Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. This morning I was out at Epuni School in Lower Hutt talking about energy and the environment. I love talking to students about those issues because they get it right? They understand the environment is the heart of our future. They know it's important. They know we need to do things differently. I was at the school with the Minister of Education because that school was a particular leader. They've changed out their lightbulbs to efficient LEDs. They've saved now 80 percent on their lighting bill and are now spending that money on the kids. I was there with Chris Hipkins because under the confidence and supply agreement we are launching a new energy efficient schools package. This new $16 million injection is going to see LED lightbulbs rolled out across 500 schools in New Zealand in a new contestable fund to support energy efficiency and solar schools replacing coal-fired boilers. It's a really good policy because what it means is the schools are actually saving money on their power bills and they get to spend that money on their kids—you know on teacher-aides and on musical equipment sports equipment and books. It's great and because of this we're going to be reducing pollution and power bills for decades and decades and decades. I've visited lots of schools across New Zealand to find out what the exciting innovative stuff they're doing with energy is—I think of Blueskin Bay School in Otago I think of Trident High School in Whakatāne—but what I love talking about to kids is the science of where this solar power comes from because 150 million kilometres away at the centre of the sun hydrogen atoms are fused into helium under nuclear fusion and this releases energetic gamma rays. Now what happens is it takes 10000 to 170000 years for that sunlight—that photon—to finally reach the surface. It then travels at the speed of light—8.3 minutes—and if it hits a solar panel free cheap clean electricity is produced. It's an amazing thing. Now contrast that with the previous vision which is: let's dig up the muck and dig coal—something that took 300 million years these primordial swamps and plants to finally dig up as an energy source. We still have 230 schools in New Zealand burning coal for energy that we need to replace. Coal is so old-fashioned. It's 300 million years old but other parties still support it. I think for me this is the energy choice we face as a country: fossil fuels or renewables; more dirty old coal or do we embrace clean cheap energy; dig up the prehistoric muck or use the power of the wind and the waves and the sun; subsidise oil companies to look for more oil we can't afford to drill or halt offshore oil permits; power companies' super profits while people shiver at home in energy poverty or helping people with an energy hardship; cold damp unhealthy and uninsulated homes or insulating homes and bringing in rental standards. These are the choices we face and I believe in a cleaner cheaper smarter energy future. The kids know it. The economists know it. Even the Marsden oil refinery knows it and today they announced the country's largest ever solar farm is going to be built at Marsden. Now today 11000 scientists from 153 nations made a statement in the journal BioScience. They said—and I quote—We declare unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. To secure a sustainable future we must change how we live. This will entail major transformations in the way our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems." This Government is building the foundations and the supports for a low-carbon country but we need to go further. We need to listen to the children and the scientists and say "No new coal mines no new oil rigs off our beaches no new fracking wells. We're in a climate emergency—no new fossil fuels for generations ever again." We can't keep cramming more cows on paddocks and more tourists in Fiordland. We're already seeing the impacts on our environment. We need a clean just transition to grow those new jobs. We need to see solar panels on our schools on our State houses on our KiwiBuilds on our marae on our hospitals on our prisons and on our universities. To decarbonise our industry and our transport networks New Zealand needs to do in 15 years what has taken us 100 years to get to this point and build a new modern electricity grid and then do it cheaper and cleaner than before. This is going to take hands-on Government leadership and our communities need to be empowered to produce their own energy. Now thinking about those kids at Epuni School there's a famous saying which people will know which is that some people say that children should be seen and not heard. Well I've seen those children on the streets—the tens of thousands of them—with the climate strikes and in the Green Party we will listen."