Clark DavidDr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Budget 2016 and the Estimates we have examined do nothing to fix the housing crisis in New Zealand. They cut health and education expenditure further in real terms and they see middle New Zealand—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am just going to interrupt the member right now to make sure that he is aware that we have gone past the housing and health sectors.Dr DAVID CLARK: Certainly.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): All right. Well I suggest that he begins with a reference to the debate that is currently being held rather than the previous one.Dr DAVID CLARK: The remainder of my first sentence will directly address the Estimates hearing. Both those cuts and the fact that middle New Zealand gets a smaller slice of the pie show that we have not got an economy that is working for New Zealanders. That is what we examined in our Estimates hearing. We looked at whether this economy is benefiting all New Zealanders.Mr Joyce told us about his regional economic development initiative. He is putting $11 million per year for the coming years into regional growth programmes. That amounts to a few hundred thousand dollars for each region in New Zealand. That is not going to change the dial on an economy that is failing to deliver for most New Zealanders. Unfortunately as we began the hearing Mr Joyce was able to give us absolutely no confidence that his target of 40 percent of GDP being made up of exports would be reached in the foreseeable future. He would give us no commitment to any intermediate targets and described it as an aspirational goal. When Mr Joyce announced that plan originally he said we would get there. He believed that year by year we would see exports grow as a percentage of GDP but in fact we are now down below 30 percent—we are solidly below 30 percent and projected to stay there for some time to come.Mr Joyce and his Government have failed to grow the economy. What we looked at when we looked at the Estimates were the initiatives of the Government to change that situation. We looked to see whether it would create an education system that would benefit New Zealand in terms of the skills it needs to grow the economy. We looked at whether the Government would make a health system that would make sure every New Zealander was productive. We looked to see whether these regional economic development initiatives would turn the dial locally to make sure that New Zealanders had opportunities to give of their best and grow the New Zealand economy and we got no reassurance at all. In fact we know that since National took office the share of the economy going to wage and salary earners has fallen. In real terms that amounted to a $50 cut for families each week in terms of their income and Budget forecasts show that that trend is set to continue. Unemployment has grown under this Government. It is higher and projected to stay higher than when the Government took office.In the regional growth plans that we saw—which were going to allocate a few hundred thousand dollars per region and which were not going to grow the economy in a way that was really going to change the picture we have got now of an economy that is driven by immigration largely rather than by productivity gains and in a situation where now $37 out of every $100 that the economy grows goes to wages and the rest goes elsewhere where it used to be 50 percent—we took no confidence. If we look through regional New Zealand we will see that everywhere and across New Zealand this Government is failing the regions. Let us not forget that if the regions succeed New Zealand succeeds—60 percent of New Zealanders live in the regions that Mr Joyce's initiative wants to support. It is just not enough and there is not the framework there to help change the dial on New Zealand's earnings. If we want New Zealand to succeed we need our regions to succeed.If we look across a series of regions—in the Bay of Plenty the number of people on benefits has increased by 13 percent under this Government. Transport spending in that region has been cut by 40 percent—$86 million in real terms. Against that the few hundred thousand in that Budget is nothing. That few hundred thousand is not going to make up for $86 million in under-investment in infrastructure. In Gisborne the unemployment rate is the highest equal in the country at 8.4 percent—18 percent of working-age people in Gisborne are on benefits the highest level in the country. There again transport spending was cut $22 million—a few hundred thousand on that regional development initiative will make very little difference indeed. Gisborne also has the lowest homeownership rate in the country and police statistics are going off the chart. This undermines confidence and undermines that growth in the regional economy.Likewise in the Hawke's Bay it is a very similar story. In the Manawatū under National joblessness doubled while incomes have fallen to the lowest in the country—again the economy is not working for those people in the regions. These initiatives this few hundred thousand dollars will not make a difference when in that region they get just $492 of transport funding per person compared with a national average of $700. Those are New Zealand Transport Agency figures which the Minister can look up if he cares to.National has underfunded services in the top of the South Island too. We see there burglaries on the increase we see net jobs down by 200 in the past year and we see cuts to the district health board that supports the workforce. There again we see police statistics: burglaries up 49 percent; police assaults—assaults recorded by the police—are up 44 percent in the past year alone. The economy is not working for the regions.National has underfunded these things in Northland as well and there the economy has shrunk by 1.8 percent in the March quarter alone. Northland's unemployment rate of 8.4 percent is again the equal highest in the country. That region has lost a net 100 jobs in the past year and the median household income has fallen by $37 a week. This initiative that the Government is promoting to grow the regions is not going to change the dial on that. I am interested to hear the Minister speak further on it because he failed to convince in the Estimates hearing on that.In my home town of Otago the number of jobs across the region fell by 2500 in the past year. Household incomes fell by $98 a week according to the New Zealand Income Survey and National has cut over $100 million from the district health board over that period. If you fail to invest in infrastructure in the regions you cannot expect a few hundred thousand here and there to make a difference Mr Joyce. National has failed.Of course the Southland economy as well as we know has shrunk by 10 percent in the past year—10 percent—and the average household income in Southland fell by $49 a week in the past year. Unemployment has more than doubled in Southland—more than doubled—since 2008 when the National Government came into office. Of course the cuts to health have impacted there too.Taranaki is in a recession. Its economy shrank by 3.3 percent in 2015 and it has already shrunk a further 1.8 percent in the first quarter of this year. They lost 700 jobs in Taranaki last year. The Minister smiles but these figures are hurting people in the regions. They are hurting people in the regions and the failure to invest—this few hundred thousand dollars that the Minister has trumpeted in his Budget in his regional development programme—is not going to change the dial in the Taranaki and nor will it in the Waikato. There we have another situation where the economy has shrunk by 2.2 percent in the last year and by a further 0.3 percent in the first quarter of this year. These are the Minister's own statistics through Statistics New Zealand. Of course the loss of 900 jobs in the Waikato region in the past year is not lost on the locals either.Wairarapa West Coast—I could go on. These places desperately need regional development programmes. The Estimates ought to be the place where we look to see the investment of the Government in those regions recognising that if the regions do not succeed New Zealand will not succeed. We cannot afford a two-speed economy in this country.We need a Government with vision not a Government that has been in office for 8 years and is content to see wages decline in real terms in these regions—not a Government that is out of ideas out of touch and increasingly described as arrogant by the people whom I talk to. We need a Labour Government with an aspiration for the future backing the Kiwi Dream addressing the housing crisis investing in the regions and making sure that real New Zealand—that middle New Zealand—is benefiting from any gains in the economy that are over and above an economy driven purely by immigration.