Robertson Grant: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8994. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): When the Prime Minister delivered his opening statement to Parliament this year two things struck me. The first was the difference between the speech he delivered in the House and the speech that was published on the Beehive website. The speech he delivered in the House began with him taking credit for New Zealand’s recent sporting triumphs—Iain Lees-Galloway: Including the test match?GRANT ROBERTSON: —he had not taken credit for that; it had not happened—and then following that up with declaring success for the economy. This will come as a surprise for a lot of people because just a paragraph later in the written speech we learn that the Government is now $17 billion short in terms of what it thought it would get in revenue from the Budget in 2015—$17 billion short.This goes along with a record for the National Government of great success: tens of thousands more people unemployed than when it got into office; wage rates rising slower than inflation over the next 2 to 3 years; $60 billion more debt than when it got into office; plummeting commodity prices which it has failed to react to; and we learnt today a likely 3 years of below break-even for farmers around New Zealand. But it is all success apparently. We can debate the numbers we can argue whether or not the numbers of growth rates are zero in terms of per capita—which they are—or whether or not we can claim credit for things that we have had nothing to do with if we are the Government but what is success in our economy? Is success in our economy the chance for every New Zealander to achieve their dreams—to achieve the Kiwi Dream of a decent job a warm dry safe home to live in time with your family and a safe community? Has every New Zealander got the right to that Kiwi Dream? Is that what the economy is for or is the economy just a set of numbers that the Prime Minister can get up and crow about?Is it success in New Zealand when we learn the fate of Anna from a recent Radio New Zealand Insight documentary? I am going to quote at some length from this. This is what the item said: “Anna is re-packing her car. Between the children’s car seats are small piles of clothes and a few carefully selected toys. She pulls a white rabbit onesie from under a small foam mattress and refolds it before opening a compartment and explaining how she stores food. ‘I can keep in there things that will keep cool. I’ve got little chilly bags. We try not to have too much fresh food on us we just buy fresh fruit.’ A few weeks ago Anna and her three children aged between six and 13 were evicted from their North Shore home. They now switch between couch surfing at friends’ houses and sleeping in the car. ‘Usually in a public area that’s got a little bit of privacy but also lighting so the other day we parked up in the next carpark to McDonalds so that there was 24-hours toilet as well as … we were parked under the trees so it had a bit of darkness. [There’s] a lot of light there so it enables sleep and security.’ She says rents are now phenomenally high she can’t afford a bond and has bad credit. The money she makes from owning and running her own business just isn’t enough to cover it. She says she phoned around emergency housing providers but they were all full.”And this is what Anna said: “You end up being on the lower end of the scale as far as trying to improve your situation. Yeah I didn’t realise how bad it was actually in New Zealand until I ended up in the situation myself.” That is happening in New Zealand today. Thousands of people are homeless. There are children sleeping in cars. Is that a successful economy? Is that what National thinks marks us out as a success—that the Prime Minister can stand up in this House and crow about the success of the New Zealand cricket team? There are people living in cars.The economy is not the end in itself Ms Goodhew. Standing up here and saying we have got a growth rate of 2 percent 2.2 percent 2.4 percent—does that matter if a family is living in a car and the best we can hope for those children is that there is a 24-hour McDonald’s that they can go to the toilet in? It is a disgrace and it is time that the National Government got up and started explaining to New Zealanders why it is that success is possible in New Zealand only for some people. It is possible for only the 1 percent under National’s vision for the future. Every New Zealander deserves the right to dream of a better tomorrow. They deserve the right to be able to fulfil their version of the Kiwi Dream. Anna deserves to be able to live in a warm dry safe home. Her children deserve to grow up knowing that they have the same opportunities as every other New Zealander and right now today in this country they do not.There are 305000 children in New Zealand growing up in poverty—that is not a successful economy. We have the lowest homeownership rate in New Zealand in 60 years—that is not a successful economy. If the end of the road for the National Government is some figures on a sheet or some numbers that it can manipulate to make itself feel better then that is not good enough for New Zealanders. The Government says: “We’ve got billions of dollars squirrelled away so that we can offer tax cuts in the 2017 election.” That is not good enough. What we have got to do from today is invest in the future for New Zealanders and that is why I am quite pleased and very happy to make the debate that we have about the future of this economy the future of this country be about what it delivers for all New Zealanders.We are a prosperous nation; there is no doubt about that. What we need to do is ensure that there is shared prosperity so that everybody gets the chance to live their Kiwi Dream and right now under this Government that is being denied. The economy is not a person—we are not going to hurt its feelings if we do things that the National Government does not like. The point of the economy is to deliver the society that New Zealanders want and to deliver the opportunities to every single New Zealander.The National Government wants tax cuts. It wants tax cuts which on its record will end up favouring the most wealthy in New Zealand because that is what happened in 2010. Well on this side of the House we say by all means you go ahead and offer those tax cuts National. What we are going to offer is a programme about investing in our future and the first element of that programme that the Labour Party has announced this year is to offer 3 years’ free post - high school training and education.The world is changing. In the first Labour Government Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby came to New Zealanders with the idea that secondary school education should be universal. They said that in order for people to be able to achieve their potential they needed the right to a free education to the extent of their abilities. It was about saying that everybody needed that because that would be the route to being a productive member of society to contributing to the growth of New Zealand. Well in the 21st century that now extends beyond high school. We need every New Zealander having a plan at the end of high school to go on and learn and study and train. That is how we will get the economy growing by recognising that the future of work has changed—and on this side of the House we get that.The Prime Minister stood up in his speech and decided to laugh about the fact that I went to a conference in Paris about the future of work. Well I wonder whether he is laughing at the 30 or 40 Ministers from around the world who were at the same conference. Or is he laughing at his friends in the World Economic Forum who devoted their whole forum in Davos to how we manage this change in the future of work?Work matters to New Zealanders. It gives them income but more than that it gives dignity. It provides coherence in our communities. We want every New Zealander in the future to have decent work and decent pay and to be able to contribute to New Zealand society. Our vision on this side of the House is for an economy where we build wealth from the ground up—where we offer those opportunities for everybody to get education and training not just the privileged few that National would have you believe this economy is about. We will be debating over the next 2 years what makes a successful economy. For me a successful economy is one where everybody gets to share in the benefits and where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their potential. We will do that only if we invest in people and the economy works for people not the other way round.This party on this side of the House has a vision for the future of New Zealand that includes everybody and that grows a prosperous economy from which we all benefit. That side of the House wants to take credit for other things and stick its head in the sand. We will see by the 2017 election that those members have no vision. This side of the House has a vision for an inclusive prosperous New Zealand.