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An algal bloom in the Selwyn River (Radio NZ, Philippa Tolley)
An algal bloom in the Selwyn River (Radio NZ, Philippa Tolley)

PoliticsMay 28, 2020

Te Mana O te Wai: What’s in the government’s new freshwater cleanup package?

An algal bloom in the Selwyn River (Radio NZ, Philippa Tolley)
An algal bloom in the Selwyn River (Radio NZ, Philippa Tolley)

The government has just announced a whole lot of new rules and policies for freshwater with the aim of urgently stopping degradation and cleaning up rivers over the long term.

What’s all this then? 

A massive package of work on freshwater quality has just been announced in an attempt to halt further damage and start restoring the ecological health of rivers, lakes and wetlands.

It’s aimed at both rural and urban waterways, and specific mention has been made in the various releases on requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up. However, many of the measures will also primarily affect rural water users.

How will the package do that?

Controls will be put on high-risk farming practices like winter grazing and the use of feedlots, and stricter controls will be put on nitrogen pollution. There will be a per-hectare cap placed on the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser for all farmers except vegetable growers. That level will set initially be at 190 kgs/hectare/year, which in non-technical terms is still a pretty large amount of fertiliser.

Dairy farmers will also have to report to councils every year how much synthetic nitrogen fertiliser they’ve applied to their paddocks. It’s certainly not the only cause of dirty waterways, but one major factor for the decline in ecological health has been the seven-fold increase in fertiliser use since 1990. Fences will also need to be kept three metres back from waterways to prevent animals from getting in there and mucking them up – though that is down from five metres in the original proposals.

Underpinning it all for the Ministry of the Environment is the guiding concept of Te Mana o te Wai.

What does Te Mana o te Wai mean?

It’s basically a concept that means that the intrinsic value of freshwater ecosystems is an end in and of itself. Waterways have their own mana, and they should be kept healthy for their own sake rather than for the sake of them being a resource to be exploited.

Extremely low water levels in the creek leading into the Upper Nihotupu Dam in Auckland (Photo: Watercare)

But we do exploit waterways.

Yes, and there’s expected to be additional economic value in having those waterways being healthy. In a release from the environment ministry, the net benefits of the proposals were estimated at “$193 million per annum over 30 years”. How so? “They primarily stem from improved swimmability bringing reduced health risks, retention of ecosystem services from wetlands such as flood attenuation and water storage, and improved ecosystem health outcomes”.

Haven’t these proposals been going on for a while?

Yes, they’ve been in the works for pretty much the entire time this government has been in office. There was also a very fraught period of feedback and consultation, in which the farming world got extremely up in arms about the costs of the proposals at angry meetings up and down the country, shouting at ministry officials about how the proposals would destroy the industry.

And will the proposals destroy the farming industry? 

Probably not, because they’ve emerged in a somewhat watered-down form from the original version that was pushed last year. The costs of the package on farmers has been reduced significantly.

“We know the primary sector is facing challenges in the wake of Covid-19 so the government has reduced the cost and impact on them, including putting up $700 million in funding to help with clean-up efforts, but without compromising environmental benefits,” said environment minister David Parker. A large chunk of that $700 million will go towards measures like riparian and wetland planting, which is key to protecting waterway health.

For Federated Farmers, the final shape of the package reflects the advocacy of the rural world. “We are pleased that the government has listened to the rural communities, and worked out that they need to take them along with them,” said board member Chris Allen.

He said what was needed now was some pragmatism in their implementation. “There’s been some good changes, some adequate changes, and some stuff that has been left in, which will be the hardest. The one thing that farmers will need is some surety that the government won’t keep tinkering with this stuff every six months.”

But if the proposals have been watered down, will they actually do the job they’re meant to do? 

That’s the big question, and some ecologists are pretty unhappy with the final product. A release from the Better Futures Forum described the package as “kicking the can down the road” saying it’s now clear that substantive environmental change won’t happen any time soon.

Prominent freshwater expert Dr Mike Joy said the advice from scientists and Kahui Wai Māori (the Māori Freshwater Forum) had “fallen on deaf ears.”

“Instead, it appears the Minister for the Environment has caved into political and industry pressure to further delay implementing the long overdue instream nutrient limits.” He added that “the limits proposed by the specialist panels were key to achieving real change, and far from being extreme, would have simply brought New Zealand into line with the rest of the world”.

On the use of fertiliser, Joy pulled few punches. “If we want the genuinely strive for better water quality outcomes for future generations, we need to front up to the unsustainability of the current nutrient regime, and seek more regenerative land-use practices which have been demonstrated to be a win-win for farmer profitability and freshwater.”

There’s also been plenty of concern about rising levels of nitrates in drinking water, particularly in parts of the country where there’s intensive dairy farming. For those wondering, studies are still underway to determine the exact health effects of drinking nitrates, but it’s generally considered to be not good.

What will it mean for a cheeky summer swim?

Recreational use has also been considered in the freshwater package. “New Zealanders want to go down to their local swimming spot in summer and be able to put their head under without getting crook,” said Parker. And according to a release from Green co-leader Marama Davidson, the goal is to have rivers be swimmable again within a generation.

Keep going!
Chinese yuan notes (Photo: Getty Images)
Chinese yuan notes (Photo: Getty Images)

OPINIONPoliticsMay 28, 2020

We may not like it, but we need China’s money now more than ever

Chinese yuan notes (Photo: Getty Images)
Chinese yuan notes (Photo: Getty Images)

Diversifying the export economy is a worthy goal – but let’s be realistic about what throwing away a critical relationship with China would mean for New Zealand, writes Stephen Jacobi of the NZ International Business Forum.

In a 2018 study of 183 economies’ dependence on China, undertaken by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand ranked 93rd. So, do we have a problem or not?

A similar debate about whether there are too many eggs in one trade basket is alive across the ditch. The study is quoted in a new report published by the Australia China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology in Sydney under the intriguing title “Covid-19 and the Australia-China relationship’s zombie economic idea”.  You’ve got to hand it to our Aussie mates for their plain speaking.

Australia’s ranking in the DFAT study was 46th, with our other great trade competitor, Chile, not far behind at 49th. Australia and Chile both send around 35% of their goods exports to China, whereas New Zealand’s concentration is at just under 25% (adding receipts from tourism and international education will push that figure higher).

For some sectors the concentration is even higher: for dairy it’s 35%, for meat around 50%, and for our $320 million crayfish trade it’s a whopping 90%.

In New Zealand the charge is that this makes us too dependent on one partner, one which has quite different political values from us.

How has it come to this?

First, because the growing affluence of China’s middle class has made them eager to buy the goods we have to sell, especially our safe, sustainable and nutritious food products and a range of other high quality goods and services. And second, because since 2008 New Zealand and China have enjoyed a free trade agreement (FTA) that has enhanced the trading environment between us.

The fact of the matter is that diversifying our business away from China, whether for crayfish, dairy or other products, is not a straightforward matter.

Other markets may not be readily available, they may be highly protected by tariffs and non-tariff barriers, or – as in the case of those crayfish – they may not be prepared to pay the premium China pays.

Decisions about choice of markets are made quite rightly by exporters themselves. To make the case for diversification is to ask exporters to accept lower prices in other markets while good opportunities are passed to our competitors. This is a difficult proposition at the best of times but all the more so right now, when the Chinese market is saving our economy’s bacon.

Nor it is fair to argue that New Zealand has pursued links with China at the expense of other partners. In some respects, seeking diversification has always been New Zealand’s strategy, ever since 1972 when the UK joined the European Community.

While the ground-breaking FTA with China has certainly led the way in terms of export growth, we have negotiated FTAs with a range of partners – including Singapore in 2001, ASEAN in 2008 and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2018, to mention just a few.

Our long-standing quests for FTAs with the United States or India have not been realised – not for want of trying but because, unlike China, those particular economies, for their own protectionist reasons, do not want to do the deal with us, at least not on terms we would be willing to accept.

New Zealand is currently negotiating a new FTA with the European Union and hopes to start one shortly with the UK. With luck, both these FTAs will yield new commercial possibilities, but they will not any time soon reduce the attractiveness of the Chinese market. That’s because neither the EU nor UK FTAs are likely – short of a miracle – to deliver new access for anything like the volume or value of products currently traded with China.

Perhaps the issue has more to do with the products we sell. It’s hard to deny that we could do with a few more strings to our economic bow. Successive governments have been trying to facilitate this for generations – remember Helen Clark’s Knowledge Wave, which was followed by a significant growth in sectors like IT, creative and film?

This is a continuing story. These are all sectors, along with high tech or specialised manufacturing, on which we should be focusing our attention to identify barriers to their further development, whether in relation to infrastructure, research or investment. That work was important before the crisis; now it is vital.

It’s true that China and New Zealand are quite different societies with different political cultures. As the prime minister has said, we are never going to agree on everything all the time.

In an increasingly complex geopolitical world, the relationship requires careful management, so that New Zealand can continue to trade and make its voice heard on global issues New Zealanders care deeply about, like human rights.

There are very good reasons why New Zealand  has been able to expand its exports to China so strongly and equally why further diversification remains as challenging as ever. What we really need is both continuing strength in the trade relationship with our biggest partner and continuing efforts to open up new markets where these exist; both continuing growth in traditional exports, and more urgent work to develop promising new sectors.

Zombie ideas aside, the more realistic we are about the task before us, the more likely we are to succeed.

But wait there's more!