A lot is hanging on tomorrow's Budget in this time of multiple challenges to our economy and to our way of life. Unemployment is predicted to go over 7 percent, and people are asking whether the Government has a plan to keep people in work. People are also asking whether it will be meaningful work that will leave the economy stronger. That, after all, was the stated purpose of the Job Summit. Let us hope that that work will not consist of digging holes and filling them in again, as people did in a previous recession.
People are asking whether the Government has a plan to start a transition to a low-carbon economy that will be less reliant on oil and more resilient to price shocks, or whether the Budget will assume that we will return to a business-as-usual economy—an extremely wasteful, consumption-oriented, and unequal economy—as soon as the recession is over. People are asking whether the Government has a plan to protect our main marketing advantage, our reputation—not really justified—for environmental responsibility and clean, green production. People are asking whether the Government has a plan to unlock the creativity of our communities, allowing good ideas to flourish and be supported, creating new small businesses and jobs, and strengthening community relationships.
We in the Greens suspect that the answer is no, the Government does not have such a plan. We note that Labour is not putting forward anything to achieve these goals either. The Green Party does have such a plan. It is called the Green New Deal. The first step towards it is our economic stimulus package, announced a couple of weeks ago, which is what we would do in tomorrow's Budget to haul ourselves out of both economic recession and environmental crisis at the same time.
With a very modest investment of just $3.3 billion over 3 years, the package would create more than 43,000 new jobs. It would create a stronger economy, with less demand for electricity as a result of major energy-efficiency improvements. That would delay the need for more power stations and give us better security of supply. It would reduce our oil imports by moving funding out of low-quality spending on new motorways, which struggle to even break even on a benefit-cost ratio, and into high-quality spending on increasing public transport capacity and attractiveness, so as to carry a lot more people, and on safer cycling and walking.
The Green Party's plan would leave us with healthier people and lower hospital costs as people's homes were made warm and dry. It would leave us with 6,000 more homes. It would employ out-of-work builders, plumbers, and electricians, and make a sizable dent in the waiting list of homeless people. It would raise business productivity as energy costs would be contained by investing in efficiency. It would stimulate a range of community businesses in waste recovery, iwi housing initiatives, car pooling and dial-a-bus schemes.
I look forward tomorrow to the announcement of one of those Green New Deal initiatives, which we have been able to negotiate with the Government—a large-scale home insulation programme. I challenge the Government to pick up the rest of our programme in order to counter the effects of the economic recession and the environmental crisis at the same time, to employ our people, to leave our economy stronger, and to give the people of New Zealand hope.
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