Genter Julie Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15888. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I am an MP for the Green Party because I love New Zealand. I want to protect our precious places for the long term and I want our country to be a place where everyone has a fair go and is looked after when they need help. We in the Green Party have a vision of New Zealand where every river is safe to swim in where every child grows up in a warm healthy home and has enough to eat and has good access to a good public education and where there are good green job opportunities—jobs that will help us meet the challenges posed by climate change and jobs that will enrich our planet and our civilisation rather than destroy it. That is entirely possible.It is entirely possible to create an economy that looks after our people and our planet. How are we going to do it? It is not rocket science. We in New Zealand are innovators. We have been pioneers. We do not need to wait for bigger countries like the United States or Australia to tackle the most pressing issues of our time which are basically climate change and inequality. We can lead the way. The Green Party I think has the best policy platform to achieve that. That is why I became an MP for the Green Party.I am a highly educated person who had a successful professional career and I decided to stand for the Green Party because our policies are the ones that are the mostlikely to achieve the good green change that I know most New Zealanders want. How are we going to do it? Well we start by recognising that it is not as easy as getting rich quick by selling off public assets and opening our waters to risky deep-sea oil drilling. We cannot get rich by exponentially increasing the number of dairy cows because that will inevitably mean that we will be increasing the pollution in our rivers.Our competitive advantage in New Zealand is that we have a “clean green” brand. That is part of how we sell ourselves overseas. It is how we sell our agricultural products. It is how we sell our tourism. Those are two of our biggest exports. The best way to build long-term prosperity is to protect our beaches and our rivers our natural environment because doing so not only benefits the industries that we are selling overseas our products that we are selling but it also benefits New Zealanders who want their children to be able to swim in clean rivers.One of the keys to achieving this good green future that is entirely within reach is to do things smarter. Unfortunately the National Government is not doing that. We could invest in infrastructure that makes it cheaper and easier for people to get where they need to go without increasing our current account deficit or our carbon emissions but the National Government is not providing leadership in this area. John Key has decided to put the interests of big overseas extractive companies ahead of everyday New Zealanders. In his statement the Prime Minister clearly outlined this Government’s priorities which do not take us towards a smart green fair future; in fact they take us backwards.So Key says in his statement that he is very proud that the Government is going to be continuing its multibillion-dollar programme of investment in infrastructure including the construction of Transmission Gully through a public-private partnership. Construction is going to begin this year. What Key does not say is that a public-private partnership is actually a long-term expensive loan. So although members on the Government side might be saying that their goal is to get debt down in fact they are taking on enormous debt—which is going to need to be paid back for a quarter of a century—for infrastructure that is going to be completely redundant or is already redundant.A public-private partnership for those at home who might not know about it is a long-term loan from the private sector. The private sector cannot access capital as cheaply as the public sector can so part of our repayments to the investors are going to include higher rates of return because they have to spend more money to access the capital. So if the Government was going to borrow directly to pay for Transmission Gully it would cost less than doing it as a public-private partnership. But the trick is that if we do it as a public-private partnership first the Government does not need to admit that it is taking on this debt and second its friends—rich overseas investors—get a guaranteed return from New Zealand taxpayers for 25 years.Let us put this in context. Transmission Gully is a project that is forecast at its peak to carry 20000 vehicles. The Prime Minister in his statement says that somehow this is going to vastly improve the daily commute. Well 10000 commuters might benefit from this project. That is 2 percent of the Wellington region’s population—2 percent. If we look at the daily vehicle trips that are going to benefit from Transmission Gully it is 0.02 percent. The petrol taxes of the average person who is driving a car in Auckland—and is stuck in traffic—are going to pay for Transmission Gully which is going to help maybe 2 percent of commuters in the Wellington region. It is just not a smart use of our resources if we want to get the best outcome for our transport system and for our economy. It makes even less sense to borrow from overseas private investors and have to pay them back.So the project which will potentially have $500 million in economic benefits is going to cost $1 billion to build but it is going to cost the New Zealand taxpayer $3 billion by the time we pay back interest over 25 years. Future Governments are going to have less money to spend on important infrastructure looking after our roads maintaining our roads paying for our police services and paying for public transport services which help us deal with congestion. We are going to have less money to pay for that because we are going to be stuck paying $120 million to $150 million every year for 25 years to these private investors for a project that benefits only 2 percent of Wellington’s commuters. How can that be sound prudent fiscal management? It is not.The worst part of it is that it does not provide the infrastructure that is actually going to give New Zealanders real choices and create vibrant communities for them to live in. I have a vision of New Zealand where kids feel safe walking and cycling to school. That is a major win-win. Not only is it good for the kids themselves—they can be independent and they can learn better. There are a lot of studies that show that when kids walk and cycle to school they actually are more focused and able to concentrate at school. It is good for their health outcomes. And it decongests the roads. The vast majority of peak-hour trips are very short distances and everybody knows that during school holidays the roads are not congested.So here is an opportunity to invest a small amount of money in looking after our kids which is also going to get enormous economic benefits in terms of decongesting our roads. It is going to get enormous benefits in terms of the health independence and learning capacity of our children. Yet this Government is not prioritising that. Instead it is prioritising a project that is going to carry less than 2 percent of the Wellington region’s commuters. It is going to carry less than 0.02 percent of all daily vehicle trips. Taxpayers and motorists in New Zealand will be paying for it 20 years from now because of this National Government. I think it is a real lost opportunity.I think New Zealanders want it to be easy to get around. They want to be able to get where they need to go without having to spend a fortune on petrol and without having to own three or four cars per household and it is entirely within our reach to create communities that are friendly and safe for our kids so they can walk and cycle learn better and have great health outcomes. That is the sort of New Zealand that the Green Party is working towards and that we absolutely can achieve.Whatever the Government says about us being crazy I know that New Zealanders at home listening to me right now know that what I am saying makes a lot of sense. It is entirely achievable and it is important to ask why the Government would need to call us crazy. Why would it not actually address the arguments that we are putting forward? Why will it not debate the real issues with us and say: “Yeah actually that is a pretty good idea. We could put more money into safe walking and cycling to schools because it would be good for our kids good for congestion good for our cities and create people-friendly places.”? This is going to be the choice that New Zealanders have later this year: whether they want a good green fair future for their kids or whether they want more of the status quo more debt and more mates—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Your time has expired.