Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting this bill. I unfortunately was not on the select committee that heard the submissions and we don't have a member on that select committee but we did read through the report and the submissions. It was quite interesting to hear that fuel companies like Gull are supportive and think these are really important changes.Just in reference to the debate that's happening here in the Chamber this afternoon I do think it's worth covering some of the territory that the National and ACT parties covered in their speeches because I guess they're showing their true colours which is that they're quite happy to protect corporates profiteering and they want to blame the Government for price rises even though the Government basically invests in things that benefit all of us. So really it's a case of wanting to maximise private profit in their case and not social good and public good. They use this mask of pretending to understand economics and claiming that economics is in favour of the approach that they're talking about when of course it's not because anyone who's studied economics knows that one of the challenges for a market economy is monopolies duopolies and oligopolies. That's exactly the reason why we need regulation and things like the Commerce Commission.In fact if you go way back in time to Standard Oil it was broken up into multiple oil companies. They're still able to profiteer and they're still actually having excess profits at a time when their actions are directly responsible for the catastrophic climate events that are hitting many nations across the world and that's something that we need to change. And that's something that if you get outside of New Zealand—and I know those members have probably never been outside of New Zealand—it's basically mainstream that people think that it's not right that big corporates should be making massive profits for trashing the planet. That's not good for the economy. We need a planet to have an economy; we need a civilisation. All of that's under threat from climate change. I guess that their world view is just so limited but they're basically on the side of big corporate profits and against ordinary people.So why shouldn't we cut petrol tax? Petrol tax is what we use to build our public infrastructure and to maintain it. So of course we think it's OK—if the price of carbon is reflected truly in the price of oil then the price of oil at the pump will rise but if it's going towards a public good which means that people know that the Government is investing in alternatives that are going to make it possible to get around their community without having to rely on a car and oil then that's a good thing.That's precisely why it makes sense to use the National Land Transport Fund to invest in things like the lower North Island rail improvements where there was a business case that the benefit-to-cost ratio was well above one; it was almost two. So you get a benefit from that. The majority of the benefits were to people using the roads. So I know it's hard to understand a system where you don't need to use the train to benefit from it. In fact there were greater benefits happening for the people who use the roads because other people were then not using the roads; they were using the train. The single-biggest imposition on people trying to drive a car is other people driving cars. So if you can reduce the other cars on the road that's how you're going to make the biggest difference to people who need to use a truck or a car to get somewhere.So yeah to bring it back to this bill this is an important role for the Government and for the public to take to make sure that people aren't being price gouged. We should be proud and happy to invest in our public infrastructure and taxes so that's why I was surprised to hear the National Party member being against the idea of—he's for the fuel companies making excess profits which of course we know they were but he's not for investing in our roads in our road maintenance and in our road safety; or better yet our rail network which provides benefits to the road network and to the climate and to the people who use it.So I think that's fundamentally the difference. We need to call out the fact that the language of economics that's being used to defend an approach that's really about letting a small number of people make excess wealth and excess profit and get more than their fair share rather than all of us working together for things that benefit us all. That is the fundamental difference. I hope that those watching this debate at home can see through the very shallow lines from National and ACT. Like if they get into Government—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well let's just let the people at home know what's in the bill shall we?Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yeah. Well what is in the bill Mr Speaker as we've been talking about is some really important implementation of recommendations from the Commerce Commission that's going to result in hopefully fairer fuel prices. But it's important to acknowledge that yes some of the fuel price is fuel excise duty and tax and that's a good thing because that's what enables us to fix the safety of the roads to maintain the roads and to build new transport infrastructure.So it's good when you're paying the fuel price and you know it's going towards something you will use or that may well benefit your community; that's good. But do you want to pay it to offshore shareholders? No. You don't want to have to pay more than you have to to offshore shareholders.The whole point of the Commerce Commission is to try and make sure that we do have fair pricing. But the National Party of course are the defenders of the monopolists and the corporate raiders and they're all for excess profit going into private hands. Privatise the benefit socialise the losses—that is the approach of the right and they will use an excuse of economics to defend it when they do not understand economics in the least. They don't share the values of public benefit public good all of us pitching in together all of us working together to solve the climate challenge.