Cleaning up our waterways

National and Labour have targeted water as a key election issue, with both announcing major policies within a day of each other.

Both sides clearly feel water is an emotive enough issue for voters to ponder over, a little more than six weeks out for a general election.

First up, National on Tuesday pledged $44 million towards a Freshwater Improvement Fund to help cleanup about 100 waterways around the country.

Much has been made of New Zealand’s rivers, streams, and lakes. The degradation of our waterways, polluted over decades, has been a national shame and a real blind spot for the Government.

Instead of alienating their strong rural support base they have merely tinkered at the edges. The fund announcement is more of the same.

It plays it safe by looking like serious action is being taken, but the amount of money committed to such a serious issue (which crosses primary industries, tourism and health sectors) suggests otherwise. Good intentions won’t solve the problem.

Then, yesterday Labour announced that it would introduce a user-pays royalty scheme where everyone from farmers to overseas water bottling companies would be charged for the water they would take. (This was part of wider policy that also including planting and fencing off waterways to help protect them from pollution).

Compared to National’s policy, Labour’s plan is bold and risky. It’s bold because it tackles the perception of greedy multinationals taking our pristine, freshwater for virtually nothing then making a profit off it. Taxing that group will be widely applauded and there will be little resistance.

Taxing farmers for irrigation is another story. This is where the risk comes in. Labour risks further alienating the rural sector by broaching the topic and asking them to add to their compliance costs. This will be deeply unpopular at the farm gate.

It is also risky as it could add to the notion that Labour, in a bid to pay for all its campaign promises, is a tax-happy, anti-business party. The royalty plan may not scare off any in the farming community with a green tinge, instead it will further harden the views of those who were never going to vote Labour. That looks like the kind of risk that Labour is comfortable with taking.

During the announcement Labour leader Jacinda Ardern said Environment Minister Nick Smith’s claims that putting a levy on water would cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars were ‘‘scaremongering’’.

Ardern’s pledge also included a promise to make the nation’s waterways swimmable within a generation. How exactly Labour proposed to do that wasn’t clear at the announcement.

In a way the parties’ announcements around their water plans were reflections of their leaders. Ardern aimed high, while being light on detail (the relentlessly positive approach). National chipped away at the issue, a cautious and deliberate approach (which fits the Bill ‘The Rock’ English narrative that National is keen to foster).

Whatever the approach, it is a positive sign that an important matter of growing importance was being treated as a major policy by the two leading parties.

- Fairfax NZ