Robertson Grant; Borrows ChesterGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Never has a truer word been said—that member's time surely has expired. He devoted a large chunk of his speech to the promotion of various mayoral candidates around the country. Just to fill in one little gap there: Justin Lester the most excellent Labour-endorsed mayoral candidate in Wellington has billboards that are yellow and black. They would be the colours of Wellington the city in which he is running. I would expect the Minister of Finance to know that given that he has resided in Wellington for a very long period of time. But he did not mention one mayoral candidate in Wellington who I think will be extremely disappointed that she was not mentioned by the Minister of Finance given that I believe he has endorsed her. [Interruption] That is right—Jo Coughlan. We did not hear about the colour of her billboards. I think you will find they—Jo Coughlan's billboards—are actually green and red but look it is fine. The Minister of Finance's endorsement in Wellington will be hugely helpful for Jo Coughlan to scratch herself up from seventh or sixth place in the order. As for Phil Goff in Auckland a man whom I think most people would be laying bets on to be the next Mayor of Auckland—but feel free National Party to put up a third candidate. It has already got two on the go—Mark Thomas a refugee from Wellington is up there as well. Actually do we count John Palino? Does he count as a National Party candidate? Well he is Cameron Slater's candidate so that is three. They have already got three National Party candidates there. So Phil Goff is well and truly in charge of that—but enough about local government. The Budget of 2016 got off to a bad start. It actually got off to a bad start the day before when Paula Bennett desperate because she knew that the Budget did next to nothing for housing decided to make her own Budget announcement. Bill English did not know about it. He was remarkably relaxed when he heard about the fact that Paula Bennett was promising to pay $5000 to people to leave Auckland. It was a little bit of a confusing policy because she also had another policy to pay people $3500 to go to Auckland. So people were potentially getting themselves on the merry-go-round of that money but in the end the success of that pre-Budget announcement that Bill English did not know about was for 12 people—12 whole people—to take the opportunity to take the $5000 and move out of Auckland. When New Zealanders take a look at a Budget what they are looking for is whether the Budget helps them and their families and their communities to grow and to prosper. The Budget is the Government's chance to say: Here are the things that are important for New Zealand to go ahead in the next few years." We look at the core areas that you do in any Budget—what kinds of jobs are going to be created what kinds of housing are there going to be for people what will the education system look like and how will the house system be supported? They are the building blocks of opportunity the things where New Zealanders look to the Government and say: "We're trying to build a good life for us and our families—will the Government be there alongside us?". They take a look at the 2016 Budget and they see nothing. It does not fix the housing crisis. It cuts health and education in real terms. It does not do anything to support New Zealanders in the transition to a changing working environment in the future of work. What is more when we look ahead the grand ambition of the Government once naming itself as ambitious for New Zealand is that wages—average wages—will not actually keep up with inflation for the next 2 years. The share of the economy that working people get is—Andrew Bayly: That is rubbish.GRANT ROBERTSON: Andrew Bayly needs to catch up with the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update. Have a read of it and you will see wages not keeping up with inflation for the next 2 years. That is how little the National Government members know about what is going on. Just how out of touch they are is that they do not even realise what their own Budget says. When New Zealanders look at that they will be saying—Bill English says he is concerned about the people who get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. Well he should be concerned about those people because they are working harder and harder and not feeling like they are getting ahead. The reason for that is that the share of the economy that working people get is declining under this Government. We know that. Wages are not keeping up with the cost increases we are seeing in housing. Then we find out in the days after the Budget that the level of income and asset inequality in this country is getting worse. Statistics New Zealand has come out and told us that the top 10 percent of New Zealanders have 60 percent of the wealth up from 55 percent just a few years ago. That is the New Zealand that this Government is creating: one where those at the very top do better and those hard-working New Zealanders who as Bill English says are getting up at 4 in the morning are struggling to see their way forward. This Budget did next to nothing for them. When New Zealanders are looking at a Budget like this what they should have seen was a plan to fix the housing crisis. It is the biggest political issue facing New Zealand today and the Budget was largely silent on it. A little bit after the Budget it turns out the Government had a panic and decided it had better create a billion-dollar infrastructure fund—Hon Annette King: How long did that take to work out?GRANT ROBERTSON: It took the Government 3 weeks to work it out. There was one sensible thing about that process: Government members did not tell Nick Smith until the very end. That was the sensible bit of the process. They told him a couple of days before the end. They did not even bother to tell the councils that they wanted to work with and most of the councils looked at it and said: "This will get us next to nothing." What that package should have been was a simple and plain thing: to have a Government that would be a partner in building affordable homes. Bill English in his pre-Budget speech has acknowledged that only 5 percent of the homes built in New Zealand in the last 10 years have been affordable homes. That translates to about 500 homes in Auckland being affordable when we need thousands and thousands. So the comprehensive housing plan that Labour has put forward is what should have been in the Budget: 100000 affordable homes built over the next 10 years making sure that we actually have an affordable housing authority that has got the mandate to get in there to work with councils iwi and developers to create good-quality affordable housing right across New Zealand. Somehow in the middle of his speech Bill English starting talking about rebuilding Dunedin. If only that was what he was going to do because actually out of our Affordable Housing Authority project we want to do the kind of urban regeneration that communities like South Dunedin where I grew up actually need—and that is what we will do. Making housing central to building strong communities—that is what Labour's KiwiBuild and Affordable Housing Authority policies are about. Then we need to make sure that we are providing adequate State housing. We heard Steven Joyce come out with his tweet to say: "We are not taking a dividend from Housing New Zealand." That happened in the wake of the Budget as well. Next year I understand that Steven Joyce's Twitter account will be included as an unspecified fiscal risk in the Budget because if he is going to make $90 million tweets he is going to get right in there alongside the Earthquake Commission and a few other things that are already in that category. But the Government needed to have a commitment to State housing it needed to have a real commitment to emergency housing and that was not there. Then we come to health where we have a continuation of the underfunding of health that has been a feature of the Budgets of the National Government. We have now reached $1.72 billion of underfunding right across New Zealand which is having an impact. Then we look at the education system where remarkably the Government chooses in this Budget to say "We will freeze the operational grants of our schools." at the very time when our schools need more support to be helping to prepare young people for the future. The good news is that in education the Labour Party has a plan too: 3 years of free post-secondary school training and education for every New Zealander—recognising that now and into the future the kinds of skills that people need to be developed and retrained and constantly upgrading. We are going to upgrade careers advice in school because every New Zealander deserves the right to have a career plan to be supported to make the decisions for what they will do next. No New Zealander should be leaving school without that plan and that is what you get from this Government: 87200 people aged between 15 and 24 not in employment not in education and not in training. Hon Annette King: How many?GRANT ROBERTSON: More people Mrs King than the population of Palmerston North—87200. There is nothing is this Budget to deal with that. So if the Budget was building the opportunity for New Zealand it would have KiwiBuild in it it would have health funding that keeps up with population change and backfills what has been let go in the last few years. It would have support for a strong education system both in our compulsory sector and giving opportunity for training and education past then and it would have support for our regions to start developing the jobs—the decent work of the future. They are the building blocks of opportunity they are the things that would be in a Labour Government Budget but we look at what is in front of us today and it is a tired Budget from a tired Government.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has long expired—at least 30 seconds."