Bruce Bisset: Swimming through slime

Bruce Bisset.

What's more outrageous: government doubling the amount of pollution allowed in our degraded lakes and rivers so they can be reclassified "swimmable", or the farming community continuing to moan about how hard it will be for them to conform?

I think the latter takes the biscuit. After all, National has pulled this hey presto party trick on behalf of its farming mates, so you'd think they'd be overjoyed at being able to not just continue but increase the amount of crap they flush into our waterways without being pulled up for it.

But no. Sure, Federated Farmers labelled the revisionist policy "sensible" but, along with Beef+Lamb NZ, grumbled about needing to recognise the "positive contribution" farming makes while "minimising the compliance burden" - weasel-speak for getting away with more, at taxpayer expense, if they can.

Dairy NZ, predictably, chanted its usual spin about having most waterways fenced and planted already - sub-text, so what's the problem? - when in reality its overblown "accord" only covers larger water bodies, not the "farm drain"-type watercourses that carry most of the effluent and leachate runoff into said larger bodies.

In short, grudging acceptance not of the problem, but of the Minister-you-have-when-you-don't-give-a-cowpat for the Environment Nick Smith's sleight of cack-hand giving farmers licence to pollute while leaving the rest of us unable to trust a dip in any waterhole for fear of getting sick.

Regardless said waterhole may now be rated "excellent" by the minister's doubled-limit regime.

Visit the website to check, first, to see if it's safe, says Smith. Why should we have to?

Denial city, aka business as usual. What else did you expect?

A smidgen of care for the health and wellbeing of citizens, mayhap. Or at least a tip of the hat to maintaining our "clean green" image for the tourist industry - now the country's No1 foreign exchange earner.

Fat chance. This is a National Government, and its idea of care and responsibility is looking after the people who donate and vote for it regardless of how much it stuffs up New Zealand. Go on, take the money and run.

Speaking of tourism, it's high time that industry grew some balls and told the Government, "Hey, we're more important than these agri-corporate cowboys and you're ruining our product".

Else their business will shrivel and die faster than the environment that supports it.

Already visitors are reporting to the folks back home that Aotearoa is not all it's cracked up to be - and those words spread quicker than a poo-sprayer on pasture.

OK, it's true there are aspects of Smith's policies that are positive, but it's the "little truth that hides the big lie" ploy because the negatives far outweigh them.

And you know we're in trouble when he defends the regime by accusing all expert critics of it of using "junk science", a phrase straight out of the US Republican "fake news" lexicon.

Bottom line, this is the farming lobby, via its gutless political apologists, castrating standards nationally - as Horizons regional farmers have done locally - by refusing to accept proper regulated land-use that limits stock numbers.

Fortunately, we will soon have opportunity for a piquant response.

If we don't want rivers and lakes that are only "Smithable" - a toxic "standard" at the best of times - then we must change the government. Simple.

This is where it gets real, folks. We're blessed to live in one of the last paradisiacal spots on the planet. If we allow it to be ruined, there is nowhere better to go.

And it IS being ruined. Are you seriously going to put up with that?

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.

- This column is the opinion of the columnist on a matter of public interest and does not necessarily represent the view of Hawke's Bay Today.