Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): That speech from Mark Mitchell like all other speeches—Hon David Parker: Scott Simpson.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Sorry—Scott Simpson. They all look the same from this side of the House. That speech from Scott Simpson was one of a series of speeches from members of the National Government who are desperate to shift the debate away from the topics that New Zealanders are discussing right now. The topics that are front of mind for New Zealanders are: do I have a warm dry home to live in; are my children going to be able to get a warm dry home to live in; are my grandchildren going to be able to get a warm dry home to live in; and do I have a job and does that job pay sufficient wages so that I can make ends meet? Those are the things that are front of mind for New Zealanders and those are the questions that people are asking of this Government at the moment. This Government is desperate to avoid those issues because it knows that it is failing New Zealanders utterly on those matters.Right now we do have stagnant wage growth. Wages in the last quarter only barely matched inflation. There was nil real wage growth over the last quarter the lowest level of wage growth in the last 6 years at the same time as this Government has presided over a 45 percent increase in housing prices. Houses are growing in price at such an enormous rate that they are becoming increasingly out of reach for ordinary New Zealanders. The Government likes to say that in its time wages have increased by 25 percent—well they will when chief executives get year-on-year pay increases of 12 percent. But the truth is for most New Zealanders wages are utterly stagnant.We are getting an increasing gap between those at the top—those who are benefiting from the meagre amounts of economic growth that have occurred under this Government—and those who are working for wages and just trying to do everything they can to get ahead. House prices are completely out of reach of ordinary New Zealanders and for John Key to get up and say that anything that would affect house prices is an attack on the poor just goes to show how utterly out of touch he really is because in New Zealand under John Key the poorest people cannot even think about owning their own home. The people he meets in the Koru lounge might own lots of property but actually if he got out and genuinely spoke to the people who have become the poorest under his watch he would know that owning their own home has become completely out of reach for them.That is because the only growth in New Zealand at the moment is because of population growth. GDP per capita is also stagnant and wages are utterly stagnant and one of the things driving that is this Government's failure to manage the immigration system properly. It issued 209000 work visas last year for roles such as retail manager cafe manager chef fast-food cook—100 people got work visas so that they could come and be fast-food cooks in New Zealand—at a time when there are over 200000 people unemployed in New Zealand looking for work in those areas and looking for wages that will actually attract them to those jobs. Instead of saying to employers You know what? We've got absolutely stagnant wage growth at the moment we need employers to increase wages to attract people into the areas that have supposed labour shortages." this Government says: "No we are going to open the gates to work visas for low-skill low-wage jobs to flood the labour market and keep wages down."That is what is happening under this Government—a Government that is utterly addicted to migration because it is the only thing that is keeping its GDP figures looking good. The Prime Minister likes to crow about GDP growth under his watch but the truth is it is all driven by population growth. We need an immigration system that actually works for New Zealand and delivers good outcomes for migrants and this Government is so addicted to letting people into the country to stimulate GDP growth that it absolutely refuses to do what it needs to do to sort that out."