Moroney Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9230. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): The Kiwi Dream—it is not too much to ask. I think that the National Party has forgotten about the basic needs of New Zealanders: somewhere safe to live; hopefully a place that you can call home that you can own. That is not too much to ask. Basic needs include security for the people we love a chance to enjoy the outdoors and the environment that we care about and a job—a decent secure job—that gives us the time the money and the safety to lead a fulfilling life with those we care about. It is a simple concept—the Kiwi Dream—but for an increasing number of New Zealanders it is getting completely outside of their reach under this National Government.I was hoping to hear something inspirational from the Prime Minister’s statement that might change that situation but a couple of weeks after the Prime Minister stood up and gave his statement you know I cannot name one exciting thing that he said and I do not think any New Zealander can. What was the transformational thing that the Prime Minister came out with in his speech that will improve people’s lives? That is what we are charged with: we are charged with improving people’s lives not handing out the same old misery that is stopping thousands of New Zealand families and children from achieving that simple Kiwi Dream. That is what we are here to try to secure. It is out of reach for far too many New Zealanders under this Government.My generation of parents is facing the sad situation of being the first generation ever to look at our children and know that they are going to be worse off than we were. That has not happened before. I think all parents aspire to know that their children’s lives are going to be better than theirs. But we are facing down the barrel of being the first generation who will not be able to look our children in the eye and say that because they face increasing housing costs and their chances of actually owning their own home are becoming a distant distant memory. They face increasing debt for everything that they are engaged with—for their education and for just simply being allowed to live on this planet and participate in life in New Zealand. They are under growing amounts of debt. The life expectation of the generation below us is below the life expectation for my generation.That is a dreadful situation for any parent to have to contemplate. Also our children face increasingly insecure jobs. That is what they are facing under this National Government. It is only the Labour Party that is concerned enough about that prospect that we are doing the hard work and the thinking and the policy making around what the future of the workforce needs to look like to actually make it more secure for people to ensure that the workforce and the labour market work for people.I listened to the sad contributions from the last couple of National MPs. Todd Muller who has just resumed his seat said that our entire success is going to be measured on how connected we are to the world. No Mr Muller our success will be rated on how people’s lives are. We have an economy to serve the people; not the people to serve the economy. They have got it completely the wrong way round. That is what I think was at the basis of the Prime Minister’s statement that was so disappointing and did not bring forward any of the inspiration any of the vision that New Zealanders are desperately crying out for.Under National the Kiwi Dream is slipping away. National members are too distracted on working out how to get rid of our flag for goodness’ sake! They are so distracted on how to get rid of our flag that they had a crisis meeting about it. They had a crisis meeting on how to get rid of our national flag when they should have been having a crisis meeting on how to lift out of poverty the increasing number of children who are slipping into poverty under National’s reign. That should have been what the crisis meeting was about; not about getting rid of our flag. So the Government has completely got its priorities upside down.On this side of the House we are connected to the Kiwi Dream and we are determined to deliver that. I want to talk about a few aspects that we are taking charge of. Extending paid parental leave is one aspect. If the Kiwi Dream starts anywhere it starts in those first early days and months of a child’s life. Getting that right getting the support getting the security getting the attachment between parent and baby—there should be no greater priority than that. That is where the Kiwi Dream starts. If it goes wrong in those early months what all the research and evidence tell us is that we as taxpayers will pay for that over and over and over again. When that child cannot learn when that child ends up in hospital when that child is not going to school because of health problems when that child is disconnected from their caregiver from their parent then we all pay over and over again for the bad outcomes of that.On this side of the House and with the support of other wise parties what we know is that this sort of investment is the type of thing that the Prime Minister should have been talking about. He should have been agreeing to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. But was he doing that? No. Instead he is talking about putting a veto on it to go against the will of this Parliament and to go against the will of the majority of New Zealanders to put a stop to getting the start to the Kiwi Dream. That is what the Prime Minister is focused on; not on dealing with the issues that matter to New Zealanders.Decent jobs—that is what this side of the House is focused on. We know that having a decent job is fundamental to being able to secure the rest of the Kiwi Dream. It is fundamental to that. But under this Government zero-hour contracts are what have been going on. People have to put their lives on hold just sit and wait for a phone call that may never come to give them a little bit of extra money so that they can put food on the table. For far too many of our families those jobs mean not only that can they not participate in their community but also that they cannot do the basic thing of putting food on the table. We are a food-producing nation and 27 percent of our children live in poverty. Too many of our children go to school hungry in a food-producing nation. How can we get it so wrong? How can that be? Did the Prime Minister address that at all in his statement? There was not one measure—not one measure—to reduce child poverty. There was not one measure to secure decent jobs. There was not one measure that actually deals with the day-to-day pressures that New Zealand families are facing and it is very very disappointing.Another part of a decent job is the good old Kiwi adage that you get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. There was never a rider put on that—I have never heard one—that says “but only if you are a certain gender or only if you are a certain race.” What I am talking about is equal pay. We need urgently to address equal pay as well. This Government cannot even talk about equal pay. It talks instead about getting women to go off and do jobs traditionally done by men. That seems to be the Government’s only idea that it has got in this space. Well it is not acceptable and it needs addressing.In the final part of this speech I want to talk a little bit about transport and its role in the Kiwi Dream. I can tell you that sitting on the Auckland motorway for hours on end is not part of the Kiwi Dream. That Government has presided over increasing volumes on the Auckland motorway without people getting anywhere. It has spent $2.3 billion on the Waikato Expressway. That was money funding set aside by a Labour Government to do exactly that. We agree with the Waikato Expressway but what the Government has managed to do is to squander that $2.3 billion. It now takes longer than ever to get from central Hamilton to central Auckland. It now takes longer than ever. It used to take an hour and a halfHamiltonians now have to put aside 3 hours to get from central Hamilton to central Auckland and that is after the Government has spent $2.3 billion on the Waikato Expressway. Why? Because it did not do the public transport part that needed to go alongside that to make it work. The Government has ignored the needs of public transport in Auckland and now what we are doing with the Waikato Expressway is we are feeding a greater volume of traffic faster to get to the “great southern car-park” and sit there for longer. That is what the National Government has managed to achieve. It is not good for productivity. It is not good for family life.Because of the housing crisis in Auckland which the Government has failed to fix we have got people moving to Hamilton living there but returning to their jobs every day in Auckland. They are going on that motorway sitting there for hours on end doing a full day’s work and doing it again at the other end of the day. They are becoming unsafe on the roads and when they get home they are feeling stressed with their families. That is not the Kiwi Dream. It is not working under this Government.