Lees-Galloway Iain: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9225. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Labour supports an economy that works for everybody not an economy that works only for the privileged few who gather from time to time at Skycity Casino to pat John Key on the back for ensuring that the New Zealand economy delivers for a narrower and narrower group of people as it has done in the last 7 years under the National Government. Under a Labour Government New Zealanders will be able to have hope that they will be able to get a job—a job that pays well a job that has secure hours a job where they know from one week to the next how much they are going to earn so that they can pay the mortgage they can pay the power bill they can buy the groceries from the supermarket they can put food on the table for their kids and they can put a roof over their heads. That is the hope that we have for New Zealand; that is the Kiwi Dream that we believe in on this side of the House—the Kiwi Dream that has been slipping ever so further away from the grasp of ordinary New Zealanders every single one of the 7 long years that the National Party has been in power.On this side of the House we are interested in what is happening with the future of work. We are interested in ensuring that the future of work delivers for working people. On the other side of the House they laugh at us for having a Future of Work Commission. They laugh at us for bringing people like Guy Standing and Robert Reich to New Zealand to actually talk about the challenges of the future of work the challenges of greater automation the challenges of a greater number of people working in contracting situations rather than in employment situations the challenges of ensuring that the future of work actually delivers for people that it results in higher wages that it results in stable incomes and it results in people being able to live the Kiwi Dream—being able to own their own home being able to have a life outside of work. Those are the sorts of things that we are focused on and that is what National members laugh at us for. Well they can laugh as much as they like; we will continue to focus on the Kiwi Dream.David Bennett can say as much as he likes that more people are employed. Actually the number of people unemployed is still higher today than it was when the National Government came to office. The few people who have been able to pick up extra work are picking up part-time work or casual agreements or zero-hour contracts—insecure work that does not pay the bills and does not give people the security they need to be able to lead a decent life—and National is happy with that. Well we are not happy with that on this side of the House. We are unsatisfied with that. We think New Zealand can do better. Just because National has given up on the Kiwi Dream does not mean that the rest of us have to give up on the Kiwi Dream. So yes we are looking at the future of work. We are looking at how we ensure that productivity gains and the wealth that this country generates can be shared fairly so that a hard day’s work does result in a good day’s pay and actually means that you can have that Kiwi Dream and you can feed your family and you can live a reasonable life. That is what people expect from living in New Zealand and it is slipping away under the National Government.So we will look at things like how we ensure that people who are in contracting situations get the minimum rights that we should expect for everybody who works in New Zealand like getting the minimum wage. The Government can crow about putting the minimum wage up by a meagre amount—it has finally hit $15 an hour 6 or 7 years after the Labour Party first said that we should have a minimum wage of $15 an hour. That is great except for the fact that there are thousands of people who work in New Zealand who do not get the minimum wage because they are not employees and they are not entitled to those basic minimums. There are thousands of New Zealanders who do not get all the other basic rights that ordinary working people should be able to rely on in New Zealand—and do you know what? National is OK with that too. Well on this side of the House we think we can do better.So our Future of Work Commission will look at things like how we expand collective bargaining so that people who are in contracting arrangements can get the benefits of joining a union and bargaining collectively and using their collective power to get fair wages and a fair income so that they can live a decent life. Those are the sorts of things that we are interested in on this side of the House. Those are the sorts of things that National laughs at.One of the things that we believe should be part of the Kiwi Dream is being able to rely on our health care system to deliver when we need it. When you go to hospital you should be able to expect to get the care that you need. I am hearing overwhelmingly from people in my electorate and from people across the country actually that our health system is failing. That is what we get when National fails to fund the health system properly. OK the Prime Minister can stand up and say that the health budget has gone up every year. That is true. But the question is: has the health budget moved sufficiently to cover the costs of inflation and population growth? No it has not.In fact $1.7 billion is missing from our health system and that shows up in events like the one I experienced a couple of weeks ago when I drove for 2 hours to take my father from Palmerston North to Wellington Regional Hospital for an appointment that was pre-arranged—only to be told when we walked through the doors: “No your appointment is not going ahead.” Why did we not hear about the fact that that appointment was not going ahead before we left Palmerston North and drove all the way to Wellington? Because the booking clerk was so tired of calling my father and cancelling his appointments that they were too embarrassed to make that phone call and they put it back on whomever it was who made the decision to cancel my father’s appointment one more time and that phone call never happened.That to me demonstrates a health system that is sick and it has become sick under this National Government because National refuses to fund health care. It refuses to pay our health professionals properly and it refuses to provide the resources so that our health system can absorb one or two urgent cases and still provide the routine cases—which they had booked people in for written to them about told them to come to hospital and make a 2-hour journey or longer in some cases—and when people walk through the door they are told that “No your appointment is not going ahead today because we don’t have the resources to provide that appointment that we promised you were going to get.” That broken promise is delivered to us by National and Jonathan Coleman refusing to fund the health system properly.I received a letter that one of my constituents got from our local primary health organisation. This constituent had been referred to the primary health organisation by their GP and the referral was for a mild to moderate mental health condition. They were told that they did not meet the criteria not because their condition was not sufficiently acute for the primary health organisation to take them on—no they did not meet the criteria because the primary health organisation has the resources to provide for only mild to moderate mental health treatment for Māori Pasifika community services card holders and people between the ages of 10 and 24. I will give the organisation credit—it was absolutely honest about that. It did not say: “You don’t meet our criteria because you are not acute enough because you don’t have an illness because we don’t think you need to be treated.” They said: “You don’t meet our criteria because you’re not Māori Pasifika a community services card holder or a person between the ages of 10 and 24.”Our health system is sick if we cannot respond to the people who need treatment. This person could very well have received low-level treatment for a mild illness and saved the health system a lot of money. My concern is twofold: this person will become sicker because they are not getting the treatment they require and that bothers me greatly. But another thing bothers me and that is that they may very well end up in the mental health ward at the hospital with a more acute condition that is more detrimental to them and also more costly for our health system. That is what is wrong with our health system—it is short-sighted it is under-resourced and it is underfunded and that is thanks to this National Government.None of this lives up to the Kiwi Dream. None of this lives up to what it means to be a New Zealander. It is certainly not how I was brought up as a youngster in New Zealand—I was led to believe that this was the best country in the world to grow up in. But now it is a country where it is almost impossible to find a job and when you do find a job you are likely to be underpaid and to have too few hours to make ends meet. It is a place where the Government laughs at people who say we need to focus on the future of work and we need to make sure that people are prepared to engage in the future of work to get a decent income. And it is a country where you get turned away from the hospital even when you have an appointment. That is not the Kiwi Dream. That is the nightmare of John Key’s National Government.