Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise on behalf of the Green Party and the first thing I'd like to do is congratulate the Government on how well they've handled the COVID-19 crisis and the fact that we've reached this fantastic development of being in a position to be able to have a safe travel bubble with Australia and even working on it with other countries like the Cook Islands.I also want to acknowledge all of those who have been in the unfortunate position of being separated from their loved ones and families because of this global pandemic. There's no question that this has been an extremely difficult time. It's been over a year and people have been separated from their families. My parents are in the United States. They are unable to see their grandsons in person—haven't for over a year—and who knows when we'll be able to see each other in person because unfortunately I don't think the United States is going to be in a position to have a safe travel bubble with New Zealand any time soon as much as my parents would love to come and see their grandsons. So it is a very difficult situation.I was quite astounded at the tone from the Leader of the Opposition who seemed to be blaming the Government for the situation of the global pandemic whereas I'd say here in New Zealand and certainly elsewhere in the world people are looking with envy at New Zealand and looking at what the Government has done and have said actually they've done a really good job and have done their best to make sure that people are safe. We haven't had our health system overwhelmed. I think I saw last week and this is—SPEAKER: Order! I've let the member run for about a minute and a half and she is now going to move away from a general discussion of the pandemic back to the subject of the debate. I thought the Minister did a good job in relating each of his comments back to the Australian bubble.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Mr Speaker obviously we're very happy to be able to have this travel bubble with Australia and that would not be possible if we had 5000 deaths last week as the United States has. That would not be possible if COVID had run rampant across this country. And while it has taken over a year to get to this situation of having a safe travel bubble I think the reason we can be confident now is precisely for the reason that the Government has taken a cautious approach as the Minister himself said earlier in his speech.One of the main reasons that the Leader of the Opposition cited as this being good news was for tourism and economic reasons and that that was the reason why we should open up sooner to a travel bubble with the Pacific. From the Green Party's perspective I think we would say it is far more important that we focus on the human aspect of this. As the Government had said last year the best economic response is a public health response. There is no economic benefit when you have people getting sick and unable to go to work and dying.So I can certainly understand the hesitation and why it is taking longer than some may like to get a safe travel bubble with some countries in the Pacific and of course we would like that but I think that to be fair the people of the Pacific are valuable in and of themselves and our relationship is valuable in and of itself. We're not doing them a favour by letting people come over and pick our fruit for poor wages and conditions. I think that's really an insult. If we really want to take seriously our obligations to the Pacific as close neighbours and having a close relationship the way to do that is to take significant action on climate change not something I've ever heard the Leader of the Opposition refer to because they're existentially threatened by climate change.And as for the tourism benefits—[Interruption] I realise a bunch of people on this side of the House don't believe in climate change. You might want to catch up with the global consensus—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The members were reacting I think to something which the member had not even in a tenuous way attached to this debate. This is now her second warning to stay narrow. I can also say that sort of reacting to the member's comments probably doesn't help.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Mr Speaker I'm sorry; I thought we had up to two minutes to respond to the off-topic things that the Leader of the Opposition had referred to.SPEAKER: And the member's now used 4½ minutes.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Mr Speaker it's less than 4½ minutes that I've been referring to the Leader of the Opposition's speech—anyway.Tourism may well benefit from this safe travel bubble with Australia but we do need to ensure that we are protecting our natural environment and getting the very best out of this relationship that we have because it is entirely possible it could be zero-sum. We might get additional Australians coming over and visiting New Zealand but at higher costs to our infrastructure higher costs to our environment and with more New Zealanders going to Australia. So I mean in that case it could be absolutely zero-sum except with additional carbon emissions.It's vitally important that we take this opportunity of having had a reset during the break that we had from general tourism that as we open up with the safe travel bubble we are taking the opportunity to make sure that the jobs that are generated by tourism are sustainable that they're high-wage that they are good safe conditions that people aren't in a precarious situation that this is not just a race to the bottom where we're writing off our environment for the benefit of some supposed tourism dollars which will make GDP go up. But GDP is not a measure of improving the wellbeing of our society. It's not a measure of the sustainability of our biophysical environment which we need to sustain us.So the thing that I think the Green Party would most like to emphasise the greatest benefit of the safe travel bubble is the ability for whānau to reunite and see one another and it really is that human aspect that is most important to our relationship with people in other countries whether that be Australia or the Pacific or other countries. We must recognise our common humanity and those human relationships are by far and away the most valuable thing. That is something that I think many of us have realised during this pandemic. It's not about the dollars and cents; it's actually about the human relationships. It's about our health and our wellbeing and our ability to connect and that during this great reset of having had a pause to travel we have an opportunity to reimagine how this could be done in a way that genuinely will benefit people and enhance our wellbeing enhance our natural environment our ability to combat climate change and address inequity in our society and across the world.