Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker tēnā koutou e te Whare. I would highly recommend that people check out this Budget Policy Statement. It's actually quite a short document it has some really useful and interesting information and graphs showing New Zealand's labour market and annual consumer price inflation relative to the rest of the world. It actually shows that—at the time this was published anyway—we were doing quite well relative to other countries. So it does help to situate New Zealand in the context of the global factors that are driving some of the challenges around higher prices.When it comes to the wellbeing approach it's very wonderful to see these sorts of objectives laid out in the Budget Policy Statement. There's five wellbeing objectives. Just transitions—supporting New Zealanders to transition to a climate-resilient sustainable low-emissions economy. I wouldn't use the word economy"; I would say "Way of living". The second one is physical and mental wellbeing—supporting improved health outcomes for all New Zealanders particularly the mental wellbeing of our young people. Three is the future of work—equipping New Zealanders and enabling businesses to benefit from new technologies and lift productivity and wages through innovation. Four is Māori and Pasifika people—really focusing on lifting incomes skills opportunities and access to housing. And fifth is child wellbeing which is reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing.So all these objectives are really great and the Green Party absolutely supports those. But ultimately the Labour Government has sort of tied their hands behind their backs in terms of achieving any of these because the fiscal strategy and keeping to fiscal rules ultimately means not addressing some of the bigger-picture issues that are driving inequality in this country. Ultimately the kind of short-term approach to politics doesn't set us up for the long term it doesn't ensure that we've stayed the course even in the midst of political dramas.So for example this week we've seen the Government walk back on commitments to making progress in reducing emissions and funding in that. If I look at the work under way in the Budget Policy Statement across water climate biodiversity and other domains we see some of the major initiatives that are effective that have delivered results were initiatives that the Green Party and the Green Ministers implemented last term like the Clean Car Discount and Jobs for Nature and the Plastics Innovation Fund. Then we flip over and we see one of the main ones in the safety of New Zealanders is preventing and responding to family and sexual violence—again initiated by a Green under-secretary and now it's being delivered by a Green Minister.So the Green Party is very clear on the transformation that we need and how to get there. You set out your priorities in your Budget and you make sure that you're staying to the strategic vision and carrying on for the long term. That means not getting distracted with short-term responses and reactions to political attacks from the people on the right who you know have absolutely no solutions. As long as the Labour Government's caught up trying to respond to the likes of the National Party they're never going to make progress on these issues. And that's why we need so many more Greens in Parliament and in Government to be able to implement the sensible solutions that actually will deliver the benefits for New Zealand.One of the key observations that the Green Party has brought to this Parliament for many decades which the National Party has yet to discover is that we live on a planet. We're part of nature. We have to live within the ecological limits. If we don't design our economy and our society to live within ecological limits we will have no future. And yes those men on the right—all men at the moment—really do not grasp that. They're very much stuck in the 20th century extractive model of society and the economy and really want to persist with the colonisation which led them to the privileged positions that they have right now which was ultimately about stealing people's land alienating people from the land taking all of the natural resources in a very short-term way and not building up for the long term.So what are our objectives; what would be in a Green Budget Policy Statement? Living within our ecological limits and making sure everyone has enough. And within that space which is quite eloquently explained by Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics—although I do think we'd need to put an indigenous Aotearoan perspective on that—there is an incredibly sensible approach to Government finances and the economy that would actually enable New Zealanders to thrive and would actually achieve the objectives set out in this Budget Policy Statement.So what is that? What are the Green solutions? Well let's start with a rent freeze a warrant of fitness on rental properties and a huge public housing bill because every single person in Aotearoa can and should have a secure warm dry healthy home so let's make that happen. Rents are driving inflation and the National Party solution to this is to allow landlords to keep creaming it. That doesn't make any sense to me. We can have reasonable rents and we need to regulate for that while we increase the housing supply from the public sector.Secondly let's invest in sustainable transport because not only is that going to reduce emissions it actually just connects people and communities and would be the single most effective thing we could do to improve productivity in this country because our current transport situation is incredibly costly and it uses a huge amount of our GDP. I mean just last year vehicle and fuel imports exceeded our dairy exports. So think about that. All of our dairy exports are only paying for the vehicles and fuel to drive around the country. Now we could have a far more efficient transport system if the public invest in public transport and efficient transport. We wouldn't have to buy as many vehicles. We wouldn't have to fill up the tank with so much fuel. The Government wouldn't have to cut petrol tax to try and reduce cost of living because people would have affordable sustainable options that weren't so reliant on petrol. So it would be wonderful if the National Party could embrace an economic analysis of their transport budget because they certainly don't.So the Greens would invest in regional rail. Put bus lanes everywhere right now; get enough bus drivers—addressing housing affordability will help us with the bus driver shortage—and pay them properly. But we should have publicly owned public transport as well.Community energy—very simple things that we could do to improve people's ability to have more resilient sustainable electricity production rather than the current crazy corporate model we have where private investors are sucking value out of our publicly funded electricity assets that we built up over generations. So if we actually managed energy and electricity for the public good it would be better for everyone in New Zealand including the businesses.Support people to have livable incomes. Every single person in Aotearoa should have enough to make ends meet. There's some simple things we could do to value the unpaid mahi that so many people do that is very important to our values and also to our productivity and sustainability as a society. Here's a simple one: extend paid parental leave. Iceland has nine months paid parental leave at 80 percent of your previous salary—three months for the birth parent three months for the other parent and three months that can be divided up between them. Then they have free high quality early childhood education from whenever parents decide to go back to work. Now why can't we do that here in New Zealand? If Iceland can do it—a country with fewer than 400000 people—we absolutely could do that here in Aotearoa.And we could have a four-day work week and a guaranteed minimum income. All of this can be funded if we change our tax system to make it fairer. Tax excess profit tax wealth because right now our economy is allowing people to benefit and enrich themselves through things that don't offer genuine value to everyone else. And that is the truth as our current economic system cannot differentiate between money earned as the result of a genuine contribution and that earned through exploitation of people and the environment. Once we're able to differentiate between those two it's very clear that the oil companies made record profits in 2022 through selling a product that is literally causing devastation around the world right now. Like Cyclone Gabrielle the horrific flooding in Auckland—direct consequences of climate change induced by fossil fuel use. And yet the oil companies made record profits. The banks made record profits last year mainly through things that have nothing to do with the efficiency of providing their service. But you know the Government's COVID response combined with rising interest rates now are leading to excess bank profits."