Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): It's time to address the bill the trickle-down bill the inequality increasing bill. I want to take us back to a few months ago when the Government decided to cut benefit increases which as officials were speaking about would have increased the level of child poverty rates and at the time were told Oh like we can't take that in isolation." despite the fact that reducing benefit increases would increase poverty. We were told "Wait. Wait there'll be other relief for people so don't worry." And now we've seen the so-called relief after an end to the subsidies for medical prescriptions the end of public transport subsidies after we've seen rents continue to go up and landlords being given more powers to evict tenants and make life harder for people after we've seen the reduction of emergency housing assistance in this Budget. We've now been told that people should be comfortable with breadcrumbs in this bill. And the reality is if you're a disabled person on the benefit if you're someone who's struggling to make ends meet or without a home this bill will do very little to lift you out of poverty or to provide any form of relief because what this bill contains beyond the breadcrumbs and tax relief are changes to the in-work tax credit rate a discriminatory policy that ignores that caregiving is work. The in-work tax credit has been labelled as an incentive for people to go into work but it doesn't adequately support those in part-time work nor does it acknowledge the caregiving work that people do in our communities. And at a time when disabled and carers have told us about the importance of caregiving the Government has once again chosen to ignore the work that caregivers do to support our communities and leave those struggling the most stranded in this austerity inequality-increasing piece of legislation as part of a broader Budget.Let's speak to another component of the bill. For the so-called complaints this Government had around the brain drain and the loss of talent and people who were overseas this bill is effectively creating a disincentive for people to come back to Aotearoa because already too many people living overseas with a student loan are feeling like they're just simply not going to be in a position to come back because of the interest rates that they're accruing. If we want to attract people back to Aotearoa the solution to that is to actually create communities here that are attractive for people to come back. Like it's understandable for why some people would want to stay overseas when they're seeing rents go up at record levels when they're seeing living standards drop when they're seeing a Government scapegoat those struggling to make ends meet the most when they're scapegoating Māori. Why would people want to come back seeing a bill that will pay for tax cuts by then also increasing the interest rates that student loans will be paid back to?So this bill effectively all it does is throw some breadcrumbs to people and in the context of the broader Budget it doesn't make up for the fact that this Government has chosen to make life harder for most people by actually legislating against supporting people with health conditions people who need to use the public transport and renters. This bill in and of itself will ultimately benefit those high-income earners more rather than people who should have been lifted as part of a cost of living Budget. The truth is that this bill in of itself will also continue having early childhood education be run as a for-profit private sector and not be treated as a public good. Because the reality with the FamilyBoost tax credit is that all it does is it creates a continuous incentive for early childhood centres to continue putting prices up. And while some people may see that 25 percent relief the reality is that it does very little to actually tackle the hard political conversation that is why early childhood education is continuously treated as a business and not a public good.But I mean I'm not surprised right? This is the party that has continuously supported privatisation the party that doesn't support everyone living a good life and under a safe warm dry home. And so it is absolutely no surprise that they're putting forward a bill on Budget day to continue with early childhood education being treated as a for-profit business by many many entities.The reality is Budgets and the legislation that are put forward in Budgets are political choices. The Greens are clear that we will make the choice should we be in power to ensure that we end poverty that we end discriminated caregivers who receive a benefit and that we tackle the environmental and biodiversity crisis that we face."