Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): The most recent official reliable report shows that more rivers are getting worse than getting better on five of the nine measurements. Additionally, many in a static state are degraded. A major concern is that about twice as many sites are getting worse as better on the Macroinvertebrate Community Index measure, which is of macroinvertebrates—those little critters—which is one of the best measures of the health of a waterway. The parlous state of many of our waterways also affects beaches and estuaries, making them unfit for swimming and gathering seafood. Right now, regional councils monitor 292 sites for E. coli during summer. For the sites with sufficient data to assess their quality, about half are at times below safe swimming levels. Beaches in our largest cities like Wellington and Auckland are being repeatedly polluted by sewage. The status quo is plainly not good enough, which is why we're taking action in both urban and rural areas.