Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Budgets are all about priorities—what we as a community as a team of 5 million think is important—and I think we all showed last year through this COVID pandemic that it is really important the health of our people how we work together and look after one another and the Green Party is very clear about our priorities what we think needs to happen in the Budget tomorrow. In fact I think the priorities of the Green Party align really well with the priorities of New Zealanders. I just want to quickly refer to the highlights from the Infrastructure Commission's Aotearoa 2050 digital engagement. That got over 23000 responses which is a pretty good sample of New Zealanders: 92 percent of New Zealanders ranked not always having safe drinking water as a very important issue 92 percent ranked a lack of recycling as a very important issue 85 percent of New Zealanders want to produce less waste—they want the Government and local government to be enabling them to live more sustainably—80 percent of New Zealanders want investment in our water network something that has been neglected over many decades. Overall priorities: more so than jobs and people the planet was the most important area that New Zealanders want us to prioritise when thinking about the future because they know that without a healthy planet we have no future. Climate change is the single-most important issue facing all of us and it's really easy to focus on the short term to focus on COVID but in fact we have very few years right now to make the changes that we need to to secure a safe stable climate for ourselves and for our kids and their kids. So in the recovery to COVID-19 climate change and climate action has to be central to that. It has to be central to everything we do: the future of food production how we get around how we build our buildings how we produce our energy how we use our energy all of that is going to need to change. I know the Government have indicated a strong willingness to move in that direction. The question is are we going to move fast enough because we can't just tinker around the edges. Everything needs to change. Our economic system has to change. It has driven it has been fuelling the destruction of ecosystems the loss of species at a faster rate than we have probably ever seen and the overheating of our climate and of course our economic system hasn't just done that to benefit all of us. It isn't benefiting all of us. In fact for the last 30 years or so our economic system has benefiting a smaller and smaller group of people. It has fuelled inequality and again this is something I know the Government has on their radar. The question is: do they have the courage to move fast enough to make the changes that need to be made in order to truly deliver an economic system that is going to benefit all people that's going to lift children out of poverty that's going to protect and safeguard our natural environment something that New Zealanders absolutely hold dear and prioritise? That's what we need. So in the Green Budget what would we see? We would see an overhauling of our welfare system. We know that's the only way to end child poverty in this country. We need to massively lift benefits. We need to make it fairer and easier to access. We need jobs that really employ people OK not just machines. There is this huge investment in infrastructure to create jobs. Yes we do need infrastructure—we absolutely do—but we also need jobs that look after people. We need more nurses. We need more midwives. We need more early childhood education (ECE) teachers. We need better subsidies for early childhood education so that parents don't have to wait until their child is three if they want to go back to work. We need the subsidies to be higher and we need the ECE teachers to be very well paid. I know there was a pre-election announcement. I don't think it goes far enough. We can afford to do this. When it comes to the infrastructure that we need to see tomorrow we need substantial investment in regional rapid rail. We are so far behind on passenger rail and sustainable freight options in this country. Public transport: in fact in the Infrastructure Commission's survey they said 75 percent of New Zealanders want public transport improved and less than 30 percent said we needed to spend more money on roads. So the money needs to be shifted to public transport rail and safe cycling in our cities. The vast majority of New Zealanders said that's what they want. The question is: will this Government deliver it? Well the Green Party will be here to hold them to account and to call for the action that we need to protect our people and our planet now and into the future.