Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I believe that allowing pollution to get worse is both wrong environmentally and economically, because if it continues to get worse, it would cost more to clean up, not less. The new national environmental standards, in effect, hold the line. The changes under the national policy statement do not take effect for several years, by which time New Zealand is expected to have recovered from the economic impact of COVID-19. I note that the overall time frame to clean up all of our waterways to a healthy state is a generation, and that will span a number of economic cycles.