The Green Party released its 'Drink Swim Fish' rivers and oceans policy package on 6 July 2026, a suite of eight interventions spanning freshwater quality, marine fishing methods, and ocean protection.

The most contentious plank is a ban on bottom trawling, along with a phase-out of set netting and dredging on seamounts. These methods have long been contested in fisheries management circles: bottom trawling in particular disturbs seabed habitat at scale, and calls for restriction have circulated through successive governments without landing. The package would also legally protect 30 percent of New Zealand's ocean territory — the so-called "30x30" marine protection target that aligns with international biodiversity frameworks New Zealand has nominally endorsed.

Freshwater: a hard number on nitrates

The most technically specific element is the proposed reduction in the drinking water nitrate limit. New Zealand's current standard sits at 11.3mg/L NO₃-N. Co-leader Marama Davidson said the party would seek to lower that to 1.3mg/L NO₃-N — the level Denmark has agreed to adopt — according to RNZ. That is a near-ninefold tightening of the allowable concentration.

Davidson cited figures suggesting up to 100,000 New Zealanders become ill from unsafe drinking water each year. The nitrate standard has been a flashpoint in agricultural and public health debates for years, with farming groups arguing the current limit is conservative enough and health researchers pointing to associations between elevated nitrate exposure and certain cancers and infant health risks. Pegging a target to Denmark's agreed level gives the policy a concrete international reference point — though Denmark's context, including its soil types, agriculture, and distribution infrastructure, differs materially from New Zealand's.

The package would also give Taumata Arowai, the water services regulator established in 2021, expanded enforcement powers, and would clarify in legislation that environmental performance standards for wastewater are a floor, not a ceiling. Strengthened rules for wastewater discharges are framed as a route to swimmable rivers, lakes, and coastal waters — a goal that has been embedded in national policy objectives since the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, but that councils have struggled to operationalise against infrastructure deficits and consent timelines.

Fisheries: QMS review and kaitiakitanga

Beyond the trawling ban, the Greens would review the Quota Management System — the tradeable quota framework that has governed commercial fishing since 1986. The QMS has periodically attracted calls for reform from iwi, small-scale fishers, and environmental advocates, though any structural review would need to navigate deeply embedded property rights that the fishing industry treats as settled.

The package also includes commitments to support kaitiakitanga in marine management and fund iwi-led conservation and restoration efforts. That framing reflects a broader shift across environmental policy toward recognising hapū and iwi as active stewards rather than consultation recipients — though the policy document, as reported, does not detail how that would interact with existing Treaty settlements in the fisheries space, particularly the 1992 Sealord deal and the associated quota allocation.

One notable absence: unlike the Greens' 2023 campaign, this document does not call for a dedicated minister of Oceans and Fisheries. Whether that reflects a strategic concession ahead of coalition negotiations or a deliberate deprioritisation of machinery-of-government change is not stated.

The package lands with an election on the horizon and the Greens sitting outside government. As a statement of electoral intent, 'Drink Swim Fish' gives the party a consolidated environmental water platform — eight distinct interventions across freshwater and marine domains — that will test how much appetite exists in the broader centre-left for ambitious regulatory change in sectors, particularly agriculture and commercial fishing, that have historically resisted it.