Hughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7588. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH  
HUGHES 
 (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I wish all my colleagues a happy New Year. I hope they have had a good time with their whanau. I would like to thank all the members and supporters of the Green Party who sent us here in record numbers just over a year ago. 
Today we heard the Prime Minister give his statement to Parliament which kicked off his fifth year at the helm of New Zealand. And what did John Key focus on? What was he focused on? Well it was quite simple. He was trying to get a laugh instead of trying to get Kiwis a job. We heard from the Government that the direction is going to be quite simply business as usual—but for our usual businesses they are plainly struggling through the lowest growth we have seen in this country in 50 years. Oddly on “Planet Key” there is more talk about the Green Party and the Labour Party than there is about the National Party or its record. So 5 years on under the helm of John Key where is the plan? Where is the vision? Where are the jobs? Already 5 years on we can see the Key Government is resorting to excuses fear and scaremongering in its attempt to hold on to power. The Key Government is looking tired. It is looking defensive. It is constantly looking for distractions. The Key Government may have given up on making our country a better place but we know New Zealanders have not. New Zealanders want vision. They want solutions not the excuses and distractions we hear from the front bench of the National Government. 
You can see it in the debate around mining and the environment which has been touched on a bit this evening. This term the Government has moved to an extreme anti-environmental position as if it is trying to look as if it is busy and active creating jobs. From wrecking the emissions trading scheme to walking out of the Kyoto Protocol to actually declining marine reserves and to watching the Maui’s dolphin go extinct and from intensifying dirty dairying to attacking freshwater scientists this Government has moved from just talking and lip service about the environment to actively undermining it this term. You could bring back 20 Bluegreen Nick Smiths into the National Government Cabinet but none of it would “greenwash” the active anti-environmental stance this Government has taken under John Key this term. 
You can see it in deep-sea oil drilling—the huge promotion the subsidies the tax exemptions the low royalties. It is symptomatic of the Government’s lazy approach to economic development. Look there is a huge list of things the Government could be doing to support our Kiwis and to get our country working again but it would rather sit on its hands and hope that some foreign oil company drills for our oil risks our environment and will send its profit offshore. Sure the Government may get some royalties but with the fourth-lowest rate in the world not much. Sure there might be a handful of jobs but given it is the lowest job-creating sector in our economy not much. There might be a few jobs for New Zealanders but we know that given this Government has changed the immigration laws so that foreign oil workers can skip through immigration not much. Sure there might be some taxes but given the pages and pages of tax exemptions and write-offs there will not be much going to the Crown. So what we know is for all the environmental risk we are going to see hardly any jobs hardly any taxes and hardly any royalties and all those profits are simply going to flow offshore. 
Surely it is not the smartest plan for our country. It is lazy economics. There is no plan there is no innovation and there is no creativity. It is simply hoping that someone else will find some oil will drill it mine it frack it and they will pay us a pittance for the pleasure. But what happens when it is gone and why do we not do that now instead of waiting until it is gone? But you know the hope-and-pray-that-oil-is-there-and-someone-finds-it plan is in tatters and what we know is that the former Minister of Energy and Resources has gone the way of Petrobras he has gone the way of Anadarko Petroleum and he has gone the way of Apache and none of them is going to be seeing New Zealand oil drilled this year. 
The clean economy that the Greens have been talking about—that is what is providing hope to New Zealanders. That is what they are looking for in terms of vision. That is what international leaders are talking about. That is what economists are talking about. It is what the business leaders—the successful business people behind Pure Advantage—are talking about. This offers a real alternative to what we heard today from the Prime Minister. A clean economy would not be putting our beaches at risk. It is those beaches that are iconic of summer and iconic of our country. Summer in New Zealand means beaches barbecues sun and sand. But it is our beaches that are directly under threat from this lazy reckless gamble approach to economics. I hope members had a great opportunity to spend some time on some beaches this summer. 
Late last year I launched a competition on www.bestbeaches.org.nz where Kiwis can vote for their most-loved beach. So far we have Kaiteriteri in front with over 1400 votes followed by Ohope and the Mount. I guess the Mount is an interesting one to be third because it is one of those beaches that has experienced oil washing on it both from the  
Rena 
 and the slow response we saw from Maritime New Zealand. For them in the Mount oil on the beaches is not an academic theory; it is tangible it is something they have seen it is something they have touched it is something they have smelt and they do not want to see oil on their beaches ever again. Just round the corner in the Pegasus Basin block just off Wellington’s coast we have the very same company that had a 25 percent stake in the Deepwater Horizon blowout explosion and oil spill prospecting nearly 3 kilometres deep which is nearly twice as deep as Deepwater Horizon. 
So the plan is a lazy approach that is putting our beaches at risk but there is a better way. What we need is a smart Green economy. A smart Green economy would not risk our environment for a quick buck. It would put the environment at the heart of our economic vision. A smart Green economy would not throw our thriving IT industry and software industry under the bus as they say is happening with the Government’s patent reforms and as it stands by passively as we still lack a second internet cable. A smart Green economy would not give up on our manufacturing sector. It would support it by driving down the pressure on the New Zealand dollar. We would support it with great research and development better skills training and incentives to export. A smart Green economy definitely would not stand by as we see 40000 manufacturing jobs disappear over the last 4 years. 
So in summary the Prime Minister has given his speech which will fail to inspire anyone in this House or anyone outside. That tired old business-as-usual approach is failing our economy our environment and our people. This year the Greens are going to step up. We are fighting for decent jobs the elimination of child poverty and the defence of our environment. We are going to do this through fresh thinking new ideas and through building a movement of people to stop the worst of the Government’s agenda. We have not given up. We are never going to give in. We are in for the future.