Hughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. In this speech I want to respond to the Prime Minister’s statement. What I heard was a negative attacking aggressive speech that focused more on the Labour Party and the Green Party than on National and its ideas. I believe that New Zealanders want to hear about parties’ policies. They want to hear about positive solutions. I believe that the people of New Zealand are sick and tired of the negative attack politics the petty partisanship and the dirty electorate deals. After too many years of putting the spies the casinos the polluters and the oil companies first New Zealanders know that it is timefor a change. After 5 years of National selling out our assets and selling out to the corporates it is time to put people and the planet first.This year New Zealand can make history with another first. In 8 months’ time New Zealand could have its first good green Government. In 2014 New Zealand can make history by electing the most progressive Government this country has seen in a generation. If the Prime Minister is going to go negative the Greens are going to stay positive and that is the Greens’ message this election. A green Government will invest in its people will protect its environment and will build an economy that works for everyone. Key’s speech was all about sowing fear and saying that the economy is at risk. Conditions are improving but Key is simply papering over the serious cracks facing us. We need a Government that is going to put the books in order and is going to address those pressing economic challenges like massive overseas debt and like the loss of control of our productive assets. We need an economic plan that is more than just cramming more cows on our paddocks and hoping that foreign oil companies find something in the depths of the ocean and do not leave too much of a mess trying to get it out.Coming out of the recession it is time to look forward to a prosperous future a richer New Zealand. We need to invest in infrastructure like a second internet cable support our smart IT sector and take advantage of the $6 trillion clean-energy greentech sector. For 30 years we have been told that there is no alternative to Rogernomics—by both his red and blue right-wing successors. Neo-liberal economics plainly has failed New Zealand on its own terms. We have dropped from fifth in the OECD economic performance rankings in 1951 to 23rd today. We are more dependent on dairy than ever and we work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages and pay some of the highest cost-of-living costs in the OECD. The neo-liberal economic experiment has seriously cost the country but this year we can make history and embark on a new direction that works for us not just for the corporate elites.Likewise after 30 years of growing poverty and widening inequality it is time to focus on real people not just the Tīwais the Choruses the Skycities the Anadarkos. It used to be said that the Prime Minister of New Zealand knew all the unemployed in the country and that we did not have poverty. Well that is far from the case now and we all know it. In a land that exports food that feeds 20 million people it is an absolute travesty that our kids are still going to school without food in their bellies. Whole families are deprived of work and we have got 270000 Kiwi kids growing up in poverty. We all know that it is highly unlikely that those young unemployed Kiwis are going to be working on Anadarko’s deep-sea drilling rigs.What we can see and what the statistics show is tens of thousands of people employed in high-earning sectors like IT. They can be people building good homes for New Zealanders insulating under the roofs and putting solar panels on the top. Cheaper power from NZ Power affordable housing from our Home for Life package and lifting our kids out of poverty put New Zealanders people first. A fair go for all may sound like something from distant history but this year we can make history by returning it front and centre to our politics and we can tackle inequality and poverty.Thirdly we need to protect what we love and what is the foundation for our prosperity: our environment. Under National two-thirds of our rivers are unsafe for swimming and as we heard today the nitrogen pollution levels are greater than in the Yangtze River. We can grow jobs by cleaning up our rivers and reclaim our birthright to safely swim in any New Zealand river or stream. We can do our fair share for a stable climate and grow jobs in climate-friendly industries like public transport. We can take advantage of the $20 billion annual economic opportunity that comes from clean-energy sources like solar geothermal and wave.In conclusion what we are doing is offering New Zealanders a positive alternative to the Prime Minister’s negativity. In this election every single vote is going to count and the question facing our country is over our direction. In less than a year’s time we can make history with our most progressive Government—a Government that is fairer a cleaner New Zealand a richer New Zealand.