Turei Metiria: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10460. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): What an absolute load of rubbish we just listened to from Sam Lotu-Iiga. I tell you what that was ridiculous to hear. Let us hear some facts shall we. This Government promised 170000 new jobs. How many did it deliver? Just 8000 new jobs—just 8000—and now it has promised another 170000 jobs so I guess we can expect another very little from this Government. It might be all well and good for that member to sit there and say that this is the Government’s priority. It is clearly not. Do you know what this Government is? This is a Government of the 2 percent for the 2 percent—of the 2 percent for the 2 percent. We saw that set out very clearly in this Government’s Budget through all of not just its social policy spending which I want to talk about shortly but its general priorities.I think it was obvious when Bill English in the lead-up to the Budget release said that there is no solution to child poverty. That is what he said—that there is no solution to child poverty. That is a typical attitude of this Government that if you do not bother to find out whether something exists then you do not have to worry about trying to fix it. “There’s no solution to child poverty.” says Bill English and that is clearly what the Government believes. If you look at its Budget and certainly if you look at the Government response to the Children’s Commissioner’s report it is obvious that the Government has no intention either of understanding the scale of the problem or of addressing it.I have to say it was quite a shock to see the Government’s response to the Children’s Commissioner’s reportSolutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand. This report came out late last year. It was worked on by a significant number of New Zealanders with a very high level of expertise on the broad range of issues to do with child poverty including tax issues income and housing. It is a very significant report and it has many many recommendations that provide the solutions to child poverty. Well what do we have? A thin meagre little response from the so-called Ministerial Committee on Poverty that was set up in Government which has done virtually nothing. It is a tiny little meagrereport that provides no real solutions. Do you know what? The Children’s Commissioner’s report said: “Government you are failing our kids. Government you are not doing enough to make sure that our kids are protected from the worst ravages of poverty and that’s why we have a quarter of a million children living in severe poverty. So Government here are some solutions that you can take on board to fix the problem.” The report says that the response from Government is simply to set out all the things it has been doing. The Government’s response is: “Well we did all these things.” Yes we know and we were told very clearly that they have failed.But there are no new solutions in this meagre meagre response. We saw how this was reflected in the Budget. Today we had the food in schools announcement and I will come back to that in a moment. But what was in the Budget that really gives some clear indication? I will tell you. The sum of $5 million a year has been set aside to fund charter schools that will funnel the poorest and most vulnerable kids into schools where there are unqualified teachers who can teach any kind of curriculum any kind of crazy curriculum that they want and subject those kids to that experiment. The sum of $5 million a year is a lot of money. What do the kids who need food in schools the kids who go to school hungry get from this Government? Do you think they get $5 million a year? Do you think they get $4 million a year? Maybe $3 million a year maybe half of that budget? No there is not even $2 million a year from this miserly mean Government which simply did it just because it knows that there is public pressure on the Government to do something about food in schools.It would still rather give money away to private enterprise to privatise the public education system and subject vulnerable kids to unqualified teachers and an unformed curriculum and spend much more money on doing that. Do you know what else the Government will spend money on? Wanganui Collegiate School alone gets $3 million a year. This Government was very happy to integrate that school and to provide it with even more money. This is a private school that costs a great deal to attend and it is for the very elite. They get $3 million a year. What about the hundreds of thousands of kids who go to school hungry? Nope they do not get even that. Therein lies this Government’s priorities. It will give money to private enterprise it will give money to private schools but when it comes to the kids who really need support well they will not get anything. They get hardly anything under this Government. They get just the meagre crumbs from the table that John Key and the Skycity executives were dining at when they did a $400 million deal—a $400 million deal that will be paid for off the back of problem gambling and human misery.We know whom this Government is standing up for. We know that it has got people whom it really wants to support communities that it believes are very important and it will be here to protect them. Who are they? They are the miserable 2 percent a tiny proportion of our community when the majority of New Zealanders are suffering real hardship. It is not just the poor not just the very poor. We are talking about the middle classes here. We are talking about people who have formed the backbone of New Zealand’s economy the backbone of New Zealand’s community who have relied for generations on quality public services to help provide them and their children with the ability to step up to a better economic situation to greater wealth and greater stability. But this Government is degrading the status of the middle classes and at the same time it is forcing vulnerable and poorer families into even worse difficulty and then providing the maximum that it can get away with to the top 2 percent.Why do we not just have a look again at this Government’s response because one of the issues that has been really huge for all communities around the country including the middle classes of course is housing and homeownership. There is a wide variety of issues around housing including the provision of affordable housing. The Green Partyhas produced the Home for Life programme which is specifically designed to provide support for young families to be able to own their own home through a progressive ownership system like the old family benefit system that we used to have in the old days so that these young families can get a real step up. We also provide in that programme a warrant of fitness for rental homes so that those families who are trapped in the private rental market will at least know that the homes they rent will be warm and dry. These were all provisions and ideas that were provided in the solutions to child poverty report particularly the warrant of fitness that is provided in the report.Do we want to have a look at what the Government has said about housing in its response what the Government has written? It is worthwhile noting that solutions to child poverty report from the Children’s Commissioner comes with a 73-page working paper of analysis evidence ideas and recommendations—73 pages on housing alone sit behind this report. Do you want to know what the Government’s response is? Its response to this report is a whole two paragraphs that it has written on safe and healthy homes compared with a 75-page report from experts in New Zealand about how to provide solutions to child poverty through housing. Do you know what is in that report what they talk about? The only thing the Government talks about in the entirety of this proposal—this response to child poverty—on housing is the home insulation programme. That is it. That is all it has got. The fact is that it has a home insulation scheme that was driven by the Green Party led by the Green Party and built by the Green Party for a number of years now. The only reason that that home insulation scheme is still in this year’s Budget is that we have been pestering and pestering this Government for more than a year in order to get it.Hon Trevor Mallard: They’ve cut the money in half.METIRIA TUREI: That is right Mr Mallard. Mr Mallard is quite right. This Government cut that fund—not just in half Mr Mallard but by two-thirds. The Government cut it by two-thirds because it did not want it. This Government did not want to insulate New Zealanders’ homes. It does not want to insulate New Zealanders’ homes and it does not want to feed kids in school either so it will do the barest minimum that it thinks it can get away with.Hon Trevor Mallard: They want higher power prices. That’s why.METIRIA TUREI: Absolutely Mr Mallard. This Government wants higher power prices. It wants kids living in cold damp homes and it wants them to go hungry. The evidence for that is in this Budget and it is in this response to this critical report on solutions to child poverty. There are two measly pages on housing and only about the Green Party’s home insulation fund. We are absolutely proud of that fund. We know that it will work for people and for children. We wanted it to be much stronger and much bigger than it is and we are deeply disappointed that this Government has been so meagre in its approach. But we also know that like the food in schools programme and like home insulation the evidence proves itself. The public are out there campaigning for it. They want it they know that it works and they are putting pressure on this Government to make changes. I want to acknowledge that people power. I want to acknowledge all of those communities—