to do about the dry winter and the lack of energy from our hydro resources. That is reflected sure enough in the supplementary estimates with more than another half-million dollars for policy advice on gas and electricity markets. That reflects the legal action that is going on over access to the remaining Maui Gas—as to who should get how much of it if there is less than we thought—and the setting up of the Electricity Commission to do the job that industry self-regulation failed so miserably to do. 
Now that we have such overwhelming evidence that our energy patterns are not sustainable—we have virtually run out of gas we frequently run out of water our oil supplies will start to taper off from about 2010 to 2015 and we cannot turn to coal without frying the planet—I looked in the Supplementary Estimates for new initiatives to encourage renewable energy sources to take the place of those energy sources—and saw there was nothing. Perhaps that is because the Government did all that in the 2003 Budget and there is not really time to implement more spending on renewables before the end of this financial year. So I looked in the 2003 Budget again just to check that and well no—I saw there was $200000 to assist the implementation of 400 solar water heaters on houses. That was the sum total of assistance to renewable energy in Budget 2003. 
But much worse than that just after Budget 2003 we had an announcement that next year’s supplementary estimates—the adjustments to the Budget for the 2003-04 year—will make provision for $21 million for exploration in search of new oil and gas finds. So not only are we spending next to nothing on developing the renewable energy that will get us through into the future and put our economy on a sustainable basis but we are spending $21 million on trying to prop up out-of-date technologies and fuels. That is not a path to sustainable development. This is supposed to be a sustainable development programme of action? 
Secondly I looked for evidence of greater activity on water quality and allocation which is the second matter that the Government said it was specialising in. Where would I find that? I looked in the environment estimates. I thought maybe there would be funding for more policy work on fresh water because we do need some of that. I saw there was nothing on water in the environment estimates. However the public has got involved. We have had the formation of the Water Rights Trust in the South Island and it has said we simply cannot allocate any more water from South Island rivers until we have done a proper assessment as to whether there is anything more to allocate. That shows how concerned the public are and hundreds of people turned up to the trust’s first meeting concerned about water allocation water quantity and water quality. There is huge concern in the South Island that by the time the Government gets around to having a sustainable development programme of action on water the Waitaki River may not be our largest braided river any longer because more than 70 percent of its water may have been taken completely out of the river channel for Project Aqua. 
I did find in the environment estimates evidence of further delay on contaminated sites. I mention Mapua the worst contaminated site in New Zealand. The Local Government and Environment Committee has been chasing the Ministry for the Environment for 5 years now to my knowledge asking when it will get on with cleaning up the Mapua site. Funding was allocated years ago and every year it is rolled over to the next year. Would members believe that the $3 million allocated for Mapua has been rolled over again to the 2003-04 year because the ministry is still not ready to start the clean-up?. That is hugely disappointing. 
We looked to see whether something was to be found in the estimates for research science and technology because a lot of that work needs research funds. We found that the Government could not spend all the money allocated for environmental research grants. Instead it gave the balance of it to Crown research institutes focused on commercialising science for industry to spend as they would. 
I looked at the third issue of children and young people to see whether provision for them has changed this year. I found nothing that will help the 29 percent of children euphemistically described as “suffering restrictions on their standard of living”. That means poverty. It is the most serious issue facing children at the moment and nothing has been done for those children in the supplementary estimates. 
There are many fine words but when one looks at how a Government spends its money one finds out what it really means. The Sustainable Development Programme of Action is a programme of words and we have yet to see any deeds. Yesterday we expressed our huge disappointment that even the grants that the Government is giving to business are not subject to any sustainability criteria at all. There are no criteria for energy efficiency nor even requirements to be a good employer for waste minimisation or for sustainability reporting.