Woods Megan: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9212. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I have been looking forward for some time to taking a call on the Prime Minister’s statement because I have got quite a lot to say. People in the south-west suburbs of Christchurch where I live and where my electorate of Wigram is located have long memories of a local MP called Norman Kirk who served the Sydenham electorate faithfully for the years 1969 to 1974. He is a leader who is warmly remembered because he had a pretty simple message for the people of the Sydenham electorate and the people of this country as their Prime Minister and that was that they needed some security in their lives they needed somewhere to live and they needed a job. This is of course what we call the Kiwi Dream.That is right this is the dream that this Government has given up on—these pretty simple aspirations that our great Prime Ministers like Kirk could articulate and stand up for the people of this country in relation to. But this is a Government that has lost its way. It is arrogant it is out of touch and it is ignoring these big issues that are facing New Zealanders. We just need to look to issues such as the housing crisis. We need to look to issues such as the health cuts that we had questions this very day in the House about. We need to look at jobs we need to look at wages we need to look at the Christchurch recovery and what is happening in that very city where Norman Kirk made his life. This is a Government of broken promises. This is a Government that has given up on ordinary New Zealanders. When we listened to the Prime Minister’s statement that we heard in this House it was a statement that was full of platitudes. It was a statement that was full of claims that everything was OK. Nothing to see here; move along—it is all OK.But as a child of the 1970s I can very much see that that Kiwi Dream is slipping away. What I remember from those long warm summers of the 1970s as a child where people did actually believe that they had a future—if we take that forward into what that means in the 21st century we have a generation of New Zealanders who are not growing up with that hope. What we have under National instead is an economy that is stacked in favour of a privileged few while everyday Kiwis find it harder to get ahead. We have a housing market that has become a plaything for speculators locking a generation out of the dream of homeownership. We have a health care system where people are having to think about mortgaging their houses to pay for drugs. So we have a system where if you have got money you can access health care and if you do not you cannot. We have an education system that is drowning our young people in debt and we have rates of child poverty that no member in this House should be content to tolerate. This simply is not the New Zealand that any of us think about when we think about what it means to be a New Zealander and what we are capable of in this country.This year began with Andrew Little showing to the country a way back to this Kiwi Dream. For Andrew Little to set out a vision for the future is something this Government cannot do because it has given up on any kind of vision or future and it is plodding along. The Working Futures Plan that Labour and Andrew Little outlined at the beginning of this year showed a very clear path to the kind of New Zealand we could have the alternative that could exist where we back an economy where everybody can have access to education.We have heard the absolute spinning around of the Government trying to counter this. First of all it sent out the “Spin-master-General” Steven Joyce who came out at first saying that it would not do anything. Apparently the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment does not think greater access to tertiary education will actually do anything. We thought that was a pretty interesting response. I think the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment quickly realised that perhaps this was not the best thing for him to be saying so he changed the spin—“We’ve got a problem; we’ve got to change the spin.”—so then it was going to cost too much. The way that Labour had a future for people where every New Zealander could access education for up to 3 years was simply going to cost too much said Steven Joyce. But then wait a minute he remembered the Government had started foreshadowing tax cuts and this money was going to be spent somewhere else anywhere so he had to change the tack on that one; he went back.What we have is a very clear difference. We have on the one hand the Labour Party which is setting out a vision for our future and for our young people that backs them and says: “When you leave school we want to make sure you have the right skills and training whether that be a university degree an apprenticeship or some kind of polytech qualification that will get you into a job. What is more we do not want to set you up and saddle you with debt for the rest of your life in getting there.”There are a lot of members in this House who go on about how debt does not matter. Well this week we are going to see how much that debt does matter and what the level of student indebtedness in this country has risen to. As someone who did pay for her education—because as well as being a child of the 1970s I was a teenager and young adult of the 1990s where I had to pay for my university education and where I borrowed for that education—I actually finished paying off my student loan last month. It was a very momentous day; it was great. I went through the student loan scheme at the very worst ravages that it could wrest and the very worst circumstances that you could have and I actually do not want anyone else to be saddled with the kind of debt that I was saddled with after my education. I was saddled with debt in excess of $100000 for the PhD that I did at the University of Canterbury. This is the kind of debt that I do not want to stand by as someone who can make decisions in this country and not change. I think we all have a duty to make sure that we are making the future better for young people and I am proud of the policy that Labour announced at the beginning of this year.It is not just in education that this Government is failing us; it is in health. There is no greater demonstration we are seeing of that than the cuts to health funding. Again the Government’s spin machine comes out and it tells us that it has increased health funding every year. Let us cut the games because we all know this is about real costs and how much the real costs are increasing by.I want to talk specifically about mental health funding in Canterbury. We have a Government that said it was going to stand with the people of Canterbury. No one would be worse off. It would walk every step with them. That was 5 and a bit years ago. This Government has done anything but walk hand in hand with the people of Canterbury when it comes to their mental health funding. Instead we have seen over $5 million cut from mental health services to a region that has greater need in mental health services than anywhere else. We are seeing an increase in emergency department admissions for suicide attempts. The police are reporting increased call-outs for suicide attempts. We have children starting in our schools who have severe development problems because of the last 5 years that they have lived with. Prescriptions for antidepressants and for anti-anxiety medications in Canterbury top anywhere else in the country. This is a region that is under pressure in mental health services and this is a Government that is cutting funding to our region for those issues. But it is not just in the issues of mental health services.If you read the written version of the Prime Minister’s statement there were a couple of paragraphs that made it in there about the Canterbury recovery. If you listened in the House once you got past the sports jokes and the political put-downs Canterbury did not make the director’s cut of John Key’s speech on the day. Simply Canterbury is slipping down this Government’s priorities. Instead it is taking money out to manufacture its surplus in terms of Earthquake Commission funding. We have the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority which has presided over botch-up after botch-up. Instead of delivering the kind of recovery and the pace and the optimism that the people of Canterbury need we have an organisation that has been nothing more than a roadblock. Then the Government spends $2.6 million on spin trying to tell everyone it is OK but 74 percent of Cantabrians do not have any confidence in the recovery decisions being made. That is not really on track. There is an alternative. We on this side of the House—