Shaw JamesJAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I rise to take a call on the Taxation (Budget Measures: Family Incomes Package) Bill. The Green Party believes that this is a highly flawed piece of legislation in terms of its design but will be voting for it nevertheless on the basis that when it comes to people who are on low incomes something is better than nothing—and they have had nothing for the last 8 years under this Government.The 2010 tax cuts that were designed for and aimed at the high-income earners in this country have in part created the set of conditions that now require the Government to perform some kind of remedial action to try to do what it can for people on middle and low incomes in this country. What has happened over the course of the last 8 years of the National Government is that people in the bottom 30 percent of incomes have actually seen their disposable incomes go backwards because their cost of living has increased far higher and far faster than any rise in their incomes over that period of time.So while the Government likes to crow about how incomes in this country have been rising when you break that data down by decile people who are in the lower third of income earners in this country have actually gone backwards during the course of this Government. That is because the cost of things that they have to spend their money on—because of course they have few choices about what they can spend their money on—has increased extraordinarily most of all in housing. That has put a huge squeeze on those families which is one of the reasons why this bill then becomes necessary.I want to pick up on a couple of points that were made by some of the previous speakers. Mr Bishop talked about rewards for hard work. This is part of the National Party mythology as far as I can see which is the notion that if you just work harder you will be rewarded for it. I have to say I know a lot of cleaners and people who work low-end jobs in this country and around the world who no matter how hard they work—and they work extremely hard—will not see a dramatic rise in their incomes as a result of more hard work. The plain fact is that they are not getting paid enough to live on.This is a question I was asking this afternoon and I still do not have a good answer for it: in this country why is it that we have people who have got jobs and have got kids who are working more than 40 hours—many of them up to 60 or 70 or 80 hours a week doing one or even two jobs—and they are living in cars? That is a sign of two things: a massive breakdown in the housing market which is why the changes to the accommodation supplement become necessary and the fact that they are simply not getting paid enough.Let us be very straight about this: Working for Families is a wage subsidy. Right? We are paying to make up the gap between what people are actually getting paid and what they need to live on so it is a wage subsidy. The accommodation supplement is a rent subsidy that goes into the hands of private landlords. Those two massive deficiencies in what people are getting paid and what they are having to spend in order to make ends meet—the Government is having to cover the shortfall in that in some way through those two schemes.One of the things that has been raised by my colleagues in the National Party that is completely correct is that actually what this does is while people are—Phil Twyford: I think you mean Labour James.JAMES SHAW: Sorry what did I—Phil Twyford: Labour.JAMES SHAW: I beg your pardon.Richard Prosser: National's over there.JAMES SHAW: Yes. I beg your pardon. It has been a long day. Those members did say a couple of things that were correct but you guys said more things that were correct. The thing that the Labour Party said earlier that was correct about this is that the design of this package which plays out in this bill means that people who are at the high end actually do get more in the hand back than people who are on lower incomes. For families who are earning $127000 or more they get $33.22 a week through this tax package and families who are earning $24000 or less get $5.34. Right? The families who are on $127000 or more get six times more back through the tax changes than families who are on $24000 or less. That is just completely contrary to the way that this ought to be designed.The fact that people who are earning low incomes are getting $5 a week back is why we are voting for this bill because $5 a week when you have so little is absolutely necessary. It needs to be a great deal more than that. If we were the Government—and when we are the Government later on this year we will design a tax package that is actually more heavily oriented towards those on low incomes than those who are on higher incomes. We need a taxation system in this country that is fair that is redistributive that ensures that actually every family is secure in the knowledge and can trust the fact that they are going to be able to make ends meet at the end of the month when they are able to pay off their rent or their mortgage—whether they rent or they own—and that they are still able to put food on the table. We think that the design of this bill and the design of the package here is flawed. Having said that a little something is better than nothing.One of the other things that I want to speak to given that it is covered in the introductory notes to the bill is in relation to housing—and my colleague Grant Robertson referred to this before. This bill as part of this package admits essentially that the housing crisis has completely gotten away from this Government. One of the things that Government members were kind of boasting about if you like this afternoon was the amount of money that they are putting into emergency housing. That is not something to crow about; that is a massive failure. The fact that we have to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars putting families into motels and emergency accommodation is a huge admission of failure.My regret about the change to the accommodation supplement in this bill is that it is a function of the total failure of the Government's ability to house its own citizens in this country. It is also from a use of taxpayer funds money moving directly from public hands into the private sector essentially because it is moving into the hands of motel owners and private landlords. If the Government was focused on actually building houses keeping them in public hands and putting those people into public housing then that money would come back and the measures in this bill would not be necessary.Like I said this is a flawed bill. We think that the design of this package is oriented in the wrong direction. Having said that families who are on low incomes are really doing it tough in this country because their disposable incomes have gone backwards over the course of the last 8 years. Every single penny that they are able to receive—I think we should not be churlish about that. We should support them. It is just regrettable that people on higher incomes are going to benefit more as a result of this package than people on lower incomes. Thank you.