Parker David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: General Debate[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18621. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour):I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Just last week Pattrick Smellie said that the National Government was wise to go to the election early because the economic news from here on gets worse. In other words this is as good as it gets. In a year when 46 percent of New Zealanders got no increase in their wages his message to New Zealand is that National has gone early because it gets no better than this. The economic recovery is built on a housing bubble in Auckland and the Christchurch rebuild. Exports have peaked; from here they go down.You might think “Well Pattrick Smellie—a trusted economic adviser.” but who else is saying this? Just yesterday Shamubeel Eaqub the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research said that raising interest rates is a huge mistake at a time when inflation is incredibly low and you are doing it only because of the housing market in Auckland. He said: “It scares the hell out of me because the collateral damage rises with each increase. You risk tipping them [the regions] into recession.” He said that yes house prices are out of control in Auckland—that is me saying that—and that they have gone up by 20 percent in real terms since 2007 but in the rest of the country they fell by 21 percent during the same period. That is of course excluding Canterbury. He then said that the gaps opening up in New Zealand are really big across geographical race and education lines and that one of the biggest issues of this generation is the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. That is from the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research. That is his conclusion after 6 years of a National Government.Across both sides of the House—Labour and National—we favour consistently stronger economic growth. Indeed since World War II the rate of economic growth in real terms has been slightly higher under Labour than under National. We both stand for economic growth. I do not deny that. National does stand for it; we do too. Of course we do. We are the party of labour and we need jobs and higher incomes. But the bigger difference lies in our desire to share that around fairly so that the economy is stronger and everyone gets ahead. It is Labour that always brings forward the long-term structural changes that reduce inequality. National is not worried about that. It denies it is occurring. Despite decreasing homeownership rates—the lowest in 50 years—increasing child poverty an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the refusal to tax capital gains National denies that inequality is getting worse despite the fact that someone like Shamubeel Eaqub the chief economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research says that those gaps are widening in every way.We believe that long-term solutions are important. That is why we introduced KiwiSaver which National voted against. We believe in making long-term savings through the Cullen fund which Bill English described as a dog when he voted against it and now says is a good idea. It is now time to move to universal KiwiSaver. New Zealand is dissaving again at the moment. We are actually borrowing more money from overseas because we are not saving. We are spending more than we earn. We are dissaving. One of the answers to that is a capital gains tax. Another important answer to that is a universal KiwiSaver scheme. That is what they have got in Australia. That is one of the reasons why they have got higher wages in Australia. It is one of the reasons why they own their banks plus ours plus so much of our corporate sector. They have a work-based savings scheme. Everyone in Australia has to be in it.We hear National saying that the low-paid should not be able to afford to save. We think differently on this side. We think that everyone needs a nest egg. We think the economy is stronger as a consequence. If people at the bottom end cannot afford to save they need a lift in the minimum wage and a push towards a living wage. Higher wages is what they will get under Labour. Following through on that we will have higher growth rates. We will have a lower exchange rate higher values in exports and more high-value jobs all at the same time as avoiding this ridiculous housing bubble in Auckland that has arisen under National.