Hughes Gareth: Appropriation (2014/15 Supplementary Estimates) Bill Imprest Supply (First for 2015/16) Bill — Second ReadingsText is subject to correctionHughes Gareth: Appropriation (2014/15 Supplementary Estimates) Bill Imprest Supply (First for 2015/16) Bill — Second Readings[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4519. Text is subject to correction.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. I heard a lot about housing from the member Jami-Lee Ross but it is a house of cards that Government members are building and they cannot seem to get it right. In fact it is like they are building a house on a sand foundation: there are hardly any houses being built the land that the Government is going around and showing off is not actually the Government’s land and we are talking about exploding substations. Now today we have seen the Minister for Building and Housing disappear into the backblocks but I am sure he will be happy that he has got Jami-Lee Ross defending him. We face a housing crisis.We heard from the member that things are getting better in the Budget for young New Zealand families. They are not. In fact what has happened is that a whole new term has been coined for what is facing the current generation which is Generation Rent. We are seeing a whole generation locked out of the dream of homeownership. In fact for them it is only a dream. We are seeing in Auckland at the moment capital gains per annum greater than the average annual salary. Something is wrong in New Zealand when we see such a pervasive housing crisis happening in our biggest city. You see the Reserve Bank cutting interest rates because of the slow-down in the rest of the economy. Sure the Government did a few good things in the Budget. It is hard to remember them and the National members have spent more time talking about New Zealand First and the Labour Party than what they achieved in the Budget. But I will take my hat off and say that it was good to see beneficiaries actually get some additional funding. It had been too long so it was right. Obviously the way it is being implemented with the abatement costs will see a lot of people getting a lot less than the $25 a week but it is good to see that beneficiaries are not just being harangued but also getting some good support.What we have seen in the wake of the Budget is that the country is facing some serious structural economic problems. This has been highlighted: once upon a time we were talked about as a rock star economy but we are seeing those serious structural economic problems. You see one in the price of milk and you see the impact that that is having on the economy. Jami-Lee Ross was triumphantly talking about debt. The last time I looked our net overseas debt position was in the same ballpark as some of the European countries that are having serious problems. When I looked into it earlier in the year we were spending $7.7 billion a year just on interest payments flowing offshore. We have seen a dependence on dairy which when those low-price commodities plummet has serious national impacts. We are seeing it with the lack of a surplus. It was not the members on the Opposition benches who made a mountain out of the surplus idea; in fact it was Bill English himself. He set this as the exemplar of what he was aiming for. There have been seven in a row—seven deficits in a row. Obviously there is also a deficit of ideas and a deficit of innovation because we are seeing real problems come through.What we have not heard about is growing inequality. We have seen a small measure which in real terms will not have a significant impact for beneficiary families but we have seen fantastically high inequality. The OECD estimates that inequality rates at the moment have slashed 10 percent off our GDP. If you look at say the mid-1990s the average chief executive officer was getting about 15 times the average wage. Now it is 119 times more according to the economist Susan St John. It is having a real economic impact it is having a real social impact and we also see the generational inequality. We have seen it in housing. For many older members of this House who grew up in a different New Zealand free education an affordable home and a good job were considered the norms. For my generation and Jami-Lee Ross’ generation they are considered luxuries now. We see a surplus of inequality a surplus of generational inequality and a surplus of omissions.What the Budget did contain were additional subsidies for fossil fuels despite all the work the Government is doing railing against them internationally. We saw a tiny increase in research and development funding but not enough to even move us from where we are which is in the bottom half of the OECD. We have a serious innovation problem. Just today a new report has come out in Australia warning that it could be losing 5 million jobs over the coming decades because of automation and other global challenges. These are where we need to be addressing some of the structural challenges facing our economy and the answers are in terms of innovation investing in our universities and tertiary education investing in research and development and science and investing in smart Green technology like clean energy. That is what the Greens have advocated for an awfully long time. Thank you.