Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I want to start with a quote from a draft of a landmark report which is currently being prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be delivered later this year. A draft of this was leaked to Agence France-Presse which reported its findings just a few days ago. The draft warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible." It warns "Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot." I just think the severity of the risk that we're facing with climate change needs to be stated every single day in this House because there are clearly members who do not understand that it was 40 degrees in Seattle Washington; that it's 52 degrees in cities in Pakistan. Fifty-two degrees is a temperature at which the human body cannot survive for long and this will increasingly become the new normal if humans don't get their act together and take drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We've known about this for decades; the Green Party has been talking about it for decades. Although there are some members in the House who've finally come on board and realised climate change is something they may need to worry about they still don't understand how quickly we need to act and change fundamental aspects of how we live our lives in our society how we produce food how we get around in order to survive this. So the Green Party will continue to raise this and proactive productive policies that will help us all work together to respond to this challenge. Now the reason we're facing this climate catastrophe at the same time as a catastrophic loss in biodiversity is because of an economic system that has exploited our planet and it has exploited many people. And we cannot address the climate crisis or the ecological crisis without addressing and changing this economic system and fundamentally improving equality between people because a system that enriches a very small number of people is not good for any of us. So Government policy is central to mobilising our society and our economy to address both inequality and climate change. And I know that this Government means well and has set off a number of steps to take us in that direction but it is not fast enough. It is not going far enough. Earlier this week in the House I asked the Minister of Finance about whether or not he was really going to address the significant need to invest in infrastructure and particularly to address the housing crisis because in our response to COVID-19 monetary policy has led to massive inflation in property prices and this is exacerbating inequality in our country and we have to do more about it. I know many of the steps that have been taken thus far are good steps: extending the brightline test removing deductibility of mortgage interest. All of that will help but we have to address the housing supply issue and we have to do it in a way that is going to reduce emissions. One thing that really concerns me is that 90 percent of the housing that's been built since 2018 does not have frequent public transport near it at all. So we're building housing in the wrong places. It still costs too much. And we need massive investment in infrastructure green infrastructure that will enable our cities to house more people in a way that uses less energy uses less water and actually creates thriving neighbourhoods where people want to be. And this is entirely possible. I just briefly want to talk about how actually it's become very mainstream to look at the economic situation quite differently. I know the debate in this House is still kind of stuck in the 1980s sometimes where the Labour Minister of Finance wants to emphasise that he's keeping a lid on debt. Well keeping a lid on debt is not a responsible thing to do when we have record low interest rates and we have a need to increase spending to address inequality child poverty the housing crisis and the climate crisis. We've got the leaders of the International Monetary Fund the IMF; the OECD the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and the World Bank all saying that this is a time for Governments to spend more money to address inequality to spend more money on income support to spend more money on infrastructure. This is not a time to worry about debt and even the Secretary to the Treasury gave a very interesting speech earlier this week where she raised exactly this point. The right level of spending depends critically on the value of the spending initiatives and where they deliver high value for money the appropriate level of debt will be higher. Now is the time for bold action to address these challenges."