Genter Julie Anne: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12050. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):The National Government is failing the economy in a number of respects so I am going to talk about the different ways in which this National Government has failed as the economic manager of this country. Firstly there are the imbalances in the economy. This is clear in the statements—the evidence is right there in the forecasts delivered to us by Treasury. We already have the worst current account deficit in the developed world. We are worse than Spain worse than Greece and worse than Ireland and this is a real worry because it means that we are buying more than we sell to the world. So if you look at “New Zealand Inc.” and want to see whether we are actually going to achieve an economy that is going to sustain us into the long term we have to look at the current account deficit not just at the Government’s own accounts. This Government the National Government is tryingto distract from the issue that the current account deficit is bad and is going to get worse under its stewardship.What the documents and forecasts from Treasury show us is that that we are going to go from having a $10 billion a year current account deficit to having a $17 billion a year current account deficit. If you were to look at “New Zealand Inc.” in the way that you might look at a company and we were going to go from making a loss of $10 billion a year to making a loss of $17 billion a year in 5 years’ time then I think that most sensible people would want to fire the board of directors—which is essentially the National Government—because that is what Treasury’s numbers show us. The National Government is failing on its own priorities of rebalancing the economy; therefore it has stopped talking about rebalancing the economy and it is trying to distract New Zealanders by focusing on the Government’s own balance sheet rather than looking at the country’s balance sheet.The only way to deal with the fact that we are buying more than we sell to the world is going to be to borrow more or to just sell off assets and neither of these two strategies is a sustainable strategy. The National Government is also failing to take the opportunity to transition to a clean green economy that works for all New Zealanders. The Green Party has a number of sensible evidence-based policies that would give us the means to not only reduce our current account deficit but to develop clean green jobs that are actually going to be very very useful in the coming decades. What the National Government constantly talks about is growing our economy by drilling by fracking by building a convention centre and with more gambling. All of these things may look like they are leading to economic growth but it is just that—it is just growth. It is not actual productivity gains. It is not actually going to translate into higher standards of living for most New Zealanders.There are only so many years left in which we can dig up our resources and sell them off and expect to make money off that so in the future we need to be thinking about how we can develop jobs that are going to enable us to thrive in a carbon-constrained world. That is the real world. That is the real world which this National Government is failing to confront—the hard scientific evidence that there is a limit to how much carbon dioxide humans can burn before we have to stop. If we do not fully decarbonise our global economy by 2030 there will be nothing. There will not be a stable climate or opportunities for our children and grandchildren and I know New Zealanders care about the future of their children and grandchildren and want that opportunity for them to live on a planet with a stable climate. It is entirely possible because the National Government frames it as a trade-off. It says that either you can have money or you can have a stable climate—either you can have money or you can have a pristine conservation estate. It is not a trade-off like that. In fact our natural advantage is our clean green environment. We stand to get richer precisely by protecting our conservation estate. We have nothing to gain from opening our conservation estate to foreign companies that are going to mine our natural resources pay very little in royalties and then bugger off.The Green Party has a vision for a clean green New Zealand and an economy that works for everyone and it is entirely achievable. We can reduce our current account deficits through smarter spending on transport infrastructure that would also reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and that is just one example. We also have aHome for lifeproposal that we have put forward which can increase housing affordability without increasing land supply and increasing urban sprawl. So there are many smart green ideas.