Turei Metiria: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 11 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2142. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Memorable Budgets? Honestly there are not that many. Labour has sometimes created significant and politically enduring solutions to address the major challenges that we face as a nation. Budget 2001 was memorable for the creation of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to address the long-term need to pre-fund this looming public superannuation bill that we face as a nation as our population ages and as our baby boomers start retiring. Budget 2006 was memorable for the creation of KiwiSaver another politically enduring solution to help address the country’s saving crisis. Working for Families which was announced in Budget 2004 stopped the rapid rise of inequality that New Zealand experienced after the National Government but it did not actually fix the dire rates of child poverty that were created by National in the early years.This National Government is still yet to pass a truly memorable Budget. For a memorable National Budget you would really have to go back to Ruth Richardson’s “mother of all Budgets” in 1991 but of course that was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Similarly noteworthy for all the wrong reasons was National’s tax cut package in 2010—we got the completely revised history of that from the speaker just before me Jami-Lee Ross—which delivered tax cuts to the rich in the midst of a deep recession. Unlike KiwiSaver and the Superannuation Fund those short-term tax cuts simply will not endure past the next change of Government.A memorable Budget for National would be one that puts at the front and centre solutions to the biggest challenges we are facing today and those are climate change and inequality. A memorable Budget for National would show the courage to believe that we can live better and fairer and free from the fear of each other and the threat of climate change which will turn our livelihoods upside down if we do not change direction.Budgets lie at the heart of why all MPs are here. We are elected to help address the very big issues that we all face the ones that we do not have the resources to address on our own. We are elected in good faith to strive to work across political lines to find these enduring political solutions that will last long after we each leave this place. On principle we are elected here to protect the weak from the strong to protect those without the resources to protect themselves.So what are the big issues of our time that we must address as elected representatives? There are many challenges that we face like creating good jobs that pay decent wages; like building warm affordable housing; like providing the best education for our kids and even better health care; like cleaning up our polluted rivers and freeing our cities from congestion and air pollution; and like protecting the species we love such as kiwi kōkako Māui’s dophin and kauri from imminent and irreversible loss. But I say that climate change and inequality are the two issues that stand above all these and are contained by them.Climate change and persistent inequality are the two issues that genuinely threaten to tear at the very fabric of our community. We can and we must spend money on measures to turn round the risk of predation that kiwi face on the mainland. But what is it for if the entire ecosystem on which they depend is destroyed by catastrophic climate change? Private companies as we see can provide temporary charity relief by funding milk in schools but what for if we never address the long-term legacy of what it means to grow up in poverty? Educational underachievement poor health poor job prospects the likelihood of time spent in prison and an early death are the consequences of poverty. That early death is indeed a consequence of long-term poverty in this country.National has continued to downplay these issues. It has been slow to serve the wider interests of all New Zealanders but very quick to serve the interests of those who keep them in power. Just 48 hours after the last election John Key sat down with John Campbell on the telly and told us that he wanted to lead a Government that would govern for all New Zealanders. He went on to say he wanted “to leave the country in better shape than I found it.” and that “Just passing everything by the barest of majorities isn’t the right way to govern a country and I certainly don’t think it will deliver a potential fourth term in Government.”In that spirit of non-partisan sentiment I would like to invite National to consider working across the party lines to deliver at least one truly memorable Budget this term. We can help National to deliver on its promise of future tax cuts to lower and middle income families with a Budget that helps address rising inequality while securing our future long-term economic prosperity by protecting the environment from which all of our country’s wealth derives. We can help the Government. Yes we can.We can help the Government deliver its programme of lower and middle income tax savings and lower debt by passing a carbon tax. A carbon tax can turn our climate crisis into an opportunity. A carbon tax can form the heart of a plan to protect our climate and leave New Zealand families better off. A carbon tax can ensure that New Zealand shows leadership on climate change and delivers prosperity along the way. In the run-up to the last election the Green Party announced a modest tax on carbon pollution recycling all of the revenue raised from this carbon tax back to families and to business through a $2000 income tax - free band and a 1 percent company tax rate cut. There was no hysteria following the launch of our policy except of course a little bit in this House from this side over here. This is because a tax is now widely considered to be smart reasonable and non-partisan; a way to address climate change by putting an effective price on carbon. It makes sense to everyone to make polluters pay.This was the promise of the emissions trading scheme but the emissions trading scheme has not delivered. The emissions trading scheme is a tool that is neither transparent nor just. Practically speaking it has not delivered the kinds of reductions in carbon emissions that we all know we need to make in order to make our climate safe. Emissions have gone up in New Zealand since the emissions trading scheme came into force not down as was promised. Carbon polluters are not paying the true cost of the damage they are doing to our environment. Independent economists at Business and Economic Research Ltd analysed our proposal for a carbon tax and concluded that New Zealand families would be better off as a result of our proposed tax changes.The Greens do not have the resources of the Government to deliver the best form of carbon tax possible but we are willing to work with National and with other political parties to make this happen. We currently live in a world where the Government is subsidising the world’s biggest polluters—oil gas and coal companies—to look for more fossil fuels while our kids go hungry to school then go home to crowded damp homes and get sick more often than they should and suffer serious illness as a result. Subsidising the pollution that is fuelling runaway climate change is not a smart way to run our economy or to secure our future prosperity. Similarly doing nothing about rising inequality is neither smart nor just.We can have a country where polluters pay and where our children thrive. A carbon tax is a win-win plan to protect the climate and benefit New Zealand families. We can futureproof our economy as we transition to a low carbon economy by building a significant tax cut for businesses into our plan. This is our hope and our vision for this Budget and for subsequent Budgets this term. We are very optimistic as you know and we are certainly ready to play our part in realising this vision and we are seeking genuine cross-party work on a true vision for this country. Thank you.