Parker David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17834. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): Far from being in terrible trouble in the polls we have the gap narrowing. The last but one poll the Roy Morgan poll had Labour-Greens well ahead of National. The poll that was out today from Fairfax had the gap narrowing between National and Labour-Greens by 2 percent. ACT is gone Dunne is down the Māori Party is discredited and the National Party has run out of coalition parties. That is why everyone in New Zealand and all the commentators know that it is all on for the election and that it is too close to call.We know that New Zealanders do not like rising inequality. We know that New Zealanders know overwhelmingly that it is getting worse. Three-quarters of New Zealanders think the gaps are getting wider. The Government denies that. It denies it despite the fact that we have got the lowest homeownership rate in 50 years and still dropping. It denies it despite the fact that 46 percent of New Zealanders got no increase in their wage rates last year—46 percent. Even on average across the whole of the economy including the rich-listers and everyone who got an increase in the amount they earn wage rates went up by 1.6 percent when inflation was 1.5 percent. In other words the benefits of growth are not getting through to everyday New Zealanders and New Zealanders are sick of that.They hate the cronyism of National. Judith Collins sits every week in this House and John Key defends her. He comes out and pretends that there was a perceived conflict of interest when there was a real conflict of interest when she was feathering the nest of her own family. She was feathering the nest of her own family by taking advantage of her ministerial position to advantage Oravida of which her husband is a director in China. That is importing into New Zealand standards that New Zealanders do not want. They do not want those standards imported into New Zealand and the Prime Minister defends it and pretends that the $50000 donation that he got through Oravida was for some independent charity rather than for the National Party.The Government pretends that it inherited a cot-case of an economy from the Labour Party but it inherited amongst the lowest unemployment in the world and zero net Government debt. In fact there were positive assets to the tune of 5 percent of GDP.Hon Annette King: What did Bill English say?Hon DAVID PARKER: Bill English said that the recession and the Christchurch earthquakes happened at a time when—this was the rainy day that Governments had been saving for.Hon Trevor Mallard: Who said that?Hon DAVID PARKER: Bill English said that. Since then we have had inequality rising. We are getting back to Budget surplus and that is a good thing after five deficits. Labour would be doing it too but a good economy needs to do more than that.We need to get money into the pockets of people through decent jobs and high wages. We need to restore the Kiwi dream of owning your own home. The Labour Party policy package is linked up and achieves those things. We have more money going into universal KiwiSaver and through that with a variable savings rate people save more and pay less in interest. That in turn takes pressure off the exchange rate. That enables our exporters to thrive and to employ people in secure high-value jobs. We have got that money going into the right parts of the economy through our capital gains tax which takes money out the speculative economy and puts it into the productive economy and grows jobs. We encourage innovation through a research and development tax credit and more productive investment through accelerated depreciation tax breaks so that we can lift wages. Then we make sure that under fair labour laws people who are working New Zealanders get their fair share.We do not forget about the vulnerable. We know that parents with young children need a better start in life. Our Best Start package improves the incomes of all familieswith young children—particularly in later years for our lowest-income families—and so it should because we have got 280000 children living in poverty in New Zealand. That is a disgrace. Then we had the Minister of Finance Bill English today pretending that income gaps are not increasing in New Zealand when both the census data and the 20-year-old data series from the University of Otago prove otherwise. People will have a positive choice to vote Labour at the next election.