Turei Metiria: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6680. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The sole mantra of the National Party over its years in Government has been this: “Sell it off sell it off.” At every point with every issue with every need that New Zealanders have had the single response from the National Government has been to sell it off—sell it off.The Green Party is here to deliver on the hopes of New Zealanders for a better a cleaner and a greener future. We give a voice to the growing number of New Zealanders who are making changes in their own lives to build a better future for themselves and their families and for more and more of those people that future is one where our core public services to which we are all entitled as citizens of this country—like health services like education services and like the justice services—are run for the benefit of the community as a whole and not for some of the National Party’s friends who want to derive a profit from it.Under National we have seen a rapid decline in public services and an absolutely massive increase in privatisation and a shift of wealth from the public sphere to the private sphere. For every review and every assessment of critical services the same solution arises out of the National Government and that is to sell it off—a sell-off of the public wealth and of the history of this country.There is a housing crisis with thousands of New Zealand families in this country desperate for a warm safe secure and affordable home—totally desperate—and they look to the values of the past when housing was treated as a basic right of every New Zealand family. Every New Zealand family and every citizen was entitled to decent housing. What has happened to that basic right under the National Government? It has been demolished by National bulldozers. That is what we have seen. Where are those homes for the thousands of New Zealand families who desperately need them? Sold off—that is what is happening with those homes. They are being sold off in the towns and the cities where people love to live where they want to build a community.In critical services for children for the most vulnerable children—whether it is Child Youth and Family or welfare we know that decades of neglect by Governments means that children’s lives are at risk. State care has been the most dangerous place for children in this country. Families are being driven into the ground for want of a basic but decent income so that they can provide for their kids. We all know that the solution to poverty is to fix incomes but what is the National Government’s solution? Privatise the welfare system sell off the welfare system and take children’s well-being out of the hands of families and communities and place it instead in the hands of corporates and profiteers. That is the sole National solution rolled out in this country.National has lost touch with the real lives of New Zealanders and is failing to show the leadership on the issues that so many families care about—feeding our kids in schools for example. It is a basic core issue New Zealanders believe in and love and National has said no.The classic example of the debacle of the privatisation agenda of this Government is our prisons. We told Governments years ago that privatising prisons would lead to failure that it would be expensive and that it would not work and it turns out of course that we were right as everyone said at the time. Time after time we have seen Serco exposed for its failures and the Minister of Corrections exposed for his complete inability to handle that portfolio. He really needs to go. He either knew that all of these things were going on with Serco and did nothing about it or he did not know because he has neglected that portfolio. Either way the Minister needs to go. He is a complete failure as a Minister of a critical core public service that needs to be kept in the hands of the public and thousands of New Zealanders believe that. Thousands of New Zealanders even National voters want the prisons to go back into public ownership and public management.Families should be able to have what they need to live a good life and to care for their families: high-quality education accessible health care and respect for the amazing work that is parenting. The Green Party is the only party with the new ideas that will build this better future for New Zealanders. We have the experience and the track record and we will deliver. We will protect and return to public ownership and public management those services that the National Government has been so committed to selling off. Thank you.