In a speech to her party's annual conference, Mrs Turei said creating well-paid "green collar" jobs for young people was one of the best things New Zealand could to do make a better future for them.
"Our solutions will result in an economic transformation that means New Zealand business thrives, creating both green collar and high-tech green jobs. The Greens in government will get serious about supporting local green jobs."
When the Government gave KiwiRail $500 million to build 38 new carriages for Auckland's electrified rail network, the contract should have gone to the workshops in Hillside, in Dunedin, and Woburn, in Hutt Valley, she said.
That would have created local jobs building green carriages for Auckland public transport, she said.
In Dunedin, local government, the Otago Chamber of Commerce, the local unions and local MPs all supported the project.
Despite all the evidence setting out the economic benefits and social advantages of building those trains in New Zealand, KiwiRail had shortlisted firms from South Korea and Spain to do the job, Mrs Turei said.
"Instead of building our public transport of tomorrow here, KiwiRail is building it overseas.
"Instead of creating green collar jobs for our mokopuna in my town of Dunedin, KiwiRail is creating jobs in Seoul and Madrid."
In a smart, green, compassionate economy, those smart, green carriages would be built in New Zealand by New Zealanders, she said.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mrs Turei also talked about extending the training incentive allowance, using her own example of how she used state support to move from being 22 years old on the DPB with a small baby, no school certificate, no sixth form certificate and no prospects to becoming a lawyer able to support her family.
"I was able to get to university and to law school with the support of the public . . . state support."
Making the training incentive allowance available to more beneficiaries could help another 10,000 New Zealanders improve their employment prospects at very little cost to the Government, she said.
The maximum training allowance was about $4000 a year. By contrast, the savings in benefit, accommodation supplement and Working for Families expenditure from a sole parent spending six months less on the benefit could be up to $10,000.
The Greens also advocated raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour immediately and to 66% of the average wage within four years, Mrs Turei said.
Party research showed that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would also generate an additional $100 million per year in pay-as-you-earn taxes.
"It is also worth saying here that, generally, it is the larger overseas corporates who tend to pay the worst wages. Most smaller New Zealand companies do their best to look after their people and are more likely to pay them enough to get by."
