Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I have to say that the previous speaker Simon Court's speech just seemed like pure projection. Pretty much everything he said could be said about his own party's policy: completely incoherent no understanding of markets totally in thrall to an ideology of somehow the private market solves only everything and yet at the same time he thinks that the Government should have gotten involved to stop the closure of Marsden Point oil refinery. Simon Court: I never said that. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well the speaker certainly did imply that something else should have been done. So anyway it was a very confused speech from a very confused man but also not surprising because he does have a background in civil engineering and it is frankly traffic engineers and town planners who are entirely responsible for our transport system which is terribly energy inefficient. I think that it would be useful to traverse a little bit of the content that I would like to which is not directly related to the bill but it is responding to things that were raised in previous speeches. But first I will say that the Green Party is supporting this bill the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill and one of the things that is highlighted in the regulatory impact statement is that we are expecting a fall in demand for petrol and diesel. In fact there's already some signs that that is happening thanks to the extreme success of the Clean Car Discount policies which have led to a much greater influx of low-emissions vehicles than we saw before those policies came in. Climate change initiatives and technological developments mean that demand for petrol has plateaued and will start to decline from the mid-2020s. Of course if we had more flexible and sensible town planning rules then that would result in a reduction in vehicle kilometres travelled. I think what the members from the National Party and the ACT Party are confused about is that our high reliance on private vehicles is a consequence of bad Government regulation and subsidies which have unintentionally created a transport system that is incredibly inefficient when it comes to energy and it also costs households and businesses much more than is ideal because they have to spend so much money on private vehicles which sit parked for 96 percent of the time. It's extremely low capital productivity. So the opportunity for New Zealand that you would think that people on the right would understand if they understood markets and economics—but you know they don't; it's more like a virtue-signalling thing on their part—is that there's this opportunity to get better outcomes for the climate for the environment and for fuel resilience simply by planning our transport system in a more efficient way which gives people more choice which means they don't have to buy as many private vehicles which saves them money and saves time sitting in traffic. It reduces the amount of land—valuable land—in our towns and cities that's tied up with simply moving or storing cars but it also helps with this very thing that this bill is about which is improving the resilience of our economy and transport system to shocks in supply for petrol or diesel and to high oil prices. So as the Green Party has been saying for over 20 years there is this incredible opportunity. Everything we do to improve our energy efficiency of our transport system also improves our resilience to high oil prices and also reduces the demand for petrol and diesel and is a direct benefit to our economy because we don't have to import as much fuel. So it's just like win-win win-win—all these things that we could do in transport. But unfortunately what is becoming increasingly clear in the speeches in the House and outside of the House is that the ACT Party doesn't believe in climate change and doesn't believe we need to do anything about it. It wants to protect the status quo. It doesn't want us to actually take any proactive practical action even when it will benefit us economically because those members are just ideologically opposed to any changes that might benefit our climate or our environment. That is why it is truly a scary prospect but it's fortunately very unlikely that ACT will be part of the next Government. But certainly voters at home should be asking themselves very serious questions: can we trust these people who have very fringe views on climate change? Can we trust them in Government? Absolutely not. They have no practical solutions and they come to the House and give speeches that are just completely incoherent when it comes to responding to issues like climate change and our need to improve fuel resilience. So I think that's enough from me on this bill. Thank you Madam Speaker.