Trickle down



National significant trickle down.

This almost slipped by me. Nick Smith, that champion of the environment, has just announced the Government is going to throw a few more million at cleaning up 'a few' of our most polluted rivers.

“This Fresh Start for Fresh Water Clean Up Fund is to encourage regional councils and communities to put plans together to clean up lakes and rivers that have become badly polluted,” Dr Smith said here.

Will that be only democratically elected councils Nick?

So instead of going after the polluters, this Government has come up with a cunning plan to encourage the local councils and communities to clean up after the dirty dairy farmers. Yes that's right; National's farmer mates get rich making a bloody mess of our lakes and rivers and the tax payer then forks out to clean it up. Just another Farm subsidy in my book. 

But it gets worse:

"The Government needs to be satisfied that a water body is nationally significant, that rules are in place to prevent ongoing pollution, that cleanup plans have wide community engagement and that the Regional Council is also financially committed to support the clean up."

Don't you just love the way lots of things are of 'National significance' these days, (call me a cynic but this looks like nothing more than free marketing for the National party at our expense) and they want the Regional Council to financially commit to the clean up, which means the rate payers will be picking up some of the tab. 

More irony from Nick:

“The current state of some of New Zealand’s rivers and lakes is inconsistent with our clean, green brand. This new fund is a further step in the Government’s Fresh Start for Fresh Water programme to better care for our lakes and rivers,” Dr Smith said.

This Government's been stripping us of our environmental credentials from day one, weakening the Resource Management Act (RMA) for its farmer mates, watering down our Emissions trading scheme (ETS) for their farmer mates, stealing our democracy in Canterbury (ECAN) for their farmer mates , failing to Support a US proposal for the Ross Sea protection, seemingly condemning the maui dolphin to extinction. Hell we are now rank 43rd in the world for water quality whereas once we sat at the top And the list goes on.

National's answer! Oh no it's not 'make the polluter pay', it's an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Instead of giving the regional councils some teeth with tough new laws and regulations to stop pollution at the source, Nick's solution is for us to pay for the clean up with tax payers' and rate payers' money. 



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