SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. In Ōtautahi Christchurch there's a plaque on a seat beside the Ōtākaro Avon River near the hospital. It remembers the 460 Christchurch victims of the influenza epidemic of 1918 half of whom died at Christchurch Hospital or nearby at the Royal Hotel. More than 9000 New Zealanders died in that pandemic in a little over two months. I can't imagine a city where 460 people died from one event in two months. I can't imagine a country where 9000 people died and the impacts that this would have on families on whakapapa on our social and mental wellbeing—the overwhelming grief that we would feel.We've avoided that with COVID because the Government's strategy has been about we" not about "me". It's been about acting on behalf of all of us and protecting as many New Zealanders as possible from dying or getting seriously ill. That is the crucial role for any Government and it's one that the Greens strongly support. So I like many others in this House am enormously grateful for the huge mobilisation of effort behind the vaccination programme for getting 90 percent of New Zealanders who have had their two jabs and are now getting boosted and for all of the preparation for the next stage of Omicron.But the need to tackle the climate crisis is as serious as outmanoeuvring the pandemic. Scientists predicted years ago that we'd have with warming temperatures more intense weather events as we had with the remnants of tropical cyclone Dovi last weekend—huge anxiety and heartbreak particularly to people in Westport in Buller and other areas in the North Island where there was extensive flooding.The Prime Minister spoke about putting climate change at the heart of our economic strategy. That's really important because we need that substantive change to reshape our economy so that we can reduce our emissions protect the climate protect nature and improve our wellbeing. For too long we've seen the climate crisis and the nature crisis as things that are separate in two silos. That's a recipe for failure. This year next year the year after that and the year after that we have to integrate the solutions to the climate crisis and the nature crisis.We had the $1.3 billion investment in Jobs for Nature as the centrepiece of COVID recovery last term. That's bringing a huge number of jobs and connection with Papatūānuku through the programmes that Minister Allan is now rolling out. But we need much greater funding for nature and for the climate crisis and we need major changes to policy and law to protect and restore our wetlands to reduce the browsing pressure that deer and possums put on our forests to protect soils and oceans to sequester more carbon and to protect the climate.One of those key areas is exotic forestry and there needs to be major change there and a major overhaul in the role of forestry in the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and I note that today Beef + Lamb and Local Government New Zealand have come out with a discussion paper on that calling for a much more strategic approach to forestry in the ETS. As the Climate Change Commission made really clear in Ināia tonu nei relying too much on forests will not lock us into net carbon zero. To achieve meaningful decarbonisation before 2050 we need to reduce emissions not just try and offset them through extensive pine planting. Dame Anne Salmond has said really recently that—and I quote—"The ETS is a spreadsheet designed in a silo and an ecologist's nightmare. It privileges the planting of monocultures of exotic conifers … while failing to assess their … impacts".With the Government spending $100 million on wilding conifer control the largely uncontrolled spread of exotics is meaning we're creating those problems for the future. One area that really needs change is the Overseas Investment Act: the way in which the special forestry test privileges overseas companies and individuals who want to come in and buy farmland for forestry. It means they don't have to prove that there's an identifiable benefit to New Zealanders. So in 2021 we had the Overseas Investment Office approving 36 applications over 7464 hectares. There is major concern in the Hawke's Bay about the Huiarua Station: 5000 hectares there that are potentially going into overseas ownership and pine. We need major change around forestry for the climate response for the emissions trading scheme the privileges it gets under overseas investment and much better regulation so that its impacts are managed. Kia ora.SPEAKER: This is a split call I presume."