White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): When I hear the rhetoric from the ACT Party and the National Party today I wonder—I wonder—how they can actually say that we need more support while having a philosophy that is so far away from that. It's a philosophy that says the market should rule. It's a philosophy that says we should actually lower wages because that's somehow going to increase production. And it has been an utter failure and it has led to the problems we see in our society. It has led to the homelessness picture that my friend Karen Chhour just showed because what happens when you actually pillage people when you take down their wages to such low amounts is that they can't survive and their mental health suffers. The median wage in New Zealand is $56000. I challenge any member in this House to survive on that money to feed their families on that money. That is a low wage and it is a stressful way to be and it is a damn sight harder to live with inflation as it is when your wage is at that level.What we need to do in this society is we need to raise our wages. We need to get out of a cycle of trickle-down economics. And yet what has the National Party offered us? It has offered us a proposal that we actually cut the tax of the highest-income earners putting huge amounts of money into the pockets of the highest-income earners. And let's just unpack that: what is going on there is that the National Party believe that that is the best way to produce a productive economy because they believe that if the people at the top have the money they will produce wealth—well that has not worked. And the biggest actual signal of that was when we had the working party report come out and it was headed by Jim Bolger who was the leader of the National Party and he said it has not worked. What he suggested was that we needed and he was with Business New Zealand when he did it a system where we had an actual structural change where we lifted wages at the bottom. And that's of course what fair pay agreements are designed to do.We need to look at our most vulnerable people in our community and we need to support them. I challenge again the National Party and the ACT Party to think: if a woman who is on those low low amounts of money is working as a caregiver is she any less worthy because she doesn't have the bargaining power to get that pay rate up? Because I've worked for different unions—when I actually was working as a lawyer which was 25 years—and what I've noticed is you can work damned hard in this country and not make any money. You can do really good work you can do work that is valuable in our community and you won't make money. because you don't have the bargaining power to do so. So what's really important is that we change the system and we recognise those groups of people and we lift them up—we lift them up—and they end up in middle-class actual incomes not scraping at the bottom not turning into our homelessness problem because that's what happens if you leave people at the bottom.And guess what! Our productivity doesn't go up. We have actually got the OECD behind us on this. The OECD say what will help our productivity in this country is if we raise the wages of those groups if our lowest-income earners get our support get organised and have collective minimum standards. That is what will make a huge difference in this country.Actually the philosophy—the philosophy—behind tax cuts for the rich the philosophy behind blaming everybody else for the problems that emerge and saying the market will actually do its thing and will protect us that has failed—that has failed so badly. And what we ended up with is we ended with run-down services run-down infrastructure—infrastructure makes a big difference to house prices. It is a system and this Government knows that and it's putting in place structural change which means better infrastructure it means actually affordable accessible healthcare and it means that we will end up with wages in this country rising—not for short term but for long term. I want less inequality more productivity and I am absolutely proud to be part of a Government that can see the wood for the trees on this one. I commend this to the House.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.