Hague Kevin: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4878. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I was not anticipating taking a call in this general debate but I am pleased to have the opportunity because there are several contributions from the Government side that I would like the opportunity to respond to. 
I want to start maybe on the comments made on the Prime Minister’s behalf in question time today in relation to the in-work tax credit. There is an interesting linkage there is there not? Support for children is linked to whether or not their parents are in work. That seems to me and to the Green Party to be an inappropriate linkage. Actually if children require support because of the poverty of their parents they require support. Children ought not to be punished for the circumstances that their parents find themselves in. That is why we favour a process whereby the support for such families—for that 21 percent of children living in poverty in this country a statistic that I am sure we are all embarrassed by and ashamed of—ought not to be related to the circumstances of their parents. It ought to be related simply to the need of their parents. 
But the Prime Minister went on and talked about the importance as indeed we have just heard from Mr Goldsmith of the role that work has in lifting people out of poverty. I do not dispute the fact that work has an important role to play in lifting people out of poverty. Actually education arguably plays a greater role and also really great health circumstances but the fact is that under this Government the number of jobs has not increased so the work is not available for those parents to lift themselves out of poverty. The escape hatch from poverty for 21 percent of New Zealand children is not available to them. 
On the Prime Minister’s behalf in question time there was comment about work readiness instead. Well is it the Government’s intention to extend the in-work tax credit to all of those who are work-ready or who are judged to be work-ready? Those people will have done what is required to make themselves available for work so it will take into account the simple fact that the jobs are not available for those people. 
Louise Upston in her contribution talked about the Greens. She said it was great I think—I may be paraphrasing—that the Greens brought to the House’s attention the growing inequality in this country and talked about— 
Louise Upston 
: It wasn’t quite what I said. 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: —it may not have been quite what the member was saying—the importance of closing that gap between rich and poor and the importance of creating jobs. She suggested that the Greens said no to everything the Government suggested. Well I think the member proposed that as a problem with the Greens’ approach but I want to respectfully suggest that that is actually a problem with the Government’s approach. The problem the reason that we say no to what it proposes is that the only things it proposes are the unacceptable ones. It proposes mining—mining in national parks for goodness’ sake! It proposes other extractive industries as the answer to our problems. All of those are non-sustainable low-value low-quality jobs if they even create any. 
Louise Upston 
: What about roads that get our goods to export markets? What about roads to get our products to market? 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: What we propose and we have again and again and again—the member talks about roads and we have provided lots of evidence in this House that roads provide very very few jobs. In fact on the one area that does actually provide jobs in that space which is the creation of cycle tracks we are working with the Government. We are working with the Government on home insulation. We have provided many many many proposals to the Government both directly and through this House for ways in which many more jobs could be created and the Government has been saying no to all of those. The Government has rejected all of the proposals that we have made that would be much better investment of the Crown’s dollar in creating jobs. What does that say? What it says is it is not the Green Party that always says no but it is in fact the Government that says no. In the House today Gerry Brownlee on behalf of the Prime Minister was saying no to universalism but also was saying no to targeting. It is the Government that says no and it is wrong.