Call for resource levy on water use

The Green Party wants a resource levy on commercial water use with the levy used to reduce rates and income taxes.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman outlined the levy during his speech to the Green Party conference in Auckland.

He said the right price signals needed to be put in place so the economy became more efficient at using finite resources.

The levy was the first part of the Greens' approach to "ecological tax shifting." Its full tax shifting policy would be released closer to the election.

Dr Norman said there had been a 50 per cent growth in commercial water use over the past decade.

About 75 per cent of fresh water was used for irrigation of intensive agriculture and about 10 per cent by large industrial users.

"As a general rule there is no price paid to use this globally valuable natural resource."

Dr Norman said the Greens were not proposing to privatise water or introduce tradeable water rights.

It was not proposing to charge for drinking water for humans or for stock.

"But if you use a public resource to make a profit then the public should be paid rental for that use."

He said resource levies made sense because these rewarded those many commercial water users that used water efficiently and put the heat on those that wasted water.

". . . currently any regulations that place limits on water use are being undermined by price signals that tell the big users to waste as much water as they like because it's free. Well, it isn't free to the environment and it shouldn't be free in the market either."

Dr Norman told reporters the levy would "reward" farmers that used water efficiently because they would get a competitive advantage.

The mechanisms were there for a resource levy as the Government had put out a draft national environmental standard on water metres to make these consistent around the country.

Most regional councils had water metering.

There was about 4.5 billion litres of commercial water use annually.

The Greens had not decided the final figure for the levy. This would be announced when it released the details of its tax shifting package.

Dr Norman dedicated much of his speech today to the issue of clean water, saying New Zealand's rivers were literally now "so full of crap" they were dangerous to human health.

He said the Labour Party had a policy that all rivers should become safe for swimming but the Greens did not believe it, because Greens had seen with their own eyes what was happening.

On the Manawatu River, Landcorp cows were allowed to graze a Department of Conservation block called Moutoa Reserve, a riparian strip supposed to protect the river.

Landcorp paid DOC $25,000 a year to graze the cows there, he said.

The Ministry of Agriculture had been opposing a plan by Horizons Regional Council to make the Manawatu River safe for swimming but had, after Green Party pressure, dropped its submission.

- NZPA