Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I'm very pleased to take a call on this bill and to be the first woman in the debate at No. 7. It's interesting how gender-segregated some of our legislative topics can be. The Green Party of course will be supporting the bill. For a very very long time our economics and finance spokespeople have been—a succession of them—speaking about the need in New Zealand to deal with the challenge of our small start-up companies scaling up without having to go overseas for investment and then New Zealand losing the benefits of those companies and their innovations. First let me just talk about why this is important and why the economy is important. It's important that people have what they need to live good lives and it's important in order for us to live good lives and in order for our children and their children to live good lives that we respond to climate change and that we radically reduce greenhouse pollution in the next decade—that's what the United Nations panel of scientists are telling us. So we need investment in our economy in the things that make it possible for us to live good lives like food production the building of houses transport networks that enable people and goods to move around and investment in education. It's really important that all of that is done in a way that benefits the environment that reduces pollution and that is inclusive because the more people are able to benefit from our activities the more sustainable that will be. We know we've had growing inequality across the world. That's not good for democracy. That's not the kind of country I think we want to be. We don't want to be a country where the rich get richer and the poor get stuck. We want to continue to be a country of opportunity and as a small nation it is particularly important—although it's probably true in large nations as well—that Government takes a really active role in looking after our education infrastructure housing and all of those things that make it possible for people to thrive and develop and that includes looking after our economy and ensuring that the Government and the people of New Zealand are actively involved in investing in our own businesses and in our own organisations and are able to retain the benefits of that investment over time. So in 2013 the OECD specifically urged New Zealand to provide more support for expansion of early-stage firms to help address our productivity problem. We know we have a productivity problem. We've had an issue with wages staying low and the top 1 percent of the top 10 percent of New Zealanders in terms of wealth and income have tended to benefit much much more from growth of the economy than the rest of the country. That's not fair it's not right and it's one of the many things that this Government wants to address. So despite the OECD recommending something like this in 2013 the previous National Government of course did nothing because they have a very ideological approach to the economy which isn't supported by evidence. Generally National tends to be quite hands-off. It tends to try to ensure that the rich are able to get richer and that companies aren't required to pay their employees living wages but generally that stagnates the economy. There's no evidence that that's good for the economy and there's certainly no evidence that that's good for society but this Government takes a much more enlightened view. It looks at the evidence. It responds to recommendations from the OECD and that's why we've had wages growing much faster than inflation since this Government has been in office. Of course we have more work to do to ensure that there is secure affordable housing for people. We have more work to do to ensure that the signals and incentives are right so that we can start to really reduce carbon pollution and greenhouse pollution so that we can do our bit in the global fight against climate change and what we need for that to happen is for there to be support for innovation and innovative companies here in New Zealand. So in the Budget we announced the creation of a $300 million pool of capital available to be invested through a new fund of funds model to support New Zealand's venture capital markets and I think that will dovetail nicely with some of the other initiatives we've announced like the $100 million Green Investment Fund and many of the other steps that we've been taking to ensure that we have the right signals so that investment is going into the productive part of our economy not the speculative part of our economy. Speculation on housing may make some people richer but it doesn't make us better off as a country; it makes us worse off as a country. Investment in really innovative companies that are able to you know take things like seaweed and reduce greenhouse emissions from agriculture; investments in new approaches to transport like e-scooters—all of that has the potential to be pretty transformational to reduce emissions to make life better for New Zealanders and we want to make sure that those small companies that start out in New Zealand with a great idea don't have to go overseas to grow. This is just a first step that will help us achieve our goals as a society. The Greens are happy to support this bill.