Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I'm going to speak to a couple of areas. Obviously this was a huge piece of legislation that had a shortened select committee period with a good number of submitters and a good portion of the recess dedicated to hearings in the Finance and Expenditure Committee where my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick was representing the Green Party. The Green Party's broadly supportive of the bill but there are some areas where we have a differing view than the Government.I'll start with the emissions reduction plan just noting that there were many submitters who highlighted the urgency with which we must tackle the climate crisis and that we absolutely note the delay to the emissions reduction plan is not ideal or something that we wanted to see happen. Now that Cabinet has made that decision it is vitally important that when the final emissions reduction plans are released and in the next Budget what is proposed is equal to what the science says that we must do to have a habitable climate in the future and for New Zealand to be pulling its weight.We also oppose the fast track of the Resource Management Act—the fast-track process which we opposed initially last year in the COVID response. We don't believe that disregarding local submitters and a proper assessment of environmental effects is necessary for our economic response to COVID-19 and indeed we want to make sure that there is a thorough and proper process before we're investing huge amounts of money and potentially taking up land with infrastructure.Obviously the biggest part of the debate was around rent changes and commercial tenancies. I note that at the select committee the majority of submitters speaking to it did want a rent freeze if not also rent controls. The Green Party absolutely backs this call. You know it is true that the Government's made a change to the number of times a rent can be increased but that is simply not sufficient to deal with the scale and escalation of rent prices in the past—I mean going back more than COVID but certainly since COVID the rent freeze ended after the last lockdown and there was a significant increase in rents. What this is driving is a huge increase in the cost of living for some of our most vulnerable people. Unfortunately the increases to benefits and the increases to the minimum wage are unlikely to have actually benefited those people who are the most vulnerable because of the rapid escalation of house prices the increase in rents and the increase in general cost of living. So we think that there needs to be further action on that from the Government and that is what submitters were calling for at the select committee.When it comes to commercial tenancies it was quite astounding to listen to the speeches from the National Party members—I'm sure the ACT Party speech will be similar. Truly the parties of rent seekers and the landed gentry in this country they want to make sure that the owners of property don't contribute anything to our economic response in COVID that they continue raking in profits just because they happen to own the land and the property and that the Government should subsidise them directly but they shouldn't pay their fair share of tax because these are the parties that have consistently argued against a capital gains tax against a wealth tax. Arguably the owners of property have done the best out of the Government's economic response to COVID19. We've seen massive increases in the capital values of property most of which—the vast majority of which—will be untaxed; that is untaxed private windfall gains due to Government policy. We had Andrew Bayly arguing that somehow they were socialising the gains—no did he say socialising the gains" or "socialising losses"? It really was truly astounding as he seemed to be saying God forbid the owners of property should do anything but just continue to profit massively from Government policy and then Government should without having any revenue source from these property owners go ahead and subsidise them during a time when the economy is virtually shut down. I just thought that was amazing.My view's obviously the exact opposite. The owners of property could if they're reliant on their income claim the wage subsidy just like any other business and there's no reason why they should continue raking in surplus profits at a time when the economy is shut down. The Greens support the idea of going back to the start of the pandemic when it comes to the commercial tenancies changes and hospo and retailers obviously support this as well. The only people who are opposed are the landlords ACT and National who would like to continue to see the people who happen to own property profit from our economic system while everyone else pays basically.One thing I also found interesting was that Local Government New Zealand totally supported the changes to the Local Government Act around the timing of elections. I think that is a really relevant point. I think it makes it pretty doubtful that you know the criticisms or concerns—one could call them scaremongering—from the National Party about some ulterior motive or agenda around those changes—clearly it is a practical change that's supported by Local Government New Zealand which is not at all politically aligned and does represent the interests of local government.I was disappointed that the Green Party was the only party advocating for overseas voters. I think that's probably the electoral issue that I would like to see the National Party join us on or the Labour Government act on. Our laws around voting in New Zealand are quite unusual. Most countries allow citizens to vote even if they have lived overseas for some period of time without there being any requirement to come back and visit the country. Of course many many New Zealanders would like to and feel a very deep connection with Aotearoa New Zealand even though they are living overseas for whatever reason for whatever period of time. Not all of them have the financial means to travel back to New Zealand every three years. Indeed in the past 18 months it has been extremely constrained the ability of New Zealanders living overseas to come back to New Zealand and this situation is likely to persist for quite some time. There will be a good two-year period where most New Zealanders living overseas will have been advised by the Government not to come back to New Zealand. That doesn't mean they should be disenfranchised in their right to vote in local and central government elections. They care about the future of this country. They are citizens they should have a right to their vote and I think that is a change that really urgently needs to be considered.So the Green Party will be moving four amendments at the committee stages to deal with some of these issues I've raised including around rent freeze the right for overseas voting and some of the changes to commercial tenancies to make sure that those small businesses that haven't been able to operate are able to get the rent relief that they deserve. Of course it's only fair for the owners of property who've massively benefited from Government policy in the last year to contribute their fair share. They are able to access Government support just like any other business. There's no reason they should be privileged over and above the rest of the economy."