Logie Jan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: General Debate[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6173. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): We have been hearing a lot about the economy in the House this afternoon. We have been hearing what a great job the Government has done in providing us with a robust economy to be able to deal with whatever comes at us in the future. That is what we have been hearing. This afternoon I want to question who has been benefiting from that economy because the household income survey that came out last week showed that a third of households in this country 33 percent saw no rise in income in the past year that 45000 more children are now living in poverty—in just 1 year—and that around half the children in material hardship in this country are in working families. It is clear that the economic success of this Government is an economic success that is being shared with only a few. It is not being shared with everyone in this country.I want today to specifically congratulate Simon Collins from the New Zealand Herald on his story on the cost to families of going back to work. This Government has put so much of its credibility on the line when it said that getting families into work is the answer to poverty. This article in the paper tells us very clearly that getting into work is not an answer to poverty in itself and that some families when they get into work—when parents go back to work—are worse off than not being in work.In this article Simon Collins points out that New Zealand’s childcare subsidies are the most tightly targeted towards low-income families of all 30 developed nations and that for a Kiwi couple with two children aged 2 or 3 where one parent earns the average wage and the other parent earns around two-thirds of the average wage for every dollar earned by that second parent they lose 97.9c in the dollar. So for every hour they are working they make just over 2c. That is extraordinary and that is the result of this Government’s policy setting. It is not fair when we have such a problem with working poverty in this country.We need desperately to give these families a fair go so that they are able to look after themselves and look after their children and that needs a change in policy settings. New Zealand has the worst outcome on those measures of the 34 OECD countries listed. Also the outcomes are worse for sole parents when compared to the OECD averages. The Government has been busy making it worse not better.The Working for Families tax credits used to be indexed to the cost of living but since this Government changed it in 2011 families have to wait until inflation reaches 5 percent before there is an increase in their Working for Families payment. This change in policy by this Government which was not floated as something significant is estimated to have saved the Government $1.1 billion since 2011. That is $1.1 billion that could have helped families put food on the table and secure a roof over the heads of their kids. It is all going towards this nebulous goal of attaining a surplus for this Government. The priorities are wrong. We need to ensure that our families are the priority.The 2015 Budget package will actually make this even worse because the Government is increasing the Working for Families abatement rate by 1.25 percent and has dropped the threshold at which it kicks in. So a family that is earning the minimum wage working 60 hours a week on $46000 a year is about $2225 a year worse off in real terms by the Government’s child hardship package which is supposedly meant to address child hardship and support families. The Government is actually going to make life tougher for a group of vulnerable families that are working and trying to do the best for their kids. The Government’s rhetoric about investment and well-being is hollow when it is making life so much harder for so many people in this country.