Clark David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11262. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Look every Kiwi family knows that setting budgets is about making choices. And for most Kiwis it is a pretty simple task; we want pretty straightforward things. We want a good job we want a home that we can call our own we want a good school to send our kids to and we want health care if we get sick. It is not rocket science but this Government unfortunately has lost its way.People in the middle cannot rely on this Government to support their priorities. It is increasingly arrogant and out of touch and we have seen it with the Panama Papers where it has looked to defend the interests of the ultra-wealthy and where it has looked to defend the interests of those who are speculators from abroad. Its instinct has not been to stand up for middle New Zealand. It has let down its guard and New Zealanders see that its priorities are different to ours. This Government is too focused on those at the top. It is now sticking up only for the super-rich and in the meantime for middle New Zealand the Kiwi Dream is slipping away.This week some research has brought to light the fact that economic development under this Government has not shared the gains that have been made. There has been very little gain but what little there has been has been shared unfairly too. Under the last Labour Government more than 50 percent of the gains from the economy went to working people. Today that proportion has slipped to just 37 percent. Again we see where the priorities lie for this Government and they are not with the people in the middle in New Zealand. It works for those who are ultra-wealthy and who are speculating from offshore. Under National that Kiwi Dream is slipping away. We can see it in so many areas not only where the housing market has become a plaything for speculators locking a generation of Kiwis out of homeownership but also in the health sector where $1.7 billion—$1.7 billion—has been cut from the health budget over 6 years. That is from independent analysis.We have an education system that is burdening our young people with debt; an education system that offers only debt and no promise of homeownership and involvement in society. Labour of course has a plan for that: our scheme to have 3 years of free education or training would see middle New Zealand have the opportunity to get ahead—and of course we know that that kind of common sense would pay itself off quickly. We know that a nurse for example who goes back and trains would pay 16 times the value of those course fees over the course of a lifetime in taxes and so on through increased earnings. We know that kind of situation makes sense but this Government is not acting in the interests of middle New Zealand. It is too busy defending the interests of the mega-rich.So when we see this happening—when we see the housing crisis where New Zealand has the lowest homeownership rates in 65 years and where we see that house prices have shot up by 90 percent since 2008—we ask what the Government is going to do about it. Tomorrow is the big day. We will see whether those members have a plan to stop New Zealanders living in cars and garages whether they have a plan to tackle the housing crisis or whether they can even say the word “crisis” because we know it is getting worse.We know it is getting worse. GDP growth per person in the last year has been zero. The only thing that has funded growth in New Zealand’s economy is immigration—that is the only thing that is pushing up our income figures as a country. On a per person basis as one Westpac economist describes it the economy is “sluggish”. We have 40000 more Kiwis out of work than when this Government took office in the midst of the global financial crisis—40000 more. We have 26000 more kids out of employment education and training—26000 kids who are the workforce of tomorrow.This Government has no plan and it has no idea. It is out of touch with middle New Zealand. We put down the challenge to the Government to deliver on it tomorrow but I fear we will not see the solutions that middle New Zealand deserves to see.