The Government's resource management reforms will add to the heavy and ever-growing burden this Government is loading on to our environment.
"This legislation will accelerate the decline of our natural world and add fuel to the climate crisis fire in what is another classic case of environmental mismanagement from this Government," says Green Party environment spokesperson Lan Pham.
"This is an absurd dereliction of duty that will do nothing to build the infrastructure New Zealand needs, and will instead accelerate environmental decline.
"The Government is hellbent on pushing our natural environment to the brink, exploiting everything it can for any profit that can be squeezed out of it.
"Halting work to protect significant natural areas will harm indigenous biodiversity, destroying the plants and animals that set Aotearoa apart from the rest of the world.
"The repeal of winter grazing regulations will worsen the pollution in our waterways and increase the level of harm our animals are exposed to. For decades, successive governments have allowed farms to be run like factories, with a profit-at-any-cost approach. This represents another step in the wrong direction.
"Easing the consenting process for coal mining is as unscientific as it is dangerous for both people and planet. If anyone needed one basic rule for dealing with the climate crisis it would be to stop burning fossil fuels.
"The actions of this Government will go down in history as the most anti-environment we have ever seen.
"Winding back freshwater protections will accelerate the demise of one of our most precious natural resources. Due to decades of neglect, many of our rivers and lakes are unsafe to swim in, whilst native freshwater species that depend upon the health of our water face extinction. This situation is urgent, something the Government is choosing to ignore.
"Nearly half (45 per cent) of New Zealand's total river length was not suitable for activities like swimming between 2016 and 2020 based on Campylobacter infection risk. A shocking 68 per cent of indigenous freshwater birds were threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened in 2021. It is now also estimated that only 10 percent of our historic wetlands remain, despite these being vital for the survival of many threatened plants and animals.
"Future generations will remember this Government for its blatant disregard of the natural world," says Lan Pham.
