Goff Phil: General Debate 
Goff Phil: General Debate 
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Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Earlier this year John Key predicted that by this stage of the year New Zealand would be coming strongly out of recession. I am very pleased that the world is coming out of recession but so far ordinary hard-working New Zealanders are seeing no benefit from that. In fact New Zealanders on the average or below-average wage are finding that things are getting worse not better. This is a Government that looks after the privileged not ordinary hard-working New Zealanders. 
Recently I attended a rally of low-paid workers. They are the decent folk who keep our hospitals going: the orderlies the cleaners and the people who work in the kitchen. They are the people who care for the disabled and the elderly. Those folk are on $13 to $14 an hour but they have been offered by this Government a zero wage increase. A zero wage increase is not a pay freeze; it is a pay cut. Their power prices are going up the cost of their groceries is going up and their rents have gone up. They were finding it hard to make ends meet before; now they simply cannot make ends meet. 
This year rent payments according to Statistics New Zealand have gone up by more than 8 percent. A zero wage increase and an 8 percent increase in the average person’s rent are driving many New Zealanders into poverty. Last week we saw the figures from the Southern Cross health survey. What did those figures tell us? They told us that the figures relating to New Zealanders who simply cannot afford to go to the doctor have gone up by 8 percent. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders under this Government’s Minister of Health cannot afford to go to the doctor when they are ill. Doctors’ fees have gone up by 6.5 percent. I say to Mr Ryall that that is false economy because those people who cannot get treatment when they need it will end up getting more seriously ill at huge personal cost to themselves but also at a cost to the health system. 
We have seen power prices go up. Today we had the announcement of the new restructuring of the electricity market. But nothing in that restructuring will help ordinary people struggling to meet their power bills. Sitting next to the Minister of Energy and Resources is the Minister for State Owned Enterprises who got $300 million in dividends out of those power companies this year and said that he wants more; he wants more. 
Bill English the Minister of Finance told these low-income people that they will have a pay freeze for 5 years. A pay freeze of 5 years drives people into poverty and for the Minister of Finance to announce the pay freeze from the high moral ground of doubling his housing allowance to $47000—more money than most of these workers get in a full year—is actually a lack of moral authority. That is why he is not taken seriously. Mr Hide who supports this can take his girlfriend to Hawaii or Disneyland but what about the average family who is finding it impossible to make ends meet? Mr Harawira can do the same; he went to Paris. 
This is a Government that has no standards but expects to put the full weight of recession on ordinary hard-working New Zealanders who are finding it toughest at the bottom. These are the people who did not get the tax cuts that were forced through Parliament this time last year; these are the people who will be paying the costs in the cuts to accident compensation and the other things that the Government is doing to New Zealanders. This is a Government that has no concept of what it is like to be on the average wage and to struggle to make ends meet. This is a Government that has no concept of fairness.