Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. Before I begin I would like to acknowledge on behalf of the Green Party the fact that over the course of the last month tens of thousands of New Zealanders have lost their livelihoods have lost their homes and in many cases have actually lost their lives. Tens of thousands of people have at some point experienced a level of homelessness and displacement. They've been without power. They've been without the ability to communicate with their loved ones—to communicate whether they are safe or not—and our emergency services and our civil defence responders and so on have risen to the challenge as best as they are able but this has been a catastrophic series of events in Aotearoa and there has been enormous heartbreak for many many thousands and tens of thousands of New Zealanders over the last several weeks.Our top priority right now has to be on ensuring that everybody has everything that they need to be able to start the recovery in their communities and in their homes. I do want to say to our new Prime Minister that I think that the immediate response over the last few weeks has been sure-footed. It's been very strong and given that the motion in front of the House is that we express our confidence in the Government I would like to say that we do have confidence in this Government particularly based on its sure-footed handling of the crisis over the last several weeks.I'd like to congratulate—well I was considering whether I ought to congratulate the new Prime Minister given that over the course of the three or four weeks that he has been the Prime Minister he has had to face two of the most significant weather-related events and crises that the country has faced in a century. I would like to say from the outset that it is clear that the recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland and Northland floods two weeks before that are obviously going to dominate the Government's work programme for the remainder of this year and in fact the next Government's work programme as well—certainly for some years to come. So it seems appropriate that in responding to the Prime Minister's statement and to the Government's work programme that he's outlined that we start by talking about the cyclone.I note that in his response the Leader of the Opposition as far as I can recall did not mention the phrase climate change" once. And so I'd like to start over the course of my response by talking about some of the myths I have heard over the last couple of weeks about the tragedies that have befallen people around the country. Then I would like to talk about what we are going to do about it and finally finish on the theme that the Prime Minister raised around the cost of living crisis.There are three myths that I have heard primarily repeated in the media and on social media over the course of the last couple of weeks—first of all that these floods and these storms and these droughts and these fires that we've been experiencing in the last few years and in particular over the course of the last month are no different from anything that has happened in this country before and I will come back to that. The second myth is that we ought to drop efforts to cut pollution and focus entirely on efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change and to become more resilient to these effects in the future. The third myth is that ultimately—and it's related to the second one—New Zealand is too small to make a difference so why should we bother anyway?Let me just start with the first myth because it is important that we base our response and our recovery programme on science rather than on mythology or whatever we see on social media most recently. First of all we do know that it is now possible to say what portion of any given event is attributable to the fact that the world has warmed up by 1.1 degrees over the course of the last century and a half. So even before Cyclone Gabrielle appeared six out of our 14 regions around the country—nearly half the country—was already in a state of recovery from weather-related events; two of those regions were in a regional state of emergency and that was before Cyclone Gabrielle hit and we had a national state of emergency declared. We haven't even finished recovering from the last set of disasters before the next one hits—that is the scale of the emergency that we face. I don't have numbers for Cyclone Gabrielle but we do know that when it comes to the floods in Auckland and in Northland that about 10 to 20 percent of the rain was caused by climate change. So that's about 2 to 4 centimetres out of the total 20 centimetres or so. Now the first 2 to 4 centimetres of rain is a puddle. We can handle that that's fine that's no different from anything else that occurs. But the last 2 to 4 centimetres that additional 10 to 20 percent equates to a biblical flood. It's the peak of the rain that causes the peak of the damage. And of course this isn't felt evenly right? It collects around our flood zones and gullies and so on and that's where you saw these catastrophic flash floods that caused so much damage. So we do know that climate change is supercharging these events and making them worse than they otherwise would be.So these events are related to climate change and it does not matter whether you believe in climate change or not. That does not change the fact that it is happening. That is like saying whether or not someone believes in gravity or not; whether you believe in gravity or not does not change the fact of its existence. That is merely science. I have no judgment on it that is just what is happening. So we have to be clear-eyed about that.The second myth that I've heard a lot over the last few weeks has been that we should drop efforts to cut pollution and focus entirely on resilience and on adaptation. And we have to walk and chew gum because I have to say that is a little bit like saying "I'm going to put all of my efforts into bailing the water out of my house but I'm not going to plug the hole in the roof that the water's coming through in the first place." It is as simple as that. We have to do both.Simon Court: What can New Zealand do about it?Hon JAMES SHAW: We do know that the increase in the weather events the intensity and the frequency of the droughts and the floods and the fires and the storms that we are experiencing is because the world has warmed up by about 1.1 degrees over the course of the last couple of hundred years. We also know that the world is on a trajectory to increase from that warming that's already happened—that will increase over the course of the coming decades and in fact the coming centuries. Every gram of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere exacerbates that effect—it exacerbates that effect and makes it worse. Every 10th of a degree makes those storms worse makes the droughts longer and more intense and makes the fires more fiery. My point is if we allow ourselves—as we have over the course of the last 30 years that we've been arguing about climate change—to continue to get it worse than the kinds of storms and floods that Aucklanders Northlanders people in Tai Rāwhiti and Napier and Hastings have experienced over the course of the last few weeks they will be worse next time. That is what we are doing. Every 10th of a degree matters.The third myth and I've heard it repeated behind me in the last couple of minutes is that New Zealand is too small to make a difference. That actually we should—you know we only account for less than 1 percent of global warming therefore we should just give up and leave it all to China and the United States and the European Union and others—Hon David Bennett: The Europeans won't do anything.Hon JAMES SHAW: —and I'm glad that the representatives of those countries are here to listen to this. New Zealand's population is about the size of Los Angeles. We've got about the same number of people as lives in Los Angeles City. So if we're saying "Actually you know what? New Zealand's too small to make a difference let's not bother." What we're saying is that actually "It's OK Los Angeles you don't need to cut your pollution either." And if Los Angeles doesn't need to do it then New York doesn't need to do it and Chicago doesn't need to do it; San Antonio doesn't need to do it and what you're saying is actually the United States doesn't need to do it either. We all have a part to play and we must all play the part that we are given.I love the fact that despite what I hear on occasion from members of the Opposition about being committed to the course about supporting the targets that we've collectively set we're hearing a chorus of objection from the Opposition right now to this idea that we might actually try and stop the pollution from causing climate change in the first place. The hypoc—oh I'm not allowed to use that word Mr Speaker but it starts with "H" and it ends with "ypocrisy". I have to say—SPEAKER: Order! The member knows he cannot use that word or even imply to use to it. He will stand withdraw and apologise.Hon JAMES SHAW: I withdraw and I apologise Mr Speaker. So the idea that New Zealand is too small to make a difference is a total myth. There are 90 countries in the world which like New Zealand emit less than 1 percent of the global total. Together we actually add up to about a third of the global total of emissions. Collectively the small countries of this world emit more than the United States does more than the European Union does more than China does and more than India does. Everybody has a part to play and it's no different. And so the idea that we would abandon efforts to stop this pollution and basically leave it all up to other people is like I say like saying "Well OK fine. I'm not going to fix the roof in my house; I'm going to leave that to somebody else. I'm just going to put all of my efforts into bailing out water." I think that that is an insult to all of the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who actually had to bail water from their houses over the course of the preceding month or so. This leads me on to what we actually do about it. There are three things I think that we can do and that we can let New Zealanders know that we—and we want to support the Government in this—can do over the coming months and for the remainder of this parliamentary term that will help to set things up in particular for the next parliamentary term. The first and the most significant one and we have heard people across the House talk about this is that we need to support families to rebuild better and safer than they were before—not just for this generation but also so that their homes and their communities will be safe and secure and warm and dry for their children and for their children. That is critically important. In this country frankly our rebuild responses in previous crises have not been brilliant and we have tended to rebuild in the same places to the same standard as we had prior to these events. And what that does is it actually builds in fragility. It makes us more at risk than we were before. So it is critically important that in the coming weeks we are able to say to New Zealanders who have lost their homes have lost their possessions and have lost their livelihoods that we will support them to rebuild whether that's in the same location or in different locations to a standard that is secure for the 21st century not the standard for the 20th century. Also that that standard takes account of the fact that this is not a fixed point right? There's no "there" there; this is a dynamic situation in which the world is continuing to warm. It will continue to warm because we do continue to put pollution into the atmosphere and the effects of these events will get worse and will get more frequent. Therefore we don't just need to be building to today's standard; we need to be building to a future standard for what we can predict is likely to come. The second thing is that obviously as the Prime Minister mentioned our existing infrastructure has been found badly wanting. That has been apparent for some time but it has particularly been exacerbated under these crisis events. And yet there are places around the country where actually things work quite well. And I want to mention the Awataha and Stonefields residential developments because actually they didn't flood in those recent Auckland developments and that was because the infrastructure there worked with nature rather than against it. I visited the Awataha development a couple of weeks ago after the floods there and the fact that they had daylighted the stream taken it out of what had been essentially a storm drain returned it to the open sky and planted the gully and the ravines that it flowed through shows that actually when you work with nature when you have these catastrophic weather events things like urban rivers and streams and wetlands can make an enormous difference and actually make us more resilient. So the idea that we would simply use more concrete—which in fact actually made things worse—is again a myth that I think we need to overcome. So I would like to say that as we build back from the recent cyclone we should pay particular attention to our horizontal infrastructure and say: well how can we make sure that this works with nature in a way that means that when we do have these events in the future we're able to cope with it?The third component of what we do about it that I'd like to bring to the House's attention—because it has been under the media spotlight for the last couple of weeks—is the Government's national adaptation plan and the upcoming climate change response adaptation bill.At the moment there are many New Zealanders who are very worried about the extent to which they understand what their share of the cost or the risk is here—who pays for it and so on. There is currently no clarity about the share of risk and cost that is borne by the householder their insurance company their bank their local authority or central government. And generally what that means in that state of clarity is that it all tends to land on central government. And as the Minister of Finance has noted on a number of occasions there basically isn't enough money in the world to be able to cover every single cost and we do need to take a hardship-focused approach to support the people who need it the most but we also need to make it really clear who bears what portion of what cost and that is the intention of that bill. And there have been calls to accelerate that and we are looking at what we can do to accelerate that or portions of that bill to help us cope with the immediate crisis. But it is an incredibly fraught area of policy and I do want to say to Todd Muller and to Christopher Luxon who have said quite a lot over the preceding weeks that they do want to take a bipartisan approach and they do understand that it is necessary to have a multi-decade approach here and that it is critically important for New Zealanders to know that there is a stable policy environment I appreciate that offer. My intention is to work as closely as possible because this challenge is going to take decades to sort out. It is going to need to take multiple changes of Government and it is more important than any petty partisanship or politicking that we can do. So that is critically important.The final thing that I wanted to talk about was how the solutions to climate change actually are cost of living solutions as well and this is again another myth: the idea that trying to stop climate change from happening is somehow going to make us all poorer; it can actually make us wealthier. I do want to applaud some of the initiatives that the Prime Minister pointed to in his speech such as the increases to minimum wage the efforts to kind of bring grocery costs down and the fact that we've got more apprenticeships now than we've had at any other time which is obviously going to support the efforts to rebuild. That's critically important. But one thing that I think we have glossed over is the idea that every time we insulate our homes that helps to cut living costs. Actually solar energy is the cheapest form of energy ever created by the human species and what that means is that when people have rooftop solar and battery in their homes they have a lower cost of living than those people who are relying on fossil fuels. They are also more resilient. Can you imagine a situation—like we had over the last few weeks—where thousands of houses were without power but let's say every third house had a solar panel on the roof? What that would have meant was that we had power for telecommunications it would have meant that those families had hot water they were able to have a shower and they were able to cook. So those solutions actually not just help to cut pollution but they also help to build more resilient communities and that is why the Green Party has been banging on about these things for so long—because we know that actually the solutions to the climate crisis are also solutions to lowering household costs and making us more resilient to the effects of climate change that are happening in the future. So as I say we have to be guided by the science here. We absolutely must be guided by the science. And the Green Party's solutions that we've been putting forward as part of this Government and that we will be putting forward later this year are designed to support New Zealanders through this transition in ways that actually make us more resilient and better off. These solutions will cut the cost of living but they will also make us more resilient and they will also make sure that we cut the pollution that's causing climate change in the first place. And this year New Zealanders will have an opportunity given the experience that we've been having to say that in the next Government we will ensure that we are able to put those solutions forward and make sure that we are able to build a better future for our children and for their children."