Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā rau rangatira mā o tēnei Whare nui o te ao ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa. Nō reira tēnā koutou katoa.[To all authorities all languages and all chiefly people of this great House of the world I offer my warm greetings. I acknowledge you all.]Well based on the last couple of performances I have to say the next year looks it's going to be a somewhat one sided battle between Superwoman and Lex Luthor. And I have to say he has managed to fend off his chief rival over here—Brainiac—but based on that performance he is yet to find the kryptonite!I have to say the Prime Minister's statement demonstrates that with a strong Green voice in this Parliament and in this Government Aotearoa is at last heading towards a future where communities thrive where ecosystems flourish and our economy is sustainable and pollution-free. That is the vision that the Green Party was founded on over 30 years ago. I am going to respond to the Prime Minister's statement through the lens of each of those three long-term and long-held priorities but before I do I do want to offer our response in relation to the shorter term but somewhat all-consuming challenge that is in front of us right now. It is entirely understandable that the attention of both the people and the Government of Aotearoa is taken up primarily with the ongoing pandemic crisis. Now as we reconnect Aotearoa with the rest of the world the priority must be on the protection and the wellbeing of whānau and communities and there are many people—here at home and abroad—who have been unable to be with their friends and family at precisely the moment when they need it the most. But at the same time it is a fact that there are literally thousands of people alive today who would not be if it had not been for our border restrictions and managed quarantine and isolation (MIQ) system. Hon Member: I thought it was capitalism.Hon JAMES SHAW: We have one of the—I'm getting to that—lowest mortality rates in the world because of it and it was good to hear from the Prime Minister that 40 percent of children have now received the first dose of the vaccine. That is a huge success but there is no doubt that the reopening of the border does increase the risk of worsening the peak of the Omicron outbreak and future variants. The Greens called for MIQ prioritisation based on humanitarian grounds—and that includes separated families—and we called for specialist MIQ facilities and that would have enabled more New Zealanders to reconnect with their loved ones and that would have meant that we would have been able to maintain an elimination strategy long enough for everyone to get their booster shots and for all children to be immunised. So if the borders are to open up before that point then we must increase the focus on protecting and supporting our most vulnerable communities. We are very pleased to hear the Prime Minister say in her statement that tens of millions of rapid antigen tests will be made available to New Zealanders. The Greens' view is that that shouldn't just apply to rapid antigen tests but also to N95 masks; they should be made available free to everybody who needs one. We're also very pleased to hear the Prime Minister announce the extension of the Healthy Homes Initiative the Warmer Kiwi Homes insulation programme and the boost to the number of public housing places. Focusing on the social determinants of health like housing is utterly critical to reducing the impact of Omicron and later COVID variants. As the Prime Minister said in her statement empowering and funding Māori Pasifika and community providers was critical to getting the vaccination rates of those communities over 90 percent in most parts of the country because when Māori and Pasifika peoples and those who are most marginalised amongst us are taken care of we are all taken care of. My final word on the pandemic response before I move on to some of the longer term issues facing us is about the economic response. Thirty years of focusing on the debt to GDP ratio as the single most important measure of a Government's success has left our country with a colossal deficit in housing in health in education in transport in water in energy in local government and in public services. But in our response to the pandemic we have demonstrated that actually Government can marshal the resources necessary to fight a crisis when the moment comes. We've demonstrated what can happen when good government meets good science and we've demonstrated that the best economic response is first and foremost to keep everybody safe and well. But as we grasp toward some new semblance of a post-pandemic normality we must not simply revert to the absolutely busted notions of the last 30 years that left us chronically short of houses and hospital beds and water pipes and classrooms and buses and trains as we were when the pandemic started.Which brings me to the Green Party's priorities which are and for a long time have been: one to protect and restore our natural world; two a fairer and more inclusive community; and three a clean zero-carbon economy. So to have a New Zealand Prime Minister devote as much time as ours just did to placing climate change at the heart of our nation's economic strategy in her opening address to Parliament gives me hope and it should give some hope too to all of the scientists and the activists the school strikers the parents the business people and the regular folk who have campaigned for so many decades to make it so.Now the Prime Minister outlined a series of actions that we will take in energy and transport and agriculture and waste to modernise our economy and to cut emissions. I won't repeat those but I will add that as we take those actions we will seek to do so in a way that first ensures that the transition is equitable and just and inclusive; second like our pandemic response that it will be based on what the science says is required; third that it honours te Tiriti and supports Māori in the design and the development of the transition; fourth that it puts the protection and restoration of our indigenous biodiversity at the centre of our response; and fifth is well signalled unlocks investment builds innovation and creates jobs.Now delivering all of this across so many industries and social sectors requires the attention and the leadership of a slew of Government agencies and at least half of Cabinet. And so I would like to thank all of the Labour Ministers for all that they are doing to deliver on New Zealand's first and now long-awaited comprehensive plan to lower emissions and to limit warning.Thanks to the changes that we made to the emissions trading scheme there is now at least $4.5 billion available to tackle climate change over the course of the next four years. Now dollar for euro as a proportion of GDP that puts our climate change response on a par with Germany. And I want to take this opportunity to address Te Paati Māori the National Party and the ACT Party. I know that we will disagree about many of the policy prescriptions that we may employ to get us there. But I do hope that we are able to maintain the consensus about where we need to get to and the institutions that we created to help to guide us there. So in that spirit I will be consulting with all parties shortly on the emissions budgets before they are finalised and we will also hold a parliamentary debate on those budgets so that every party may put down its views on record. And I hope that that will mean that there is a clear message to New Zealand about the direction of travel that has to span several changes of Government. But I do also welcome what I know will be robust critique and debate about the precise measures that this Government will be employing in the first emissions plan. Of course the emissions reduction plan is not the only major milestone on the climate change front in 2022. In August we will be publishing the national adaptation plan outlining how we're going to build resilience to the increasingly frequent and severe floods and droughts and storms that we are already experiencing here and around the Pacific and that will lead to the introduction of the Climate Change Adaptation Act early next year.Of course also this year we will be deciding on the design of the system that we will be using to price agricultural emissions and support farmers to adopt practices and technology that adds value increases profitability and cuts emissions. There are so many good farmers who are already working with more sustainable and regenerative farming practices and in 2019 the sector asked for and was given an opportunity to create a credible effective and fair way to reduce emissions from agriculture and I hope that they take it.I mentioned that one of the Green Party's top three priorities was to protect and restore our natural world and that will remain true in 2022. Tackling the biodiversity crisis goes hand in hand with tackling the climate crisis but for decades Governments have approached these issues separately. I am determined to better harness the power of nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to help us to adapt to the effects of climate change. Also in 2022 the Greens will be pushing efforts and funding to rescue our native species from the brink and we will continue to demand no more mines on conservation land. As the Government reforms the Resource Management Act we will be the voice for nature in the House and we will put the health of our oceans firmly on the political agenda pushing for a fix to the broken rules that allow overfishing habitat destruction and pollution to continue. The Greens have always stood for fairer more inclusive communities and the truth is that in Aotearoa today the comfort and security of the wealthiest New Zealanders would be virtually unimaginable to those on an average income let alone the poorest half of our society. The clearest indicator of the rot is the housing crisis and the record low rates of homeownership especially amongst Māori and Pasifika. Last year as has been well-travelled house prices rose a staggering 23 percent. Thousands of families who should have been able to buy a home are instead funding their landlord's retirement through exorbitant weekly rents which were up 5.8 percent last year alone for new tenancies. That is unfair and unjustified. We welcome the Prime Minister's commitment to accelerate housing supply and improve the emergency housing system but one of these options has to include the possibility—wait for it David—of rent controls. And I know that that has to include—sorry; I know that my colleagues on the right will blow their gaskets over this—but rent controls have been in place in cities like New York and Paris and Berlin for decades and the sky hasn't fallen in. In places like Ireland and Scotland and London Governments are showing what new modern rent controls can look like. So given the scale of the housing crisis in New Zealand this House ought to consider it as an option. Now as an associate housing Minister my co-leader the Hon Marama Davidson will be working to bring support to our whānau who find themselves where no one expects or deserves to be and that is without a home. We are in the midst of a crisis that is forcing all but the wealthiest out of quality stable housing. I'm very proud of what she is doing and what we are doing to see that nobody goes without it. At the same time this year the Hon Marama Davidson will be working across Government and with tangata whenua communities and NGOs to deliver the actions outlined in Aotearoa's first ever strategy and action plan to eliminate family violence and sexual violence Te Aorerekura. Te Aorerekura is nothing short of a landmark in New Zealand's social history but we also know that the hard work is just beginning and I cannot overstate the importance of that work. Everyone has the right to live in a peaceful home to be respected to be safe from mistreatment and violence. The Greens will also keep pushing for action and approaches that honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the tino rangatiratanga of hapū and iwi over their lands waters and people. Honouring Te Tiriti can not only right past wrongs but also empower Aotearoa to address underlying social and environmental problems. For decades Māori have been excluded from decisions about what happens to land that used to be theirs. Now the Green Party are calling on the Government to begin a process of returning stolen land to tangata whenua so that they may reassert their ancestral role as kaitiaki of our precious whenua awa and moana.So in conclusion we broadly support the direction laid out in the Prime Minister's statement. But fundamentally the Green Party's view is that our country our planet and our people face a multiplicity of interconnected independent and escalating crises. But the root cause of all of these crises whether it's inequality in health or housing or wealth whether it's in mass extinctions or ocean plastics or polluted rivers whether it's in the accelerating droughts or storms or coastal erosion—the root cause of all of these crises is the same and that is an economic system that privatises benefit and socialises cost. It will not be transformed by incremental action. As these compounding crises continue to metastasise Green Party Ministers inside the Government and MPs outside of it will continue to stand for transformative long-term action over incremental short-term fixes. Einstein warned us that we cannot solve the problems with the same level of thinking that created them. We agree with Einstein and recent polling suggests that more and more New Zealanders agree with us. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.SPEAKER: The question is that the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.