Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I think perhaps the greatest revelation in this debate so far today has been that the biggest issue occupying the mind of the Minister of Finance is the colour that local government candidates are using on their billboards up and down the country. He has taken the time to go and do a detailed study of the colours that mayoral candidates are using on their election hoardings. That seems to be Bill English's greatest obsession. I was interested to learn that he did not seem to realise that yellow and black are actually the colours of Wellington seeing as he has lived here for most of his political career. But I digress because at least that is more substantive than the issues occupying the time of the National Government backbench whose biggest issue for the week thus far appears to have been the way airports advertise lost luggage—lost luggage. The advertising of lost luggage is the biggest issue on the minds of the National Government backbench. Forget about the children living in poverty or the people living in cars—No luggage left behind" is going to be the campaign slogan for the National Government at the next election. It is going to free the airports of all that pesky red tape about the way they advertise lost luggage and the economy is simply going to take off. It is going to take off as a result of this revelation coming from the National Government backbench about the advertising of lost luggage. We are confronting the reality that many aspects of the economic system that we currently have are broken and the National Government's best attempt to fix it is to change the way the airports advertise lost luggage. But it is actually a very serious issue—the economy that is not the luggage—and it is not being addressed by this National Government. We have to accept the reality: there is a large proportion of the New Zealand population that is feeling left behind and forgotten under this National Government. And we have to accept the reality that in the current economic environment effort and contribution have been decoupled from reward. There are a lot of people out there working really hard who are not getting ahead and who are not being rewarded for that hard work while they see other people doing exceptionally well who are not making as much of an effort. Those at the top continue to get richer while those who go to work every day to help create the nation's wealth who toil away feel that they are being left behind and that the Government is simply ignoring them. They have had enough of John Key and Bill English telling them that things will be better tomorrow—things will be better tomorrow—and that there is a brighter future on the way; that brighter future that never seems to arrive. Eight years into the tenure of the National Government the voters are still waiting for it to deliver on the promises it made in 2008. But of course we know that the National Government is governing in the interests of those at the top and not the interests of the hard-working New Zealanders who generate this country's wealth. While families up and down the country see the fees that they are being asked to pay for their kids' education going up and up in early childhood education and in schooling they see that this Government's priority is to increase the funding for the kids who attend private schooling. And they see that while they are shut out of the housing market while they cannot get a foot on the property ladder this Government is quite happy to see those houses that are available hoovered up by property speculators. This Government has no real plan to deal with this. These families see that while there are people desperately in need of specialist appointments so that they can get the healthcare they need those who can afford health insurance can go straight in and get the healthcare they need while those who cannot get left behind languishing—not even on waiting lists because they cannot get on to health waiting lists under this Government. While hard-working New Zealanders have been clobbered by increases in GST under this National Government they see the vast bulk of the tax cuts that the Government has dished out going to those on the highest incomes who least needed it. And of course then we see that the biggest priority coming out of the Government this week is the recovery of lost luggage—in fact not even the recovery of lost luggage. If it was recovery of lost luggage I would have some sympathy for it but it is not even that. It is just the advertising of lost luggage. We have to confront the reality that prosperity and the benefits of economic growth have not been shared in the current economy and as a result trickle-down economics has been exposed as a massive lie. Let us put some numbers into this—70 percent of New Zealanders are earning less than $48000 per year. So when the National Party comes along next year and promises a big bribe in the form of tax cuts bear in mind that the vast bulk of New Zealanders probably will not benefit at all from that. Any benefit that they might have had from that has more than been taken away by the other charges that they are encountering when it comes to their kids' education when it comes to their healthcare when it comes to their transport options because under the user-pays environment the people at the bottom pay more while the people on the highest incomes do significantly better. Here is another revealing statistic about the economic track record of this National Government. Working families' share of GDP growth under this National Government has fallen by $50 per week. There are 50000 more unemployed New Zealanders than there were when this National Government took office. It inherited the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD and it has added 50000 more people to the unemployment queue. Let us compare the track records. National Government members think that they are brilliant economic managers. Well they might be brilliant economic managers if you are on the highest income and at the top of the economic heap but not for the vast bulk of Kiwis. Fifty-one percent—more than half of GDP growth—went to workers during the tenure of the last Labour Government. Only 37 percent of the growth has gone to the workers the people who generate the wealth of this country under this National Government. Forty-four percent of Kiwis—that is just under half—did not get a pay rise in the past year and there are now 82000 young New Zealanders under the age of 25 who are not in education employment or training; they are doing nothing. Their future has been written off by Bill English who calls them "pretty damned hopeless". Rather than actually backing them and providing support so that they can get ahead Bill English would rather simply say that these guys are "pretty damned hopeless" and are not worth any support. This is a Government that promises to make progress rather than actually delivering progress because progress requires a plan. It requires leadership it requires vision and it requires a bit of humility. None of those things are present within the current National Government. It has no plan to fix the housing crisis. The biggest issue the biggest challenge facing the Government is the housing crisis and it has no plan to fix it because Nick Smith thinks that the crisis is simply a figment of people's imagination. John Key thinks that the use of the word "crisis" is simply emotive. Anne Tolley says that people living in cars is nothing new. Steven Joyce thinks the housing crisis is a good thing. That is what he has actually come out and said—that he thinks the housing crisis is a good thing. So what are the solutions that National has proposed to this most pressing issue? Well it has got the $1 billion fund which actually turns out to be only a $30 million investment of Government funding because the rest of it just simply recirculates. It had the flying squad stunt. Whatever happened to that? It was these flying squads that were going to identify any people—which turned out not to be flying squads at all. Perhaps they were out looking for their luggage as well. Then of course it has got the emergency housing grants that cover 7 days of accommodation when it takes 155 days on average for somebody to find a home if they are homeless. But that is OK because they will get a week of hotel accommodation. It is only the other half of the year that they are going to have to find somewhere to live maybe a bridge or a shopping trolley. It is paying the homeless $5000 to get out of Auckland. Well how many people have taken that up? Very very few. Then of course we have got the special housing areas that have resulted in fewer than a thousand houses being built. It is cutting the building tariffs which resulted in the price of building materials going up. We have got the surplus Crown land promised by Nick Smith. That was going to deliver 500 hectares of land and it delivered 13 once you took out the substations and the cemeteries and Government House up in Auckland. Then of course we have got the selling off of State houses to the merchant bankers and the offshore investors and pretty much anyone who will buy them because the Government is desperate to get rid of them no matter the cost. But I think the pièce de résistance of National's housing plan is its selling of P houses to unsuspecting first-home buyers. I think that that really deserves a special mention because not only does it show it has not got a plan; it shows that it is spectacularly incompetent. I did not get the chance to go into the National Government's failures in the education area but I will simply point out that every parent in the country is going to pay more for their kids' early childhood education and more for their kids' schooling because this Government again has frozen the budget which means that that funding is going backwards."