Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am not sure what I have been listening to. Was it an attempt by the Minister for Primary Industries to have a transplant of personality to go from being a dour farmer to some sort of clown? Well he may be bucolic and he may be full of the joys of spring but that just highlights how this Government skates over the environmental impacts of its focus on a pollution economy. It has been very distressing listening to the people in Havelock North this week and their descriptions of the impacts of gastroenteritis: the days off school the days off work cafes having to close and over 4500 people being very sick. We have seen similar problems with E. coli and campylobacter being reported in water supplies around New Zealand—in Pātea in Darfield in Hanmer Springs in Springston. When you get E. coli in water you know that it has been contaminated with animal faeces and that is what this Government ignores. Its preoccupation with doubling the value of primary sector exports by 2025 by giving big handouts to agribusiness and by subsidising irrigation has meant a huge expansion in dairying and intensive agriculture in New Zealand and that means there is a much greater risk to drinking water. It is a core principle that if we want clean water in New Zealand we need to protect the sources of water supply—that is our rivers our lakes and our aquifers. In New Zealand we have one of the highest rates of gastroenteritis in the developed world. More than 6200 people fell sick in 2015. That is not clean green New Zealand when we have a much higher incidence of gastroenteritis than Canada Australia and England. We need to get serious about looking at land use and the consequences of that for our water and that is what this Government is in denial about. The Minister can go on about growth in the agricultural sector. What he will not front up about is the impacts of that on our clean water. It was a Labour Government that developed a national environmental standard under the Resource Management Act for drinking-water sources. The purpose of that standard was to ensure that catchments were properly managed so that the sources of drinking water are protected. It will be very interesting in this inquiry into the situation in Havelock North to see whether the Hawke's Bay Regional Council has properly managed land in the aquifer recharge areas or whether it has been preoccupied with promoting intensive agriculture and its compromised role as a regulator and has been far too casual in the rules that it has got in its plans. This Government continues to sacrifice clean water on the altar of agricultural intensification and it is putting our economy at risk by doing that. Its failure to bring agriculture into the emissions trading scheme means that the industry can freeload on the environment and not take account of the effects of its greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. Its weak regulatory response in terms of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management means that we do not have decent land-use controls to protect water because this Government is the master of the gesture. It is the master of doing a little in politics to try to persuade people that it is doing something and I am sure we will see that next week when the Minister for the Environment makes an announcement about swimmability. The Government's failure to set a standard for swimmable rivers in the national policy statement has meant that councils have failed to control the land uses that are leading to pollution of our rivers lakes and aquifers. We have got the problems in Havelock North. We have seen major increases in nitrate levels in waterways in places like Canterbury Southland and the Waikato where we have had major dairy intensification. We have 1.7 hectares in New Zealand that is under dairy farms. We have 6.4 million dairy cows and another 3.5 million cattle. That is equivalent to having a human population of 140 million people yet without any sewage treatment. Agricultural intensification is polluting our waterways. The Government needs to get serious about protecting our environment because we cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy environment. The Minister completely misses the point in thinking you can focus only on economic development without protecting the basis of that economy which is our natural environment.