Borrows Chester; Hayes JoEnvironment SectorThe CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Members we come now to the votes in the environment sector B5 volume 3. JOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take this call for the Estimates on Vote Environment. I am really pleased to do this as a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee. As we start moving through my contribution I just want to add that it has been the 2017-18 Vote Environment appropriation that has increased to 82 percent of the funding from the 2016 actual expenditure. We are looking at $871.489 million of appropriations going into the 2017-18 Vote Environment.A significant appropriation for this vote has been the New Zealand Units to do with climate change. We are investing—the appropriation is looking at—$681 million just for the allocation of New Zealand Units. We are looking at $23 million to provide advice for mitigating environmental hazards and waste—that is the Waste Minimisation Fund. There is $23 million for advice to implement tools to improve environment management and $20 million to provide advice and implement tools for water management.Even though it is a 5-minute call I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the freshwater management section of the Vote Environment appropriations. I think that the Clean Water package of 2017 is a very good package because it looks at areas like $100 million investing into the improvement of fresh water for the Freshwater Improvement Fund. That is to go towards organisations and communities to actually help them with cleaning up their waterways.I also want to talk a little bit about the fact that some members in the House believe that our rivers and waterways should be 100 percent swimmable. Obviously that cannot happen because the weather will not allow that to happen. Just look at the floods that happened which actually did contaminate our waterways. So we are looking at 90 percent of the waterways in New Zealand being swimmable. I doubt that anybody would have wanted to swim in those rivers that flooded over the weekend. When we start to look at the fresh water I really do support this. I also come from a rural background and I see it all the time—whenever the rivers flood you do not want to go swimming in there. So 100 percent swimmable rivers—I do not think that is actually achievable but 90 percent is actually achievable.One of the other things that these particular appropriations look at is actually locking stock out of waterways. This is the first Government of New Zealand in the history of this country that has actually put in regulations around locking stock out of waterways. If we start to look at some of the areas in the North Island and the dairy farmers are actually implementing those rules around locking stock out of waterways and that is really important. It has been this Government that has put that particular piece of legislation in. So you know we get a lot of flak on this side about that but we are a Government that has done this. This is the first time in the history of this country that a Government has stepped up to manage fresh water and put in regulations that local government has to implement to keep our water clean so we can all drink it.Hon Amy Adams: That's right. Thank heavens for National.JOANNE HAYES: Yes that is right. It is a National-led Government. So when I stand and I hear all the banter from the other side it is just blowing hot air in the wind because you did not do it when you had 9 years the Greens did not even have any influence in that Labour-led Government and I doubt that will happen into the future. I am really proud of what this Government is doing around the Vote Environment portfolio and especially around fresh water. I am sure that my colleagues will carry on discussing the rest of the Vote Environment because they are good pieces of information and appropriations that have gone into Vote Environment as well as Vote Conservation.This is a Government that is actually delivering for New Zealanders. No other Government has done that. We will continue to do that into the future for the environmental health of this country and I am very proud to stand here and take the first call on the Vote Environment Estimates. Thank you.