Brendon Burns
Water Spokesperson

28 September 2011

National gilding the lily on water quality

The Government is continuing to gild the water quality lily by clinging to already discredited Yale figures in order to justify its failure to halt the continued pollution of lowland rivers, says Labour’s Water spokesperson Brendon Burns.

“In Parliament today, Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith continued to quote what former National Party candidate Guy Salmond calls a ‘totally flawed’ piece of research.

“Only half the 130 countries ranked by Yale had any data available at all. Massive discrepancies in geographical distribution saw 80 sample sites in New Zealand, but just 11 in China, and the same number in Australia, from just one State,” Brendon Burns said.

“Nick Smith twice claimed that New Zealand’s ‘99.2’ rating in the Yale study justified our second placing, yet every leading water quality scientist in the country will tell you this research is a farce.

“The study was based on 42% of collection sites being ‘control sites’ in pristine headwaters, so if we consider that spread in catchments such as the Waikato or Manawatu, then obviously, the results will be seriously skewed.

“Any scientist would be ashamed to draw any conclusion at all from these results, yet Nick Smith, himself a former civil engineer, is quite prepared to along with them,” Brendon Burns said.

“Dr Smith also quoted visiting OECD policy analyst Kevin Parris, saying New Zealand matched up to its ‘clean green’ image, though more needs to be done with freshwater management.

“Yet earlier today Dr Parris also said that some catchments may need stocking limits set for dairy herds, and society may have to decide if some rivers and lakes may have to be abandoned to pollution entirely if we want to main the present economic benefits at the cost of the environment.

“This is certainly not a message that Nick Smith and his pro-development cabal in Cabinet would want to hear, yet this is the direction in which we are heading,” Brendon Burns said

ENDS

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