Logie Jan: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8939. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I am pleased to follow on from that piffle. As I listened to the Prime Minister’s statement to this Parliament earlier in the week I must say that unlike others who seem to be in awe I personally was left bored and frustrated by the cheap barracking and the smoke and mirrors. It is not like we do not have major social environmental and economic challenges in front of us as a country. Half of the population did not get a pay rise last year. In just 2 years there has been a 20 percent increase in the number of people who are underemployed. There are 305000 children living in poverty in this country and our emissions are going up while we watch the cyclones approach. In all of John Key’s many speeches over the last 8 years he has mentioned poverty only 15 times—and even then it has been mostly to deny its existence—and he happens to have mentioned rugby 21 times.Despite our pressing global challenges the Prime Minister has never mentioned climate change in a state of the nation speech. John Key seems incapable of naming our challenges or accepting that we can do something about them. He seems so tied up with what is in front of him and his mates that he is missing the bigger picture and this is so evident when you look at the Government’s Better Public Services targets. These are its main goals for what it wants to achieve in Government. The No. 1 goal is reducing long-term welfare dependence—specifically to reduce the number of people getting income support by 25 percent by 2018—with 75000 fewer people getting income support within this parliamentary term. I really want to examine that a little bit because I can understand that some people will think that that is ambitious and is a really good thing. But is that really the most important goal for this country? Is it more important than reducing poverty? Is getting someone off income support without any concern as to whether they have got a job or whether they are well or whether they are safe more important—the most important thing in our country? Is that the extent of our ambition?But put aside for a second the poverty of the goal and let us consider how the Government is doing on its No. 1 goal. The only real at all relevant material I heard in the speech in relation to that goal was the Government saying that it has created an extra 160000 jobs over the past 3 years and that Treasury expects another 195000 by 2020 which actually if you analyse those numbers shows us that the job creation rate is slowing and the Government is telling us that is a good thing. These are the figures that John Key promoted in his speech so we are all expected to think: “Well OK surely there are more jobs so these beneficiaries are going to be able to get off welfare and into work. If they need the work great.”But last year the same Government granted almost 186000 work visas. Admittedly that includes visa renewals but the majority of these visas—120000 of them—did not cite an occupation and are likely to be low-wage jobs. So even allowing for these renewals these are obviously more visa work permits than the number of jobs created. So while saying getting people off income support is its No. 1 goal the Government has actually made it harder for New Zealanders to get off income support and get into work. It has effectively flooded the market with low-wage workers.When I asked the chief executive officer of the Ministry of Social Development about how it was tracking on this target of 25 percent—it was 2.8 percent last year—he said: “Oh well actually it’s more of an aspirational target.” He is not even expecting to achieve it. This is the Government’s No. 1 goal and the chief executive officer has given up on it—and no wonder when the Government’s other policies directly conflict with doing this and the achievement of it. And what it has left us with is a stigmatised group of people who have been subjected to some of the harshest most intrusive welfare reforms that this country has ever seen. It is time the Government—