Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Everyone in our country should be able to make ends meet. Everyone should have enough to live a decent life. The Green Party has a vision where everyone in New Zealand has a warm dry affordable home to live in. Of course that is absolutely achievable; everyone should have enough to be able to put healthy kai on the table and the ability to get around.Now there are two stories coming out of the pandemic. Right now we seem rampant inflation a cost of living crisis—how does that play out for ordinary New Zealanders? There is a family in South Auckland—probably many families—who are renting. Their home is not sufficiently insulated there is no State support necessarily to insulate that unless the owner chooses to do so. It may not even have curtains in the bedroom and in the winter the temperature can get quite cold. The quality of the house means the kids are more likely to be sick to miss school to have to visit the hospital. This family was making their energy payments they are making every electricity power payment. However that meant that they didn't have enough to go to the supermarket and buy food. And so they had to go visit food banks.At the very same time that these families are struggling with these terrible choices—to have to choose between paying the electricity bill being in a cold unhealthy home or putting food on the table—we see companies in New Zealand—the supermarkets the energy companies the petrol companies—making record profits. Now you can't tell me that there's not a connection between rising prices and record profits in sectors where we know there are a few big players wielding market power.So what's the solution to this? I mean Government is there to make this system fair and we can do that. It doesn't benefit all of New Zealanders to have supermarkets and energy companies and petrol companies and the banks raking in record profits. It's super-profit. It's excess profit. There is a difference between making a living—an honest living—and making a killing by ripping people off.I think New Zealanders can tell that right now during this time of inflation no the culprit isn't the Government. Government is investing in public services—obviously there's areas where we differ in some of the focus on projects and there are different trade-offs that the Greens would make. However we need Government to be investing in core public services like our health system our education system. We need better water infrastructure; we need public housing.So what are the solutions? Well firstly we need a fairer tax system. If we know that there are record profits—and I can go through what these are. So of course even the Commerce Commission study found that supermarkets were making excess profit of $1 million a day—$1 million a day. Meanwhile we look at the big gen-tailers"—the big energy companies that generate power and retail this—and I know they do a lot of good work and there's good people working in those companies but the system means that they are incentivised to maximise their profit. As at August Meridian is up 55 percent Mercury is up 42 percent and Genesis is up from a $31 million profit to $221 million—a nearly 600 percent increase.Now when those companies are making such huge profits we know there is a problem and it's ordinary New Zealanders that are getting ripped off. At the supermarket on their electricity bills and on their petrol bills. But there are things that the Government can do about this absolutely.Firstly we want to make sure the tax system is fair; that there's not this ability or an incentive to rip people off to make super profits. That's something that we can change. The Green Party is calling for those sorts of changes.Other ideas for Government solutions: firstly we need to have regulations around housing. I know we have healthy homes legislation—it doesn't go far enough. When someone can rent out a house with no curtains in the bedroom no heating in the bedroom no insulation and the temperature can fall to 6 degrees overnight we have a problem and a health crisis. It makes sense for Government to intervene. We've heard that there are some landlords that are renting places with leaky roofs—that needs to stop. Government can invest in insulation invest in energy efficiency and invest in free public transport. We can do that with revenue raised and fair for those companies that are making super profits to pay more tax so that we can pay for these solutions that help all New Zealanders."