Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour): There is some irony in following on from that member Alastair Scott directly. I am aware that our candidate in the Wairarapa has an event tonight that includes a signed Brian Lochore rep jersey and photographs. How things have changed in the Wairarapa. But I guess given the member has not visited for some time he may not be aware of the changes that are afoot there.I want to speak directly to the last sentiment that—Hon Maggie Barry: That made no sense.JACINDA ARDERN: —was shared by that speaker. I want to speak directly—Brian Lochore; he was quite a famous rugby player very supportive of the Labour Party and Kieran McAnulty.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Back to the bill.JACINDA ARDERN: I want to speak to the last sentiment that the speaker mentioned. That was that National in delivering this tax package is the party that delivers to everyone—with the exception of anyone on a minimum wage and without kids and with the exception of families with kids who earn the median wage. There are a number of groups that lose out from this tax package. The point that we have been trying to make I think quite successfully has been that when you take into account that even what someone on an income of $55000 or $28000 is going to receive—between $10 and $20—actually those families are experiencing enormous costs in other ways which will only continue to increase.Just today—and I highlighted this in the Committee stage—a parent contacted me to tell me about the workshops they had been a part of for the local school for fund-raising. They were fund-raising for basic digital needs in their local school. These are parents who are increasingly being asked to dish out in donations schools galas and fairs to meet basic infrastructure costs with their school and these are the same parents who are likely potentially to get $10 or $20 which is going to go straight into meeting the growing needs of our core services of which education is one example; health is another.The point that I have consistently tried to make is that when Andrew Little and I have travelled around the country doing the state of the nation tour that we have been carrying out on not one occasion—on not one occasion—has anyone raised the issue of tax brackets. But in every single meeting someone will raise the housing crisis the rising cost of education and even things like the fact that over the weekend Waikato Hospital shut down its services because demand was so great that it could not cope. For us it is a matter of prioritisation. We are not in a position where $1.9 billion can be spent with such a lack of targeting and with such a lack of deliberate emphasis.I want to speak to another comment that the last speaker made around the accommodation supplement. He has continued throughout this debate to try to make an argument that the accommodation supplement is somehow—the member across the way has tried to make the argument that the accommodation supplement is somehow just a discretionary additional amount of cash that goes into a household's income. In fact I think the words that he used were hard cash" for the tenant. Well the accommodation supplement is directly related to the amount that people are required to pay to their landlords because of increasing rental costs. In Auckland alone we have seen what in the last 8 years a 40 percent increase in the cost of a rental. An increase in the accommodation supplement here does not get paid out to a tenant and then spend some time there just sitting in a tenant's bank account while they decide whether it's necessary to pass that on to a landlord. [Interruption] It is literally—and it is very relevant Mr Assistant Speaker because the $10 to $20—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I have let the member run on for some time in replying to the comments that were outside the bill from the previous speaker. I think it has been fairly well established earlier on that in the substance of this bill those changes do not occur. In the third reading what we are meant to be doing is debating what is in the bill as it emerges from the select committee.Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The problem is there is no other legislation that we can talk to on this because the Government is doing it by way of regulation.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will resume his seat. [Interruption] The member will resume his seat. Next Tuesday when we come back the first order of the day is the Budget debate. There is quite a large opportunity to debate it at that stage. It is the Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill rather than specific legislation but to say that there is not an opportunity to debate it is not correct.JACINDA ARDERN: As I was touching on in my third reading speech at the conclusion of this debate the $10 to $20 that is granted through this bill will very quickly be subsumed by household costs that those individuals whom the Government has tried to target are facing. The amount of disposable income available to these families has been on the decline. If you look at any of the analysis which I am sure the Government did when it formulated this tax package—if the Government looks for instance around housing costs relative to income and the report that Bryan Perry produced as part of the Ministry of Social Development's annual reporting on household incomes it no doubt will have seen—and I quote from the section on housing costs relative to income—that housing costs now take a much greater proportion of household income especially for low-income households. For all working-age under-65 households they are up from 14 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent in 2015. For the bottom quintile they are up from 29 percent to 54 percent—up from 29 percent to 54 percent. This change has had a major impact on the trend in incomes after deducting household costs.My point here is that the Government has tried to make an argument that these bracket changes will be putting extra discretionary disposable income into the back pockets of low- and it has claimed middle-income New Zealanders—it seems to have discounted the fact that those same amounts are going into the pockets of those on higher incomes. But my point is that those amounts will simply be feeding back into those households significantly increased costs around housing in particular through a lack of addressing those wider issues. So that $10 to $20 is very unlikely to make anyone feel better off in the long term given the relative costs that they are facing and those increasing costs.I particularly want to expand on the last part of the statement here in this section from the household income survey which says that on average—from the survey in 2011 to the last one—43 percent in the bottom-income quintile had housing outgoings of more than 30 percent of income and one in three households spent more than 40 percent of their income and one in four spent more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs. That goes outside the realm—we know of course that we consider it to be affordable if you are in the 30 percent range so that gives an indication of just where exactly it is likely that the tax cuts included in this package are likely to immediately go.I will finish on one point: in June 2016 almost all renters receiving the accommodation supplement—94 percent of them—spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. Three in four spent more than 40 percent and half spent 50 percent. Half of people receiving the accommodation supplement then went on to also spend 50 percent of their income on housing. What does that tell you? That is the reason we do support that element that the member spoke to but it is a short-term measure and should not be seen as a solution.The one thing in this bill that was a solution was the amendments around the Working for Families package. We have been very open about supporting them and had this been a bill that broke it down into discrete parts we would have supported those parts. Instead we presented that in our own amendments. The $373 million that the Government invested in the Working for Families changes we supported. They were targeted they benefited those who needed it most and it was a good use of taxpayer dollar. When you look at the proportion though of that $373 million versus the $1.9 billion that we spent on those tax bracket changes our argument is that that is inefficient and a poor way to target that spending particularly given the trade-offs that I have already highlighted. What we give on the one hand—simply parents and families in particular will be paying for that increase in costs that comes through lack of investment in those other core areas of Crown spending.Overall though our message has generally been that because of our belief in things like Working for Families and the family tax credit—obviously that is something we strongly support. Of course our grievance around the abatements and thresholds still stands but because of our view that it is a really efficient way to deliver to people we stand by things like our Best Start package. It is our intention that going forward and into the election voters will see what we will be proposing as an alternative. That will include not just our thoughts on take-home incomes for people and wages but also our view that we need to get back to basics. We need to remember those really simple sentiments around all people ever really needing being a place to live—a warm dry one at that—something to do someone to love and something to hope for. That is exactly what you will see encapsulated in an alternative Labour budget before the election."