Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Congratulations on your re-election and thank you for all that you have done to make Parliament family friendly and a welcoming place for a working mother. I saw your little wave to Felix before. I'm very grateful to be here and I feel the privilege and the weight of this opportunity. It is my privilege to stand alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern our Māori caucus Labour's first XV past student presidents—quite a few up there—and my talented friends and colleagues from the class of 2020.I look up to the gallery and see my three wonderful children my family the faces of friends mentors colleagues campaign volunteers national council members previous MPs and the staff who have supported me to get here today. I look up and also remember the faces of those who have loved me but have passed before I had the opportunity to stand in this House. I believe it is important to express gratitude so that we acknowledge that we stand here not only because of our own efforts and talent but because we are the result of a long-term project and must pave the ground for those who follow.I have much to be grateful for: born to Tom and Trish—both academic educators who believed in growing individuals and communities. My grandmother Peg lived a life centred around giving to others and dedicated much of her life to supporting me and my brother Peter. My house was noisy. There was a lot of opinion and argument. It taught me the value of knowledge of listening and learning and that arguing improves your analysis and leads you to deeply understand what you believe.I often feel like I won the birth lottery. On top of being part of a loving family my father is a historian—expert in the history of Aotearoa. This meant that on summer holidays we would visit pā sites and museums all over the motu. While 11-year-old me probably complained a little bit about these trips I did come to learn that our history is messy. But not everyone had these same experiences or received the same education at school that I did. At Otago Girls' High School we learnt about Hone Heke and the flag pole Princess Te Pūea wars and broken promises. It is bizarre that the complexity of our nation is often ignored or oversimplified with divisions stoked—iwi or Kiwi"—instead of addressing what happened why it happened and how to address it. Because of my upbringing I have been grateful for my education and have never taken it for granted. At the University of Otago as a student politician I fought against high fees and student loans because I feared that those unable to sustain the extortionate interest rates of the 1990s would be locked out. Without access to education the social divide can only grow.My education led me to environmental law. The law governs how we live in our built and natural environments and how we interact with each other. As boring as it might sound to some urban planning impacts each of us every day. Communities need green spaces healthy homes and access to facilities and infrastructure such as hospitals and public transport to get there. Being reliant on personal vehicles is inefficient and the type of parking creates a barrier to amenities and care invisible to those of us who presume a car and parking space are our birth rights. My first job was at the PCE—the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—an Officer of this House where 20 years ago we investigated a Treaty-based environment audit system proposing ways to increase and restore mana whenua involvement in environmental management which unfortunately seems as relevant today as it did then. My commitment to strengthening recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi remains. My legal career has covered environmental law planning resource management and local government law. Most recently I worked on the six-member Randerson review which included how we build decision-making partnerships between mana whenua and both central and local government. I look forward to helping this Government reform and improve resource management legislation this term.For the last 10 years I've also worked as a company director. I have lived the decisions that face business to sustain profitability and care for employees. My directorships included retail and travel industries—some of the most affected by the economic challenges of COVID-19. I value how the strongest economic response has been the best health response and look forward to working with our Government to help business rebound recover and thrive.Through my time in business and the law I have come to find that for me it is now time to move beyond interpreting the law to a place where I contribute more directly to the development of the law—law that reflects our unique Treaty relationship. It must be clear and fair. Wherever there are tensions between interests there will be trade-offs. These trade-offs must be explicit open and equitable with decisions clearly and simply stating the justification for those trade-offs.Politicians before me have not accepted that simply because we are a small country we should have small ambitions—quite the opposite. From the work of the suffragettes to convince "King Dick" that women should have the vote the creation of the welfare system and universal healthcare that recently saved the life of my father and the stand to be nuclear free and not accept foreign interference when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed New Zealand leads the way in being an open democracy with minuscule corruption levels. Government is accountable through the independent media institutions such as the Ombudsman and Auditor-General the independent judiciary—some of whom are here—a public select committee process to scrutinise legislation and offer ideas through submissions and an Opposition that can choose to agree or disagree. All of this means that Governments are encouraged to serve the interests of citizens and not the elite and to respond to facts and not fake news—thank goodness.What we do here matters and we can do better. To do better we must be informed by our past. As a mother I am motivated by my commitments to my children and that means caring for the world that they will inherit. My children ask a lot of questions about their world. My son Felix has the awkward habit of asking people if they voted for Labour and my daughter Orla wants to know why there is no musical about the Treaty when the US has Hamilton.As a very young child that same Orla asked if ash would frustrate the ducks. There is so much that we do that frustrates our indigenous flora and fauna from the obvious acts of draining a wetland or chopping down a forest to the insidious and irregular negative effects of climate change. We know that climate change is caused by our emission of carbon methane and nitrous oxide with the most vivid example being the burning of fossil fuels—oil coal and gas. There was the international Paris Agreement to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees' increase and our Government has recently declared a climate emergency. The last Parliament unanimously passed the zero carbon legislation that created the independent Climate Commission that has just produced its draft budget describing how New Zealand can be a low-emission country—that is to reduce our reliance on using fossil fuels and reduce biogenic methane and nitrous oxide in agriculture. There is a lot that New Zealand can do to decarbonise some of which is reflected in the Government's commitment for departments to be carbon-neutral by 2025 today's announcement of 22 new low-emission transport projects and changes to public transport including the phase-out of public diesel buses by 2035.Despite the negative effects temperature rises have on our biodiversity and built environments there is often resistance to decarbonise with cries of "But we in New Zealand are so small! We can't make a difference!" Tell that to the suffragettes to the proponents of a nuclear-free New Zealand to the elderly immune compromised and healthcare workers who stood to face the heaviest weight of the wrecking ball of COVID19. This Government led the world in an iterative and transparent way to the COVID challenge. We can take the same values-driven evidence-based iterative approach to decarbonising. And if we want to lead the world in agriculture and tourism I believe we must aggressively decarbonise our country. And our Pacific neighbours need us to do our best.There is also the need for adaptation. We have already changed our future world and the question now is: by how much? The scale and time frames for the need for adaptation are wildly variable depending on how the world—including New Zealand—responds to the decarbonisation targets. So that makes planning for adaptation especially complex and difficult but not insurmountable. In Dunedin we have a number of areas affected by heavy rain events synonymous with climate change. The homes affected are not expensive coastal properties. If sea level rise is not a factor then there are many interventions that can be made to enable people to live safely in these areas for now—things like building higher off the ground over-grounding infrastructure taking much greater care in stormwater management and more. None of this is the status quo and more might be needed depending on what happens globally with those decarbonisation targets. So we have to be able to accept the complexity and the need for an iterative approach. An intervention that works for the next 30 years may not last for the next 100 years—but it might. We must not simply throw up our hands and give up on areas where people have built communities over generations without first trying to change by working collectively with central government councils mana whenua and local communities. Planning for different scenarios and trigger points is required.To achieve both decarbonisation and engage planning for adaptation there is a need for the reform of the Resource Management Act and the status quo that it entrenches. Regional spatial planning that includes the climate commission's adaptation plans as well as mitigation measures such as walkable cities are sensible. Focusing on enabling positive climate mitigation measures and planning legislation is also important and legislation and funding for enabling all relevant parties to work on equitable and iterative adaptation solutions is also needed. It will need to be principles driven to allow for the different circumstances communities will or may face around the country.I am so grateful for this Government's ambition to tackle complex issues. We now have a Wellbeing Budget that helps improve the discussion of what is trying to be achieved in one area and how it relates to a wider range of outcomes including natural resources and communities. Breaking down silos is necessary to this approach and is started with the amendments to legislation around the operation of the Public Service. The work of Government to build an inclusive future and protect the environment is a long-term project. It requires detailed thought argument listening compromise reflection evaluation and iteration. Progress can be frustrating. It can be slow. It is not always linear but it is built on the foundations of an open and optimistic Government that believes that what we do here in Aotearoa matters to the world and what we do in this House matters to New Zealand. I am grateful for the chance to stand in this House and am under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead.So thank you to family and friends who encouraged me into politics before and after university and to one John Angus who would annually ask me when I was going to stand—a gentle prod and confidence booster. Thank you to those I campaigned alongside David Ingrid Liam and John and to the volunteers out in the rain and snow—this was in Dunedin and Otago—who share the Labour vision and offer many hours of work but never seek the spotlight. To my children Zac Orla Felix I love your optimism curiosity energy generosity and how you always welcome others. To my husband Chris Jackson thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement and for our shared belief that achieving change is slow difficult and requires patience and sacrifice yet is so very worth it.I am grateful to be a member of this House to be part of a country that believes that what we do here matters to our neighbours and to the world—to be part of a Government that reflects inclusion diversity that embraces complexity and seeks to make long-term change. If I can contribute and play my part in improving our environment and help Aotearoa become a world leader in decarbonisation and addressing the complexity of adaptation then my time in this House will have been well spent. Thank you.[Applause]Waiata"