Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. I do want to acknowledge all those people who have been severely affected by the floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. Unfortunately this type of devastation is not a one-off event. It is the sort of thing that we have known for some time will become more frequent and severe as a consequence of humans putting too much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Some of that is because of the way we use energy and the way we organise our transport systems and also the way that we have changed land use away from indigenous forests and prairie with a focus on raising animals.So the message that scientists have been saying to us—and that the Green Party has been bringing to this Parliament for a quarter of a century—is that we can live in greater harmony with nature we can live in greater harmony with each other and we can do that by living in greater harmony with ourselves. The Green Party has always been thinking about the long term and trying to connect that we can't get rich and have a successful economy by trashing the planet. Ultimately it's going to come back to bite us and it already is so it is beyond time that we start to take the steps to work together to protect our natural environment and to protect all life not just that that is immediately of interest to humans. We do that through our Government policy at local government level at regional level and at central government level and I would argue that some of the solutions—and there are many nature-based solutions that can be benefit us and lead to a higher quality of life—are going to be better delivered at lower levels at the level of our communities. So the Green Party does envisage more of the important decisions being made at a local government level where people understand and are directly involved in the community.This year is such an important year and I really have to say that it is a choice between making progress on our collective issues and going very far backwards after the next election because—bless Maureen Pugh she spoke her mind and ultimately I think the view that is reflected in the National Party: even though they say they believe in human-caused climate change they oppose every single evidence-based policy that we could bring in to help address our pollution. They absolutely want to roll back any sorts of standards or protections that have been put in place to make our rivers safe to swim in again. Protecting our waterways protecting our natural environment—that is not what they stand for. Their entire economic vision is predicated on allowing those who already have the most to continue to get richer and to do so by exploiting people and the environment whether that's landlords exploiting tenants whether that's stopping protection for workers—which they absolutely opposed so that employers could keep making money by exploiting workers—or opposing any sort of change towards a more regenerative sustainable approach to land use. Absolutely the Green Party sees a role for horticulture and agriculture and forestry but we can and must do it in a much more sustainable way. Part of the way we do that is through Government paying attention to the science keeping track of the data and setting in place really important and useful regulations—and we don't have a race to the bottom.When I go around Aotearoa New Zealand what I see are people who do care deeply about our land and our water and they do want to protect nature and do the right thing for climate change. But they have been failed by successive Governments that have prioritised having big corporates make money and having the rich getting richer and have just constantly pushed back and tried to delay progress on protecting our environment and our climate.So the Green Party is here. We have a vision. We have practical evidence-based policies. We see a transport system that uses energy much more efficiently and that delivers people and goods—mobility in a low-carbon and lower-cost way. We can see much more of a role for electricity that is generated by solar and wind and a much bigger role for energy efficiency and ultimately that is something that we must do together.