Radhakrishnan PriyancaHon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for Youth): Thank you Madam Speaker. So much doom and gloom from the other side of the House but on this side of the House we've just had an extraordinary Budget that will take all New Zealanders with us as we rebuild in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were literally two things that the member who just resumed his seat Matt Doocey said that I actually agree with and one was to acknowledge the role of volunteers. As the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector I absolutely tautoko that. The second one that he said was that we need to get on and do it today and that is action on climate change. I just want to I guess take the House back to something that the Prime Minister said right at the start of her tenure as the Prime Minister. She said that climate change is our generation's—and perhaps even more so the next generation's—nuclear-free moment. We've also said right from the start of when this Government took office that there are three areas that we would focus on in our term in Government. One is to continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. The second is to rebuild our economy in a way that is sustainable and actually takes New Zealanders with us on that journey. The third is to continue to address some of the long-term challenges that face us as a nation and one of those is climate change. We've seen from the Climate Change Commission's blueprint on addressing climate change that they have confirmed that the Government has made good progress to reduce emissions but that it's time now for us to step up and to get on with further actions. We've seen though from the Climate Change Commission's advice that we need to build as I said on progress. The important bits of their advice that I'd like to just highlight today are that meeting our targets is achievable and it's affordable and will bring huge economic benefits benefits to people's health wellbeing and to our wallets as well. The other point that I'd just like to highlight is that it's a collective effort. There is a job in there for everyone to do: agencies local government central government businesses and our communities as well. As the Minister for Youth—this is an incredibly important issue for our young people and we've seen that time and again. We've seen that over the years. In 2019 we saw about 170000 people take to the streets to encourage us all here decision makers to move on climate change on climate action. That was of course the School Strike 4 Climate. I want to highlight some of the work that the Ministry of Youth Development has done in this space. A shout-out to both the ministry and also Hivers. The Ministry of Youth Development has encouraged active engagement between youth and the Climate Change Commission through an initiative called the Hive. It's a by youth for youth initiative. It encourages a two-way conversation between our rangatahi our young people and decision makers and it demystifies the policy engagement process in a way that is really exciting. I just want to shout out to our Hivers both past and present. It's an initiative that started in 2020. It was a way to mitigate some of the sense from young people that their voices weren't being heard by decision makers and equally that many of our Government agencies were struggling to engage with young people. So this group of 15 young people that was partially funded by the ministry used the Climate Change Commission's advice package consultation as their first engagement as they demystified the policy process.They've also shared some of what they've heard. They broke down the Climate Change Commission's advice into a way that was understandable to young people. They used social media like Facebook and Instagram. They used some of the interactive polls via Insta stories to reach out to a diverse range of rangatahi across Aotearoa. They shared some of the areas of importance and one of them was on transport and ensuring that we have—so as the Opposition bangs on about the fact that we are offering various modes of transport to New Zealanders I want to point to the fact that our young people are actually asking for this for us to decarbonise the transport network and to offer options to them by way of public transport. This is the time to act and we are acting.