Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Better things are possible. The whole reason I was motivated to stand for the Green Party and get involved in politics is because I am eternally hopeful and I have seen places that make better decisions than New Zealand currently does: places where people have warm dry affordable homes where they use more renewable electricity where they have lower fuel bills and they have cleaner air and kids walk and cycle to school and people are healthier and happier as a result. Ironically in those very places that the National Party identified as the countries in the world with the best roads"—the Netherlands Singapore Japan; what do all these places have in common? The majority of people in the cities are not using cars and the reason for that is because they've invested in alternatives. All of this is possible for New Zealand as well. But as long as we are going to be totally focused on cars and roads as this Government is—if they want to realistically do anything to meet our climate targets which they say over and over they are committed to we have to do something about the cars coming into the country and reduce those emissions and we have to be evidence based about what is going to work. I want to acknowledge my predecessor Jeanette Fitzsimons co-leader of the Green Party the late Jeanette Fitzsimons someone who was way—way—ahead of her time and calmly persevered in here. She set up the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and worked alongside the hon David Parker on fuel economy standards—which were then thrown out by the National Government in 2008 and as a result of that we were lagging behind the rest of the world. That's very clear when you look at these graphs from the International Council on Clean Transportation which compares New Zealand Mexico Japan Chile South Korea Australia China Brazil India the United States Canada the UK and EU and shows that up until very recently the average fuel economy of the vehicles coming into New Zealand was worse than all of those other countries. And nobody benefits from that here in New Zealand; nobody benefits from being a dumping ground for polluting vehicles. It just means we spend more money on petrol and diesel and we have worse air quality and more people die as a result—and we have worse carbon emissions. So here's the opportunity that we had to have evidence-based policy that was going to get results—objective results—that would benefit everyone in New Zealand as proven by the benefit-cost analysis that was done. But in fact the policies exceeded expectations. They were working even better than planned. The Clean Car Discount combined with the Clean Car Standard saw a drastic reduction in the average emissions of the vehicles coming into this country. Before we brought those policies in the industry said "No way can't be done—can't be done." That's what they said. But then guess what happened? We did bring in the policies and it happened and the average fuel economy of cars coming in—and bear with me I know the other side doesn't like numbers they don't like to get into the numbers but we went from 189 grams of carbon per kilometre to 136 grams of carbon per kilometre. It was decreasing at 50 grams per kilometre per year—incredibly fast rate. The average emissions on that trend for May 2024 would have been 92 grams per kilometre and now they're up to 161 grams per kilometre. So objectively ditching the Clean Car Discount putting up the road-user charges for electric vehicles and now introducing certainty in the sense that the standards for 2025 to 2027 are going to be watered down means that we will get more polluting vehicles in New Zealand than we would otherwise get. And who benefits from this in New Zealand? Who? Anyone? Oh a tiny percentage of people—the only people the Minister is actually going to consult about this policy because he's put this legislation through under urgency with no select committee process. We've heard from heaps of people actually in the vehicle industry that they are very concerned that this means ditching the standards. It's introducing uncertainty and it's at a time when electric vehicles are increasing globally—sales are drastically increasing but they have plummeted in New Zealand and this locks in emissions for 20 years from now because brand new vehicles that come into the country they're still going to be driven in 20 years. So every year that we import more fossil fuel vehicles that have high emissions we're locked into those emissions for ages. So it's just a total own goal but you know entirely expected from a Minister who takes very seriously the comments on his Facebook page: rather than looking at evidence rather than looking at what is going to be effective turn everything into a culture war make it all about blaming certain categories of people when in truth we all have to face climate change together. The farmers are being affected by the floods and the droughts. We have to work together to solve this problem and we were—we were solving it together. But those people on the other side they will use hate and division and utter propaganda to stop progress—to stop progress. Why? Because the people who donate to them stand to benefit. A tiny percentage of people—a tiny percentage of corporations and very rich individuals. My colleague Tangi Utikere said that these parties are not ambitious. Well they are very ambitious for a very small percentage of people. They want a very small percentage of people who already own the most and have earned the highest profits to earn even more—double-down on the status quo and pretend that letting a few people get richer or a few overseas corporations make more money at the expense of New Zealand's atmosphere and air quality that that's somehow going to make New Zealand better off as a country. What a joke—what a joke. It's positively Orwellian the propaganda and the words that come from this Government when they describe their actions. We had a Government policy statement today supposedly about increasing economic growth and productivity—what a joke. Every action it takes is setting us backwards on the failed policies of the 20th century that have led to New Zealand having an incredibly inefficient transport system incredibly high petrol and diesel bills and it's going to keep doing that. The Minister said with respect to this legislation that it was increasing certainty for the industry. It's doing the exact opposite. As he admitted during the committee stages putting it into regulation means that the standard for next year—just six months from now 2025—could be higher or could be lower. He said he's done this to make it consistent with how the standards were going to be set two three four or five years from now. The truth is it's increasing uncertainty and it's making it very clear that the Government is going to water down the standards irrespective of the evidence about the climate impacts irrespective of the evidence about the economic cost to New Zealand of doing that irrespective of the evidence of the health impacts. The Government is going to carry on down this track because a small number of overseas vehicle manufacturers will find it slightly more profitable because the rest of the world is not taking these polluting vehicles anymore. I've heard the ACT Party say during this debate that "Oh it's so great that the vehicle industry is making more electric vehicles and reducing emissions." The only reason they're doing that is because most of the rest of the civilised world has understood that in order to get them to increase efficiency we had to have fuel economy standards and price incentives like the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount. That's literally what every other country in the world and the EU and China and the US are all doing right now. So when we water down the standards and we get rid of the price incentives what's going to happen? Again New Zealand will be getting the more polluting vehicles that are more costly to run that are more damaging to our health and our cities. And all of this for what—for what? Do the members opposite actually think that's going to make us better off as a country? If so I'm intrigued as to the rationale for how one could think that we'll be better off as a country by importing more highly polluting vehicles that cost more money to run and that means we have to import more petrol and diesel. Why is that better for New Zealand?Hon Member: Listen to our speeches.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yeah I haven't heard anything that makes any sense from anyone in the Government parties on this topic particularly not the Minister. But it's just one of those things that if they say something enough in the media they know that a certain percentage of people will believe it. So they just keep saying "Black is white white is black up is down let the rich get richer and then we'll be richer." Oh yeah that's what's happened over the last 30 years—that really works! Double down on neoliberalism double down on lack of regulation. Actually what I do see—the common thread from the Government parties—is there's a constant trade off where we allow a small number of people to get richer a small number of corporations to increase profits at the expense of life itself. It's more cancer more car crashes more climate chaos—for what?"