Carter KahurangiKAHURANGI CARTER (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. I am honoured to be speaking on behalf of my tabled amendment here which is looking at clause 14 and the actual levy rates for these three different categories: business and for our households.Now we at the Green Party agree that the cost of living for everyday Kiwis is terrible and it's only going to get worse under this Government. So we need to be really serious about waste minimisation. The Minister has talked about New South Wales broadening their scope of environmental activities. Well my question to the Minister is: if we're using New South Wales as an example for why we're broadening the scope of activities then will she bring the waste levies in line with New South Wales which are currently $160 per tonne? New Zealand we're looking at $60 a tonne so that is less than half of what New South Wales is paying for tonnage.Now let me just explain about industry. Industry will only invest in waste minimisation and reducing their waste to landfill when it costs more for them to send it to landfill than it does to reduce their waste. That is what a waste levy is about. We know that at the moment our waste levy is absolutely so too low for them to be actually motivated to make those changes that we really really need. So let's understand that: if the waste levy goes up to a sufficient amount industry will actually make that difference and work on their waste minimisation and we will live up to our environmental obligations. So the waste levies should be going up and they should be going towards waste minimisation infrastructure and projects because we have a $2.4 billion deficit in infrastructure.Let's talk about what that infrastructure actually is. So my colleague here Steve Abel talked about Xtreme Zero Waste in Whāingaroa Raglan. That is a resource recovery centre—it's not a dump; it's about recovering the precious resources that we have mined and extracted in this exploited. They have mined and extracted in this exploitative extractive system that we currently live in and they recover those resources. We have those same things like at Wānaka Wastebusters we have them at Ethical Waste in Ruapehu. People on the flax-roots at place; local people who know how to recover those resources and keep that capital within their communities. These are amazing initiatives that actually send a real message to New Zealand and the world that New Zealand will clean up its own mess.We're not going to leave it till our next generations to have to be cleaning up the mess that we are creating today—$2.4 billion deficit in infrastructure and you want to take money away from waste minimisation? We need to be increasing the waste levy and I just implore the other side to really really focus on the interconnectedness of the world; how the world really works. Because as New Zealand falls further and further behind other countries with regards to our environmental our climate action and our waste minimisation that is going to affect our trade because no one's going to be wanting to buy dirty products from dirty New Zealand. That clean green image that our tourism industry; that New Zealand relies on; that our businesses rely on like the beautiful Ruapehu which is a tourist industry and we need to make sure that those precious taonga that have been gifted to us by Papatūānuku are respected.I think that this Government really needs to go back and reflect on what the repercussions are for our tamariki for the next generation and for every generation after that. Because what you are not understanding is that there is no economy without the environment—there is no economy without the environment. We need to be serious about our commitments to our next generations to Papatūānuku and to living in harmony with nature.