The Great Green Hope? – Outdoors Party

The Green Party, as part of the coalition Government, has flipped from environmental hope and flopped into something more reminiscent of the blue-green cabal of the National government, says Alan Simmons, co-leader of the NZ Outdoors Party.

In the 270 days since Eugenie Sage, Minister of Conservation, came to power she has allowed a Chinese company to export 580 million of litres of NZ water per year in plastic bottles from Whakatane, continued to poison valuable game animals rather than allow them to be harvested for meat, watched drilling given the thumbs up in a Taranaki marine sanctuary, seen 8km of conservation land bulldozed for another mega-dairy irrigation scheme in McKenzie country and failed to intervene in a hydro company’s plans to dam the Waitaha River in the Morgan Gorge.

The Department of Conservation has still failed to intervene in the planned pipeline by Okuru Enterprises, which will suck 9,600 million litres of water annually out of the Arawhata river headwaters, again to be exported overseas, despite the pipeline construction tasking place in a Kiwi sanctuary.

Unsurprisingly, Winston Peters has completely abandoned his election promises his party made; no commercial fishing within the 12 nautical mile limit, 1080 ‘gone by lunchtime’, support for the wool industry and a stay on immigration and foreign ownership.

Under the current Government of Green Hope our seas are still plundered and polluted, land is still poisoned in greater volumes, water is bottled and sent to China in greater volumes, people are still paid a pittance and our rivers remain unswimmable.

The Great Green Hope with the Greens and NZ First in Coalition is nothing but business as usual.

The NZ Outdoors Party stands for protecting our land, seas and rivers for future generations to enjoy and to harvest, catch, grow and hunt their own food.