Curran Clare: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15860. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): A woman came into my electorate office today. Her landlord has ended her tenancy of 4 years because he wants to renovate and sell and she has not been able to find another house that she can affordnear the school that her two boys go to. In order to keep her children at their local school her children are boarding with a friend but there is no room for their mum so she is staying with another friend on the other side of the city. She came into my office this morning to say that she had visited the children at the school and was walking back across to the other side of the city. She had no coat and it was raining. She is trying to do her best for her kids. She is waiting for Housing New Zealand to even accept an application for a house and even if it does it is likely to tell her that it has no houses available and to try the rental market. This is what is consistently happening to people in my electorate and in electorates all around the country—people who earn incomes but whose incomes are not high enough to feed a family and pay market rents.This Government continues to ignore the calls for action on child poverty youth unemployment and the shortage of affordable housing. It talks about wealth creation but where is the evidence that the people who deserve a fair share of that wealth are getting it? Instead the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report released today shows once again that many New Zealanders are increasingly being locked out of a fair and just society. That report shows that there are some signs of improvement in some social indicators but while at the top end of town the privileged few continue to do well under this Government child poverty and the lack of affordable housing are the time bomb issues for our country. The report repeats calls for action to address these matters as well as rising living costs and the number of families that are struggling to pay their bills. This is this Government’s failure. John Key and National have been focusing on those few at the top while hundreds and thousands of kids are in poverty and many young families cannot afford a home.Labour’s Best Start package which was announced a couple of weeks ago is the first in that series of practical and affordable policies that are going to make a real difference to the fight against child poverty in this country. It is about improving antenatal care extending paid parental leave making sure that families have more financial support when they need it when they have a new baby and increasing the range and the scope of early childhood education. Those are very practical very targeted very important steps that will make a real difference. All of the experts agree that the first 5 years of a child’s life are critical to getting that best start.We have already taken some steps to address the housing shortage with our policy KiwiBuild. We will have a range of proactive policies to create jobs and increase wages in our cities and our regions for young people along with ensuring that they are going to have the educational opportunities that give them the skills to contribute to building a better and more modern society and ensuring that there is affordable health-care when they get sick. These are tough times. Despite what this Government says these are very tough times for many New Zealand families. The Best Start package will make a real difference in our programme of reform which includes health education housing and economic development.In the last 5 years this Government has treated our country as a corporation and not a country. One of the worst outcomes of that is that our regions are going backwards. In the last 5 years this National Government has closed eight schools—eight schools—in the Dunedin South electorate. Our city is losing daily commuter flights to Auckland because Air New Zealand has admitted that it made a scheduling cut based on a demand curve for the city which is code that Dunedin is not on a growth trajectory. This Government is responsible for the closure of Hillside Engineering which is the heart of our manufacturing sector because it decided that cheap poor-quality railway wagons and engines were better than keeping and building a thriving skilled manufacturing base in an important regional centre. We have lost skilled tradespeople with families whocould not find decent work in our city. They have had to move away and take their families with them. That has had a flow-on effect throughout our city.Steven Joyce is now backing a decision by AgResearch to shift the Invermay Agricultural Centre campus in Mosgiel out of our city. It should be grown not shrunk. It is a world-class centre for important research. We have launched a petition on this. My colleague David Clark has this week launched a petition on this very matter and I urge anyone who knows how important that facility is to Otago and Southland to sign it. I urge them to go and visit the website which is www.saveinvermay.co.nz. Is that right? That is right. I urge people to go to that website and to sign that petition.The number of young people out of work in our city is one of the highest in the country. A report in 2012 had it at 34 percent. Everyone knows that this is a huge issue but what does Paula Bennett do? She shuts down the only teen parent course in the city which offers National Certificate of Educational Achievement credits and much-needed second-chance training for teen mums who have no confidence no skills and now no hope. We have got a pressure cooker situation building in Otago and Southland health services with work pressure from funding cuts and a growing climate of fear in the sector. We are seeing surgeons speaking out against the unacceptable situation for many people needing surgery who are being bumped off waiting lists and put on Active Review which delays their surgery indefinitely. Health professionals are under huge pressure due to inadequate funding and some fear retribution if they report mistakes which means that adverse events in the sector are not being reported and our standards of care are slipping.There are suburbs in Dunedin such as Corstorphine with zero or inadequate access to any health services. We are seeing more and more services such as breast screening fertility services and home support being contracted out to organisations with no local knowledge and for whom profit is the primary driver. Mental health hospital care is being halved with inadequate community care available. I and my Dunedin North colleague David Clark will hold a public meeting on Friday 28 February at Dunedin Hospital led by our very able health spokesperson the Hon Annette King to seek public input into the health service crisis in our region. The underlying causes and possible solutions must be addressed now before things get any worse.This Government does not care about our regions. It does not care about those who are struggling to pay their bills. Many of these people have jobs or had jobs until they were made redundant because of this Government’s policies. They are the struggling middle as well as the lower-income people and this Government has deserted them. This Government is arrogant it is out of touch and it is for the few at the top. It has stopped listening to New Zealanders and is continuing to look after itself and the privileged few at the expense of Kiwis. This Government will ensure that any economic recovery will benefit only the top few. We stand for opportunity for every New Zealander regardless of their background their income or where they live.