Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I do want to acknowledge that pretty much everyone in Aotearoa's mind right now is on the COVID-19 outbreak and the pandemic and that makes absolute sense. But we also have to consider that climate change is a problem that is not going away and now is the time that we have to be taking action—not only to keep ourselves safe in the pandemic but to respond to this absolutely urgent climate crisis that is only getting worse year by year.Yesterday the Government announced the next three years of spending in the National Land Transport Plan which is the Government's budget for transport excluding things like the New Zealand Upgrade Programme and excluding the COVID recovery fund. Now the vision is good. What they want to achieve is good. We want a transport system that enables people and goods to move around New Zealand in a climate-friendly way and there are opportunities to do that in a way that improves public health and that makes our streets more lively and lovely and safe so that our kids are free and independent to explore their own neighbourhoods to get around under their own steam. We have the opportunity to give people and businesses in New Zealand real options so that they aren't locked into using a car for every single trip they need to make. The opportunities there are that that's better for the climate but also that that costs them less. We have a transport system that at the moment where Government if it's only investing in roads it means that people have to have a car to get around and they have to spend a lot of money on a car. They've got to spend a lot of money on fuel and we have to use up a whole lot of land in our urban areas to park the cars three-quarters of which is empty at any given time. So the announcement yesterday from the Government: while it tried to signal a big change in direction and a real commitment to giving people those options and taking action on the climate crisis unfortunately it is really not the transformation that we need. If we look at the percentages a billion dollars over three years is to be spent on active transport improvements. That is a huge increase on previous years but it's still insufficient. It is less than 4 percent of the transport budget. The Road to Zero safety improvements—I'm very proud of those—are $3 billion. That's 12.5 percent of the budget and absolutely that needs to happen. There's $7.2 billion on operations and maintenance of our network—that's walking cycling local roads regional roads and State highways. That's about 30 percent of the budget. Of course we have to continue—that's a huge amount of money. That's the amount that we have to spend just to maintain the network that we currently have. But unfortunately public transport at $2.3 billion for infrastructure—that's less than 10 percent of the budget. Compare that with local regional and State highway new roads which is $6.6 billion or nearly 30 percent of the budget—that's 27.5 percent of the budget. Now ultimately adding new roads to our existing road network doesn't solve our problem with congestion; it adds to it. If we plan all of our new housing just around highways then the people who live in those new housing developments are going to be stuck in their cars getting on the existing network making traffic worse increasing emissions increasing cost. So while it absolutely makes sense that a huge percentage should be spent on safety and maintenance of our existing road network it doesn't make sense that we should be spending so much more on new roads rather than on new public transport new active transport and new rail which would actually give people and businesses the option to use something different.Climate-friendly transport options in this are less than 25 percent of the budget. They're less. They're less—they're a minority of the new capital spending. If we break this down by new capital spending—new projects—59 percent of that is on new roads. So it's simply not going to make the difference and I've heard lots of Opposition members saying Oh tradies can't use bikes or public transport." No one is saying they should. If you look around at peak time at a congested time the majority of cars will have one person in them. They won't be moving heavy equipment. Those are the opportunities we have to improve our existing road network for those who need to use cars and trucks.When we give people real options we know they use it. They've done it in Auckland. We had very high public transport patronage in Wellington before the last Government. The last National Government screwed everything up which it's going to take some years to fix unfortunately. Ultimately what's good for people what's good for the planet is also good for the economy and this is an area where there shouldn't be any right-left debate. The Green vision makes the most sense. That's what we want to see."