Labour's plans to clean up our waterways are bound to fail

Friday, 3 January 2020

The Government has released its freshwater plan, with a focus on working with community, iwi, agricultural and local government sectors.

OPINION: Environment Minister David Parker's proposed freshwater reforms are disappointing. As someone who has twice been involved in court action against councils for failing to deal with waterway pollution, and an active campaigner against the Ruataniwha Dam in Hawke's Bay, I was expecting clearer thinking from one of Labour's most able ministers.

I was also expecting to be able to wholeheartedly support a national environmental standard that would result in waterways we could swim in. Unfortunately, these reforms will not achieve this aim. Parker appears to have taken a complex approach to a relatively simple problem, and created a series of perverse incentives with his reforms.

The simple measure of whether the reforms will be successful is whether we can swim in our rivers every summer, or whether they will be closed for swimming due to excessive levels of toxic algae. Fixing this problem has the widespread support of most New Zealanders, and from a political perspective is more urgent than climate change, because it happens every summer, not at some time in the future.

The simple measure of whether the Government's reforms will be successful is whether we can swim in our rivers every summer, writes Simon Lusk.

Aside from failing to deal with the problem of making our waterways swimmable, the reforms have other major failings. In the short term they reward those who currently pollute. They fix pollution levels as they are, with current polluters allowed to continue polluting at current levels. This results in a massive wealth transfer to the people who least deserve it: the current polluters.

Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor address a public meeting in Timaru about the Government's proposed changes to water quality (Video first published in January 2020)

* Government fighting back for our aquatic heritage

* Editorial: We must clean up waterways to prove we are clean and green**

Environment Minister David Parker appears to have taken a complex approach to a relatively simple problem, and created a series of perverse incentives with his reforms, writes Lusk.

Cape Sanctuary media manager Simon Lusk talks about the creation of Cape Sanctuary and the ongoing work to build a native coastal habitat.

Non-intensive farms with little impact on water quality are punished for being good corporate citizens. They do not benefit from a free right to pollute, meaning that their farm values decrease compared with farms with a right to pollute. This makes changing land use difficult, incentivising only planting of trees, and perhaps only carbon farming rather than planting for harvest.

Polluters, on the other hand, have a right to continue to impose the cost of their business on the rest of society, and continue to pollute our waterways. This is morally wrong, and should be seen as such. We should be fixing our waterways by charging the true cost of polluting on those who pollute, not punishing those in their industry who do not.

The question that needs to be asked is why Parker is willing to promote important reforms that punish the most sustainable, community-minded farmers to protect polluting big agricultural business. These farmers are being asked to pay for major polluters' pollution.

The proposed reforms include instream standards that are far tougher than the current toxicity levels permitted. This is a necessary change if waterways are to become swimmable. Parker deserves credit for this, though credit comes with a caveat.

Worryingly, enforcing these standards is being left to regional councils. This means we could have different regulatory regimes across the country, with different timelines and enforcement policies that do not make our rivers swimmable. A council may choose to implement outcomes in the prescribed regulations over 50 years, rather than five, making the reform package meaningless.

Giving regional councils any ability to make decisions is problematic based on their past performance. Regional councils have proved beyond doubt that they are incompetent at managing water quality. If they were competent, we would be able to swim in our rivers.

Rather than involve regional councils, Parker should have imposed a set of national environmental standards nationwide. This would mean that incompetent councils would all have to enforce the same standards, and there would be no doubt or confusion about what these standards are. Instead, each council will come up with its own plans, at vast expense to ratepayers, and with the inevitable result of some councils delivering waterways that remain toxic every summer.

Parker's reforms create another major problem. Failure to make our waterways swimmable makes a strong Green Party in government far more likely. A government could be determined by a strong Green vote entirely based on failure to deal with freshwater quality. Those complaining about the proposed reforms should pause and consider what a government with 20 Green MPs in it might do.

Freshwater management reform needs to be bold, clear and effective. Parker's proposals will not succeed because they are not effective, and the average voter will not be able to swim in their local river in the summer any time soon.

The perverse incentives created by the proposed reforms not only let down those who want to use our waterways, they reward polluting farmers at the expense of non-polluting ones. They also make a radical government with a strong Green component more likely, which should be far more troubling to farmers than the current proposals.

* Simon Lusk is a campaign consultant, fisherman and hunter.