Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): Over the last few weeks I have had the great good fortune to be attending the E tū union delegates' forums. These are gatherings in education of union delegates from a wide variety of different workplaces who have been coming together to look at what the big issues are that are facing them and their families and their communities. I was really impressed by these ordinary working New Zealanders who were taken off the job in order to get together to have a really good discussion about what it is that they want to see in their country. What is their vision for Aotearoa New Zealand?I am pleased to have been joined by many of my colleagues from the Labour Party while we were doing this. What I found was that at every single one of the meetings that I attended—and there were about 11 of them—all those members all those delegates had first-hand experience of working together of joining up and working together to make really good positive changes for everybody. For everybody not just for one or two but for all of them—they had bargained collectively. They had sorted out problems collectively. Consequently those workers received much better terms and conditions in their employment than other people who are non-unionised. It really does strike me that the Budget that we have is quite the antithesis of this. It is not about working together. It is not about making positive changes for most people. It is not about getting the best bang for our buck. It is again the typical divide and conquer tactics that we have seen with this Government year after year after year in the Budget.One of the things that I did pick up from these delegates was the impact of low wages on their families and on their communities. We supported this Budget because of the simple fact that there was a modicum of relief for our poorest families with the Working for Families increase—tiny increase—and through the accommodation supplement. While we supported that we also I think have to recognise that in many cases this poverty alleviation is a subsidy for landlords. That is what the accommodation supplement is becoming. And Working for Families has become a subsidy for employers to keep wages low. We will continue to keep wages low and we will have to rely on tax credits like Working for Families unless we do something about redressing the imbalance of power between employers and workers so that they can bargain effectively.Over the last 30 years we have seen productivity in this country increase but the share of that productivity to those who create it in the workplace has decreased. It is simply greed. Despite this—despite this fact—in this Budget the Government once again gave handouts to those who were most well-off in their typical divide and conquer type of way.We could make dramatic—dramatic—change if we did work together because we are all in this together. If we were the type of Government—and I have to say the Greens in Government will be that type of Government—that actually did think about all of us rather than some of us then we would be adopting and endorsing the living wage. We would be introducing that initially to people who were employed in the Government sector and then passing it on to those who contract with the Government. We have seen a missed opportunity with this Budget. We could be doing so much more to bring all New Zealanders up and to ensure that those who most need it get the most help. But this is not what happened here. In all good faith we did have to vote for it because of that small relief but as I say we could do much better and we need to change the Government so that we can.