Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. A lot of people think about Auckland Central as just Auckland central city and the surrounding suburbs but I do have a story for you. The electorate extends far beyond that amazing place across the Hauraki Gulf all the way out across Waiheke Island to Aotea Great Barrier Island.That's where this story starts because that is where in mid-2021 a pair of kayakers first discovered Caulerpa brachypus. I'm a little bit gutted that there has been a changeover of Speakers in the Chair just now—not to in any way intimate your skills Mr Speaker but I did want to shout out to the former Speaker in the Chair the Hon Barbara Kuriger for the work that she and I did in trying to get cross-party understanding on Caulerpa brachypus and the potential threat that that posed to our particularly marine ecosystems.Caulerpa brachypus looks like this[Holds up a photograph] to those who are unfamiliar or uninitiated with it. It is an invasive seaweed that grows at approximately 3 centimetres every single day and is posing a massive threat to the smothering of our sea-floor in the Hauraki Gulf.Now there's been an immense amount of work by a number of local champions and I just want to list a few here today in this very brief speech: Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea; Aotea/Great Barrier Local Board particularly the chair there Izzy Fordham who's been phenomenal in leading some cross-agency work here; as well as the Waiheke Local Board and the chair Cath Handley there. I also need to put on the record a shout-out to deputy chair Bianca Ranson who also wears a hat with Mauri o te Moana and is quite heavily involved in the Waiheke Marine Project. I need to shout out to Ngāti  as well on Waiheke Island; to the Hauraki Gulf Forum; particularly to Kate Waterhouse of the Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust who has been doing a lot of the work in driving policy understanding behind the scenes here; also to the likes of Revive Our Gulf; and even to the rec fishers LegaSea and NZ sport fishing who have been trying to ensure that there is greater political understanding of the threat that this invasive seaweed poses to our marine ecosystems.We could talk about a lot of the threats that are facing the Hauraki Gulf—namely bottom trawling which of course the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has put abundantly clear on the record that we support the full ban of in the Hauraki; as well as the need for greater marine protected areas and of course there's a piece of legislation making its way through select committee at present but the Greens support that marine protection extending to at least 30 percent of the Hauraki Gulf.We also have massive challenges with regards to biosecurity. Just to give a sense of the threat here: in the Mediterranean where Caulerpa brachypus was studied it was found that there was a I believe 30 to 60 percent reduction in biomass of fish as impacted by the smothering of the sea-floor.We are having this discussion at a point in time when the Government is not only slashing jobs across the Public Serve but also in Biosecurity New Zealand and in National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd—two agencies that have been at the forefront of trying to get a handle on this kaupapa.But particularly to that connection or lack of parallel approach that we've seen with other biosecurity hazards and issues in this country I just wanted to create the parallel to Mycoplasma bovis which of course posed huge issues with regard to agriculture. There we saw that there was cross-party support for the better part of a billion dollars to be invested in eradicating Mycoplasma bovis—heck we saw the same kind of approach when it came to a fruit fly in the outer Auckland Central suburbs. But we have not seen that same impetus and that same political galvanisation on the issue of Caulerpa brachypus and that is the plea that I am making to the House today. In conversations that I've already had with the Minister Tama Potaka obviously with his conservation hat on I've made this plea. But we need to see far greater resourcing. There are three key things here that this Government—and I would hope with the cross-party support of this Parliament—can do. The first is for a whole-of-agency whole-of-Government strategy for the eradication of Caulerpa brachypus; the second is to resource a team specifically dedicated to eradicating Caulerpa brachypus within the Ministry for Primary Industries Biosecurity New Zealand or actually potentially even a cross-agency piece of work; and the third is the pūtea the funding and the resourcing to make this happen. So far all we've seen is approximately $5 million a drop in the bucket and this invasive seaweed continues to expand smothering the sea-floor and actually posing massive threat across the entire East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.