Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. Just rising to speak again in support of my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick's Supplementary Order Paper 74 which would amend Schedule 6 to take it back to the very first lockdown the beginning of the first lockdown—the definition of the affected period" when we talk about commercial tenancies. I do want to thank the Minister for his answers. I think that they've all been very reasonable and we're really pleased that the Government has picked up the amendment that Chlöe had proposed—Chlöe Swarbrick—to go back to the beginning of the current lockdown but we think it would make sense to be able to take into account other periods of lockdown when obviously people have been very constrained in their ability to trade goods and services during lockdowns and that's because of the global pandemic. The Government rightly intervened and gave us a huge period of time in which we were able to trade because we had such an effective lockdown in 2020 but there are still issues for those who have excessive rent in arrears. Of course that's not to impugn—I'm sure there are many landlords that have taken into account the difficult circumstances that people are in and they have come to agreements. But ultimately the law changes are set to protect everyone and set a kind of baseline for that so that—the good landlords are not punished by these changes; it's the ones that ultimately are trying to seek excessive rents during periods when it's just simply not possible. I know the National Party is trying to mischaracterise my comments and say that it's somehow personal. It's not personal. What we're talking about is a system and trying to make the system more fair. Everyone in our society has been affected by the pandemic. Everybody has had to make sacrifices. It's really important that Government has been able to step in and protect the most vulnerable people provide financial support. We agree with all of that. But ultimately a system that here in New Zealand sort of privileges investment in property over real work isn't fair. That's not to impugn anyone who has done that to get ahead because of course people make decisions in the system as it is and that makes sense in that context. But to stand there and say we should continue to keep the system unfair—to me that's really objectionable and that's of course what the National and the ACT Party are advocating for.They can't tell the difference between productive enterprise which is creating goods and services for people—you know building buildings and building new buildings is a productive thing. But simply owning it and earning excessive profits off that ownership is rentierism. I mean anyone who has any grasp over the economy—[Multiple members interject] I think the difficulty for them is that they conflate what's good for them as individuals with what's good for society. Yes it's been possible to get ahead by owning property. That doesn't mean that it's good for the economy for a small number of people to continue earning greater returns. In particular I think it's objectionable that there's no sort of asset tax really—no capital gains tax no asset tax—that reflects increases in asset values. That's what's being ignored here is that—it's not socialising the losses. Socialising the losses would be the Government bailing out the landlords and the landlords walking away two or three years from now with massive capital gains that are then privatised from Government policy which has been to support the economy. I know they really struggle with this concept. But when you look at what is productive in society it's trading goods and services not owning something and extracting rents. Yes you're getting rich but you're actually taking away from the productive economy. I know that's a struggle for people to accept if they personally have gotten wealthy through this particular means but it's not fair. I think Joseph Mooney made a really good point about well what's the banks' role in all of this? Obviously interest rates have been at record lows so expenses haven't been excessive. But there is a question about what role the banks should be playing. I know that the Government made some provision for mortgage relief during the time of the first lockdown but I think probably we could have gone further on that.The other amendment to Schedule 6 that I just wanted to speak to was the one around overseas voting rights. I do think it's really important that the Government does take action on this issue. Even if managed isolation and quarantine opens up and there is more freedom to travel next year there will have been an extended period of time in which New Zealanders residing overseas were not able to return to New Zealand. When things start to open up more there are still going to be huge constraints in air travel—much more costly than it was several years ago. So I think it's really incumbent on the Government to make sure that those New Zealanders who haven't been able to return home because of the global pandemic still have the ability to participate in elections. That is why my colleague Golriz Ghahraman has moved—[Time expired]"