Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Green Party absolutely supports this bill the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill and is very pleased to see it pass its third reading today. It has been a long time coming. We've known for decades that continued use of fossil fuels is at odds with a healthy stable climate and the sort of future that we want to leave our children and grandchildren.We're already starting to see the impacts of climate chaos because we've put too much greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and that has created a thicker atmosphere which is trapping more heat. We've seen a record heat dome this week in North America as well as unprecedented forest fires uncontrolled fires burning in Canada. And this of course follows earlier severe weather events that have hit Aotearoa New Zealand including Cyclone Gabrielle and the flooding of Auckland.These kinds of storms and fires have incredible impacts on people. They take their homes they can take livelihoods and they impact on food production. They will certainly be disruptive to the way people live their lives. So the cost of this is enormous and it far outweighs the cost of action and transitioning to an economy and a society a way of living that is reliant on clean renewable electricity that we have harnessed from the sun and the wind.Here in New Zealand we already have our hydro dams and we do need to be working to increase renewable capacity. But one of the key things the scientists have been telling us for several years now more than several years is that we have to stop looking for more oil coal and gas. That is irrefutable. It is impossible for us to carry on looking for more fossil fuels when we already know the world cannot afford to burn the fossil fuels that we know already exist.The debate on this bill should be enough for members members of the public people watching at home and voters to understand how stark a difference it will be if we have a National-ACT Government. They are planning to continue exploration for fossil fuels. They see no reason to stop looking for them. They completely misunderstand the science and the clear direction that we've been given that says yes we're going to continue using some of the oil coal and gas that we already have but we have to stop looking for more. We have to rapidly transition away from using them to have any hope of meeting the Paris Agreement which was to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming.Already this year we're going to hit over 1.1 degrees of warming I believe since preindustrial levels and we're seeing the sort of chaos it's creating. Imagine how much worse it will be if we breach that 1.5 degree threshold or 2 degrees. We're on track for maybe 3 degrees. Every action that we take from now on has to be aimed at protecting the climate and protecting biodiversity enabling nature to be restored. Changing our land use is absolutely essential. Humans are just taking too much from the Earth. We can live in harmony with nature but we have to draw a line and stop doing the things we know are destructive and counterproductive. It's that simple. It's that stark. So anyone who tells you and people at home that it is important for our economy to continue exploring for fossil fuels and to just open the floodgates and promote more mining and extractive industries is just completely wrong and their values are in the wrong place. They're probably being paid—DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right Ms Genter; we're here to talk about a bill and we're going a long way off it. So let's relate it to the bill shall we?Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The bill changes the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act so that it's no longer about promoting but rather about managing and that distinction is very important. It doesn't mean that there will be nothing happening. It does mean that the Crown will be exercising its responsibility to manage how those activities take place where they take place whether or not they're taking place in an environmentally responsible manner or not.But what the members opposite have said during this debate—that is the National Party and the ACT Party—that they want the Government agencies to be required to promote this sort of extractive industry and exploration for fossil fuels is just unthinkable to me. It's completely at odds with the science and what we've been told. Most New Zealanders want to have that security—to know that we're looking after nature that we're looking after the climate that we can responsibly transition to a different way of living. But we can't do that if all of our Government systems and legislation is set up to carry on the way it was before.Ultimately I do believe that ACT and National are completely in denial about the challenge that we're facing and this is not surprising because the reason we have a Crown Minerals Act that was requiring you know the Government to be promoting exploration of fossil fuels was directly linked to lobbying by the fossil fuel industry who have denied the existence of climate change and put huge amounts of money into confusing the public about the science of climate change so that they could carry on their activities and continue to make obscene profits from activities that are hurting and damaging the very planet we live on—and it's threatening our very existence.So the Green Party is very happy to see this bill. It is of utmost importance that we carry on this trajectory of transitioning to a clean green way of doing things and it's the Government's responsibility to manage how these things happen and that's what the bill proposes. Yes some minerals will continue to be used but only if they are recovered in an entirely ethical and responsible way. That is why this bill is so important—because it is changing from promoting something to managing it. And managing is responsible; promoting is not.