Water is an issue for everyone
Every year, there are a few dates that stand out and for an MP Budget Day is one of them. Today, Finance Minister Steven Joyce will deliver Budget 2017 – his first budget as Finance Minister. In the lead up, the Government has been making a series of major Budget-related announcements. These include investing more than $500 million to fund an extra 1125 police over the next four years, a $178m boost for tourism infrastructure and $59.2m to ensure all road ambulance call outs are double crewed.
For Otago and Southland, double crewing will create 31 more paramedic and emergency medical roles during the next four years. It was great to have Minister Joyce in Clutha-Southland recently to deliver a pre-Budget speech and answer some questions about how the Government plans to address some of the unique challenges and opportunities in our electorate.
It’s been a busy month for hosting Ministers and MPs in Clutha-Southland. I’ve also brought Defence Minister Mark Mitchell to Gore, Social Housing Minister Amy Adams and MP Chris Bishop to Queenstown, Corrections Minister Louise Upston to Lawrence and Milton and Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith to Queenstown, Winton and Invercargill. Minister Smith’s was a timely visit, with the hearing process for Environment Southland’s Water and Land plan getting under way this week. He was a guest speaker at the Federated Farmers Southland AGM, addressing the 200-strong crowd on the future facing farmers. In his speech, he made it clear that water quality is an urban issue as well as a rural issue - and dairy farmers often unfairly cop all of the blame.
He also acknowledged the big task facing ES, regarding its proposed Water and Land Plan. Given that the Southland district is so strongly centred on farming, the impacts of the plan have the potential to touch everybody. We’re lucky in Southland that the lag time for water to make its way through the various pathways and emerge as surface water is relatively short. That means we can see the effects of improved practice faster than other parts of New Zealand. There’s no denying Southland’s water quality figures have shown a decline, but there are promising signs over the past five years that those trends are levelling out.
There are a lot of great initiatives already in place as farmers and communities in Southland have shown high interest in water quality and it’s possible we’re already seeing the benefit of improved effluent practices, wastewater containment and other improvements in the stabilisation of our water quality data. This doesn’t mean we can ignore the problem, and everyone - urban and rural - still needs to adopt practices which mitigate potential negative effects on water quality. But it does reinforce what I, and many others, said in my submission - we need to focus on holding the line now and not impose strict regulation until a full suite of economic information and community values are available to consider alongside the physiographic science and water quality data.
Good luck to the 300 people speaking on submissions during the hearing process. Don’t underestimate the impact you can have - provide real life examples, tell your personal story, focus on facts and help the hearing panel understand how this plan will have a real impact on you.