Stanford Erica; Tolley AnneERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Boy I was sitting here I have to say and wondering if the Minister of Fisheries was going to get to cameras on fishing boats because frankly I thought to myself that if I was him I probably wouldn't mention it. It's not such a good thing given that he's been completely slammed by all of their mates—people like Forest & Bird who have called this an utter abomination. In fact it's a massive back-down because in fact out of 1000 boats in our commercial fishing fleet they've put cameras on 28. That's 2.8 percent my colleague Mr Todd Muller tells me—he's very good at math. But let me tell this House something else about those 28 boats: they already have observers from the Ministry for Primary Industries on all of them. Hon Peeni Henare: No they don't. ERICA STANFORD: Yes they do—yes they do. They already have observers on those boats. So here we have a Minister trumpeting his Government as being transformational with 28 boats having cameras out of a fleet of 1000 who already have observers on them. This is actually a massive failure. It's not transformational at all. The reason if anyone is wondering—I'm sure everyone knows but for the people out there in Voter Land"—why they're not rolling it out as promised across our fishing fleet it's three words: New Zealand First. New Zealand First don't like this because they have ties to the fishing industry. The ironic thing in all of this—the ironic thing; the thing I find the funniest—is that the Hon Shane Jones prior to being in this Parliament spent a good three years travelling around as our roving ambassador of the Pacific and his job was to look after the fisheries. What did he do while he was appointed in that role? He put cameras on fishing boats. That's what he did and he comes here to this Parliament and his party puts the brakes on and stops cameras on fishing boats across our fleet because of the ties that they have to the fishing industry. That is frankly appalling. For Minister Nash to get up here today and tell us how transformational it is to put cameras on 2.8 percent of our fishing fleet is frankly appalling and a massive joke. I can't believe that he even mentioned it. If I was him I would be hanging my head in shame because their mates—people like Forest & Bird; people like Kevin Hague—are now coming out and calling this a major back-down and saying that they're frankly appalled by it themselves. This Budget has been specifically designed to embrace New Zealand in this cloak of warm fuzzy buzz "make you feel good" rhetoric. Much like the cover of the Budget was wrapped with those two people with the happy smiling faces—nothing to see here—we all know how that ended up. This Government's inability to grow our economy and their increasing of costs drove those people overseas to Australia where in fact actually they would be happier because the opportunities aren't here any more. The simple fact is that the reason these guys don't want to talk about GDP or productivity or the economy and they'd rather talk about something else that they've rebranded wellbeing is because they know very well that whenever they talk about the economy their vote drops because New Zealanders don't trust them with the economy. In this country when they hear the words "Labour" and "the economy" they turn off. They turn away because they don't trust them. So in this clever move to avoid ever talking about the economy or GDP or things that actually matter they've concentrated on this other thing that they've rebranded as wellbeing which funnily enough ties really well into the thing that they're actually quite good at: spending New Zealanders money in a willy-nilly fashion with no accountability. They're terrible at growing the economy but very very good at dishing out the fruits of New Zealanders' labour. It's all this massive rebranding exercise to trick and divert our attention. It's that sleight of hand—"Don't look at that thing over here that really matters. Look at this shiny new thing over here that we're going to call wellbeing."—this new buzzword that's pretty much what every Government in the history of this country has done to appropriate money for the wellbeing of New Zealanders. The issue for this Government now is that this thin veneer of fluff and rhetoric is wearing off. Their promises that they trumpeted are starting to not be delivered on and we're piling up with them in this so-called year of delivery. One of their biggest areas that I'd like to focus my contribution on today is the environment. I'm going to talk about water in particular but I do just want to start with the Greens' investment fund because whatever happened to that? Todd Muller: That's in my speech. ERICA STANFORD: Sorry I'm stealing Mr Todd Muller's thunder. I'll just mention it very briefly because it was heralded and trumpeted as this wonderful thing that the Green Party won in the coalition negotiations and then there was silence. In fact I was in very recently a meeting in my electorate with a company who had applied for the fund quite recently and were told that it wasn't ready to be dished out yet because they were still working on it. We are 20 months into this Government 20 months into this greenest Government ever and the Green Party's big win the Green Investment Fund still ain't ready. How embarrassing for this greenest Government ever. But one of the biggest things—and Labour trumpeted this in the election—and one of their most important promises to the country was that they were going to make rivers swimmable in a generation. In fact water was their No. 1 environmental issue. There are two main things when it comes to water: Labour's failure to deliver on their promise of swimmable rivers in a generation and the second thing can I say is massive uncertainty. For a Government that made this the No. 1 environmental policy at the election and they campaigned on this day after day—"We're going to clean up our rivers in a generation"—in August this year it will be 23 months since they were elected and what have they done? Why has this taken them so long? I say "August" because that is apparently when we're going to see the first national policy statement on water perhaps. Maybe it's the working groups that they've had that have tied them up for so long. They've got a council working group a scientists working group a freshwater working group and an iwi working group. On The Nation—if anyone watched The Nation on the weekend—the Hon Minister Parker described the issue as extremely complex and very difficult and not very simple. Well go figure! In Opposition on the campaign trail it was easy: "We're going to clean it up in a generation. Nothing to see here it's all very easy in fact." When they're in Government well it's all a lot more difficult and they fill the air with fluffy rhetoric. It's all very nice and well to say "Clean it up in a generation." but in fact it is very difficult. In two years of Government so far what they have done is absolutely nothing for fresh water—nothing at all. Let me remind this House of what we did when we were in Government: we set up the Land and Water Forum we measured waterways around the country we set limits and the biggest thing the most important thing was that we—Hon Member: And it got worse. ERICA STANFORD: In fact more waterways in this country showed improvement than decline for the first time. The Labour Government prior to us only invested $300 million sorry $30 million—not even $300; $30 million. That's all they invested. We invested $400 million into cleaning up our waterways. Let me tell this House what we can gather so far that Mr Parker has put in this Budget into cleaning up some waterways that he's unable to identify as of yet because he's not quite sure where they are after 20 months: $12 million. Now it's a huge difference to go from $400 million in cleaning up our waterways to a measly $12 million. But the biggest thing I want to talk about in my remaining two minutes is the uncertainty that we face around this Budget because there is a sustainable land use package that has got no detail around it. Now members will be aware of Minister Parker's comments at the last election when he was in Ashburton talking to farmers. Basically it was a thinly veiled threat where he said "Well if you don't get on board I'll double the price of water from 1c to 2c." So given the lack of detail in this Budget around the sustainable land use package all I can suspect that this big pot of money is is another tool for him to get at farmers to say "Well I've got this money and if you don't get on board with me well maybe you won't get any of it." There's very little detail and given his past issues with farmers I can only guess that that's what this is here to do. I'm very suspicious of this fund given that there is no detail around it. Farmers are gathering today at the Fieldays. It's our biggest agricultural trade show. All they have is uncertainty from this Government and this Budget. They don't know if they're going to be in the emissions trading scheme they've got no idea about whether or not they'll be charged for water or how much and they've got no idea about the climate change bill and how that will affect them. Now we have got Minister Parker telling us that we won't even perhaps see a national policy statement on water until August—almost two years into their term. Massive uncertainty for our farming and rural sector who are producing some of the finest products in the world at very low emissions—some of the best in the world in fact—and yet here we are with more and more uncertainty on them. We wonder why our economy has gone from 4 percent to 2 percent growth and it's because sectors like this have absolutely no certainty. They're not hiring they're not investing and they're not growing. This Government is failing to deliver on its promises. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Now I understand this is a split call."