Shearer David: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15766. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): Could I take this opportunity as well to wish you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson and the House a happy New Year. In a few months the Minister of Finance Bill English is likely to present his first Budget surplus—his first Budget surplus in 6 years. It will be the last Budget that he presents to this House and—good for him—it will be in surplus. It must be galling that after nine surpluses under Labour it has taken 6 years in order for him to be able to deliver one Budget surplus to this House. He is obviously getting the hang of it. Nine years of surplus and 5 years of deficit and finally we get a Budget surplus or that is what we are led to believe. A Budget surplus to the Labour Party is a given. That is what we do when we are in Government: we produce Budget surpluses. That is what we do.Here is another statistic. Ever since the first National Government came into office the average GDP growth under all National Governments right back through history has been 2.9 percent—the average GDP growth. The average GDP growth under all Labour Governments throughout history has been 3.7 percent—3.7 percent. Every LabourGovernment has been able to produce better growth than any National Government. So despite what this Government says about Labour Governments they are the most economically prosperous Governments and they have been able to deliver what New Zealanders want. We have been sound financial managers and we have been able to do that every time we have been in Government.Our economy has gone through the global financial crisis as has the rest of the world. We have had the rebuild of Christchurch which has helped with half of the GDP growth that we are seeing at the moment. Our commodity prices are doing very well and that has obviously contributed much of the rest. But although our economy is starting to move again along with the rest of the world the question is whether New Zealanders are any better off. Are New Zealanders any better off? Are they doing as well as the New Zealand economy is said to be doing? I know that many of those people out there who might be watching this now will say no because 50 percent of them will not have had a pay increase. Fifty percent will not have had a pay increase in the last year.House prices are unaffordable. I ran into a couple the other day and we were talking about their particular plight. They lived in a rented house saving hard for a house. They made improvements to their rented house because to be quite honest the couple wanted to live in good accommodation. So they painted it they put in a sandpit for their kids and they even put in a barbecue. As soon as they did that the landlord moved them on. They are now in more expensive accommodation renting and still trying hard to save for that house but finding it more and more difficult to be able to do that because this Government completely ignored the cost of housing and the price of houses in the economy.As a result young couples who have spoken to me say they go along every week to yet another auction and they are always outbid. They just cannot seem to be able to get to that price. A father of a young woman I know said to me that it makes him angry that his daughter his son-in-law and their three kids cannot do what he did when he was young—move into their own house and be able to afford that. That is the opportunity those people had back then and young people today simply do not have. The opportunities for young New Zealanders are simply not there and have slipped away under this Government.In fact you were telling me today Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson that a house in a street that I grew up in in your electorate in Papatoetoe the other day sold for a million dollars—a million dollars. That is a house for hard-working New Zealanders middle of the road middle class—it went for a million dollars. To buy that house because this Government has brought in the loan-to-value ratios you would need a $200000 deposit. What sort of family can afford a $200000 deposit? Absolutely nobody. Not a young couple—Hon Simon Bridges: You can.DAVID SHEARER: Maybe you Mr Bridges but certainly not a young couple who are aspiring to own their own home. Who has that sort of money?And while we are on the subject power prices have continued to climb. House prices and electricity prices have continued to climb. I will not forget a woman who has come to see me and said to me that she gets so sick in her stomach every time that she goes out to her letterbox just in case her electricity bill has arrived—just in case her electricity bill has arrived. Yet she reads in the paper comments from Mr Bridges and from everybody else and all his friends that we have one of the most competitive electricity markets in the world. It is just that it does not bring lower prices—that is all. Everybody is changing companies but it does not bring the price down. Last year the inflation rate was 1 percent and the electricity rise was 5 percent. You tell that toKiwis—that somehow their competitive market is making them better off—and they will laugh in your face because they are turning their driers off their heaters off because they cannot afford to pay their bills and this Government will do nothing about it.That is why people want a Labour Government—because we want a fair society. We do want to see opportunities. We want New Zealanders to have opportunities—the same opportunities that I had when I grew up the same opportunities that I want for my kids as they are growing up as well—where New Zealanders can afford a house where they can afford to pay their power bills. That is the sort of country that I want to live in; not a country where this Government is so out of touch and so arrogant that it does not actually understand what real New Zealanders actually want. The Government believes that somehow the house prices can be cured by Mr Nick Smith’s pixie dust that he sprinkles around all over the place or Mr Bridge’s plaintive cries that we have somehow got a very competitive energy market. It is absolute nonsense and people out there know that.Yet Government members are not listening to ordinary New Zealanders. They are so arrogant and they are so out of touch that they do not actually understand what it is that New Zealanders want. They are not listening. They are not listening to the fact that this Government is about to sell off yet another power company. Genesis Energy is soon going to be on the block—Genesis Energy which no mums and dads will invest in. Let us face it. When was the last time that you heard about mums and dads investing in power companies? They do not. Only 1.5 percent of New Zealanders actually invest in these power companies and I can tell you what. They are not ordinary mums and dads—not the people whom I speak of. That is how out of touch this Government is. Does it really think that mums and dads are buying them? No the corporates are buying them. The financial companies are buying them. The overseas companies are buying them and shipping the proceeds and the profits off to other places outside of here.This Government is out of touch. It is out of touch it is arrogant it has lost the plot and that is the reason it will lose this year. I congratulate Mr English on his last Budget being in surplus. I am so sorry that the other five were in deficit but at least his last one is in surplus. His days are numbered and so are this Government’s.