Sio William: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18142. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): That was a wasted space in the speaking slots of this House from Mr Hayes and I say goodbye to you Mr Hayes. That is the last Budget speech he will ever give in this House. He is gone. He is gone along with 16 other members of that National Party.Hon Trevor Mallard: Rejected by the leader.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: That is right—ejected by the leader and rejected by the leader he will never ever return to this House or speak ever again in this House whatsoever.After last year’s Budget I was asked by the Samoan community what I thought of that year’s Budget and what they got. I said to them that we were promised a brighter future; what we got was a slice of toast where we did not get any butter and we did not get any jam. That would be for the next year which is this year. This year I was asked again what they would get out of this Government’s Budget. I said we were promised the butter and jam but we are not getting it this year. It comes next year and the following year and in the meantime the Government has burnt the toast. It has burnt the toast. We are $56 billion in debt paying $10 million a day in interest rates for that Government debt. It is costing us $1.2 billion because of the tax switch that favours the very very wealthy—that group’s lot.I want to tell you another story. When Mr Key first became the Prime Minister of New Zealand many New Zealanders welcomed him as someone who was seen as not so buried in politics. They liked his rags-to-riches life story. They liked the fact that hehad $50 million in his bank account. He was a seductive proposition to many New Zealanders who themselves wanted their own rags-to-riches stories to come true. He appeared to be easy-going with a good sense of humour. Even our media loved him so much that they were giving him all the time in the world.After 5½ years of his being the Prime Minister and of National being the Government more and more New Zealanders now see for themselves the kind of Prime Minister he is and the kind of Government it really is. He made promises he did not keep. He promised not to raise GST and then went ahead and did it anyway. He made deals with the top end of town—backroom multimillion-dollar pokie machine deals for convention centres and the casino Skycity. He gave the top 10 percent of income earners the lion’s share of the tax cuts while the rest of New Zealand paid increased GST. He refused to listen to the thousands of New Zealanders who opposed the selling off of our State assets. The Government sold them to the very few high rollers instead of to mums and dads as he had promised.In the last 5½ years we have gradually seen the man and his Government for what they really are: a Government that does not care one iota about New Zealand and its people. It cares only about the sport of politics power and its mates the high rollers. We have seen his arrogance and his refusal to listen to New Zealanders in the last 5½ years of his Government. We have also seen last week during the Budget debate the political animal he is when he spent a major part of his speech attacking Labour and attacking our Labour leader instead of talking about why he did not make the well-being of New Zealanders the centre of this Budget. He does not care. The Government does not care about people. It does not care one iota about people. Instead it cares about the sport of politics and holding on to power. It has revealed that in this Budget because this Budget fails to address the most basic and fundamental challenges that New Zealanders all over this country of ours face.There is no vision for how to address high unemployment no vision for how to address income inequalities and no vision for addressing unaffordable housing and access to tertiary education for the next generation. There is no vision for how our communities can develop themselves and achieve prosperity for all our families. People do not matter to this Government. When there is no vision the people perish. This Government is wrong—people do matter. It should have focused on the well-being of all Kiwis in this Budget; it did not. This Government failed to eliminate the high unemployment rate that the majority of working New Zealanders are forced to endure. We all know that unemployment is a modern-day scourge on our society and this Government is content to allow that to be so now and in future years of its Budgets. It intends to maintain high unemployment at 5 to 7 percent now and in future years of its Budgets. People do not matter to this Government. When there is high unemployment people struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills. It is wrong for this Government to feed the workforce the crumbs off their employer’s table—low wages.People’s dignity matters to us. Although this Government does not care about that we in Labour do. People matter to us. This Government failed to attack poverty and the income inequality that is growing between the top end of town and the rest of New Zealand. It seems content to allow continued growth in the inequality gap between the few who have and the many who have not. Shockingly income inequality for Pacific people is the worst I have ever seen since the days of the winners and losers. We were all promised a brighter future by this Government in the 2011 general election yet since 2009 the real median weekly income for all New Zealanders has fallen by $10 a week to $575 a week. For Pasifika adults nationwide it has dropped by $77 a week to $381. What is frightening about these statistics is that 50 percent of all Pasifika adults are attempting to scrape a living earning less than $19812 per annum. This is during aperiod that this Government says is a so-called rock star economy. It is much worse for Pasifika people living in Auckland where the majority of Pasifika communities reside. Since 2009 their median weekly income has dropped by $88 a week to $379 while the overall weekly income for Aucklanders is $575 a week.I doubt very much that any of the MPs of this Government have seen the look on a mother’s face when she cannot feed her children a proper meal. I doubt very much that members of this Government can look those 285000 hungry children in the eye look at the sores on their feet from walking without shoes and say that this is the brighter future they promised them. More and more New Zealanders are now realising how uncaring this Government really is. It is a sure sign that it does not care about people when it refuses to acknowledge its part in the growing inequality that is infecting all of New Zealand like a plague. It is no wonder that Pacific homeownership is at an all-time low of 18.5 percent under this Government. It is at a low of 18.5 percent under this Government.Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s shocking.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: It is shocking but those members do not care one iota. This is not what Pasifika communities were expecting when National promised everyone a brighter future. Pacific people like all New Zealanders have a right to own their own home and Labour will keep that dream alive and real. Housing unaffordability is increasing even more so for first home owners. It is so difficult for so many families to pay rent to private landlords. This Government is content to keep the rest of New Zealanders who cannot afford to buy their own home renting from overseas-based landlords because that is who is buying up our housing stock. In order for working people to buy their own homes and afford rental payments they have got to have decent jobs and fair wages. This Government has failed in its Budget to provide any vision of hope and confidence to working New Zealanders. There is no vision of hope and confidence for New Zealanders.We stand for full employment. We want to see every person who is able to work having secure meaningful job opportunities. People matter to us. People being in decent jobs matters. That is why we will target a 4 percent unemployment rate for the end of our first term of Government. People matter to us. People earning a living wage matters. That is why Labour will lift wages to a more meaningful amount in our first 100 days to make sure that workers have money in their pockets to support their families and give their children the best start in their education. I have often heard Ministers on that side say from time to time that when Pasifika people succeed the rest of New Zealand succeeds. Well they are failing Pacific communities right now. They are failing Pacific communities. That means the rest of New Zealand fails especially under this Budget. Come 20 September we will get rid of this Government. We have to do that for the sake of all New Zealanders.