"Act clearly believes the best environment policy is no policy at all," says Labour's green group chairperson Pete Hodgson.

"Act's so-called policy has nothing to say about protecting the environment and everything to say about why existing protection is an impediment to business.

"Despite its bluster against economic intervention it wants taxpayers to subsidise the environmental costs of doing business. It would gut the Resource Management Act and reduce state environment agencies to shadows of their already slender selves.

"National is already heading in this direction. Act would obviously encourage them to slash freely at the RMA, the Department of Conservation and anything else that might get in the way of the bulldozers.

"Reports of Richard Prebble on the West Coast today enthusiastically waving a broom handle made of New Zealand beech say it all. Act looks at ancient native forests and sees broomsticks.

"To Act our natural heritage is so much raw material. Its attitude towards the environment is straight out of the nineteenth century."

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