Shaw JamesJAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): There is a saying that the perfect is the enemy of the good meaning that sometimes you should take what you can get even if it is not perfect. I think it perfectly encapsulates where we are in relation to this bill. It is far from perfect but it does do something just a little for people who need it. So I just want to spend a little bit of time unpacking why we are supporting this bill in its third and final reading.I do want to commend the Labour Party for the rigour and for the analysis with which it has dissected the Government's numbers on this because the Government has used sleight of hand to disguise what is essentially a tax cut for people who are on higher incomes as a support package for people who are on lower incomes. Labour has done some very good analysis and presented some very good arguments in the House over the course of the last 24 hours and I commend it for that.Now in terms of the bill's flaws we have waxed lyrical about the nature of the tax component of the bill where you have the absurdity of a family who is earning $127000 or more every year receiving $33.22 out of this package versus a family who are on an income of $24000 or less getting $5.34 out of this. It is literally one-sixth of what the higher-income family is getting as a result of the tax changes in the package. One of the things that the Labour Party has spoken a lot about is that if you had just adjusted for inflation the total cost of that would be about $900 million in forgone revenue. But this is a $1.9 billion tax cut so in other words above inflation this is a billion-dollar tax cut. It is a billion-dollar tax cut above inflation the vast majority of which goes to families on higher incomes not families on lower incomes. That is a deep flaw and some would say a fatal flaw at the heart of this bill.The second criticism is around the accommodation supplement which despite the protestations from the Government is public money that ends up in the pockets of private landlords and motel owners. What that means is that that is essentially a transfer to the private sector. The third flaw in this bill is in the nature of Working for Families—the complexity of it the fact that people often do not know what they are entitled to and the fact that it does not apply universally. It applies only to people who are in work and the people who by definition are the hardest-up in this country are families where neither parent is in work and therefore they do not get any access to Working for Families and therefore remain at the bottom of the heap and the most excluded.Having said all of that there are three things that we think are worthwhile to note in this bill. While the majority of the tax cut benefits accrue to people who are on higher incomes there is some benefit that does accrue to people who are on lower incomes. So for people who are earning $22000 they will get an additional $10.77—people who are earning between $22000 and $52000—and they are obviously not high earners. Those are not high-income earning people in this country. So there is some benefit and they will appreciate that additional $10.The accommodation supplement for all its flaws is necessary because we have such a stuffed up housing market in New Zealand. Families on benefits will see an additional $30 a week as a result of this. And these are people who are in absolutely desperate straits. Now $30 is not going to cover even close to what has happened in accommodation cost rises in this country but it will be a welcome relief to those families.The third is in relation to the family tax credit. That is really why we are voting for this bill. The family tax credit is universal. You can be in work or out of work and you still receive the family tax credit. There are 150000 children living in poverty in this country and the Child Poverty Action Group whose numbers I do trust believes that this will support about 35000 to 50000 of those children. There is $9.25 a week for the first child under the age of 16 and we know that support for children should be oriented towards the younger end. An additional $9.25 increase per week to some of our most desperate families is nine loaves of bread and that will not go unnoticed. And $17 to $26 a week will be the increase for subsequent children and that is universal to those children. Those are for children under the age of 16 who are the ones who need it the most. So increasing the tax credits for children under 16 means more in the hand for our hardest-up families.It is because of those things in this package—and only because of those things that are in this package—that we are voting for this bill. You have got to remember that these are people who absolutely need it. There was a story in one of the newspapers this morning illustrating the plight of a Pasifika family in South Auckland with three children. The mother would eat half a can of food some days—that was all she had left over—in order to be able to feed her kids and meet the rent and just get by on the absolute basics. She was working. She had a job. She was doing 60 hours a week as a cleaner. So let us remember why we are here.It is beyond me that we struggle so much to empathise with such a large number of New Zealanders in this country who are in absolutely desperate straits. Over the last 9 years of this National Government their plight has gotten worse because any increases to their incomes have been completely soaked up and reversed by cost increases in the things that they have no choice but to spend money on. That is why in this country we have people who have jobs people who are working 40 to 60 to 70 hours a week who are living in cars—people with jobs living in cars. That is just unacceptable in New Zealand. It is unacceptable in this country that we have that level of deprivation that we have 150000 children growing up in severe deprivation in this country.This bill is deeply flawed. I believe that we would do things differently. We would not wait 8 years to actually do what needs to be done. We would get started immediately. We would design it so that it is oriented for the people who need it most. We would not give away a tax cut for people who do not need it. We would use that money to invest it at the bottom end in those lowest-income families where it is going to make the greatest difference to lift those people out of deprivation and poverty and into cycles of opportunity. So if we really want to solve this problem if we really want to alleviate poverty in New Zealand then we actually have to change the Government. That is why this September those of us on this side of the House are going to be working so hard to put in place changes to welfare and income and taxation that actually are designed to fix the problem and that start from day one of the new Government not 8 years down the track once it has made things worse. Thank you.