Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. As I said in my first reading speech the Green Party supports this bill. It is absolutely sensible economics and it makes sense for the people of a country to benefit from the natural resources in their country. And that's why we've long said that our royalties on oil and gas should be raised to reflect the value of New Zealand. Now of course the people on the right particularly David Seymour will pretend that somehow foreign companies coming to New Zealand are doing us some huge favour by taking our natural resources and making huge profits off it. But in reality most countries and particularly those that we would aspire to be like understand that it's important for New Zealanders to benefit from that and that's why we have resource rentals. But mostly and most importantly is that it's really important to send the signal that there is value to this—that there's a cost to it—and that when we're using fossil gas it's contributing to climate change and it is a natural resource that doesn't belong to the company that's invested in the infrastructure; it belongs to all New Zealanders and it makes sense for us to get some collective benefit from that. Closing the loophole to make sure that all of the gas is paying the same royalty or is able to pay the same royalty makes sense to me. People made investment decisions in the 1980s and the world has moved on and changed. It's been nearly 50 years since the 1980s and it makes sense for us to close this loophole and have an equivalent level of royalty applied to all of the natural gas—you know if that is the way that indeed this change enables that clarification. So it's really hard to sympathise at all with the ACT Party and the National Party acting like this is some big outrage. I mean what I think is outrageous is the way that they want to let the rich get richer the planet get trashed and then claim that somehow people are doing us this huge favour while they trash our planet and get richer at our expense. But look that's their world view. They're here to defend the status quo at all costs because they have no imagination and no values. They have no values. They have no ability to understand that New Zealanders value our natural environment they value a stable climate and they value equality. What I really love is hearing David Seymour refer to the wealthy people who are saying Actually it does make sense for us to pay more tax. Please make our tax system fairer." And he's like "How dare they? How dare they have that opinion?"—ha ha!—because it conflicts with his opinion which is that a very small number of people should get outrageously wealthy while trashing the planet and eroding workers' rights. But luckily I do think that most New Zealanders are going to start to see how important it is that we work together that we work together to take action on climate change to protect our environment and to have an economy that works for everyone not just the wealthy few and certainly not just billionaires whose own Governments have failed to tax them appropriately. So I have no doubt that we're actually going to get a really good outcome this election. I'm feeling really good about it."