Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting the legislation. On balance we think that most of the proposals are sensible and carry on with a pretty good approach to managing COVID—I mean very good last year. Obviously in recent times the approach has slightly changed and the Green Party has put out our own position statement on COVID response one that we think would ensure that we are protecting our communities and the health of our people and really upholding that the most vulnerable people need to be at the forefront of our mind during a global pandemic. We are happy at one change in particular that the Government picked up. My colleague Chlöe Swarbrick put forward two amendments around the commercial tenancies provisions and one was that it would be backdated to the beginning of the current outbreak in August 2021 which the Government did pick up. We would have liked to see the Government go further and backdate it to March 2020 so that the initial lockdown and any others—there's been a few level 3 lockdowns in Auckland over the past year—could be considered as well.We also are disappointed that the Government didn't choose to just go ahead and move on ensuring that New Zealanders residing overseas have their voting rights protected during this time when they've had a significantly reduced ability to return to New Zealand. I know the Minister has said they're open to hearing from the Justice Committee about it. I'm really pleased that I believe the ACT Party and the National Party both voted in favour of that amendment which is a really good sign that there could be across the House a consensus that we need to change this law so that we're not disenfranchising New Zealanders who probably will have a constrained ability to return home for some time. Even after we've reduced the need for managed isolation there will still be reduced capacity in air travel and much higher prices for air travel and not everybody can afford to travel all the way back to New Zealand but that doesn't mean that they aren't New Zealand citizens who are very engaged and passionate and care about the future of this country and want to be able to exercise their democratic right to vote in local government and central government elections. Finally we were disappointed that the Government didn't go further and reintroduce the rent freeze during level 3 and level 4. It's been an incredibly long lockdown for people in Auckland and this is following intense increases in rent prices that have happened over the past year. We think that ultimately the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act have not gone far enough to protect renters and particularly in this period where we're trying to catch up on providing additional supply to meet need and demand for housing it's really important that the Government is doing everything it can to protect people's right to secure affordable housing and a rental freeze at the very least during a level 3 or level 4 lockdown would be reasonable. I know the Minister spoke to this and said that people can go look at flats at level 3 but really is that something we want to be encouraging people to do? We're still in a situation of constrained housing supply. In fact emergency housing and transitional housing have been at the—our failure to house all of our people here in Aotearoa New Zealand has been a major factor in the spread of the virus that we're currently seeing in Auckland. So I think as a society we'd all be better off if we sorted this out. Rent freeze and rent controls are simple tools that can ensure that people are able to afford rent and that they don't have to constantly be moving around or getting shifted out of housing into transitional housing into emergency housing into their cars—wherever they may be. All of that makes it harder for us to manage the virus and so obviously we would like to see the Government go much further in those areas and we will continue to champion that. Just one last point about the kind of absolutely inconsistent position of National where they're complaining about the Government having too much debt and then promising to spend more money on things. It really doesn't make much sense because here they are they're saying Oh we should be building purpose-built MIQ facilities. We should be massively investing in the health system."—I completely agree. Increasing the ICU beds—yes. Increasing the staff—yes. All of those things require Government funds and Government funds are reliant to some extent on taxation and we'd like to see progressive taxation and to say that it's socialising the losses—no. Actually what they're advocating is precisely privatising the benefits and socialising the losses of this pandemic but I guess it's not surprising that their position is so incoherent. They don't know if they support vaccine certificates or not. I mean it's really interesting. I guess they have a lot of people in their caucus who have different opinions about things and ultimately they don't have a coherent vision for a society in New Zealand where we can provide the basics to everyone where we can ensure that people live good lives where we're providing social services and we're allowing for people to do the things that matter most to them because ultimately their ideology and the best interests—DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member needs to come back to the bill. It's not a general speech.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I understand what you're saying Mr Speaker and I was just trying to point out the philosophical inconsistencies in some of the arguments we've heard from the other side of the House which I think is worth raising in the debate because those arguments have been raised in the debate. But when it comes to the bill we're disappointed the Government didn't go further in some of these areas to look after our people. But we are supporting the bill."