Election billboards sporting images of the Rena disaster have spilled onto pastures as the Green Party brings attention to the 'big issues facing the country”.

Green Party Tauranga candidate Ian McLean says the billboards are designed send a strong, clear message about the party's main policies.

The new Green Party billboards show images of the Rena grounding on Astrolabe Reef.

Green Party MP Gareth Hughes with Maketu Ecological Society's Tania Gaborit-Haverkort and Russell Norman.

The big three are: a cleaner environment, lifting children from poverty, and building a smarter greener economy.

'They're designed to make you think, just be a little bit shocking and draw attention to big picture issues, which the Green Party believes are facing New Zealand right now,” says Ian.

He believes the party's plan to protect New Zealand beaches from oil spills is partly a result of the environmental disaster the ensued after the cargo ship hit the Astrolabe Reef in October 2011.

To protect Kiwi beaches from oil spills the Greens are campaigning to prohibit deep sea oil drilling; implement compulsory shipping lanes for coastal shipping; build Maritime New Zealand's oil spill response capability; and introduce stronger legal framework so when accidents happen, New Zealand taxpayers don't pay for the clean-up.

'The Rena drew attention to the issue in a quite shocking way, but there's a much bigger issue,” says Ian.

'Offshore drilling, which the Rena doesn't relate to directly, is a highly risky enterprise that's documented and easily demonstrated – and the Green Party believes it shouldn't be

'So the party is determined to remove that risk from our shores by simply not doing it.”

Ian says the Rena simply demonstrates: 'hey this is what happens when you get oil on the beaches; it's really expensive, really messy, and it lasts a long time”.

'The absence of shipping lanes is a primary cause of the Rena event and was also identified at the time as an issue that needed addressing – and this Government has refused to respond to that request.”

Ian says Maritime New Zealand's oil spill response to the Rena was 'slow and inadequate” and has the ability to be improved.

'After three years if MNZ's capability has shifted at all it would be a marginal shift.”

But Ian says NZ's response capabilities wouldn't have to be so high if the country didn't allow offshore drilling.

'There is an enormous investment required event to achieve a partial capability to respond to an offshore oil spill on the scale we saw in the Gulf of Mexico – as we couldn't possibly make that investment.”

'So the best solution is not to go there. However, there is still possibility of a Rena-style spill and we need to increase our capabilities to respond to this level of spill, which is much smaller scale.”

Ian says his party also believes taxpayers shouldn't pay for oil spills from commercial operations.

'It's a commercial enterprise and they should pay insurance to protect their activities.”

Asked if the Rena wreck should stay on Astrolabe Reef, Ian says the Greens believe it's a local issue and will support the community's stance on it – particularly that of iwi.