Dyson Ruth: General Debate 
Dyson Ruth: General Debate 
[Volume:674;Page:20476] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. There is nothing more frustrating than watching New Zealand families go backwards in terms of their ability to pay for the things that are essential in their lives and that is what we are seeing in New Zealand now. Day in day out good hard-working New Zealand families are going backwards and the Government is standing on the sideline as if it were a spectator in a sport saying “It is nothing to do with us.” I have watched in this House day in day out Ministers wringing their hands absolving themselves of all responsibility. I do not know why they collect their salary. If they are spectators in the sport of people’s lives then why do they take up ministerial portfolios and accept the salary that goes with them? Their job should be to support New Zealand families support New Zealand businesses and present a plan that we can rely on to move New Zealand forward. But instead we have no plan. We have New Zealand families going backwards and a Government that is completely out of touch with what is happening. 
That was very sadly related on the weekend in a story in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
. There are often stories that make me feel unwell in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 I must admit but this particular story was about families that have so many people living in the house and that are so short of money that they put padlocks on their fridge so they can ration out the food amongst the people living in that house. Who in New Zealand has heard—other than perhaps in some members’ houses where they do it for reasons other than poverty—of a family that is forced to ration its limited food by putting padlocks on a fridge? Those are not beneficiary families; they are families of low-wage earners. They are people who go to their job every day do their best and work hard and they do not have enough money at the end of the week to adequately afford to feed their family. That is a disgrace. That is why the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister should be stepping up to the mark instead of coming into this House and giving us smart alec and nasty answers to the good serious questions that we are entitled to ask on behalf of New Zealand families. 
We are now seeing more and more families particularly in Auckland living in overcrowded situations. We know what that means. We know that that will mean more Third World diseases of poverty becoming evident in our community and tragically we are seeing those outcomes already. Claire Mataira of the Hamilton Budgeting Advisory Trust was quoted in that article in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
. She said that with regard to the things that people have to have like power food and petrol—not extras not nice-to-haves but the things that people have to have—the trust no longer has enough money to provide those essentials for their service. 
We know that more and more of our New Zealand children are going without breakfast. The  
New Zealand Herald  
reported recently that 4000 children every day are going to school without even having any breakfast and that maybe 85000 to 87000 children every day go to school without their lunch. It is not acceptable in our country to have families living in overcrowded situations that add huge risk to their health as well as additional stress and tension. That is where family violence becomes more and more obvious that is where people’s stress levels get increased and that is where their health is at risk. We have more and more families living in those situations and it is certainly not acceptable to have families who have so little money to share out to buy the essentials that they are forced to padlock their fridge in order to ration food. 
One of the items that is really expensive for people to buy—and a lot of discussion has been generated about it in this House by Labour members—is milk. People in New Zealand cannot understand why we produce so much milk but it costs us so much to buy. I congratulate Labour leader Phil Goff and my colleague from Christchurch Lianne Dalziel on their sterling work in getting an inquiry into this essential item.