Bruce Bisset: Bleeding our country dry

Bruce Bisset.

Let's stop kidding ourselves: we are in the grip of a water crisis, and any government that fails to recognise and immediately work to ameliorate this is a government which does not care for its citizens.

Moreover, any government - and yes, I mean you, National - which not only stands by and lets the crisis deepen but actively pursues policies which significantly make it worse is a government at war with its own country.

Because without sufficient guaranteed supply of fresh clean water, we have no future.
It's not "just" the oh-so-offhandedly-impacted environment that will suffer, or the sacred cow of the economy that will then bleed. We, the people of Aotearoa/New Zealand, will die.

Which part of that do you not understand?

Somewhere between 40 and 80 per cent of all waterways in this country - depending on the statistics you use - are already polluted beyond safe drinking or swimming limits. Say 60 per cent, as a realistic baseline.

No matter how the denialists of Federated Farmers et al may spin it otherwise, much of that pollution is from intensive farming - dairying in particular. And no, they are not doing enough to redress it.

Tireless water quality campaigner Dr Mike Joy clearly hit the mark when he accused the Ministry for the Environment of deliberately shifting the goalposts to make things appear better than they are; he's quite right, because the "allowable" levels for contaminants have in some cases increased by a factor of 10, so what was seen as severely polluted before is termed average or acceptable today.

That's a nonsense Secretary for the Environment Vicky Robertson didn't even bother trying to address in her rebuttal of Joy's comments this week, instead trotting out a PR full of spin about the great job the ministry is doing.

Tellingly, however, earlier in 2016 she said delivering the government of the day's priorities was "absolutely critical" while, secondly, looking to the future and what the ministry must focus on was merely "part of the stewardship role".

So the ministry is entirely, as Dr Joy argues, a "captured" agency. From which it's clear the blame for degrading our water (and environment generally) is government policy, on behalf of vested interests.

Doesn't the public have a vested interest? Of course we do - but we've been sat so far back of the bus, we've fallen off. Maori alone are still clinging to a seat but hardly a comfortable one.

If you're not mad about this yet, dear reader, you're either dead already or one of those vested interests. Like the good ol' boys down the West Coast who want to take 800 million litres of pristine water per month from the Mt Aspiring National Park and ship it overseas in bulk tankers.

Excuse me, but: WTF?

And they're getting the water - you guessed it! - for nothing. Because "nobody owns water".

Wrong! Everyone owns water, and it's well past time government manned up and not only said so but made it so in legislation.

Then, and only then, can we start properly protecting this vital life-giving resource - for all our sakes.

So this election year, for me water is the number one issue; and the party that will get my vote - and should get yours - is the one which will immediately slap a moratorium on all new water take consents while it urgently works to replace existing legislation with laws that enshrine water in its rightful place: the most precious resource, allocated by need, not greed, and levied appropriately on a regional basis.

Because our lifeblood belongs to us all, so we all must insist on a say and a share in its use.