Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. About a third or a quarter of the way through Simon Bridges' speech I thought to myself I have never looked forward to a speech by Winston Peters so much." I want to pick up on where he left off which is just after the election in 2017.On election night 2017 I said that New Zealanders have voted for change—for change. On that night the Opposition parties the three of us commanded a majority of votes and I said it was time for us to work together to create a Government of change that New Zealanders wanted. Four weeks later as he's just mentioned the Deputy Prime Minister said that there had been a choice between a modified status quo and change—change.This Government—our Government the first that the Greens have been a part of—was elected on the basis of change to ensure a good future for all New Zealanders to confront child poverty to reverse the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots and to ensure that people's wages are actually enough to cover their living costs. We were elected to fix the housing crisis to make sure that every New Zealander has a roof over their head and a warm dry home that they can call their own whether they rent or own. We were elected to reverse the epidemic of ill mental health that is sweeping our nation and to get people with drug problems out of prison and into care.Our Government—and the Green Party that Marama Davidson and I are proud to lead as part of it—was given a mandate to bring about equality for women finally and to stem the tide of domestic and sexual violence against them; to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to create a country where future New Zealanders can understand each other not just in te reo Pākehā but in Te Reo Māori as well. We were elected to clean up our rivers to give sanctuary to the dolphins and the whales and the fish that live in our oceans and to free them of the deluge of plastic waste that is choking them. This Government was elected to restore our native forests and to save our endangered birds. And this Government—our Government we—were elected to make climate-change history. Now that is the change—that is the change—that we campaigned on all of us and that we were elected to bring about. On this side of the House all of us—all of us—want to be able to look our kids and our grandkids in the eyes and to say that we did our best to create a good future for them. I know that some people are frustrated that things aren't moving as fast as they could be; I am—I am. But can I just take a moment right now to say that if anyone still thinks that the Green Party could be making more progress on any of those issues if we had gone into partnership with a limping conservative fourth-term National Government whose central policy was the slow erosion of public services then they are beyond mistaken. There are some other words I could use but they would be unparliamentary. When you hear the Leader of the Opposition start the year with his exciting new idea about cutting taxes—because you've never heard that one from the National Party before!—what he's telling you is that he wants to cut funding for doctors that keep us healthy and he wants to cut the funding for midwives that deliver our babies and he wants to cut funding for the teachers that educate our kids. He's been going around over the summer saying "We're going to build loads more roads"—any road anywhere as long as it's got four lanes; it doesn't matter where it goes—"and we're going to pay more teachers and we're going to cut debt and we're going to cut taxes." And if Mr Bridges thinks that he is going to ride into Government on the back of that bandwagon he's going to need to be towed there by an entire blessing of unicorns.It's been widely reported over the summer that National wants to do nothing more than talk about how we fund public services—or as it's commonly known "tax". Well let's indulge them—let's just indulge them a little bit. Let's start by talking about Karen. Karen is a renter. She's got a career and she earns roughly the median wage. Over the last 10 years she's earned about $450000 and she's paid roughly $70000 in tax. She budgets well she can manage the rent and she can manage the other expenses but she can't quite have enough left over to save. And then there's Paul. Paul also earns the median wage. He's a bit older than Karen and Paul got lucky and managed to buy some rental property before house prices really started rocketing—about the time that Karen came into the workforce about the time that John Key became Prime Minister. On the day that Paul sells that rental property he makes as much as Karen has in the last 10 years and he pays zero tax on that income—and remember that Karen has already paid $70000 on hers. Now what does Paul do? He uses that as a deposit to buy two more houses. That is the rational thing to do. And what does Karen do? Well Karen keeps renting because there is no way on God's green earth that she's going to be able to scrape together a deposit on $45000 a year. And that in a nutshell is why we have a large and growing wealth gap in this country and it is undermining our ability to pay for the public services that we all rely on including Karen—including Paul.Now the Green Party has long been calling for that fundamental imbalance to be addressed and every single expert working group in living memory has agreed with us but no Government—no Government—has been bold enough to actually do it. But if we are to be the Government of change that New Zealanders wanted and elected we must be bold. The crises that we face on multiple fronts—the wealth gap climate change the housing crisis—we cannot solve without fundamental reform. These crises have been allowed to metastasise because generations of politicians have timidly tinkered rather than actually cut to the core of the problem. And the consequences of that timidity—the consequences of that timidity—are being felt by Karen and by hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders just like her trapped in "Generation Rent". So when the commentators pontificate about whether this Government can politically afford to do what no other Government before it has done I ask "Can we afford not to?"Can we afford not to? We were elected on the promise of change. If we want to reduce the wealth gap if we want to fix the housing crisis and to build a productive high-wage economy we need to tax income from capital the same way that we tax income from work. The very last question that we should be asking ourselves is: can we be re-elected if we do this? The only question we really ought to be asking ourselves is: do we deserve to be re-elected if we don't? I have to say boldness is needed everywhere everywhere. The vast majority of New Zealanders were delighted when the Prime Minister and my fellow Green Minister Eugenie Sage announced last year that we were phasing out single-use plastic bags but New Zealanders also know that plastic bags are just a tiny part of a much larger problem. Enormous islands of plastic waste are spewing into our oceans all over the world. Plastic has been found in the fish that we eat. We need to massively cut down on what we use as well as dispose of it properly. So this year Minister Sage will be leading the next phase of the "war on waste" and part of the solution will be to put a proper price on pollution and waste. Now in its interim report last year the Tax Working Group pointed out that New Zealand makes less use of pollution pricing than almost any other country in the OECD—almost anyone. So it's hardly surprising that we have some of the highest waste per capita in the OECD. Just as we don't have a snowball's chance in Australia of fixing inequality without taxing income from capital the same way that we tax income from work neither can we resolve our environmental challenges without putting a proper price on pollution and waste. And Simon Bridges says he wants the National Party to have a strong environmental focus. So I look forward to seeing how he does that—how he cleans up the environment without making polluters pay. People aren't stupid—they know when they're being lied to and they appreciate being told the truth. Now I believe we have nothing to lose by being honest with New Zealanders and the truth is that we can clean up our oceans and our rivers and our skies. It will involve changing the way we do things now: we can make the switch from coal and oil to solar and wind we can have fast and comfortable and convenient electric trains and buses through our cities and congestion-free roads for our electric cars. My other fellow Green Minister Julie Anne Genter and our colleague Phil Twyford will this year be making some of the boldest investments in New Zealand's future transport infrastructure ever. We can replace our ageing freshwater and sewerage pipes with new infrastructure that's resilient to the effects of climate change and sea-level rise. We can rebuild our hospitals and our schools to make them fit for purpose so that everyone can have a good future. In all these areas in all of them in transport water schools and hospitals just as with the tax system successive Governments have simply been too timid—too timid—to actually do what needs to be done to solve the problem. They've preferred to kick the problem down the road to lump it on future generations. Well here we are—here we are.In the United States Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is making headlines calling for a Green New Deal that offers everyone a good future. I just would like in all modesty to point out that the Green Party first called for a Green New Deal for New Zealand here 10 years ago in the middle of the global financial crisis. We have a 30-year infrastructure deficit to deal with and we have an urgent need to build a new generation of infrastructure that is resilient to the effects of climate change and sea-level rise. Conveniently we also have the lowest cost of borrowing in recent history and we have a public expectation that finally there is a Government willing to make the big investments not just for this generation but for future generations as well. We have no excuse not to.When the House resumed after the formation of Government in 2017 I said "It is 27 years since the Green Party was [first] founded with the goal of bringing the principles of ecological wisdom social responsibility appropriate decision-making and non-violence to New Zealand politics to solve the problems that traditional politics could not. It has been a long and a very winding road but the Green Party has arrived in Government."In the 14 months since that formation of Government our Government Marama and I and our Green colleagues—well we have been busy. Our Government has nearly completed a top-to-tail review of our entire tax and welfare systems with a view to fundamental reform this year. Our Government has introduced a Families Package that will increase the incomes of 380000 families by $75 every week—every week—and make it easier to send that child to school camp or to afford extra schoolbooks. Our Government has put 1900 families into public housing so they have a roof over their head. We've made the lives of New Zealanders warmer with Warm Up New Zealand and winter energy payments. We've restarted the home insulation scheme. We've introduced new standards for rental properties that mean our homes are healthy and not making kids sick. We've taken a huge step in launching just yesterday in Porirua the pilot of the youth mental health scheme that the Greens campaigned for. Young people in Porirua will no longer have to book an appointment with their GP and form a long queue and then pay around $150 that they don't have to get critical support that could save their life. That service now comes for free. We've built a whole-of-Government framework for tackling violence against women in the home. We've given our native birds a fighting chance with the largest increase in conservation funding in 16 years. We've invested billions in light rail in buses in cycling and in walking to make it easier and safer to get around our cities and last year our Government said that fossil fuels are not our future. This year the Green Investment Fund will make the first investments in the low-carbon economy of the future and also this year we will pass the zero carbon bill hopefully with political consensus across the House. Finally we will have legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a politically neutral climate change commission to help guide us there.Our Government is busy; we make no apology for it. These few changes that I've had time to list won't by themselves result in the truly transformative outcomes that New Zealanders elected this Government to shepherd in. As the Prime Minister said at Waitangi and again today we know—we all know—there is so much more to do but we are just getting warmed up. But to do it—but to do it—for Pete's sake we must be bold. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa."