Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. What kind of society do we want? That should be the question that we ask before we debate Budget policy. Do we want an Aotearoa where rivers are clean and safe enough for our kids to swim in them? Do we want an Aotearoa where every child has a warm dry home the ability to walk and cycle safely to school and nourishing food that enables them to grow and learn? Do we want an Aotearoa where everyone has the basics that they need to live a good life and an opportunity for meaningful work with fair pay? Do we want a world with a stable climate? And do we want important contributions like looking after children or looking after the elderly teaching cleaning up pollution in our natural environment cleaning up our offices after we work in them—do we want the people who do those jobs to be able to do that work at their best and to have the resources they need to live good lives? I think the answer to all those questions is obviously yes.When it comes to the Budget this National Government is continually claiming that we cannot afford to do the things that matter most. It frames the questions in such a way that we are always asked to make impossible trade-offs. So we are asked to give up the idea of protecting our pristine natural environment—the place that is most precious to us—for some jobs. We are asked over and over again to give up critical Government services that help make our society fairer so that the most well-off people can pay much less tax. And we are told we cannot make long-term investments into clean infrastructure that would benefit the whole country in the long term—like keeping and extending the use of our electric freight trains or investing more rapidly in affordable rail and light rail public transport in our towns and cities—because it would cost billions and billions of dollars. Well the Government is already spending billions and billions of dollars on infrastructure; it is just not clean and it is not going to help us in the long term.We have an unfair system of allocating resources at the moment and it results in the concentration of wealth which means that some people will never have the equal opportunities to live a good life. And National is actively choosing to allow that unfairness to persist by prioritising tax cuts over critical public services or prioritising asset sales over critical public services. We want people to have access to the public services they need to be able to have meaningful work and to have equal opportunities and we can do that if we have a Government that shows leadership.National's refusal to do anything to truly protect and clean up our waterways to incentivise sustainable diverse agriculture is quickly eroding the things that we love most about Aotearoa so some vested interests can continue making some short-term profits without having to do the hard work of protecting our waterways. We want to protect our natural environment; most New Zealanders want to protect our natural environment. They know it is a birthright for our kids to be able to swim in our rivers and lakes. We can create jobs by doing so if we have a Government that is willing to show leadership.Budgets are all about priorities and the people of Aotearoa do not have a difficult choice to make. Vote with your values. Vote for the things that matter most to you. Do not let anyone tell you that we cannot afford clean water that we cannot afford fair pay that we cannot afford ending child poverty and that we cannot afford to invest in the long term for a clean stable climate and the infrastructure that is going to enable us to create the jobs that will not rely on increasing fossil fuel pollution. We can do all of these things. We have the opportunity to make those choices.The Green Party is not afraid to say that we will show leadership. We have the policies that will prioritise the things that matter most to New Zealanders that will protect the things that New Zealanders care about for the long term. Kia ora.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jami-Lee Ross—5 minutes.