Salesa Jenny: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 09 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8787. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for this short call in response to the Prime Minister’s statement.New Zealanders are not a greedy people. Most are highly aspirational for their kids. Their dreams are modest such as owning their own homes and having a secure future for their children a well-paid secure job and some time to enjoy life with their family and friends. Together these make up the Kiwi Dream.However simple these aspirations may appear this Government is not doing much to keep them within the reach of the majority of New Zealanders. This Government does not value the dreams of middle and low income parents and more and more of my constituents in South Auckland as well as thousands of New Zealanders are being shut out of the Kiwi Dream.Inequality for which we all pay the price in due course is on the rise here in New Zealand. The economy is increasingly weighted towards people already doing well and blocking others from getting ahead. In spite of protestations to the contrary from the other side the reality is that this Government has turned a blind eye to the appalling rates of poverty blighting the future of many tens of thousands of our children—the kind of poverty that we see on a daily basis in our electorates in South Auckland. Research highlights the close links between poverty and underachievement from preschool onwards creating bigger and bigger problems for our children and our society well down the track.A genuinely forward-looking forward-thinking Government should be doing everything it can to make sure that the Kiwi Dream is within reach of every single person. My colleagues and I have been out on the road in the last few weeks with the Future of Work Commission talking to businesses teachers educators and ordinary New Zealand citizens. We have had a great reception to the issues papers and the plans that we have. We plan to modernise our education system so that every child is better prepared for jobs—even the jobs that have not even been invented yet—in our country as well as globally.Our leader Andrew Little has committed the Labour Party to a new principle—a new principle that I wholeheartedly support—we will not tolerate poverty in New Zealand in the 21st century. In Government action against poverty will be nested at the heart of everything that a Labour Government will do. We will work towards making sure that every early childhood education teacher is fully qualified so that every child gets the best possible start in life. We will make sure that hungry children are fed. We will make sure that children grow up in healthy warm and dry homes not ones that are cold full of mould and in winter contribute to children passing away. Every decision our Government will make will be checked against its impact on child poverty.Education is one of the keys to unlocking future prosperity for those on low incomes and for those who are not able to find work. They need education they need training and they need the barriers to education and training to be eliminated. We would not continue the current governmental neglect of education. National refuses to properly invest shifting more and more costs on to parents and students while wasting valuable time and resources trying things on our kids copying experiments that have failed elsewhere. We plan to make sure that our children are ready for work in the 21st century with the right skills and training without the fear of being saddled with debt. The nature of work is changing rapidly and our education system must keep up with that to ensure that the opportunities of the future are such that we in New Zealand are able to compete in a global economy. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research estimated that 48 percent of New Zealand jobs are at risk from automation within the next 24 years.Our new policies are bold and they will open the door to higher learning for people who have never studied beyond high school. We will ensure that every New Zealander has the tools that they need to be able to have a share of the Kiwi Dream. Thank you very much.