Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you Madam Chair. I just have some questions for the Minister of Finance particularly around some of the climate aspects that we discussed at the Finance Committee. There was $2.9 billion—arguably $3.7 billion—worth of climate initiatives that were cut in Budget 2024. We can see that this lines up quite neatly with the amount of money that was given back to landlords as a tax break in the Budget but given that we have seen some of those initiatives that had direct emissions impacts—and subsequent to the Budget coming out at the Estimates hearings we had around the Budget we have of course had the first scorecard from the Climate Change Commission around how policy changes from this Government are taking New Zealand backwards in terms of meeting its climate budgets and the flow-on effects to nationally determined contributions (NDCs).So a couple of specific questions for the Minister: she's touched on one of them in terms of the contingent liability question that Chlöe Swarbrick asked her but one of the things is that there has been an increasing body of work that's come out only in recent months and I just wondered if the Minister is thinking that as we head into Budget 2025 this will change the scenario of how it is that we need to treat that liability under accounting practices. What we've seen is the work from the McGuinness Institute that looks very specifically at some of those accounting standards particularly if we want to be specific PBE IPSAS 19 which is an accounting standard that says that we need to take into account the likelihood an outflow of resources will be required to settle the obligation and the extent to which a reliable estimate can be made. This is quite different to the way Treasury has previously addressed this question of the liability and how it should be booked. So while Treasury acknowledges that there is a specific fiscal risk in terms of us not meeting our climate budgets—and us not cutting emissions at home means that New Zealand needs to go and pay other countries to do that work that we need to go and buy credits off other countries effectively paying for jobs and paying for initiatives in other countries rather than our own. We've seen the impact that this Budget had on reducing the domestic work we were doing on climate change which means we'll be funnelling more and more money overseas to pay other countries to cut their emissions and to keep people in green jobs.So I just wonder if the Minister is looking at how that might have to be accounted for. The Treasury's argument has always been that the Government has choices about how it achieves its NDC. We're seeing as work firms up with things like the report from the Climate Change Commission that it's becoming increasingly apparent that the Government can't because it is cutting initiatives domestically that reduce emission that that increases New Zealand's liability offshore. It also points to the fact that when the then National Government actually signed the Paris Agreement they laid bare explicitly that their plan was to offset by buying international credit. So I just would like some information from the Minister around whether or not her thinking has evolved on this. There's a lot more evidence that's pointing to the fact that New Zealand has a $24 billion liability that needs to be booked and the moves of this Government taking New Zealand backwards cutting our initiatives here at home are just widening and making that liability for New Zealanders even greater.