SpeechDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I think I've mentioned in this House before that I have teenage children. And teenage children don't find it easy having an MP for a mum. In fact it is a little-known secret that the battered mum-mobile I drive around town has removable magnetic posters with my name and face on them so that they can be removed when said teenagers are in the car as opposed to when I am driving on business.But the thing is it's the kids' fault that I'm here. There were a couple of years just before I got asked to run when my then early teenage youngest child began a little bit of a bedtime ritual. She would come into me and she would say Mum can you tell me that the world won't burn up by the time I grow up?" Every night my daughter would come into me and she would say "Will you tell me that the world will be all right when I grow up?" And I realised I couldn't say that to her. It was a major reason for me taking the decision to stand and begin the campaign that ended with my role here. Her heart was breaking; my heart was breaking. Minister Allan has spoken of her own heart breaking when she witnesses the effect of climate change. There is a recognised phenomenon now of climate grief where our children our middle-aged mums our older people are grieving for the damage done to our climate by us.I often speak to young people. As often as I can I get out into the community in Whangārei and I talk to the schools and I run a youth forum and I sit down with children from the littlies to the biggest ones. And I talk to them because when I was a girl in Whangārei Intermediate and nuclear weapons were last considered the great threat—and as Minister Twyford has said to us that's something we should be thinking about right now—that was the problem I tried to take action I reached the end of my tether on that I knew not where to go. I do not want any of the children in Whangārei who are now in grief over climate in anxiety over climate not knowing how to take action. I tell them every single time the antidote to anxiety is activism. That is why when I stood in this House walked into this House for the very first time—it was the day that this Government declared a climate emergency and it was a remarkable moment for our country; it was a remarkable moment for our Government. When I look at Whangārei now—and I look at where I live where we're facing I think the third time that Maungatapere is flooding and our farmers are trying to dig out their paddocks and our community is calling for volunteers to pick up shovels and go down for the third time this year—I know that it is things that this Government is doing now which are ameliorating it not just in terms of $2.9 billion invested into climate change but in terms of the small things.Today I spoke to Jack Craw who is a Northland regional councillor with a particular expertise in environmentalism. He talked about the Whangārei Urban Awa Project where the Government has invested in the growth of trees the cleaning of waterways and the protection and development of new wetlands—things that he told me were "fantastic" in his words. In fact he asked me when I told him about the speech to get up here and thank Minister Parker and Jacinda Ardern. He said it has been extremely helpful. He talked about the carbon sequestration and the flooding relief that that measure is going to take.When I look around my little area I see Golden Bay Cement also which has had $16 million out of $25 million of cost into waste reduction and cleaner energy. It is these measures which will assure our children gradually slowly one tree at a time of a better future than my daughter fears."