Salesa Jenny; Carter DavidJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this opportunity to respond to the Prime Minister's statement earlier on where he said that there will be business as usual this current year. This is my first speech this session Mr Speaker and I would like to wish you and all my colleagues from across the House a prosperous and wonderful New Year. I would also like to wish all New Zealanders especially those from South Auckland a prosperous year.These past 8 years have been a time of growing inequality a time where many many New Zealanders are going without. The Salvation Army's 2017 state of the nation report which we received just 2 days ago is evidence that things are getting worse. Inequality is growing child poverty is growing and yet this current Government does not even want to define child poverty let alone measure it. How can we effectively address this issue if we do not even know what the definition is and if we are not even measuring what it is? Do we live in a country where everyone is prosperous? Do we live in a country where all of our children have equal opportunities? Not when we have tens of thousands of families and children living in cars living in garages. Not when we have over 40000 who are homeless.One of the staff in my office in Auckland in Ōtara lives on a street where every second house on her street has two families sharing the house because this is the only way that they can get by in Aotearoa New Zealand today. We do not live in a prosperous country when we have $1.7 billion taken out of the health system when nearly 60000 people have been declined specialist medical treatment and when mental health services and emergency departments in hospitals in very many cities across New Zealand are stretched to the breaking point where our doctors have gone on strike not once but twice because they are not being funded adequately. Not when many parents are struggling to manage the contributions to the schools that their children attend when we live in a country where the education that these children are receiving at State schools is supposed to be free. New figures show that parents of a child who is born today can expect to pay almost $40000 for their supposed free State education and that is simply outrageous.We live in a country where we know from figures released just last week that we have 90000 of our young people who are not in employment education or training. That is also outrageous when we have 15- to 24-year-olds 90000 of whom are not in employment education or training and at the same time many of our employers are going overseas recruiting from overseas because we do not have the right skilled people to rebuild our own country. We need a country where we are actually training our young people and making sure that they have the right skills. The longer that our young people are disconnected and are not in education or training the harder it is for them to become a member of society where they can actually contribute.The good news is that this is 2017 it is election year and we can have a Government that actually invests in core health education and housing. We can have a Government that actually addresses the housing crisis. Labour will address the housing crisis by building more affordable houses by making sure that there is a health system that everyone can rely on and by making sure that young people have access to quality education. Labour is committed to reviving the Kiwi Dream. Thank you.Mr SPEAKER: And I understand this is also a split call—Andrew Bayly.