Logie Jan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: General Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3469. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I apologise in advance for my seriousness and lack of personal abuse in this speech—it seems to be counter to others. If an economy is not working for everyone it is not working and this economy is not working. We have about a quarter of a million of our children living in poverty. We have between 60000 and 100000 children consistently going without nutritious meals their own beds waterproof or warm clothing shoes access to transport or the ability to go on school trips or to get birthday and Christmas presents. We have more than one child a week dying of preventable poverty-related diseases.We have more beggars on the streets than I can remember in my lifetime. We have community workers having to access food banks at the places they work because they believe in the importance of caring for others even when this Government cuts the funding for their services. We are hearing about people sleeping in their cars or on the streets in Ashburton in Hastings in Auckland in Invercargill in Tauranga in Kaitāia and in Wellington.From one end of our abundant country to the other people are on our streets struggling. We have a capital city with the highest rates of depression in the country due to the constant restructuring of our public services. We have distressed farmers worried that they might lose their farms as they have been encouraged into untenable levels of debt. We have wages for half of this country stagnating even while ours as MPs increase.We have an entire generation abandoned. Those under 40 are burdened now with massive student debts. They are increasingly having to face up to the fact that they may never own a house or may have to wait until their parents die in order to have a house and far too many are struggling to even find a warm stable affordable place to live. We are seeing more people now with Bachelor’s degrees in the lowest income bracket—more than we have ever seen before—and we have a generation facing or trying to ignore the looming emotional and financial burden of climate change due to a failure of successive Governments to act.National tells us that it is working for New Zealand. National has lost touch with everyday New Zealanders. It has chosen to build an economy that works only for New Zealanders who already have a lot. The Budget is an expression of our collective priorities as a country or it should be. But it seems that we are going to be getting another Budget that is ignoring the reality of all too many of us and this makes me worried for all of us because it costs to look the other way when someone else is suffering.I am sure everyone in this House knows that sick feeling you get when you have hurt someone. But rather than fronting up to them and dealing with it you ignore it and of course your relationship with that person suffers. We all know that; we have all done that. If we do not feel a little bit sick when we are staring into the faces of those children going without their own beds and going without a decent meal then this is a disturbing reality of ideology and the impact of it on us.The Green Party is prepared to stand up for younger New Zealanders and all those who do not have enough to get by who are being let down by this National Government. There is an alternative—in fact there are many—and the Green Party has real solutions to ensure our economy would work for all of us. For us it is sensible economics for a small country but much more than that it is what we know is right. An economy that is working for only a few is not an economy that is working.