Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 28 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15557. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare Pāremata. It is great to be starting the year on such a positive note. That positive note is that this is the year when people have the opportunity to vote for a party committed to positive solutions. The Green Party is looking forward to engaging with all New Zealanders about a smart and sustainable economy and a compassionate economy with strategies that will actually reduce inequality and protect the environment because the environment is what sustains everything and everyone in this country. It is just the Government that has not understood that yet.Today the Prime Minister’s statement was a little bit of a cheap shot. It is the kind of thing that Lorde was talking about in her song when she said that the privileged live at a particular level but the rest of us do not live there and we actually do not want to. The Prime Minister had a number of cheap shots against the Greens including a highly selective interpretation of the economic situation where he took credit for all kinds of things that no one in this House can take credit for and he skipped over the difficult issues like climate change; the causes and effects of poverty unemployment and under-employment on people; children’s needs; and the ever-degrading state of our environment.The Prime Minister’s written speech had a focus on natural resources which really continued that “mine it drill it kill it” agenda and conveniently failed to mention some of the MMP collaborations that have made real change. This is possibly because as mycolleague Kevin Hague has just said the Government does not want to undermine its own rhetorical attacks on the Green Party by talking about joint achievements where we have played a leading and positive role. An example of this is the memorandum of understanding that I negotiated with Dr Nick Smith and then with Amy Adams on cleaning up toxic sites. It is kind of hard to characterise the Green Party members as a bunch of fringe crazies when we have managed to work with Ministers and actually deliver some very positive changes and leadership on issues of significant public and environmental risk.I was a reluctant participant in the contaminated sites memorandum of understanding at first because I was not sure what we would be able to negotiate. I have been characterised by the right-wing commentators who do not know what is going on in politics as someone who might be a bit too challenging to work with on these things. But in fact despite the changes to the Ministers and the Government’s instability in the Government team we have made some solid and important progress on toxic chemicals which will benefit all New Zealanders. The clean-up of the Tūī Mine was an urgent task and now the Greens the local authority the Minister for the Environment and mana whenua have overseen the clean-up of the unstable tailings dam and an improvement of water quality from that abandoned mine. We have negotiated a national register of contaminated sites and we are collectively engaging with regional councils on issues of consistency recording and transparency.These are all going to benefit the environment and people. This is a matter of public health and the health of the environment. I look forward to working with the Government further on this and to being part of a new progressive Government to also work on this in the future to make sure that we clean up the mess of previous bad practice and weak regulation as well as the frightening ignorance around chemicals. The clean-up of our country is a Treaty issue and it is the responsibility of all political parties to make it work. The opportunity of MMP as Russel Norman said today is to get good things done without compromising our principles and our values. So I look forward to more solid and constructive work on the contaminated sites issue.The Green Party has also started the year with an excellent policy launch for reducing inequality through education which the Prime Minister dismissed as giving the odd kid a lunch. This particularly unfortunate disparagement is completely inaccurate because in fact this programme has been well received by many groups outside this Parliament. Groups such as the Youth Hub Barbadoes in Christchurch said it was excellent and right on the button because it will help decile 1 to decile 4 schools give children a lunch and it also provides an opt in for other schools where children need to eat to learn. You cannot learn if you cannot eat—food for thought Prime Minister. It is very typical of the Greens that we have thought it through. First things first let us make sure our kids are fed then we can improve the quality of their learning.We have a very positive and necessary vision that we offer to this country and a very green Parliament is what we actually need. So when it comes to attacking the Green Party as Kevin Hague just said we have made many positive changes in this term of Government. Despite the disparagement attacks and opposition we have worked with Ministers. Despite National having amnesia about that we look forward to leading a progressive Government that will actually make change on many of these issues. Whether it is education whether it is cycleways whether it is unemployment whether it is union rights—