Cunliffe David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: General Debate[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17575. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): How desperate is that Government? The guy it puts up to deflect and dissemble could come up with only the unemployment rate on a day that it stayed the same—from 6 percent to 6 percent. As the Labour Opposition—why does he not listen to this—has revealed long-term unemployment under this Government has tripled since National took office. If that is the best it can do in a general debate it really is in trouble.Mr Joyce mentioned Labour’s monetary policy. He obviously did not like it. I will tell you why he did not like it: because the Employers and Manufacturers Association did Federated Farmers did the Manufacturers and Exporters Association did the bank economists largely did former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash did and bank board members did. So that is why Steven Joyce did not: because New Zealanders did. They know that it means lower interest rates. They know that it means a better export economy with better jobs and higher wages.And ladies and gentlemen has not the last week just shown the contrast between these two parties? On the Government’s side—politics as usual. On the Labour side—a party of new ideas that wants to put people first. That is what Labour is about: putting New Zealanders first. This Government puts money first. That is the common theme of the sad parade of the last couple of weeks. It put subsidising RioTinto ahead of compensating Pike River families. It chose to help Skycity not to end child poverty. It chose the Cabinet clubOravida and Maurice Williamson’s call to the police about a donor. It is privileging wealthy donors and granting special access to Ministers. It is our duty though it gives us no pleasure—Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —to point that out to New Zealanders. Well there is the laugh of the damned. There is the laugh of the damned. They are damned because John Key came to office 5 years ago promising to be a breath of fresh air. I think he wasbouncing from cloud to cloud at the time but that is what he promised. He promised high standards from his Ministers. He did not promiseOravida and draining the swamp. That is what he has got. He did not promise Ministers intervening with the police to help out wealthy donors. He did not promise Ministers taking wholesale donations and then forgetting that they had got them. Those are not the standards New Zealanders expect. That is sadly what politics as usual has become but it is not good enough and it is not what Labour stands for.What Labour stands for is putting New Zealanders first. We have a positive agenda that is about our children: the idea that every single New Zealand child deserves the best possible start irrespective of where they are born irrespective of who their parents are or where they come from irrespective of the size of their family’s wallet or home. Every child deserves the best start and that is why the Labour Party has been working so hard to bring in the Best Start package to end the fact that one in four of our children is growing up in poverty. One in four of our children is growing up in poverty and that Government is enriching itself and its members and their families not the most vulnerable children of this land.Every New Zealand child deserves to grow up in a warm dry healthy home. There are 5000 families in New Zealand on the waiting list for a State home. Is it not sad that the Prime Minister cancelled 500 State houses in his own electorate of Hobsonville? The same Prime Minister tells us how he came from a family that depended on a State house. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we do not pull up the ladder. We put all New Zealanders first. We do not mind hard work but we want every New Zealand child to have the opportunities that we had. Politics as usual or politics for people? It is an easy choice in 2014.