Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to begin by acknowledging that in this Budget the Government started shifting the dial on investment on climate action and healthcare infrastructure. And there are quite a few discrete things to like. We support the child support pass-on as well as the increase in the eligibility for hardship grants for low-income workers—these are all things that will make a difference for our communities. But at the core in this Budget what we have accepted is that some families will continue living in hardship and needing to get into thousands of dollars of debt with our own Government agencies that are designed to support them just to survive. And it is very clear for us that if the Greens held the balance of power if we had a stronger influence in the decision making of this Government we would have taken the opportunity to put in place policies that no longer tolerated families living in hardship.What I've learnt in my time in this place is that it's easy to fall into the habit of making decisions based on vibes focus-group feedback or simply high-level political narratives centred on what will keep us in this job instead of doing what is right for the communities that we claim to serve.We've actually known for decades that our healthcare system is under massive amounts of pressure; that many communities are struggling to make ends meet; and that unless we take urgent action to reduce emissions countless numbers of people will face displacement. We know this because the communities we serve have told us so by marching in the streets demanding action producing rigorous research on issues such as poverty and shared countless numbers of stories on social media and mainstream media alike. Even the polls tell us that there is appetite for the collective care that many of us know is really valuable. Yesterday there was a poll talking about the Government cost of living payment which is a $350 one-off payment for people who normally do not meet the criteria for the winter energy payment. And the polls showed that a clear majority of people wanted beneficiaries and pensioners to be included in this payment. For me it speaks to the fact that actually in Aotearoa there is a desire for genuine progressive values that people are rejecting this compromise just to keep this sort of sense in the narrative of fiscal responsibility and actually ignoring the responsibilities that we have to communities that are facing cost of living pressures.What this Budget failed to acknowledge and particularly the cost of living payment failed to acknowledge is that people on the benefit are facing massive amounts of pressure. Some of them are actually having their income eaten up by debt that they accrued by going to the agencies that supported them of almost $27 a week. They're missing out on what the cost of living payment would have provided. And so if we're really serious about this Budget being a health and climate Budget then we would have put into action the desire and the policies to no longer see children getting sick with preventable diseases that come from not having a warm dry home or liveable incomes.One of the previous Labour speakers talked about the changes to dental grants in this year's Budget and the increase of eligibility of non-recoverable assistance—when you go get treatment for dental when you're receiving assistance from Work and Income. And that is of course a step in the right direction. In fact I would go further and say that we should be looking at things like free dental and that we should be exploring wiping the debt that people have accrued from needing that level of support. If we're serious about supporting the oral health of our communities this is why we would be putting in place higher benefits so that our families have access to abundant kai. We should not just be making services free once people get sick; we should be funding the things that support people not getting sick in the first place.And I've heard the contributions from the members of the National Party who back in 2013 rolled in all these horrible welfare reforms—punitive sanctions that saw thousands of parents losing their income. And many of these policies continue being in place despite members of Government speaking against them at the time. Again if we're really serious about supporting our communities in this Budget we would have a commitment to roll back those punitive benefit sanctions that the National Party introduced to genuinely listen to our communities and have increased core benefits further so that we're not seeing people needing hardship grants just to make ends meet.If the Greens held the balance of power we would be fighting for a guaranteed minimum income that provided unconditional support to people in Aotearoa. This would not have the punitive relationship rules that mean that when people lose their job they can't even get access to income support because their partner may be deemed to be earning far too much pushing too many families into lower incomes and a perverse financial dependency. The Greens will continue fighting for outcomes that are just and push this Government to include the transformative policies that our communities deserve. Kia ora.