Lockwood Smith has been doing a great job in parliament of late. He can be bullied by National MPs, particularly Gerry Brownlee, but he sets off in the right direction. Making Ministers answers questions. Brilliant. Allowed John Key to make a right fool of himself when he discovered he had to give his opinion on Rodney’s reliability. Suddenly found he had to back Hide’s judgement when even Hide didn’t back Hide’s judgement…
Another Smith, Nick, has been more mixed: I obviously wasn’t a fan of his decision to speed up the economic nonsense that is roading Transmission Gully.
But if he follows through on his Water report, I’ll be most impressed.
The Land and Water Forum has produced a report that is likely to lead to much tougher standards and higher quality water in our rivers and lakes. It’s unclear if it will reach David Parker & Labour’s goal of “water clean enough to swim in”, but it looks to be advocating a massive improvement from that which dirty dairying is resulting in currently.
Federated Farmers, despite being involved in the report, are already backing away from it, saying they awaited farmers’ reactions. Hopefully Nick Smith will be able to stand up to them and keep the recommendations. He currently hasn’t committed to anything specific, but seemed pleased with the report as a whole.
So this is just a little encouragement – stick with it Nick.
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