Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I rise to confirm the Green Party's support for this imprest supply bill. It can be comforting to believe that big history is something that happens to other people in other places. You read about it in books but you assume that it doesn't happen to you. We're very comfortable studying about the past in the abstract but events in recent weeks I think have given us a chance to reflect anew on those blurry photos in textbooks and consider the role that we have here in shaping how future generations of New Zealanders will view the events which we are participating in today. It's matched I think—exceeded actually—by the vital work that's being done throughout Aotearoa by nurses and doctors and support staff in our hospitals by the people stocking supermarket shelves by those who are transporting food and all of those people who are engaged in the simple act of caring for others. It's in these moments where we are learning more than ever that it is some of our hardest-working but lowest-paid workers who hold our communities together. Supporting the health and wellbeing of our whānau our friends our loved ones and wider communities is at the heart of everything that we're doing as a Government in response to COVID-19. This is what motivated the Government's commitment to permanently increase benefits by $25 a week to provide wage subsidies to ensure that workers will continue to receive an income over the coming months and to invest $500 million in the healthcare system to manage the impacts in our hospitals and on our health services. Closing our borders sending the country home for a month spending tens of billions of dollars and counting in the relatively short drop of a parliamentary hat—I can tell you as a Government Minister that these are all decisions that I would have said were inconceivable when taken individually let alone as a whole and in such rapid succession. So we ought to pause here for a moment to reflect on what we're learning as this process rolls out and how we can continue to act in the long-term interests of communities around Aotearoa New Zealand. I think that we've got an opportunity to take stock of what we've done so far and to evaluate how we build better systems that put care of our people and our planet first. I think one of the most important things that we're learning again is the power of the Government balance sheet. Although I know for certain that it has given the Minister of Finance many sleepless nights the last few weeks he has acted swiftly and decisively in opening the purse strings to soften the local effects of a profound blow that a shutdown in the movement of people and many goods has had on the whole world economy. I cannot overstate the importance of commitments such as protecting people's pay through wage guarantees paid self-isolation leave and mortgage freezes for the many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who face an uncertain financial future as a result of COVID-19. In a way this is the Government fulfilling its most basic duty: stepping in when no one else can to ensure that families can keep food on their tables and a roof over their head. Now one of the most remarkable things about this vast injection of money and the severely truncated process of which it was the end result is the near universal public support for the Minister of Finance's stimulus package. This morning Stuff reported on a poll conducted over the weekend which showed 83 percent support for the stimulus measures taken out. As it turns out there are no fiscal conservatives in a fox hole. New Zealand of course is not alone in going to extraordinary lengths to support local communities with COVID. Governments from around the world from right across the political spectrum have suddenly discovered the joys of Keynesianism which in many ways even the great financial crisis was unable to elicit. Wage guarantees in the United Kingdom a doubling of unemployment benefits in Australia US Republicans voting for extensions to Government-backed paid leave—none of these sound like the actions of right-wing conservative administrations and yet here we are at the dawn of a brave new world a world where we put care and concern for each other at the centre the deeply held human values of making sure that we're all OK. So given that the world has finally simultaneously learnt to love Government spending and investment in our communities how can we ensure that we don't inadvertently reinforce mistakes that we've made in the past when responding to a crisis? I say that we need to have a vision of the kind of world that we want to pass on for future generations. The Green Party believes that the future economy has to be cleaner than today's fairer than today's—an economy that supports biodiversity and a connected country with prosperous vibrant communities smart low-carbon industries a strong social safety net affordable housing and puts Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the heart of everything that we do. This is the vision that the Greens have always sought to represent in this House. It is a hopeful and future-focused vision and I believe that it is a vision that New Zealanders need now more than ever. It is a new reality that we can imagine going forward.This in many ways is an opportunity to reshape how we do things and to look past the status quo. The amount of money that we're likely to spend in the coming months and years to get New Zealanders back to work and the wheels of the economy turning again will be massive. We could spend that money locking in a high-carbon wasteful economy where despite the good work that this Government has done the circumstances of your birth still dictate the outcomes of your life to far too great an extent. It would be all too easy in our desire to have things just go back to the way they were before COVID-19 to repeat the mistakes of the past to pump money into the old polluting economy when we have the opportunity to create a different future. We can put that money to work on the process of creating something new. We could put it towards a cleaner fairer future for our people and the land where economic prosperity no longer means rising emissions where nature is at the heart of what Government does and where our investments in social support in housing or in preventing domestic violence mean that everyone has a decent shot at participating in society.Now I doubt that the sum total of anxiety in the world has been higher at any point since the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although extraordinary measures such as society-wide lockdowns are a vital tool in our fight against a deadly enemy they do little to ease the sense that people have of living in uncertain and unpredictable times. The stress of living through a pandemic has multiplied for the tens of thousands of Kiwis who have or will become unemployed as a result of the crisis and of the responses taken. With events moving so quickly it's easy to lose sight of the future in the constant scramble to stay up to date with the present. When you don't know what the next week holds let alone the next year it can be very easy to feel like you're living in the end times and the scenes that we've seen in supermarkets around the country are just one symptom of those feelings. No one who truly believes that the future is going to be all right buys 200 rolls of toilet paper. People are looking to our Government for reassurance that we are going to come out the other side of this OK and I want New Zealanders to know that we are looking out for them and we will do everything that we can to make sure that things are OK. As we pass a bill allowing the Government to appropriate $52 billion I encourage everyone here to consider the long-term implications of what we spend that money on over the coming months and the importance of presenting a future which can be a beacon to people locked nervously inside their homes over the coming weeks. I've been buoyed by the level of commitment across all parties in this House to ensuring that support flows quickly to those who need it the most. I hope that we can continue to work closely together in the months ahead to see that New Zealand comes out the other side. I truly commend this bill to the House.