to the other; it is paradise even though you can't swim in all the rivers. We market ourselves

internationally as being clean and green. A statement which is a little bit rich if

you look at the state of our rivers. In fact we haven't maybe looked at them enough and

there are many New Zealanders who are just getting to the point in their lives now where

they realise all is not perfect in Godzone. The Government's already committed $100 million

over ten years to cleaning up our waterways; they want people to be able to wade in all

of our rivers. So it's okay for National as long as we can get to the point where we can

wade in the rivers. The Green Party says that isn't good enough and that our rivers actually

need to be swimmable. So not drinkable, but swimmable. So that's where you are, you've

got wading, you've got swimming and then at the top of your game you've got drinking.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw is with me now, James good morning to you.

Good morning Paul. You know there wouldn't be many New Zealanders,

even those that poo-poo the Greens and just think a group of feral strange people that

aren't alarmed that our rivers have got to the point that they have got. When did we

start dropping the ball on rivers? Well we actually started dropping the ball

about 20 years ago, so this is a long run problem and it basically matches the intensification

of the dairy industry and also increasing population, particularly in our main urban

centres and you know, like Auckland and so on so it's been a problem that's been around

for a while. We haven't got a huge population for our area

though really have we? So it must come down, I suppose you've narrowed down dairying and

then industry. Well dairying and industry yes but it actually,

there is a lot of these rivers that flow through our near urban centres so the Ruamahanga goes

through Masterton, the Lucas Creek, in Auckland, of course which runs from Albany to the Waitemata

Harbour and two or three decades ago that was swimmable and a lot of places it was actually

drinkable but over the course of time, there's been a lot of silt, metals and weeds that

have choked it up and so it's now at the point where if you put your head under the water

you do run the risk of catching a horrible infection.

Everyone can understand dairy and its pollutant nature to rivers but when it comes to industry,

when it comes to a large population, the things that you're talking about now, what is it

that we're… how have we dropped the ball on tipping things into rivers?

Well in the Lucas Creek in Auckland for example, there are a number of stormwater drains that

run into the creek and there's rubbish and toxins that build up in the stormwater drains

that get passed through into the creek as well. So one of the things that we would look

at for urban centres in Auckland and other ones is proper stormwater filters where they

do meet the creek and also managing new development because part of what's happening of course

is that as you get more developments going on, you get soil and the heavy metals that

get tipped into the creek as well. Alright so the one good thing about all of

this and National have acknowledged it too is that at least now we're focussing on this

because obviously for at least a decade, we didn't even see that this was a burgeoning

problem. You don't know how much this is going to cost, National have said we'll throw $100

million at making these rivers wadeable and I agree with you, wadeable isn't good enough

but they don't even know if 100 million is enough for that. I mean what kind of money

are we talking? Well there have been some huge estimates,

there was one estimate that we saw late last year that said the cost of cleaning up all

of our rivers around the country could be anywhere between $4 billion and $7 billion

over the course of the coming few decades. It's a colossal cost and that's one of the

reasons why in this campaign we're focussing on ten key rivers around the country where

we can say we know what's going to make a difference, it's not going to cost the earth,

let's focus on some local rivers that people really know and love.

Can you - now I know that one of the things you've said is you would stop any more resource

consent for any more dairy farms, but you take the Ruamahanga in the Wairarapa, there

must be a lot of dairy farms on the banks of that river. Now you're not suggesting that

any of those dairy farms are closed down so how can you clean the river?

No absolutely not, well there are a number of things you can do and in fact there are

a lot of very good farm stories where farmers are putting huge amounts of effort into making

sure that they don't get runoff from the animals in to their water and from the nitrogens into

the water, you can do things like plant wetlands, riparian planting, increasing fencing along

the waterways, to ensure that animals don't get into the rivers and so on.

So this is not, we haven't missed the ball entirely… we haven't missed the party on

this, you think that there is still time to get all of these rivers to a swimmable standard?

Yes we do, none of them are completely beyond hope and in fact with the right kind of effort

I think it's not going to - we just need to focus on it.

Are Labour completely onside, your new buddies? I haven't spoken to them about it yet, but

philosophically, for sure. Okay James thank you very much for joining

us. Green Party co-leader James Shaw.