Mackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19174. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am very happy to take a call on Vote Environment and also the climate change aspects of the environment vote. I think it is fair to say that the environment is going to be one of the major issues of this election campaign. We have a Government that has a stated target of doubling agricultural exports by 2025 but at the same time tells us that it wants to see no further degradation of waterways. Well I am sorry I say to the Minister for the Environment but those two things do not go together. They cannot both happen. What we have is a Government that is happy to oversee further degradation of already very polluted waterways in pursuit of an economic target that will inflict massive environmental damage. It is a short-term sugar fix for people and farmers right now that will potentially mean that future generations will not be able to farm land in the same way that they do right now and that future generations will not be able to benefit from the enormous environmental wealth on which our economy is based. That is what this debate is about. It is about sustainability.It is not about whether or not we farm; it is about how we farm and where we farm because what we know is that we are having land types with extremely vulnerable soils being converted to dairying—lands that leech nutrients very quickly into waterways that are already overallocated and already polluted. This Minister says that is fine. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a report earlier this year where she talked about land use changes. For the first time she brought together two modelling tools that are well-known and that are very credible so that we could see what land use changes would look like in 2020 and therefore extrapolate from that the impact on waterways. What that showed was that with the settings the Minister has suggested for the National Objectives Framework within the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management the 2020 worst-case scenario that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment laid out in her report would not be stopped at all. There is nothing in that National Objectives Framework that would stop the worst-case scenario from happening.That is of deep concern to a country that is not only hugely reliant on a healthy environment—because I think Government members do not realise that without a healthy environment we do not have a healthy economy. It is not a trade-off between the two. We must protect our environment because without it we have no economy. It is as simple as that. It can be done. As I said this is not about whether we farm; it is about how we farm and it is about where we farm. That is a discussion that we should be having instead of unfortunately a proposed National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and a National Objectives Framework that will not stop further extreme degradation of our waterways.Labour has said that we will strengthen the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. We will bring back the national policy statement that we suggested when we were in Government. We do not want to see any further degradation of our waterways and we want to see remediation of those waterways that are already polluted. But that is not what this Government wants to do.So to compound it what the Government has decided is that we need sweeping Resource Management Act reforms. Apparently it is the Resource Management Act that is holding everything back. This is despite the fact that since 1991 our economy has grown 75 percent—since the Resource Management Act was implemented. It has hardly been held back by a piece of legislation that simply requires that the environmental impacts of economic activity are taken into consideration and managed. That is what the Resource Management Act does. That is what it is designed to do. It is not and was never meant to be an economic development Act yet that is what this Government wants to turn it into. The Minister says it is failing. That is despite the fact that our economy has grown by 75 percent since the Resource Management Act was introduced. Our population has grown by 25 percent since the Resource Management Act was introduced.I note the most recent survey of local authorities in terms of their performance on the Resource Management Act and bear in mind the Minister says this is a broken system that needs to be fixed. Do you know how many of the 34000 consents that were processed in the last financial year that was reviewed—and these reviews are done every 2 years—were processed on time? Ninety-seven percent were processed on time. Do you know how many were approved through this system that the Minister is trying to convince New Zealanders is holding our economy back? Ninety-five percent were approved. How many were appealed? It was 0.7 percent. How many were declined? It was 0.27 percent. I think you would struggle to find another piece of Government legislation that is working as well as the Resource Management Act.Labour agrees that process improvements can always be made to the Resource Management Act and we have no issue with that but we need to leave the basic fundamental values—the heart and soul of the Resource Management Act—alone. We have 20 years of case law that has been developed. If the Minister thinks that destroying 20 years of case law is going to provide certainty then she is absolutely off her rocker. It will do nothing more than provide huge uncertainty and environmental degradation. She has not actually shown or proved in any way that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.The Supreme Court has come to the rescue. In relation to the recent New Zealand King Salmon case the Minister had been saying: “Well the problem is you see the values and the hierarchy of principles in the Resource Management Act are being given a higher purpose in law than the national policy statements and planning documents like regional plans and district plans. That’s the problem so we need to amend Part 2 of the Resource Management Act.” Well Minister you do not need to because the Supreme Court has just completely turned that on its head and said that no that is not the case. In fact those planning documents where they use directive language do have precedence over Part 2 of the Resource Management Act. So rather than the Minister saying that these are technical changes that will bring the Resource Management Act into line with case law case law and the Minister are now heading very quickly in completely opposite directions—completely opposite directions.The Minister’s other argument is that the Resource Management Act is a sacred cow apparently—a sacred cow—that Opposition members are saying should never be touched. How ridiculous! I asked the Parliamentary Library to do a search. There is no other piece of legislation since 1991 that has been amended as many times as the Resource Management Act. Barely 18 months have gone by without a Resource Management Act amendment bill and that is appropriate. What we need however alongside it are the national policy statement and planning documents which can guide the Resource Management Act streamline processes and provide far more central government guidance. The Supreme Court has now given those planning documents a supremacy that is extremely helpful.I want to quickly come to the issue of climate change before my time runs out and just say I am so disappointed with this Government’s performance on climate change. This is actually about futureproofing our economy. We have to do this. This is not a “nice to have”; this is something that we have to do. We have to transition away from our heavy reliance on fossil fuels. The longer we leave it the more difficult it becomes the more expensive it becomes and we miss the amazing opportunities that are out there right now. There are countries around the world that are crying out for low-carbon solutions and crying out for low-carbon goods and services. This is our natural area. This is our natural strength and what are we doing? Nothing. In 2007 John Key said that we need to be ahead of the game on this that we need to realise that we will become trading pariahs if we do not bring agriculture into the scheme and that we need to capitalise on the enormous potential and opportunities for New Zealand as a country that has—or used to have—an enormously high reputation in this area. We are being overtaken by countries like Denmark which is seeing these opportunities and rapidly advancing towards it for the betterment of its economy.The National Government says that it wants an emissions trading scheme but it does not want a price on carbon. That is utterly ridiculous. Why would you have an emissions trading scheme the sole purpose of which is to price carbon if you did not want a price on carbon? Then the Government makes up some ridiculous figure that it will cost $500 extra a year to have a proper price on carbon. That is utter garbage that is being made up. Do you know what? If the Government had transparency around carbon pricing and stopped the price-gouging that it knows is going on by electricity and fuel companies which would drop the price of carbon actually the overall cost would not be that much to businesses and households at all. Of course what we are doing is incentivising low-carbon products by giving them a price advantage. That is the point of a price on carbon. The Government has allowed cheap units to flood into our emissions trading scheme collapsing the price of carbon and damaging our forestry sector. That is the one sector that did all the heavy lifting over the last 6 years. The only reason that we came out positive in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and did not face a massive bill was forestry. Our gross emissions kept going up. We were just planting enough forests to more than mitigate that.Well in 2020 those forests come down and because of the Government’s climate change policies we are not replanting the forests. We will face a massive massive bill. If there is a post-2020 agreement there is a real risk that it may be unaffordable for New Zealand to enter that agreement—that is if we do not do something about planting more forestry and reducing our gross greenhouse gas emissions right now. Can you imagine how devastating it would be for our reputation if the mess that this Government leaves is so bad that we have to equivocate on whether or not we are able to enter into a post-2020 agreement? The Government’s climate change plan is 0.4 percent difference from doing nothing at all.