Cunliffe David: AdjournmentText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Adjournment[Sitting date: 31 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19809. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition):Now that Paula Bennett has got her seat sorted out she probably could have afforded to stand with the rest of them. I think I have not seen Bill English so excited since he got 21 percent in the time he ran. I do want to acknowledge something that he has said which I think is right. It is to New Zealanders that we owe the credit for surviving the Canterbury earthquakes and the global financial crisis. We all know that milk and disaster are not an economic strategy. What New Zealanders are waking up to is the sad realisation that actually there is nothing there—there is no plan. This is a Government that goes from day to day muddling through in the name of political pragmatism what is actually just reinforcing privilege. If New Zealanders want a fairer better more decent society that is going to require change. It is going to require the MPs on this side of the House to move to that side of the House so that we can implement the changes that New Zealanders want.This is the final debate of the year the adjournment debate and it is a time to extend the hand of collegiality if not friendship across the House. I believe that we have a set of policies that will help MPs on all sides. The Māori Party—our retirement policy will help all three of them. Peter Dunne—Labour believes in more transparency for our spying operations and nobody has done more for that than Peter Dunne. And the ACT Party—our apprenticeships policy has been widely applauded. I understand a certain John Key wants an apprenticeship for some young fulla in Epsom. We will see how he goes. I want to extend the hand of friendship to Steven Joyce because he and I have something in common: neither of us wants to see Judith Collins as Prime Minister.More seriously I do want to thank the people who keep this place ticking. I would like to start with the cleaning staff and in particular Service and Food Workers Union member Jaine Ikurere whom I met yesterday when we announced our $2 an hour rise in the minimum wage policy launch and site manager Arran Milne. You guys you do a thankless task but it is greatly appreciated by all of us. Good Lord! There is enough mud thrown around this place. Thank God somebody is cleaning it up.Thank you to the messengers to Heather Daly and her team and to Philippa Henwood from Visitor and Support Services and her team; to the ever-helpful travel office—Roz Parry and her team—to Alan Mumford and his team from Buildings and Services; to Peter Andrews and the team at VIP Transport Services; to Janette Smidt and her team at Security; and of course the Bellamy’s and Copperfield’s staff including staff at 3.2 and the General Manager of Parliamentary Service David Stevenson. I would like to thank my Chief of Staff Matt McCarten and our Whip’s Office manager Emma Williams and the dedicated and talented team of Labour staff executive assistants out-of-Parliament staff and issues assistants. I am sure all parties would want to join together and thank our hard-working staff for allowing us to do the job that we do.The adjournment debate is also a chance to thank those who make Parliament work. It is an opportunity to sum up the issues that have really focused the minds of this House over the last 3 years. You might say: growing inequality a failing economy and the antidote—Labour’s strategy for a high-value economy that puts people first and delivers for homes jobs and families.But before we get into that I do think we need to pause for a brief moment to note the tragic state of affairs in Gaza. This is a humanitarian disaster. The Labour Party stands with the international community in its call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. I would note that we have supported the Government in its statements but I want to register our growing concern that the strength of those statements has not kept up with the deterioration of the situation in Gaza. We want to see more resolve and more strength now from New Zealand in pushing hard for an immediate ceasefire.As I said yesterday when I announced our minimum wage policy raising it by $2 to $16.25 in our first year of Government will put $4000 a year in the hands of minimum-wage workers in this country. That will make a huge difference to the 40 percent of our children who are growing up in poverty even though their parents are working—the working poor. It is high time that we stopped saying that poverty is only a matter of the unemployed. It is not. A quarter of a million New Zealanders will be affected by this wage rise. That is one of the most important things we can do to make this country whole again and that is just the first round.Make no mistake—work and wages are a major issue for New Zealand. They join other significant issues of the day: the transfer of our productive assets from all New Zealanders to just 2 percent of them; the fact that the Government’s major attack here on the economy was tax cuts that we could not afford for people who did not need them; the fact that Government put up GST on everybody else even though it said it would not; the Government’s erosion of New Zealanders’ privacy by extending the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau; and so many of the Government’s actions where it has shown a disregard for the majority of New Zealanders including it might be said the creeping politicisation of the Public Service and the broader institutions of Government—something that is worrying all New Zealanders.Hon Member: Ha ha!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The Minister may laugh but New Zealanders expect a professional Public Service not toadies and cronies for people who are acting on behalf of privilege.Hardly a week seems to go by without one of the Government’s Ministers being mired in scandal. What does the Prime Minister do? He shrugs and walks away. If it is not the Minister of Conservation bullying environmental advocates doing their statutory duty it is his Minister of Transport ignoring aviation security or the Minister of Justice forgetting about conflicts of interest involving donations and her husband’s directorships or it is cash for access or it is interfering in a police investigation for another donor or it is Mr Banks resigning over electoral fraud.That is just the Cabinet. If we cast a little wider the endless stories of looking after the top few at the expense of everybody else are widespread like taking off workers to appease an international film company or bailing out multinational corporations or subsidising polluters or throwing millions of dollars of public money at elite golf competitions failed yacht races or oil executives’ junkets—$250000 on entertaining oil barons; mining dining and wining—while we have delivered a minimum wage rise to quarter of a million New Zealand workers. That is the difference between that side of the House and this. The choice could not be clearer.Do you know what? All that looking after the Government’s mates would not be so bad if it was just a bit of excess in an economy where everyone was doing fine. But that is not what is happening. Instead the Government is indulging the top few while leaving most New Zealanders behind like the 46 percent who have not had a pay rise the many more who have not had enough to meet the increased cost of living and the 260000 children living in poverty. They are just the Kiwis who are doing it really tough. What about all the others who are working hard playing by the rules and just cannot get ahead—the ones who are afraid to open their power bills each month because they do not know how they are going to pay for them and the ones who go out and work a hard day’s work every day who expect not too much but expect to be able to get ahead yet at the moment cannot? They cannot even afford to not go back to work once their paid parental leave runs out and they are worried about getting a decent education for their kids or worrying about their mortgage rates going up.These are the people whom this election campaign will be about. These are the people who will decide who gets to govern for the next 3 years. The Government offers them nothing. In fact it takes it away. It took away their assets it took away their rights at work it took away 2.5 percent through GST it has run down health funding and it has run down social housing. Now the Prime Minister is saying that giving the lowest-paid Kiwis a modest pay rise is “really frightening”. Like fairness and decency it is something to be scared of! Labour rejects that view.We have a plan to build up New Zealand businesses and grow the economy—to be a Government that works alongside our businesses and communities to grow wealth and create jobs. There is no point in economic growth if it does not lead to a fair and decent society. The plan is all costed. New Zealand can do better will do better and we know that we can deliver. The next Labour-led Government will not just work for New Zealanders; it will work with them and alongside them. It will have the aim of making New Zealand the fairest most decent society in the world—a place where everyone has a good job a good roof over their head and opportunities for their family to get ahead with them.