Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Mr Assistant Speaker it is the first session of the new year. May I acknowledge you in the Chair and colleagues on all sides of the House. It is a time of change. It is a pivotal year. It is the time that New Zealanders get to decide who they want to help govern their country for the next 3 years. Summer is a fast-fading memory—just ask any Wellingtonian or Todd Barclay who can barely remember the faction feud which meant he just survived in his seat by only the barest of margins by kissing the papal ring of Bill English.We are here to decide who is going to run New Zealand for the next 3 years and the Labour coalition is going to be here to give New Zealanders the chances that they deserve. You know it is about them not about us in this House and people have reasonable expectations: a home to live in a home to own a home to base their families in without fear of being sold out and sent down the road a good school for the kids and healthcare when you need it. Those are not things that used to be too much to expect but for too many New Zealanders they have been lately—the ones living in the cars or the garages and the ones working full time who cannot afford to both put food on the table and send the kids to the doctor. That is not OK. That is not the best of us.Todd Barclay: Why don't you hang around? You're bailing.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: That is not the New Zealand that we want to be part of. Oh" says the member "hang around." Well why did he not ask that of John Key? As I have been going around those in the business community they say to me that never in the history of New Zealand politics have they known a popular Prime Minister one who was so popular for so long who did so little and who left so quickly with so many major issues undone.We live in a good country—we know we do—but it is a country that could be so much better for so many deserving New Zealanders. That Prime Minister and the new one were not willing to lead. They were not willing to address child poverty. They were not even willing to measure it. They were not willing to solve the housing crisis because they were not willing to have the State build houses and they were not willing to tread on the toes of rich foreign investors and landlords. They were not willing to keep the funding for our health system up so that the 60000 New Zealanders who have been shunted off waiting lists in the last 12 months could get a fair go and they were not willing to fund our schools to proper levels so that every Kiwi kid could get a fair chance let alone being willing to address some of those longer-term challenges that we are leaving to our children unaddressed and getting worse. Global climate change is not a philosophy; it is a fact and this Government has done nothing—nothing—to address it except gut Labour's earlier sound plan.Child poverty is growing and getting worse homelessness is getting worse our health crisis is getting worse and look at the crime statistics—our streets are getting less safe not more. That is why it was Labour that first pledged 1000 extra police and National that pledged to catch up.Bill English they say—the new Prime Minister—is a decent bloke. I think he is in it for the right reasons but he sure as heck is not a leader. It was not just his lacklustre performance when he was touting for the job; anyone who listened to his state of the nation address would agree. There was no vision; there was no excitement not even on his own benches; and there was certainly no plan to grow New Zealand's economy or restore its widening gaps. Economic growth if you take away migration is less than 0.5 percent a year and the share of that wealth going to ordinary New Zealanders is getting less and less as the ones at the top are taking more and more. Those are the ones who give some of it to the National Party which runs it like a business taking big donations to keep itself in power so it does not have to change the rules and the rich keep getting richer.Well it is time for New Zealanders to rise up and say that that is not good enough for all our children. It is not good enough to have less and less funding for our schools and our hospitals or to have people living in cars and garages. So this is the year that Kiwis decide—when Andrew Little is the Prime Minister who makes change happen."