Curran Clare: General Debate 
Curran Clare: General Debate 
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CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I pay my condolences to the family of New Zealand Army Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell. 
This country is becoming more and more economically insecure and I ask what the Government is doing. It is doing nothing but making New Zealanders’ lives harder and making them more afraid. I would like to talk about people—real people—and how they are feeling. Over the last few weeks I have been doorknocking in Dunedin South one of the poorest and most densely populated parts of our country and I am pretty angry about what I am hearing. People are insecure and afraid. They either have jobs that are not paying much and they have not had a pay rise for a long time or they do not have jobs and they cannot find jobs. They cannot make ends meet. They are not turning their heaters on. I have talked to countless elderly people who have either lost or are confronting losing their hour and a half per week of home help. Doing a bit of housework preparing some meals and helping with some chores around the house is actually not a great deal but it makes a lot of difference to them. That home help means doing work that they can no longer do and it allows them to stay in their homes. God help us that those elderly citizens who have contributed to our country by paying taxes—many of them went through the Great Depression—and bringing us all up now get treated like this at the end of their lives. Helping people stay in their homes and lead a life with value is actually more cost-effective than taking away their independence and requiring them to be put in a home and it does not take much brains to realise that. 
This Government has no vision and no plan to improve the lives of ordinary New Zealanders. This Government is deliberately chipping away at the assistance to vulnerable people who need it the most. I will tell the House about Marie who is a single mum who contacted me and told me that she had her heart set on gaining a Bachelor’s degree in health science to get a nursing degree. She believed that because of the shortage of qualified nurses she would be guaranteed a job. But she has a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old so childcare is a major barrier to gain that qualification and a barrier for her to get back into work. She cannot work weekends because of the lack of childcare. Public holidays are a problem also. On top of that she has to deal with rising childcare prices and a serious lack of job vacancies. She said that she knows that she will get there eventually but there are so many obstacles. She said: “Yet here is National planning to punish us if we don’t find work label us as breeding for business calling us unemployable and has generated maddened groups of benefit bashers.” I tell members that she does not have the ability to go to Australia like so many others. She is stuck here with no brighter future. 
Then there is the latest example of the fight to keep neurosurgical services in Dunedin. The absence of those services will be of great detriment to the people of Otago and I will state the obvious: Dunedin should not lose neurosurgical services. People will die families will suffer and our hospital and medical school would both be put at risk. And all the while the Minister of Health Tony Ryall is sitting on his hands doing nothing. It is clear that this Government has no vision and no plan. What is the cost? Recently one family said to me that they could not afford to eat meat but they used to be able to. A lot of families say that they do not know what they will do when GST goes up. Any gain from tax cuts will be taken away by the GST rise and the predicted 6 percent inflation. 
My colleague Carmel Sepuloni’s bill is coming before this House. It seeks to overturn National’s attack on workers’ rights. Labour will show our commitment to the rights of workers by voting for this bill. I encourage any National MP who cares about his or her constituents and their livelihoods to do the same. So instead of attacking people’s rights and chipping away at assistance to people who need it the most we need policies that address inequality and help Kiwis stay afloat. We need some fresh ideas to put more money in the pockets of people. We need honesty and vision not distractions and sideshows from a do-nothing Government. We need a vision and we need a plan. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.