Logie Jan: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5875. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I am pleased to take a short call on this for the Green Party and to follow on from my colleague Julie Anne Genter who spoke previously and outlined what our alternative vision would have been for this Budget—a mixture of incredibly practical measures to raise revenue to save money and to more fairly share the resources that we have. But tonight I would like to focus on one aspect of this Budget and our vision for this society and that is equality.I remember on election night that John Key in front of the nation was saying that he would lead a Government that would govern for all New Zealanders. Well this is the first Budget since the election and it is our chance to assess whether he is delivering on that promise to the country. Is this a Budget for all New Zealanders? My premise this evening is that it is not.New Zealand has had one of the highest increases in inequality in the OECD since 1985. This has resulted in the greatest loss of growth in the OECD. Inequality in this country is estimated to have knocked off more than 20 percentage points of growth in this country. The biggest factor for the impact of inequality on growth is the gap between lower-income households and the rest of the population. We are not talking about just the bottom 10 percent but the bottom 40 percent of this country.The household income survey that came out last week showed us that this gap in some ways is widening. There are 45000 more children this year living in poverty whose family incomes after housing are 60 percent below the median wage. This is showing clearly that the economic gains post-global financial crisis are not being evenly shared. That report also showed that after housing costs income poverty rates for older working New Zealanders—those aged between 45 and 64 living on their own—have trebled between 1984 and 2007. Those rates since then have remained high and that group is second only to sole parents in terms of poverty rates in this country. This points to the number of vulnerable older New Zealanders increasing into our future as we have an ageing economy. Significantly this is about housing and access to being able to buy houses in this country and we know the Government has not addressed that problem in this Budget.Also we see the counterbalance of this struggle for the bottom 40 percent of the country when last year the average salary for big business chief executive officers grew to an average of $1.645 million a year being earned by the top chief executive officers. At least 11 executives in this country are now earning over $2 million a year. So we have a group of New Zealanders who earn more in an hour than full-time minimum wage workers can earn in a week and a half. And now in this country 50 percent of New Zealanders own less than 5 percent of the wealth.Average debt per household in this country is massively increasing. I have been hearing the Government saying that it is pulling that back. Well actually it has increased by over $100000 per household since 1992. That is a phenomenal increase—up from $20000 to over $120000 of debt per household. Net public debt has also been increasing since this Government came to power. It has increased from $3000 per capita to $14000 significantly because of its investment in job-poor expressway projects that have negative cost-benefit ratios. So it is investing in things that are bad for our climate bad for our people and bad for the books. And yet Government members stand in front of us and tell us: “Everything is OK. Don’t worry. This is as good as it gets pretty much.” Well I do not think New Zealanders believe that.When we know that our current top income tax rate of 33 percent is the fourth-lowest in the OECD that we have no tax-free threshold for people on low incomes and that we have no inheritance tax no gift tax no general capital gains tax to tax wealth and that on top of that we are one of the only OECD countries where GST is levied on all domestic products at a flat rate—including food which the Government is now looking to extend—we know the Government is not taking up even a smidgeon of the options open to it to be able to reduce inequality. There is an alternative to this agenda.