Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. Protecting life on our planet from climate change and biodiversity loss is actually the defining issue of our time. The science is increasingly clear that we are going to have to take drastic action to ensure that future generations have half a chance at a decent life. In 2050 my children will be only 32 and 29 years old—so it's not that far into the future. If we want—and I would hope that every member of this House would have this aspiration—them and their peers to have a decent chance at a good life at a planet that has enough water that has enough food that has natural spaces where other types of species can thrive then we need to act with very great speed to stop the destruction of nature to limit global heating and to make our economic system fairer so that it is supporting everyone in our communities and not extracting and concentrating wealth just for a few which is the status quo that we have.We in this House are elected to represent New Zealanders and to take decisions that are in line with their values and aspirations. I know that the vast majority of New Zealanders support protecting our taonga our water our soil our native flora and fauna and they support making our society fairer so that truly everyone has what they need to live a good life.This Budget does show some small modest steps in a positive direction. I have to acknowledge that. That's why the Green Party voted for this Budget. There are far too many things missing and the Green Party's Budget would've done things quite different. I talked about the alternative Green Party vision during the general debate before the Budget and I want to take this speech to just focus on two areas related to two of my portfolios: finance and transport.So on finance and fiscal strategy we know that we need a new approach. Globally the economic literature is very very clear on this. I believe that the IMF has produced research reports that show that the benefits of neo-liberalism the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were oversold and in fact they've had some very harmful consequences and we need to take the lessons from that and make changes.In New Zealand that neo-liberal dogma of the 1980s and 1990s the massive privatisation and the massive changes resulted in greater inequality many more children living and growing up in poverty and that really hasn't changed enough yet. I know the Labour majority Government have aspirations to reduce child poverty but we need a step change in how we're approaching that. The neo-liberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s also resulted in a deficit of productive infrastructure and core public services in New Zealand.So with this Budget we saw an important step from the Government which is their new fiscal strategy. Arbitrary debt targets have failed our country by creating a massive infrastructure deficit which has been pointed out by the Infrastructure Commission and also a social deficit. So allowing Government to take a new approach—because a Government is not like a household. Government finances should not be managed like household finances. There's a really important countercyclical role that the Government plays. It's appropriate for the Government to take on debt to invest in productive infrastructure and services that benefit all New Zealanders.The new fiscal strategy however only goes so far. So it loosens those tight fiscal rules for physical infrastructure and this is something that I am particularly interested in and passionate about. We've still got the operating spending tightly controlled by the accounting rules around running operating balance before gains and losses surpluses. If you think about it from an economist's perspective it doesn't make sense. Somehow we can borrow to invest in concrete whether that's a road or a building and that counts as a productive asset against the Government's books but if we are investing in people—and we know that there's a lot of economic literature and research that if we invest in education if we pay people to do things that help out other people it can actually have much-greater economic returns than a strip of concrete or a building in and of itself. Yet that public spending for services—whether that's childcare healthcare early childhood education teachers midwives nurses—it's seen as an ongoing expense for Government and so it's kind of sort of against it. It's not seen as a productive asset.So we need to look at how we can change those rules so that we enable greater investment in the things that bring true economic dividends to our people. Even the Treasury says this in their analysis—and I quote—the structure of the new rules will sharpen questions regarding what should count as an operating expense and what should count as an investment." For instance from an economist's perspective elements of education conservation and health expenditure have the characteristics of an investment in that they provide enduring benefits into the future. So we want to see more money for early childhood teachers for nurses for midwives for people working on pest control. All of that is an investment in our future it's an investment that most New Zealanders would love to see. Unfortunately the way that the rules are changing still makes it difficult to increase operating spending even when we know there will be a significant economic benefit unless we significantly raise taxes.So this new fiscal strategy needs to continue to evolve. We in the Greens call on the Government to consider whether putting such heavy reliance on the technical definitions of "capital" and "operating spend" will not create perverse incentives. Obviously we're calling on the Government to make our tax system fairer; implement a wealth tax which ensures that we have a fairer tax system that we have a fairer economic system and that we can invest in those core public services that ensure everyone in society has a fair go.On transport: now there's no question that New Zealand has one of the highest car ownership rates in the developed world. That is not a good thing. That does not make us better off. It's a huge cost burden on our society. We import all of our cars and all of the fuel to run them unless they're electric and it's a huge cost. If we can do the same amount of getting around our communities and around our country with fewer private cars with fewer trucks with less oil that is a direct productivity gain to New Zealand.So what do we need? We need fast frequent and affordable buses and trains and ferries. We need safe design for our streets and our neighbourhoods and our infrastructure which means that people can walk or use e-scooters or bikes or e-bikes for those short trips which takes up so much less space than one person in a car. I mean the reality is that some cars and trucks can be very practical for some trips but if you have everyone in a city trying to use a car at the same time for one person to travel 1 to 5 kilometres it doesn't work very well; it's very inefficient. The only reason we're in that situation is because successive Governments have failed to invest in the alternatives to private cars.Of course this Government has taken some important steps in this Budget. Implementing a permanent 50 percent concession for community services card holders is something the Green Party campaigned on and worked on in the last term of Government. That means most tertiary students as well are going to get this 50 percent discount. That goes a long way towards Green Party election policy. They also committed hundreds of millions to support those sustainable alternatives but that is again just a tiny fraction of our transport budget.If we want our road network to work more efficiently the best way to do that isn't to add a couple of new links that are incredibly expensive on the urban fringe. Again the science is very very clear: the way to make our roads operate more efficiently is to invest in the higher capacity ways of people getting around. That means bus lanes that means increasing train services where we already have a train line that means separated lanes that can be used by people on bikes or e-scooters or mobility scooters to move around their communities. We didn't see this in the Budget. There was no subsidy to make e-bikes or cargo bikes which are true alternatives to cars for those short trips more accessible to New Zealanders. We did not see a reallocation of money away from those outrageously expensive urban-fringe highways into sustainable alternatives. The science is clear: we have to stop building traffic-inducing urban-fringe highways now. They don't work. They're not going to solve congestion. There is a huge opportunity cost.A perfect example of something else that was missing was the $350 million needed for an investment in train services in the lower North Island that would mean frequent passenger trains between Wellington and Palmerston North on the Kāpiti line on the Wairarapa line. The Green Party would be supporting that incredibly cost-effective investment. We will continue to support many more pragmatic investments."