Allan KiritapuHon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): Madam Speaker thank you for the time to be able to make a contribution in the House and to follow my colleague the Hon Megan Woods in commending the work and the leadership of our friend and our colleague in this Government Minister James Shaw and the Green Party who have been a constant advocate for ensuring that we have justice equity—justice equality. And so this is leadership and this is leadership in its finest. As my colleague Megan Woods said what it takes to become a leader in terms of climate change is it requires all parties to come to the table. Thank you for corralling all parties in this House to get to a point where we can collaboratively agree to set the emissions budget under the Climate Change Response Act. And I implore our colleagues across the House—I implore all of our colleagues—we aren't all just climate-change individuals climate-change parties; we are climate-change parliamentarians as my colleague said and I implore this House to come together to collectively agree the route that we must take as a nation to ensure we reach that net-zero carbon target. Now you've heard from my colleagues this is an incredibly special day for Aotearoa where we agree to set the emissions reductions budget. Today in particular though I want to talk about just how critical it is that we take these actions through a two-tiered lens: the crisis of climate change and the crisis of biodiversity. These two are intrinsically linked. Not everybody understands the threat to biodiversity and how intimately connected these things are to climate change but we only need to look at the wetland fires down in Awarua the wetland fires up north those carbon sinks those incredibly important carbon sinks to understand just how critical it is that we do our part to change behaviour to put us in a position where we can tangibly achieve a net-zero outcome.So today I want to acknowledge how things like the extreme weather events across the country—rising sea levels rising temperatures—are putting increasing pressure already on incredibly threatened wildlife and wild places. There's 4000 species currently that we know of—there's probably a whole lot more—that are in a threatened state or at threat of extinction and we have to take action today on climate change to ensure those threatened species survive that they thrive and they are a taonga that we hand on to future generations. Climate change poses risk to nature and the very things that make this place Aotearoa New Zealand special. Many of our plants our birds our bats that my colleague Rachel Brooking's wearing the earrings for—bats that are mammals and are not birds but that's for another day that discussion on whether or not they should have been Bird of the Year. But anyway many of New Zealand's plants our birds our bats our insects our reptiles our fish—they cannot be found anywhere else in the entire world and this is part of the legacy that we've inherited when we split off from Gondwana all those years ago. Climate change poses many risks to nature from entire habitats being lost during extreme flooding or fires to change in the range and distribution of pests. Iconic coastal alpine and wetland ecosystems risk being degraded squeezed and eliminated from our landscape if careful adaptation is not taken now—right now. We only need to cast our eyes up to places like Te Tai Rāwhiti or up to the coast to see that climate change is having a real impact on real people's lives right now. We're seeing the erosion of those coastlines and if we do not change our track I am nervous that we will not genuinely be able to hand something on to future generations. Look I have to make mention of this: it was a one-time former leader of the National Party Judith Collins; she said she was in favour of glacial action but on their zero carbon Act she said But New Zealanders do not want to be first fast or furious; they want a fair go." We cannot give people a fair go unless we take urgent action and this is what this plan sets down. We cannot hand on this precious place that we have to our future generations if we do not take action right now. So to this House we absolutely implore and commend these budget targets to the House."