Logie Jan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11734. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Budget is supposed to represent our shared concerns. But sadly this Budget fails to represent our most pressing concern as a country. In this Budget the first Budget since the coroner found that Emma-Lita Bourne’s death could be linked to the cold damp house that she had to live in the Government has cut funding to Warm Up New Zealand for home insulation. In the Budget—as we have found out one in 100 New Zealanders are homeless—the Government has provided money for 750 social houses in the face of one in 100 New Zealanders living without a home. This is all while the Government allocates further money to facilitate the sale of more State houses. Although more than one child a week dies of low-income - related diseases there is absolutely nothing to increase incomes for parents who are not in the paid workforce. I guess the Government considers that it fixed child poverty in last year’s Budget.The Government tells us that work is the pathway out of poverty and it obviously thinks that it is going to do this by getting people off benefits. The Government has set a target of getting 25 percent of people off benefits by 2018. This is although its targets and its budget lines for expenditure for every single core benefit in this Budget show that it is expecting expenditure to either increase or decrease by about 1 percent which clearly shows that the Government does not believe it can do it—that it cannot get people off benefit at the rate it says it can. Even if the Government did it would still leave over 200000 people in this country unable to work and living in grinding poverty unable to secure a roof over their head unable to consistently put food on the table and unable to keep themselves healthy and well.That is what this Government’s Budget is delivering to the country. Although two out of five children in this country who are living in poverty have parents who work no one even talks about people without children who are living in grinding poverty. The Budget projects that wages will be 1.1 percent worse off after inflationso every day people are going to find it harder to pay the bills thanks to this Government.This is the first Budget since the working group was set up to start delivering equal pay for women. This is something that is well over 120 years overdue. This working group started meeting last year. The expectation was set that there would be money in this Budget to ensure equal pay for caregivers at the very leastyet here we are and there is nothing in the Budget beyond the usual contingencies. Even worse than that the commitment that the Government has already made to pay caregivers for their in-between travel time which was only partially funded in the last Budget has no more funding in this Budget. So it is all too clear that this Government plans to continue to underpay and exploit women and it expects us to be thankful for it.Although we have known for years and have had repeated reports in the last year of the fact that Child Youth and Family is not adequately resourced to help families and keep our children safe and that the Children’s Commissioner said he was not resourced to be able to monitor their safety and ensure that they were safe we have had no increase for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.JAN LOGIE: This Budget cut money for home insulation put money into selling off State houses reduced funding to the Children’s Commissioner chose to keep over 200000 people in poverty failed to deliver equal pay predicted growing inequality and then it cut funding to community organisations that are desperately trying to hold people above water as they deal with increasing homelessness stress of stigmatisation and grinding poverty created by this Government. This Budget is a fail.