Roche Denise: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 30 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15739. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call in this debate in my first speech in the House this year. I wish you all a happy New Year. Inequality is really the defining issue of this election and sadly it was missing from the Prime Minister’s speech. He did wax lyrical about the improving economy but his assertion that “On average wages are growing faster than inflation.” is not actually correct. I checked this morning and the data from Statistics New Zealand shows that since 2009 ordinary wage rates and that is not including overtime have gone up on average by 7.8 percent while inflation has risen by 9.8 percent. Put simply with the most up-to-date data we have wages have not even kept up with inflation and for ordinary New Zealanders the standard of living has dropped under this Government.The Prime Minister talks about jobs and I agree with my colleague Carol Beaumont that we must talk about jobs and we should talk about jobs. We agree that we need more jobs in this country. But this Government has fostered a low-wage economy and today’s workers are not getting a decent pay rate that will enable them to live on what they earn. In fact the Prime Minister in his speech talks about introducing further legislation around industrial relations that will make it harder for workers to negotiate for decent pay. Just in December the OECD results showed that although productivity overall in New Zealand has increased the share that goes to workers into their wages has decreased. We are the third-worst out of all the OECD countries for sharing the wealth we are creating. This is inequality. We heard today from the Deputy Prime Minister that the Government is in denial about inequality. He would rather argue with Labour about whether the gap between those who have the most and those who have theleast has remained the same or increased than actually address the fallout of that inequality. The fact is that there are 270000 children living in poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand and that two out of five of those kids have at least one parent who is working.We have hundreds of thousands of workers who cannot provide for their families on the wages that they earn because those wages are too low. The minimum wage is $13.75 an hour. For a 40-hour week that is $550 before tax. Housing costs alone eat up most of those wages so it is no wonder there has been a significant increase in working families utilising charity and utilising food banks. What we see is mums and dads working several jobs to make enough money just to get by. A classic example is the parliamentary cleaners the people who work here for Spotless who are contracted to the Parliamentary Service to clean up after us. They earn $14.10 an hour and they work from midnight until 6 o’clock in the morning. None of them work a full 40 hours. All of them work 30 hours a week and it is not enough to live on. We worked alongside these women—mostly women—last year in order to see what their jobs were like and I tell you that it was hard. They deserve a living wage which would be $18.40 an hour. The cost of that would equate to the salary of one backbencher. Inequality exists here too.I am proud to be a Green and I believe that we will be part of a progressive Government that will work for good lives and fair futures for all the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you.