Davidson MaramaHon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): All right the boys have had a little bit of a go. The Green Party will vote to pass this Budget. It includes some really important steps that will make a huge difference to people's lives. As a result of this Budget people are going to find it so much easier to get on a bus or train. Thousands of families won't be forced to pay through the roof to get their tamariki into early childhood education (ECE) and I do send a mihi to Minister Tinetti and I understand how much of a difference that is going to make for so many people. I know that the ECE sector are going to be particularly happy about that. Households will get the help they need to make their homes warmer and healthier and lower their power bills. We are stoked that this Budget delivers a number of policies that the Green Party have campaigned on for over 10 years. Nine years ago we promised to extend the 20 hours' ECE subsidy to cover two-year-olds and this has happened. Greens have campaigned for 10 years to deliver more affordable public transport and now in Government this is a reality—yay! [Applause] Thank you my colleagues. Warmer Kiwi homes is also a longstanding Green commitment that dates back to 2009 when the previous Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons won an agreement from the Government to insulate up to 180000 homes. It was only when we got into Government in 2017 that we could scale this up to really make a difference. The key message from this Budget is that if Labour wants to keep working with us we have plenty more ideas we can share.The Budget also builds on the foundations that the Green Party has laid out over the last four years to take climate action in every part of Aotearoa with another $1.4 billion towards cutting climate pollution. This is huge—[Applause]—yeah please pakipaki mai. This is huge and it is on top of a $2.9 billion package in Budget 2022 and $865 million before that. But we absolutely need so much more. Overnight some of the world's leading scientists have confirmed that globally we are now more likely than not to warm the planet by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is the globally agreed limit for what we can safely deal with. Every fraction of a single degree matters. A 1.6-degree world is a lot less bad than a 1.7-degree world but we simply cannot find out what 2 degrees of warming looks like and that is up to all of us together. Every single tonne of climate pollution that is stopped matters. We are in a climate emergency and it is time for everyone to act like it.When I look across this Budget I am struck not just by the impact the Green Party has had on people's lives but by the breadth of issues on which we are making a difference. Is it enough? Not even close. So let me be clear: while we are pleased with large parts of this Budget we know it still falls a long way short of what is needed. There is so much more that we could have done in this Budget now—not future ones but now. This was the Budget that could have reduced the outrageous and immoral level of income and wealth inequality we have in this country. It could have been the Budget that confronted climate change with the urgency and the scale that it demands a Budget that made sure everyone in Aotearoa has what they need to have—kai on the table a safe place to call home and to be able to live a good life—a Budget that invested in action to protect our rivers land forests beaches and oceans a Budget that can make sure that secondary teachers' pay is in line with the rising costs of living and a Budget that upholds Tiriti justice returning resources directly back to iwi and hapū so that tangata whenua can finally have the autonomy and authority over our whenua and wellbeing that we were promised. It could have been a Budget that taxed the mega-rich to pay for it. Everything we need to make life better for people in Aotearoa exists but what's missing is the political willpower to use it. Budgets are a political choice. These choices are meant to reflect the underlying values of the Government of the day. The reason we have a Budget is to allocate resources where they are needed so we can build the kinds of communities and society that are good for all people to live in to create the conditions we need to support each other to care for native wildlife to cut climate pollution and to make sure the richest few contribute more to cover the good things we all need. The Budget is one of the best chances the Government has to make clear to the people why it is in power and what it wants to do. Today's Budget will be talked about at length in the media in our workplaces around the dinner table and amongst friends. In every case it should be judged on the difference it will make to people's lives. For many people the struggle to put food on the table and to pay the bills is the concern that rises above all others. It's the worry that keeps people up at night and the first thought people have when they wake up in the morning and understandably so.Inflation hits lower-income families the hardest—those whānau who spend the majority of their income covering the essentials like food and rent. One of the major drivers of inflation is corporate greed. Massive companies have cynically used global crises to push up their profits and with it they have brought us more expensive groceries and higher energy bills. So while corporations like banks and supermarkets juice their profits thousands of people are forced to struggle to get by: to put kai on the table to pay the bills and to heat their homes.As I stand here I feel the huge responsibility that is upon me and the Green Party to rewrite the rules around care contribution and connection; nurses and teachers being paid what they deserve; warm affordable homes; thriving native wildlife; resilient communities with places for people to connect; fast reliable buses and trains; and clean air to breathe. When thousands of our friends our neighbours and our whānau cannot afford to make ends meet when we are facing more extreme weather super-powered by a fossil fuel industry whose political power has caused climate change then we have a fundamental choice to make. We cannot allow the very rich to get even richer while everyone else struggles to get by. We can collect the resources we need from those most able to pay and use that money to improve the lives of millions of people who have unjustifiably been missing out for generations.Successive Governments have repeatedly denied their ability to fix major problems. They tell us that their hands are tied. Balancing the Budget has become an end in itself so much so that it seems to be higher up the list of priorities of most political parties than actually helping people put kai on the table. The time to change that is right now. It's simply not good enough for politicians to continue to rely on tired and disproven arguments about restraining spending. Aotearoa is a wealthy country. We have what we need—there are no excuses for children going hungry. Putting a low spending to GDP ratio ahead of meeting the needs of everyone in our beautiful whenua is deeply flawed it is economic nonsense and worst of all it shows a lack of vision for building an inclusive Aotearoa that does work for everyone. Ending poverty ensuring everyone has a home and a high-quality health and education system protecting our environment—as with any Budget the only constraints a Government faces are those it places on itself. Right now the biggest constraint of all is the money available and the tools we are not using to access it. This isn't because the money is not there; it's because Government after Government has actively decided not to use it. It is simple: we must change Budget and tax rules so we can pay for the things that really matter to us. The money we need to support each other is already there. Some people have way more than enough and others have been suffering through successive Government rules. There is no economic reason for these self-imposed revenue constraints. It's a political choice—that's it—and it's a choice that comes with a cost. The rich get richer as they accumulate more and more unearned tax-free wealth while the rest of us struggle to get by waiting for a bus that never comes waiting for care from an over-worked nurse or waiting for a decent affordable home.So if people want an answer to the question of why there is not more in this Budget to pay for the things we need then look no further than the ongoing failure to fix the tax system. Cabinet has the tools it needs; it just needs more Green MPs to share our homework a lot more. At a time—[Applause] Oh you're so cute my colleagues—I love it. At a time of climate crisis and a time of massive wealth and income inequality now is the time to completely change how we do things. Through political choice wealth in this country is severely severely out of balance. Right now a tiny group of 311 people hold in their hands more wealth than nearly half of the entire population altogether. So this is a mega-rich group of families with a combined wealth of $85 billion and yet they pay less than half the effective tax rate of a nurse. To put this into context Government spending in 2022 on health education and welfare including superannuation was around $90 billion—only just above the combined wealth of these mere 311 individuals. These individuals have on average wealth of $276 million each—$276 million each. The average house price in Aotearoa is $1 million say so that means 311 people own the equivalent of 276 houses each. That is immoral and unacceptable. Do you know how long it would take for the average nurse to earn that amount of money: 3680 years. They talk to us about who works hard for their money—if that was the only definition all nurses would be billionaires. To stand by in the face of such a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is stupid. Not only is it so obviously unfair; it is also counterproductive. It is starving our health education transport and social services. Make no mistake we got here by political choices—a choice to favour a tiny group of people at the top of expense and at the expense of the rest of us. The fact that there are 311 people with enough money in their bank accounts or tied up in their tax-free property portfolios to lift every single family—Matt Doocey: You're giving them free prescriptions.Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: —in this country out of poverty—Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Oh look the rich are triggered.Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: —overnight we could all make this decision. Oh my I'm shocked that the rich are triggered! I did not expect that. This Budget did not change those rules. It's politicians who need to be triggered. We made these rules and we can change them and the rest of you aren't moving. This House watches over one of the most egregious concentrations of wealth that I can think of. We must muster the collective political courage to do something about it. Well the Green Party is up to it. We're up for it. The time is now to be bold. We need urgent action to cut climate pollution and build resilient communities where everyone has what they need to thrive; not just a few. We want to make sure everyone has what they need to have kai on the table and a safe place to call home and to live a good life not just a struggling surviving one but an actual decent life. We need to stop large corporations trashing our environment. We need to restore our rivers our oceans our forests and wildlife to health—to ora—for the benefit of everyone—Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Our seabed. Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: —and we need to allocate enough resources in our Budgets to do these things—yes Debbie Ngarewa-Packer including our beautiful moana and seabeds. The only way we can do that is by rewriting the rules to make sure the richest few people in Aotearoa provide more to cover the things we all collectively value. Ko tēnei te wā kua tae te wā. [This is the time; the time has come.]Today's Budget makes it clear: if people want a Government that will build an Aotearoa that works for everyone and asks the most privileged members of our community to make it happen the we need more Green MPs to influence the direction of the next Government.Let me be up front about what needs to be put on the table and pushed for in any post-negotiations: a tax on the richest few that will raise money that we can use to build a climate-friendly wiser and more just prepared Aotearoa that we can all be proud of and an Aotearoa where everyone has a warm affordable place to call home and kai on the table; where housing is treated as a human right and not just a get-rich scheme for the already wealthy; where people have the choice to walk or cycle or get on fast frequent affordable buses or trains to meet their friends to get to the shops to go to school or to get to the park; where everyone has access to the healthcare they need whenever they need it wherever they need it; where our nurses and teachers are all paid what they deserve; where all of our students can succeed without having to skip meals to make ends meet like boosting student allowances to livable levels and making them available to all; where we have restored our awa our moana our ngahere and our wildlife to health for the benefit of everyone; where Te Tiriti and mana Māori motuhake is honoured and embedded in everything we do and every decision we make; and where land is rightfully returned to tangata whenua so that we may have tino rangatiratanga over our whenua and resources. I cannot say how the world will look for our mokopuna and mokopuna to come but what I do know is that it will reflect the decisions we make today. The time is now to get those decisions right. No reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.