Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. The Green Party very much supports this bill. MARPOL Annex VI as other speakers have mentioned is the primary international regulatory mechanism for addressing the climate change impacts from shipping.Of course when it initially came into force Annex VI in May 2005 it was regulations for the prevention of air pollution from ships. Now it seeks to address the impacts from shipping emissions not only on climate but on human health and environments in and around port communities by regulating emissions of harmful pollutants from ships and it addresses the climate change and ozone layer - depletion through both air-quality regulations and energy-efficiency measures.I think what's most interesting about this debate tonight is that the National Party is supporting the bill. That's great. I've heard some supportive comments about coastal shipping from the National Party and for this particular bill. It's really interesting the reason why something that came into force in 2005 New Zealand is only acceding to now through these legislative changes because a long time ago in 2010 when I came in before I was elected to Parliament and I joined the Green Party's research unit as a transport advisor in Parliament there was great concern amongst some of the people who were working on international shipping that the Government had no interest at that time in 2010—this was the National Government—in acceding to MARPOL Annex VI. Indeed that's why nothing happened until 2018 when the coalition Government came in.I think the previous Labour Government in 2005-2008 had been doing the work to get it going but obviously when the Government changed nothing happened. If you look back at records the United States was signing up to this with the Environmental Protection Agency implementation in 2011. So the reason why this took so long is because the previous National Government did nothing about it for the entire time it was in Government. Of course when we came in in 2018 these UN conventions bringing them in and making them part of law in order to accede requires a whole set of Government processes which had been engaged in prior to this bill actually coming to select committee and then second reading in this House.We had public consultation on accession that started in 2018 and went to 2019. The Environment Committee did consultation of the parliamentary treaty examination. Then we had to have informal engagement on implementation which took us up until now. So it is really important that these international agreements which we engage in in order to protect our environment to protect our climate and to protect our human health they do require a process that takes quite a bit of time. And the momentum in New Zealand signing up to this it can all be lost simply in a change of Government and it not being a priority for a particular Government. So I'm really happy to see that the National Party has now changed its tune now that it's no longer in Government that it is supporting this bill that we are finally acceding to Annex VI of MARPOL—thank God!—because we practically could not be any later than right now.The Green Party is happy to support the bill and will continue to advocate for intelligent Government regulation and intelligent global agreements that help us tackle our collective challenges which include pollution of our marine environment catastrophic climate change and things that affect not only our medium- and long-term wellbeing but also our immediate human health because the truth is air quality is not very good around our ports because we haven't signed up to this in time.