Hughes Gareth; Rurawhe AdrianGARETH HUGHES (Green): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I guess the key takeaway from the speech from the last member Brett Hudson was that he's a bit sad that there weren't enough roads in the Budget. If we took the advice of the previous member we would have roads everywhere. Now the fact is that for the last nine years of the previous Government there were road-dominated Budgets. The member doesn't know what the term is but the academic term is actually induced demand": when you build roads they rapidly fill up with cars. What we saw from the previous Government was they literally borrowed billions and billions of dollars for these high-cost very low - benefit cost-ratio motorways—the "roads of National Party significance". On only seven roads they spent billions and billions of dollars. It didn't increase productivity didn't increase New Zealand up the economic rankings and actually saw people locked into an only-roads car-based mobility system. What this Government is standing for is actually balance. So we've had nine years of road Budgets; it didn't work. Now we've got a balanced system that's actually investing in rail investing in public transport investing in walking and cycling investing in road safety and yes even investing in new roads. Now in previous Budgets we've had nine years of roads Budgets. We've had "chewing gum Budgets" black Budgets and "block of cheese Budgets". This was the first time New Zealand's ever had a wellbeing Budget. We've seen Budgets that have myopically focused on the surplus or the deficit and Budgets that have focused entirely on tax cuts; this is the first time we've seen a Budget that is focused on wellbeing—a Budget that's actually put wellbeing above gross domestic product. You know as a Green MP—the previous member talked about only having a "side of Greens". Actually I think you can see Green ideas in the heart of this Budget because the thing we've been talking about for literally decades from the Values Party and now the Green Party in Parliament for decades is actually that we need to value more things than just GDP. What we know of course is that a car crash increases GDP an oil spill increases GDP and a devastating earthquake increases GDP but it doesn't increase wellbeing. That should be the true metric which we measure ourselves against. Now I'm glad to see the international attention from around the world on this new approach to Budgets. I remember that while the previous Government were focusing on roads and tax cuts the only time we got international press was when the previous Prime Minister was on Letterman or we were literally the butt of international jokes on The Colbert Report. We're finally now getting international media attention for the right reasons because the country and New Zealand is focusing on wellbeing and actually measuring the outcomes and not just focusing myopically on GDP. So the National Party has said "Well how is this different?" Now the difference of course is that every vote went through a Treasury process that asked the critical question "How does it increase wellbeing?"—that's the difference. The previous Government said "How does it build more roads? How does it just increase GDP? How does it support the National Party?"; this one asked the question "How does it increase the wellbeing of New Zealanders?" So that's why you can see things like the child poverty targets in the heart of this Budget. That's why you can see the indexing for benefits against average wages really improving the situation. For the Green Party this is our first time in Government and this is a Budget that we can be proud of. If you add up all the Budget bid initiatives in the Green Party confidence and supply agreement and across the work of our Ministers and other Ministers related there's $4.7 billion of spending which you can attribute to the Greens—and we're glad to be working with our coalition partners Labour and New Zealand First. Now for the Green purview I think there's big things to highlight. Jan Logie in particular did stellar work leading a work programme a cross-agency work to help reduce family and sexual violence. We've seen the tourist levy which is doubling the historical amount of money that the Department of Conservation received in the last Budget. The tourist levy is going to deliver $180 million to the conservation estate actually aiding the experience that Kiwis and tourists get with the places that we absolutely love. Significant spending in mental health. Significant spending in the environmental space with $186.5 million improving water quality and support when it comes to the Resource Management Act. The $1 billion we've heard about for rail and it's absolutely fantastic to see the rail line opening from Napier to Wairoa; we just need to get it up to Gisborne. It's a great first step. From here the Wellbeing Budget can do more to support Kiwis to lift New Zealanders out of poverty and to make sure that we've got a clean pristine environment that we have a tax system that actually benefits the productive economy and not just speculation and that leads the transition away from old polluting forms of economy to the job-rich high-quality high-wage clean-energy economy. This is my vision going forward. This is just the first step in a series of Wellbeing Budgets that see a richer New Zealand a cleaner New Zealand and a fairer New Zealand one that moves away from neo-liberalism and an unfair economy towards true wellbeing for Aotearoa New Zealand. Kia ora koutou. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Golriz Ghahraman—five minutes."