Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. I'm very happy to stand and speak in support of this legislation and I have to say that the Green Party is thrilled to hear the National Party members making such positive remarks about this and acknowledging the important responsibility that people have to look after the moana and the whenua. If they are exploiting it or resources like oil and gas we should at the very least be held responsible for decommissioning and clean-up afterwards because what I take from that is most New Zealanders absolutely care passionately about our environment. We want to see it looked after and we expect those who are extracting resources to do so in a manner as responsible as possible and to clean it up appropriately and not leave it to the people of New Zealand to fund the decommissioning. Now how it is possible that Tamarind was in the situation where they were able to just pull out and leave the cost of decommissioning to the New Zealand public is a question given that the National Party had such an explicit oil and gas strategy in the last term they were in Government. I mean I remember back in 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon crisis happened in the Gulf. The Green Party was asking questions of the then National Government saying What is your plan if we're doing all this oil and gas exploration offshore to respond to that type of crisis here in New Zealand?" and the answers were completely insufficient. In fact there was no thought or effort put into how we would plan for a contingency like that—how we would respond to it—and apparently there was not even an explicit statutory obligation for petroleum permit and licence holders to carry out decommissioning activities and meet the full financial costs. Of course even if that was the case that that responsibility existed and they had the statutory obligation they were able to get around it and so this work should have been done sooner. If anything the Green Party will be asking questions at select committee about whether it goes far enough and about whether the penalties that are proposed in this bill are sufficient that it won't simply be in a company's financial interests to simply pay the penalty which won't cover the cost of decommissioning and so that will be a question that we will ask. But it's really good to hear—so far anyway—across the House a consensus that petroleum permit holders should be held responsible and that there should be consequences or even criminal penalties if they fail to meet their obligations to our environment. This is the very least we can do. The oil industry unfortunately has a long history of lobbying Government to reduce their responsibilities and their moral ethical obligations to the world and we can see this very clearly. Now obviously the transition that we're in now to clean energy from fossil fuels should have happened 20 years ago. It could have happened 20 years ago were it not for the very well-funded powerful international oil lobby basically seeding confusion amongst people and lobbying politicians to not take action to transition to cleaner energy. Unfortunately because we haven't taken action sooner it will be more expensive and more difficult and there is a serious risk that we don't have enough time to get off fossil fuels to avoid some pretty serious damaging consequences for life on this planet. I'm sure that members here will be really aware of what the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science is saying which is that we have record heatwaves in North America happening right now in 2021. Imagine what that's going to be like in 10 years or 20 years. As we've continued to emit fossil fuels that traps carbon in the atmosphere which is like a blanket suffocating the planet. It's basically heating it up. Most of the extra heat that's been generated by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions has gone into the oceans and we're looking at serious consequences for life in our oceans because of ocean acidification and changes in the temperature of the ocean not to mention overfishing. So basically humanity is at a major turning point right now. Either we're going to take the actions that we need to take to enable life on this planet to thrive or we're going to continue doing what we've always done and most people wouldn't agree with that. Most people want to do the right thing and they want to look after the environment and they want to leave a healthy moana for their children and grandchildren. But unfortunately most people don't have the power that huge multinational oil companies have to influence politicians and most people don't feel that they have that power but they really do—we do. The voters have the power and you can continue to elect parties that will be firm in the face of that lobbying and that will do the right thing. The role of Government is to ensure that these private corporations are not allowed to just run amok exploiting our environment for their own shareholders' personal short-term financial returns. But rather we can find a way of working together to ensure that we're looking after our natural environment and that we're looking after our people. All of this that has been done in the name of "economic progress" hasn't really benefited many many people at the bottom. It has enriched a very small number of people and it has had enormous consequences for the environment which affects all of us and—Simon Court: And we're all much better off with all this cheap energy—I mean we are living this life because of the cheap energy aren't we? Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I've an ACT member on my right who's firmly in the denial camp. He doesn't understand that his life and the life of his children is deeply related to the health of our water our soil our air and our atmosphere and that the consequences of just pumping the pollution out into the atmosphere will be dire and severe for all of us. Of course I'm not even going to go into the issues with plastics and how plastics are affecting our health and the health of many other animals that we share this planet with. It's really time for us to be responsible. Most people want to do the responsible thing and most people understand that in order for us to do the responsible thing we need to have a strong transparent democratic government system that is able to regulate and hold these companies to account and to tell them no sometimes—"No. No you can't do that because it's not in the interests of the New Zealand public."—and I really wish that some people had said no in the past. When it comes to the way that this fossil fuel exploitation has happened in New Zealand it has cost the New Zealand public and we're very fortunate we haven't had a catastrophic incident like they regularly have now in the Gulf of Mexico where we have pipelines bursting and catching fire. We haven't had a severe catastrophic incident but we have had many many oil spills and there are consequences for our sea life because of that. So the Green Party is happy to support this bill. We will be looking to ensure that it is as strong as it needs to be and that the penalties are sufficient to get the behaviour that we want from these companies and of course we want to see a faster transition away from fossil fuels because that is the only way that we're actually going to be able to respond to climate change. The gauntlet has been laid out for us. It's increasingly clear that we are running out of time and we have to work together. We can work together to transition away but not if we listen to the lobbyists and definitely not if we listen to the big companies who want to keep doing things the same way they always have and not if we listen to politicians who are in total denial about the state that we are in."