New Zealanders need to be able to enjoy nature. We need to restore the dawn chorus in our forests. We need to be able to have healthy oceans where whales, dolphins, fish, and seabirds flourish. But the previous National Government slashed conservation funding. It ignored the fact that our most essential infrastructure is nature itself. It gutted several hundred rangers from the Department of Conservation (DOC), while allowing the seas to be plundered by fishing interests. National failed to act to strengthen the Resource Management Act, to have a strong national policy statement to protect our rivers and streams—instead, they got dirtier with dairy intensification. But with this Government, in just over two years, we have set out to right that neglect with a series of ambitious programmes to address the challenges that National, in its blue-smoke era, failed to do.