Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I ask those at home to imagine waking up in an energy-efficient lovely warm affordable home. Imagine everyone in our beautiful country has access to such a secure place to live. Imagine leaving home and making one's way along a wide path lined with native plants native trees we can hear birdsong we can hear kids laughing as they make their way to school on their bikes or their scooters. Imagine reaching the intersection where the local farmers market is humming and an electric tram or bus departs every few minutes electricity in our country is 100 percent renewable and no matter what people do—whether they care for children or the elderly maybe they're a marine scientist maybe they're helping retrofit or build new environmentally sustainable buildings maybe they're working in forestry a teacher a hospitality worker a student—no matter what their situation they have a livable income and everyone in Aotearoa does. Imagine our oceans teeming with life native forests regenerating. Imagine our rivers clean enough to swim in again and growing our food and our timber and our other materials in a way that protects and enhances our soil and our natural ecosystems our waterways.The cost of living the escalating climate crisis the loss of biodiversity—none of this is inevitable; it is the consequence of powerful vested interests and political choices made by successive Governments for decades. It has enabled a very small number of people to become exorbitantly wealthy while exploiting people and our planet. We can change it. It's 2022. It's time to do things differently. The Green Party knows that we have the ability to come together and to build an equitable and sustainable future together starting with honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi.A Green Budget tomorrow would have shown leadership and it would start to support people in communities to build this future together. It would address inequality. Here's just a few ways that we could do that: a commitment to overhaul the welfare system before the end of the term low-income families can't wait; an in-work tax credit; and a package to eliminate child poverty. A Green Budget would make housing affordable faster. We would expand the income-related rent subsidy to councils we would build more sustainable homes and we would ensure that Kāinga Ora was able to do this in partnership with iwi and hapū and communities and local government. We need rent controls while supply is catching up. We need 100 percent universal design in our publicly built housing supply. A Green Budget would extend ACC to all birth injuries including stand-alone mental injuries injuries to the baby and all disability and illness. In the interim the Green Budget would extend and increase disability allowances. A Green Budget would have money for allied health workers. It would back nurses on pay equity and back-pay. We would ensure safe staffing and fair pay for care workers and early childhood education teachers. A Green Budget would have hoki whenua mai land-back fund. We have to start the process of decolonisation and a process of building an equitable future while realising the injustice of the past and making it right. It would have investment in real evidence-based alternatives to prisons. We know that our overcrowded prisons are filled with members of our community who are suffering from brain injuries and serious mental illness. We know that rehabilitation and community-based solutions work elsewhere in the world. It would have a commitment to fill our annual refugee quota for the first time after the start of the pandemic. It would reprioritise the huge sums of money earmarked for a few new expensive highways that are going to be entirely counter-productive and put it into sustainable transport options for people around our towns and cities between our towns and cities surface light rail in Auckland and Wellington regional rail rebates on utilities and e-bikes and cargo bikes. A Green Budget would invest in helping nature protecting our oceans more funding for fisheries research marine science more funding to stop bycatch and investment in Jobs for Nature. It would do all of this—incredible investment in our people our nature and our climate—by taxing wealth properly. A wealth tax would mean super-rich paying their fair share and giving us revenue for better health funding the public services that we need and so many practical opportunities to get better outcomes for people and our planet.