SpeechGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. This week I had the privilege to speak at the memorial for Jeanette Fitzsimons a dear friend of mine my mentor someone who made a massive contribution to this House and someone who in particular put climate change on the national agenda. Now my wife once told me to avoid disappointments you should never meet your heroes. But look I had the great fortune to actually work up close with mine. In her maiden speech here in 1996 she said the key question was not whether centralised industrial capitalism should be controlled by the State or by private interests but the unsustainability of centralised industrial capitalism itself. Now when you look around the world we can see the results of that rampant industrial capitalism and a runaway culture of greed consumption and short-term thinking. Now last month in the Arctic we saw consistently above 18 degrees the hundred-year long-term average. The Arctic Siberia is literally burning. We've seen the World Meteorological Organization two weeks ago put out a report saying the red line that world Governments signed up to 1.5 degrees of warming could be passed in four years something we thought was potentially years and years away. We've seen since 1990 when Jeanette Fitzsimons and the original group of Green founders formed the Green Party—more emissions have entered the atmosphere in the 30 years since the Greens were founded in 1990 since Captain Planet was on TV since Seinfeld was first on TV. In the last 30 years more emissions have entered the atmosphere than the preceding centuries and centuries of human history. But I am proud to say here in 2020 we as a Government have done what's needed to avert this urgent danger. We've taken action we've laid the foundation we've drawn lines in the sand and we've set very important goalsThis term we've laid the foundation. We've developed and passed unanimously a zero carbon Act. We've improved the emissions trading scheme. We've set up a Green Investment Fund. We've taken action with climate impact assessments. We've set the foundation for a low-carbon economy. We've drawn lines in the sand courageous lines in the sand like stopping offshore oil and gas exploration. We've stopped the tens of millions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies the previous Government was quite happy to give to oil companies. And we've set goals: a goal of being zero carbon by 2050 and 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035.But we haven't done everything we need to do. We need to go further; we need to go faster. Our country's response to our generation's nuclear-free moment the most important issue facing our future and the future of our kids and grandkids must reflect the urgency and scale of the emergency. So we've laid the foundations but next term we need to go further; we need to build on that foundation. We need to erect the walls and those walls have to be solidly insulated. We need to make sure that when we're building the walls we're putting inside double- or triple-glazed windows. We need to make sure when we're putting on the roof that it's covered in solar panels. And that's what I want to talk about today.This election we need to help Kiwis and Kiwi businesses reduce their emissions. So with public support what we're going to do is put solar panels on all 63000 State houses. We're going to halve the cost for people to install solar panels and batteries in their own homes. We're going to support community energy and I'm thinking of groups like in Paekākāriki or Waiteti or Ruatōria Whangārei who I've met with who want to produce their own energy. They want to do it locally and do it for themselves. So we're going to support them with a $250 million community energy fund. We're going to stop coal use by 2030 and gas use by 2035.So our slogan this election is Think ahead" and I ask people to think ahead—what this means—because what it means is thousands and thousands of homes where people can point to their roof knowing they're producing their own clean energy. I'm thinking about the hundreds of thousands of kids in those State houses who are going to be paying cheaper power bills. I think ahead to the national electricity grid that's going to be able to use those 63000 State houses as a virtual network be able to time-shift that free clean solar energy to time-shift it to the time when we're burning dirty coal and gas saving everyone money.I think of those communities who I've worked with and met who have felt they don't have a fair playing field when it comes to the big power companies and those big power stations like Huntly. That's what I'm thinking about—those schools and factories that are not going to have to burn dirty old expensive polluting coal who can do it themselves with clean wind solar and other forms of energy.So for me this is a good example of Jeanette Fitzsimons' thinking in action. It's not about this false trade-off between the cost of the environment to the economy or thinking of the environment as something totally separate. It's integrating it and knowing that our wealth and our prosperity are dependent on the environment. And actually by investing in the environment we can grow jobs we can save people money we can solve other social problems such as inequality and poverty. This is the mahi of Jeanette Fitzsimons that I'm proud to continue and a whole new generation of Greens will continue it after September. Kia ora."