Genter Julie Anne: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17840. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I love New Zealand. I stood for Parliament for the Green Party because I am passionate about finding solutions to the long-term problems we face. There is no question that we are facing some pretty big challenges. We heard from Dr Kennedy Graham earlier about the clear and present danger caused by human-caused climate change. This is not a subject that is up for debate. We know it is happening and we know it is caused by us and our use of fossil fuels and our deforestation. We have no choice—either we change what we are doing or nature will change what we are doing for us. But we can change what we are doing and be better off.The National Government does not seem to believe that this is possible. It wants us to keep doing more of the same—the things that will make climate change worse that pollute our rivers that threaten our beaches and that increase the gap between the wealthy and the poor. National says that is just reality. The reality is we cannot afford to keep doing more of the same thing in the long term. The reality is that we have fantastic opportunities to green our economy which will create jobs and make New Zealand an even better place to live. That is what the Green Party is here for.The National Party would have New Zealanders believe that the Greens are against jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want high-wage jobs in a cleantech economy. There is a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers I would like to quote: “The potential economic gains from low carbon development are too significant to be ignored. … with the right policies the clean technology sector in New Zealand could be worth between NZ$7.5 billion and NZ$22 billion to the economy by 2015.” So how do we do this? How do we decouple economic prosperity from resource depletion and fossil fuel use? We need the right policies. We need to remove the barriers to investment in clean technology. That is why our co-leader Russel Norman yesterday announced the policy initiative called the Green Investment Bank. This is just the first of a suite of positive initiatives we will be announcing in the run-up to the election in order to get New Zealand on the right track—that is creating good jobs in a high-tech low-carbon economy.What is the Green Investment Bank? It is Government-owned but it is a for-profit investment bank that will specialise in projects that increase sustainability. It will cost the Government about $120 million over 3 years to set up. We can fund that by raisingour royalties on oil and mining up to international averages. It will be financially self-sustaining and it will earn good returns. Like the Superannuation Fund it will be entirely independent of the Government. This is not a new or radical idea. Like most Green Party policies it has been done successfully overseas. The oldest example is in Germany. The State-owned self-financing bank there has grown to be one of the most successful investment banks in the world investing $73 billion in projects worldwide one-third of which have an environmental or climate protection dimension. Green investment banks can be found in Japan Malaysia and three of the larger states in the United States including California and New York and the Conservative Government in the United Kingdom recently established a green investment bank there.The Green Investment Bank is a perfect example of an opportunity for New Zealand to create smart green jobs that will benefit us all in the long term. It is proven it is practical it is forward-looking and it deals with the reality of climate change and our need to transition to a low-carbon economy. It is in sharp contrast to the National Government’s strategy of doing more of the same—more mining more oil drilling more motorways more traffic more dairy cows and more raw logs—leaving us completely vulnerable to external shocks to rising oil prices and to high costs for the transportation system that we have right now. We are vulnerable to the challenge of climate change and rising oil prices and we have the opportunity to reduce that vulnerability and leave all New Zealanders better off.We love New Zealand. The Green Party is here to look after our precious environment and to ensure that all of our people have great opportunities for good jobs well into the long term well into the future. Thank you.