Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Chairperson of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee): Madam Chair thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this debate as the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. For the benefit of the committee I'll give a little bit of an outline in terms of what we heard from the Minister Megan Woods at Estimates and then I've got a couple of questions that I will pose to the Minister before no doubt others will want to pose their questions.The main appropriations sought for energy and resources—we heard that there's money in the Budget to fund energy storage energy efficiency and fuel switching projects that reduce carbon emissions from industrial processes. We heard about the work to fund the work of the Electricity Authority which is a Crown entity responsible for regulating the energy market. We also heard from the Minister around the finance to expand the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme and I'll have a question about that soon. We also heard from the Minister about funding for the work of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. And finally we heard about support policy advice in terms of the management of the Crown mineral estate. We also had a discussion about the Commerce Commission's study into the fuel markets which aims to ensure New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump.I'd just like to pick up on a couple of those aspects. The first one I'd like to touch on—and I'll have a question leading out of it—is the funding in Budget 2021 for the extension of the Warmer Kiwi Homes project. Now as the Minister told us there are a number of health benefits that are associated with a warm dry home and this appropriation in the Budget will allow for 47000 homes to receive insulation and heating retrofits. Now just to put a personal lens on this in 2008 my wife and I—I was actually working in retail at the time—we had two young children and were in a fairly cold house and we were fortunate enough to receive a grant through a community services card for insulation underneath our house which was on piles and also insulation in the roof which was a scheme similar to this scheme. It certainly made a significant difference to our house and certainly to our children and our family.There's quite often a discussion around health housing and education how the three of those work together and which is most important. Some would say that education is the most important aspect for our children to create opportunity in terms of opportunities for them later on in their life; some would say No no it's health that's most important."; some would say housing. Obviously the three of them work together but I have a view that actually out of those three housing is vital to get right because if you have young people children living in warm dry healthy homes you can then work to wrap around those services around the education and the health. So I am very interested to hear a little bit more about this programme and in particular what sort of health benefits the Minister expects that this will have particularly for our tamariki. So my question on the housing aspect is: what will this funding be used for specifically and how will it impact on low-income households particularly children? So what sort of benefits does the Minister see this investment having for our tamariki?The second aspect I'd like to touch on before I finish my contribution is the investment in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority's programme with businesses. I'm curious around what sort of programmes and policies have been successful in encouraging businesses to reduce their carbon emissions. Now I know the Minister is particularly passionate about ensuring that we meet our Paris targets in terms of decarbonisation and so the investment obviously links in with that as we've heard from the Minister in the Estimates. I'd be interested to hear from the Minister in terms of given the success of the first round of funding in the Government investment in Decarbonising Industry fund—and I know there was a lot of interest in that from businesses—what sorts of things does she expect the next round of that funding to support? How does she believe that this funding will support us as a country reaching our targets in terms of the decarbonisation and supporting businesses to decarbonise their work? Thank you."