Woods Megan: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 30 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15719. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): The previous speaker Tim Groser told us that the Opposition is preaching a message of hopelessness to New Zealanders as we go into election year. I think the previous speaker and other members opposite should actually stop and listen to the narrative of hope that we are giving to New Zealanders. Labour will build a future. It will build an economy for all New Zealanders. Unlike the present New Zealand we are living in it will be a fair and just society where everybody can live with some dignity it will have an environment that we are proud to protect and it will be a nation that we can be proud of.We are not ashamed to have big visions for New Zealand. When we come to be the Government at the end of this year this will be the New Zealand that we strive to create. Labour will restore a country based on values that work. It will be that a full day’s work will cover the basics. A family that works hard for 40 hours a week but still struggles to put food on the table and lives in poverty is not good enough. There will be more jobs available and wages will catch up with prices.New Zealanders will pay what is fair whether it is for their power bill their tax bill or their grocery bill. This is the kind of New Zealand that we believe in. We believe that every child in this country will have what they need to start a healthy life and to start learning early to fulfil every bit of their potential. That is not what is happening now. Instead what we have is a Government that is arrogant out of touch and out for its mates and no other speech in this House during this debate than the one we have just heard exemplifies that more.We do have a lot of competition for this arrogance and out-of-touch nature. Only hours ago one of the National Ministers delivered a speech to the UN where she told assembled international delegates that 8000 red-zoned homeowners in Christchurch were put out of their land because their land presented unacceptable levels of life risk. Well this is news to many people. It is news to anybody who lives in Christchurch actually that this is the case. She told the assembled delegates that the land had liquefied and now it was swamp and water. Well maybe the Minister should get out of her ivory tower and take a drive through Christchurch take a drive through the residential red zone. That is right. She can drive. She does not need to take a boat because the land is not still liquefied in water and swamp.But I suspect that the Minister who made these comments is adding to the woes that the National caucus seem to have and that is around occupational health and safety. We have seen the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee in this House sporting a bandaged middle finger. We have to believe that actually there is some kind of repetitive strain disorder from continually giving Cantabrians the middle finger which is creeping into the National caucus.This is a Government that is arrogant and out of touch. We were told by the previous speaker that it was hogwash—the growing inequality in this country. Well I will go back and tell the constituents in Wigram that it is hogwash that they cannot make ends meet. I am sure they will be convinced about that. We were told that there was no evidence that the poor as he called them and the middle class were struggling. Well the Minister should tell that to the 265000 children in this country who are living in poverty. That is 25 percent of our children. He should tell that to the more than 40000 children who have been hospitalised for poverty-related diseases since 2008. What more evidence does that Minister need that inequality and poverty are real in this country?That Minister exemplified exactly what this Government has come to represent: a Government that is out of touch and that does not understand what it is like for ordinary New Zealanders. It does not understand the struggles that are happening in homes all over this country every day. It is not hogwash; it is the lived reality for too many New Zealanders’ families and their children.That is why Labour is proud of the measures it is taking to give every child in New Zealand the best start in life. We will offer financial support. We will offer that to 95 percent of New Zealand families. Obviously this has rattled National Government members. It is not polling well for them obviously. Obviously they are getting rattled by it because despite all their claims there is absolutely no criticism of the fact that we pay a universal superannuation. They are not quibbling over that. But why are they refusing to accept that all our children deserve some kind of help?The commitment that we are making to further the access to early childhood education is something we can be proud of as a party and something we will be proud of as a Government when we implement it. We do believe in paid parental leave. We believe that this is important and we believe that it is important to back the parents of our children at this important time in their lives when their children are born.But our belief in our children and our commitment to our children does not just begin when they are born. As my colleagues have talked about we believe that this support for families needs to start even before birth. That is why we are making a commitment around antenatal initiatives. My colleague the Hon Annette King has spoken about that at length in this House. These are things that we can be proud of.We had the previous speaker who got up and like his colleagues the Prime Minister and the Minister of Science and Innovation Steven Joyce spoke a lot of rhetoric about the commitment to research and development and innovation that this Government is putting in. He told us that research and development tax credits had to go because they were being rorted by people. Well people should stop and consider that these research and development credits did not even get through a full filing period before they were scrapped. Labour believes in its commitment to New Zealand businesses that we will actually let them make some decisions around what is needed in their businesses to be truly innovative and that we will back them and trust them because we know that the success of our country lies in their ability to innovate. We will facilitate that. Unfortunately this Government’s high rhetoric on innovation has not been matched by activity.Let us have a look at some of the initiatives that the Government likes to speak the big game about. There is the much-vaunted Callaghan Innovation. Actually the Advanced Technology Institute was an idea that Labour did back in its conceptual form because it did offer an opportunity to really get behind our high-value manufacturing sector—for us to really do something about moving to a 21st century economy to a productive economy where a manufacturing base could exist. But we have not seen the kind of action out of Callaghan Innovation that either we need as a nation or the name is worthy of.Sir Paul Callaghan was a New Zealander who believed that we need to concentrate very carefully on several things to make our country and our economy better and unfortunately we are not seeing these come out of Callaghan Innovation. What we have seen are delays. We had a business plan for Callaghan Innovation that gathered dust for goodness knows how long on the Minister’s desk before it was quietly released into the ether just before Christmas. This was overdue. But what is worse is that we were having Callaghan Innovation come into being and Industrial Research Ltd being scrapped even before there was a plan in place. This is an instance of putting the cart before the horse.We have Callaghan Innovation without a business plan hocking off New Zealand intellectual property to international buyers and not keeping jobs in New Zealand. The kind of New Zealand we believe in is one that looks after its children. It wants to give them the best start in life and it wants to have a New Zealand where jobs can be created. But we know that in order for us to create jobs we need a productive economy. We need one where businesses can be innovative where we do have the infrastructure in place in order to achieve that and we are not seeing that. We want to give our children the best start and to do that we need to address the fundamentals in our economy.