Today in Question Time the Prime Minister and Opposition leader exchanged jabs over the Government's proposed environmental regulations, with Simon Bridges asking if New Zealand's new economic strategy was a switch from dairy farming to apricots.
Mr Bridges asked Jacinda Ardern: "What effect on business confidence and investment will there be from David Parker's announcement on Q+A in the weekend regarding nitrates, and his statements that he hasn't done any analysis on the economic impact on reducing the country's dairy herd?"
Jacinda Adern says instead they want to restrict “the amount of pollution we have in our waterways”. (Source: Other)
Ms Ardern said the "characterisation of this issue is totally incorrect".
"We have been talking about water quality and our desire as a government to make sure our rivers and our lakes are swimible again, as the rest of New Zealand wants.
Environmental Minister David Parker spoke on TVNZ1's Q+A on Sunday , saying in some areas of New Zealand "the number of cows per hectare is higher than the environment can sustain".
He said there would not be a raw cap on cow numbers, instead "it will be done on nutrient limits, the amount of nutrient that can be lost from a farm to a waterway".
David Parker tells Q+A’s Corin Dann farmers denying pollution will need to be regulated to “do the right thing”. (Source: Other)
Q+A host Corin Dann asked what the economic impact would be for some regions, with Mr Parker saying, "We haven't done an analysis of what the economic effects would be. But it's very, very difficult to model, because second-best from the farmer perspective may still be very close to the same outcome profit-wise."
Today Mr Bridges pressed Ms Ardern in Parliament on the issue, asking: "In light of what David Parker has been saying, is switching to apricots the government's new economic strategy?"
In the Q+A interview, Mr Parker spoke about the move in some areas towards horticultural use, "which are high-value land uses", using apricots as an example.
"Why is it in Central Otago where we grow the best apricots in the world, we're not growing apricots and we import those rubber bullets from overseas? It's because we've got a labour-cost disadvantage. And this is where my Economic Development portfolio’s important and the Provincial Growth Fund, because we’re going to be bringing forward robotics," Mr Parker said.
Ms Ardern shot back at Mr Bridges today saying if he wanted "to make a mockery of making good land use decisions, which is the example that the member was making in that interview, then be it on his head".
"But what we want to do is to make sure we up the value of our exports, that we take into account the environmental impacts of our current economic use of our land, and that we get better outcomes for New Zealanders. This side of the House is a bit more ambitious than that side."
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