Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to speak to this Venture Capital Fund Bill. As many have spoken about their experiences pertaining to the content and intention of this legislation in their contributions so far I feel it probably only makes sense for me to refer to as many of the former National Party speakers actually have the former National Government. My father was moving house recently and we found a pile of letters and notes and other paraphernalia that I had had in my room as a child. One of those things that I found in that cabinet was a letter that I wrote to the Rt Hon John Key as a 13-year-old. I wrote a letter to Sir John Key asking for him to invest in my idea for a car that ran on magnets. There wasn't a whole lot more thinking behind it but at that point in time what I was concerned about was that we were moving towards a clean green economy. So if there's a more earnest Green Party opening to a speech I don't know where you can find one.We've had the Rt Hon David Carter referring to where we're going to find some sense of whether this Government is business-friendly or not and I really want to unpack that statement because what on earth does that actually mean? We bandy around words like that in this place all the time and it is so disconnected from the reality of the so-called everyday New Zealanders that the Opposition likes to speak about so frequently. Talking about being business-friendly I genuinely believe if you look to the core root of it puts the cart before the horse. Surely the point of Government the point of the State the point of a House of Representatives is to be people- and society-friendly. Business is the means to help achieve that but increasing the size of business is not an end unto itself.That's why I think it's really important that we note in responding to the contributions from members of the National Party that such thinking leads to an absolute perversity in ideology because growth and prosperity are two separate things as we all know.I actually most recently sat on a panel with the Hon Paul Goldsmith at the University of Auckland where we were talking about how GDP is not the sole measure of wellbeing for a society. He himself and the National Party say that they believe that there need to be broader measures of the economy and how well it is doing. That is why we need to recognise that simply talking about growing the pie simply talking about growing the economy can lead to perversities such as not recognising that GDP that growth unto itself doesn't recognise or tell the story of the distribution of wealth nor the quality of transactions that lead to that growth or that GDP.This is where there's a really great example actually which is something which I'll allude to and then reference explicitly within this legislation. That's the story of green energy. If you actually follow the investment pathway for something like solar panels for example that initial transaction—that purchase and installing of solar panels—contributes to GDP. To begin with it contributes to growth. But as soon as you have installed those solar panels and you as a family or an individual or a household have that sovereignty over your energy you are no longer plugged into the grid and therefore no longer paying for that electricity and therefore your clean green energy which is good for the planet is good for reducing carbon emissions is no longer contributing to GDP growth. That is just one of the many examples of the divergence between prosperity of society and of us as Aotearoa New Zealand and GDP growth.Which brings me to—I believe it's clause 36 or 35—clause 35(4)(c) in the Venture Capital Fund Bill. This is really important because it speaks about the directions that the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation must have regard to when they are utilising this $300 million Venture Capital Fund. That is that they must have a regard to the Government's commitment to a low-emissions economy and in paragraph (ca) the Government's commitment to an inclusive economy.I would however note that this doesn't quite go far enough for where the Greens would like it to be. But this is something that I believe that with the contributions of our co-leader and our economic spokesperson the Hon James Shaw has contributed to that discussion across the three parties in this Government to help get that in there. I would however note the contributions of New Zealand First in making sure that we do have a more human face to our economy in particular—and that being the parallels or the Venn diagram as to what makes this Government work with regard to that commitment to an inclusive economy.So this doesn't go far enough because it allows for for example the opening of a window where there is perchance in some distant future an oscillation of Government and other parties find themselves in charge of the reins of this country and we may end up with an unfortunate situation like what we're presently seeing with the State-sanctioned investment in fossil fuels under ACC at present—that billion dollars which is presently invested in those fossil fuels. It is quite simple. As we all know every Parliament is sovereign unto itself to change those directions which any Government may give. But nonetheless as many of those who've contributed so far to the debate have highlighted this fills an important gap in our economy in Aotearoa New Zealand. This legislation this Venture Capital Fund Bill as administered by the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation in opening it up and enabling but also directing and channelling that $300 million directly into businesses—particularly hopefully small businesses—in this country is really crucial to helping those mums and dads that the National Party so often invoke.But in wrapping up my conclusion I'd just like to say that it's really critical that we end up continuing to move towards that clean green economy and recognising the distinction between simple GDP growth which we all now on the record explicitly recognise as not the sole measure of the wellbeing of our society and our prosperity. Kia ora.Debate interrupted.