Street Maryan: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15872. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): On this side of the House we cannot have any confidence in a Government that favours the few we cannot have any confidence in a Government that is out of touch and we cannot have any confidence in a Government that is so arrogant that it does not listen to the people.This morning the Salvation Army released its state of the nation report and there was a lot more reality in that state of the nation report than we have had in the Prime Minister’s state of the nation speech. There was a lot more reality about what is happening in New Zealanders’ lives in that report than the Prime Minister has any knowledge of at all. In that report the Prime Minister was given a D for efforts on child poverty. He was also given a D for housing affordability but I will come back to that one shortly. The D for efforts on child poverty is an indictment on this Government’s policies and on where it has been going for the last 5 years. When the Government looks after only the few at the top and still continues to believe in that old discredited outdated irrelevant trickle-down theory which never worked in the first place then its only possible mark is a D—is a failure. For those who do not remember what a D stood for it was an epic fail in anybody’s terms. That is how the Salvation Army rated this Government for its efforts on child poverty. So that is what the people of New Zealand are looking at right now.The Salvation Army sent a very clear message to all political parties. It said that bold policies are needed to address child poverty; to address things that come out of that that are related to it such as domestic violence and violent crime; and also to address housing. Bold policies are required and we see none of that coming out of the Government. If the economy is improving as the Government would have us believe how is it that there are so many people so many families locked out of any of the benefits or potential benefits of that improvement? How is it that there are so many people who are feeling that they are locked out of a fair and a just society?I would like to pick up on some of the Salvation Army’s work as it relates to Nelson where I live and work. Major Jill Knight who is the head of the Salvation Army in Nelson and who was the one who fronted the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report in Nelson said that more was needed to be done to combat problems such as child poverty. She said that “Stresses from low wages and seasonal work can lead to domestic violence and child poverty” and others agreed with her. This was the front-page story on theNelson Mailtoday. This was the front-page story.The Government is so out of touch that its member for Nelson has no idea of the level of poverty the level of deprivation that exists in Nelson. Everybody thinks that Nelson is a wonderful place to live in and so it is—and so it is. But it is a hard place to survive in. It is a hard place to survive in because it has that double whammy of low seasonal wages and extremely high house prices because of its desirability because of its physical environment. Yet it is incredibly difficult for young families to get by in Nelson.The common claim about Nelson is that it lives on sunshine wages. There are two definitions of sunshine wages. One is that low wages plus sunshine are meant to be the things that help you get by. So it does not matter that people earn low wages; they have the sunshine to compensate. That is one interpretation. The realistic interpretation however is that because of the seasonal work in many instances people can work only when the sun shines. They do not get paid for the days when it rains and they cannot get out they cannot harvest the crops and they cannot contribute to the primary production for which the Nelson region is famous. So seasonal work and sunshine wages mean thatworkers get to make money only when the sun shines. If it rains the workers do not get paid.I just want to quote from Jill Knight who is as I say the Salvation Army Nelson Tasman Bays Community Ministries manager. She said the Salvation Army report was reflective of problems in Nelson. She said she saw people “at crisis point” and she put a lot of this down to low wages and a reliance on seasonal work. What she said was this as quoted in theNelson Mail: “Families that have regular income may be sort of okay it might be sunshine wages but it’s regular; but for seasonal work if it’s a wet day people don’t get paid and because it’s seasonal work they only earn on the day they work it’s not an easy situation”. She said most of the families they see are trying to do the right thing but they are spending more than half of their income on rent and then there is the power bill.The Prime Minister had the nerve to get up in this House today and say the Salvation Army ought to get out more. I have never heard a more arrogant dismissive statement applied to that body of people who are famous for working for the underprivileged who are the ones who unlike this Government get out and do the hard yards with the people who need assistance. This Government’s idea of assistance is money for Rio Tinto is money for Skycity and is money for Chorus. That is this Government’s idea of assistance. To get out and help the people in need it will give $30 million to Rio Tinto it will sell problem gambling and the downstream social consequences of that to Skycity and it will make sure that the ailing Chorus will roll out broadband at a price that families cannot afford—but it will make sure the company does not fall over.What happened to competition? What happened to the survival of the fittest which the National Party is so famous for representing? This Government is doing harm. Its purpose is not to do harm. Its purpose is to assist the growth and the development of this country but it is not doing that. It is locking out the majority of people—including families in Nelson who are doing it hard—from the results of any improvement in the economy locking them out of any hope for their families and locking them out of any security going forward.When the number of food parcels that are given out in the Nelson area is nearly twice as high two-thirds higher than it was before—and in fact in a 10-day period in January there were certainly some 70 food parcels given out to just over 200 people—there is something wrong in the State of New Zealand. This Government is leading the rottenness in the State of New Zealand. It has run out of ideas it has run out of energy and now it needs to be run out. Thank you.