Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I am standing on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand this afternoon to support this motion and to have our position placed on the record along with other parties in this Parliament. I think it's important firstly to respond to some of the commentary stated in closing by the spokesperson for the Opposition on finance Paul Goldsmith particularly in regard to a policy announced over the weekend by the Green Party where he spoke about our taxation policy and kind of held himself out as a fantastic economic manager but then later went on to himself admit that he had got the maths wrong. Of course what this agreement does fundamentally is provide the bank with an annual average of $115 million a year for its operations over the next five years with a further average of $13 million a year for the issuance of currency. I'd like to join with other members of this House in recognising fundamentally the importance of the independence of this institution of its advice and of the tools that it utilises. In my contribution today I would like to highlight the bank's new dual mandate which was alluded to by the Hon Paul Goldsmith. It is to set monetary policy in a way that maintains obviously price stability and supports maximum sustainable employment. Also it is to bring together climate change and jobs and to say that the best way to fulfil that dual mandate is actually to address the climate crises. I think it's important to address the points made particularly by the Opposition in this because they hypothesise that perhaps speculating on things such as the climate crises or the environment was outside the remit of economic thinking. To that point I think it's really important that we actually consider when we speak about the economy not just in this Chamber but within people's lives and within society and across the world that the economy isn't some out there deity which we sacrifice to when it's angry. The economy is in fact actually our collective resources and the wealth that all of us together create. It also is the rules that all of us place around it and in Aotearoa New Zealand I think that we are incredibly fortunate for the price stability that the Reserve Bank plays a role in creating. These five-yearly funding agreements sit outside of the political cycle which helps to protect them from the politics of the day. This means that the Reserve Bank can focus on making sure that the financial system is stable and works for everybody as best as possible. And as I'm sure that most people would agree a financial system that works is one that responds to the crises that we face. The most significant of those right now is the existential crises of climate change or global warming. There are a number of important tools that are available to the Reserve Bank to do this. The first is understanding climate-related risk. There are two types of climate-related risk. The first is one which we're all familiar with: that of extreme weather and its increasing severity and frequency and it's pretty clear what those risks are. Of course earlier this year we saw the consequences of climate change exacerbating the bushfires in Australia. But the second and less talked about is transition risk. By this we mean the risk that occurs when organisations fail to change the way that they do things so that we can move from where we are today to where we need to be to tackle the climate crises. Some people call this the just transition". In other words it is the risk that occurs if companies do not change their business models to shift their operations to align with the sorts of change that needs to occur to bring our emissions down and in fact will occur regardless of whether we engage with it. The reason that this poses a risk to financial systems is that without the requisite knowledge of how exposed businesses are to climate change central banks risk lending to organisations that are not changing in ways that they need to. This is what people talk about when they are talking of stranded assets: lending to businesses that are not adjusting to the reality of what we need to do moving into the future. This is one of the things that the Reserve Bank has been concerned about recently: making sure that this information is readily available making sure banks that lend to businesses and to other investors can be sure that the organisations that they are lending to are thinking about our collective future and acting in a way that is consistent with the direction that we in this Chamber have set for the country. Typically the financial system has taken a rather short-term view in its decision making pushing longer-term problems into the long grass. But proper mandatory disclosure of climate-related risks will help to change that and it is something that the Reserve Bank has been pushing for. That disclosure will enable risk assessment and mitigation and incentivise investment in emissions reduction and adaptation. It means that the Reserve Bank—New Zealand's Reserve Bank our Reserve Bank—can consider climate risks when making decisions that affect the type of country we live in and pass on to future generations. It will also serve to constrain the climate-related financial risk taken on by the banking sector. Climate-related financial risk would mean any activity that is not consistent with a 1.5-degree world. One of the reasons that the Reserve Bank has been calling for this mandatory reporting of climate-related risks is they know it is necessary if they are in fact to fulfil that dual mandate. One of the questions in all of this—a question banks will be asking themselves—is whether the Government is serious about this transition to a low-carbon economy. Of course when it comes to this Government the answer is yes because we have built an enduring framework for a better future and in doing so set the direction for future investment and innovation. So what happens when we confuse price with value? Well we end up undervaluing the very things that make us who we are like caring for each other and for our planet. We need to redefine those kinds of concepts of value to take the action that is requisite to make life better for each other and for future generations. Financial investments will of course never be a substitute for ambitious climate policy and action by Governments. In fact of course they shouldn't be as has been emphasised by multiple speakers so far in this debate but these financial investments and these instruments can and should amplify those policy decisions. Just in closing given that other speakers have sought to reference others—other academic thinkers others who have been engaged in economics for a while now—I think that it is most pertinent to reference Herman Daly who hails from institutions such as the World Bank and Yale University as an economist who said "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment not the other way around." The Greens support this motion and commend it to the House.Motion agreed to."