Hughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is great to be back. Happy New Year to all the members. I would actually like to congratulate the Prime Minister John Key. I mean what is it his seventh Prime Minister’s statement and I think this is the first one where he did not try to blame Helen Clark for everything going wrong in the country. He had to look in the mirror a bit himself. But listening to some of the speeches you can see exactly why young Kiwis are tuning out of our country’s politics. What they heard was negative name-calling pointless point-scoring partisan—Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s the expert!GARETH HUGHES: We know that Nick Smith was one of our country’s youngest ever members when he came in and he has got to ask the question why Kiwis are not participating. They tune into this House and they are sick of all this partisan point-scoring they are seeing. What they want to see is less of the Dr Strangelove less of the Dr Dolittle comments and what they got instead was Dr Norman who actually finally gave them what they want which is a real debate about the issues a real discussion a real focus on solutions which is not what we heard from the Government side.What Dr Norman spoke about was the issues and he talked about our priorities which are climate change and inequality. This is something our Prime Minister could not mention even once in his speech. We have seen the Pope the US President and the Chinese President all make climate change—the greatest threat of our generation—their priority this year but our Prime Minister could not mention it even once. It was in his written speech but it did not make it into the Prime Minister’s comedy set but the extra funding for oil and gas in New Zealand—extra subsidies from New Zealand taxpayers for what is already one of the wealthiest industries in the world—did.At a time when we have seen the oil price bottom out at around 50 bucks a barrel when investment is declining all around the world at a time when we know that climate change is one of the most important threats facing us and even the International Energy Agency says we cannot afford to burn two-thirds of the oil we have already found at a time when you see Stanford University the Norway sovereign wealth fund the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Victoria University Dunedin City Council and the Anglican churches all divesting away from fossil fuels we see our Prime Minister wanting to invest in more of it from taxpayer subsidies.We know that climate change and inequality are environmental social moral questions and challenges but they are also economic and as we know when it comes to inequality the OECD has estimated that 10 percent of New Zealand’s gross domestic product has been slashed as a result of our growing inequality. Likewise with climate change. We have seen from the Stern Review that we could be at risk—10 to 20 percent of our global GDP. What we heard from the Prime Minister and National as a party that cannot get a surplus is flogging-off of the assets and now it is looking at people’s homes.Under National Kiwis work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest pay and pay some of the highest costs of living in the world. It is a sign that the National Party does not have a plan for our economy. It is a gambling plan as we heard from Denise Roche when it comes to Skycity and as we hear with its big picture its big plan for the New Zealand economy: hope that someone foreign finds something in the bottom of the ocean it is oily we can export it and they do not leave too much of a mess. That is not a plan for our economic future or a richer New Zealand.A future for New Zealand is a smart Green economy one built on innovation. The latest statistics from the Parliamentary Library show that research and development spending from the Government has actually declined 3 percent. It is great it has got a target. It has got a target for business to spend 1 percent of GDP on research and development but the way the Government is going about it it could not spend any less because we already spend less than half of what average OECD countries do. If we want to have a richer economy we need to invest in innovation and research and development to kickstart a smart Green innovative economy.Another area totally ignored by National is the clean energy phenomenal economic opportunity—a sector that Bloomberg has just said has almost reached a bumper year with more than $310 billion in capital investment last year an area PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion economic opportunity for New Zealand. In New Zealandour solar sector has grown 300 percent in the last 2 years despite the uncompetitive barriers in the market that National has put in the way. Every 2½ minutes another American business or house goes solar.When it comes to the IT sector sadly under National a quarter of New Zealand families still do not have internet or computer access. At the current rate National is addressing it it is going to take 227 years for all New Zealanders to finally get online. But at least the Minister Amy Adams is not standing still. I saw she put out a very important press release today urging Kiwis to change their passwords. So we have got changing passwords and changing the flag but no plan for a richer New Zealand just a plan to gamble when it comes to dodgy deals trying to bet against the house with Skycity and hoping someone finds some oil when the world is moving to a smart Green clean energy sector.This is the challenge we issue to the Government. We are going to stand up for a smart Green economy one that tackles the challenges of inequality and climate change. We are looking forward to the next 3 years. We are excited about the opportunity because ultimately our vision is one shared by tens and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who do want a richer New Zealand.