Mahuta Nanaia: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Mahuta Nanaia: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
 After National’s 9 years in Opposition and 2 years in Government that speech by Maurice Williamson is as good as it gets. It absolutely shows that National did no thinking after 9 years in Opposition and 2 years in Government as to what will take this country forward. In fact the Prime Minister’s speech given yesterday was lacklustre. It failed to show leadership on the real issues facing everyday Kiwis throughout New Zealand. It was a case of great spin a lot of mincing but more smoke and mirrors. The thing about listening to this debate is that although Government members have used the recession to hide some of their most blatant objectives such as selling off State assets they really do not have any new ideas to address the real issues affecting New Zealanders throughout the country: no plan to grow the economy no new jobs and no response to lift young children out of poverty. Of everything that I have listened to throughout this whole debate the failure to articulate that response clearly is the most disappointing. One would have thought that a Government leading the charge or so it says on a brighter future would be able to spell it out quite clearly—quite clearly. 
On this side of the House we have raised issues that have affected those everyday New Zealanders: the rising cost of living and things like petrol prices food prices power prices rent increases rates increases and mortgages. Those types of things are affecting real families and those families are starting to feel the pinch. Every member of the Opposition will be able to dive into their electorate and give members numerous examples of where people are starting to feel the difficulties under a recession and a jobless recovery. The Government cannot articulate clearly enough to the people in those communities how it will lift their sights above the parapet. 
I point to some examples. Rents for example have increased in some areas by 9.5 percent. In my electorate in Ngaruawahia which would be seen as a very humble community we are seeing an average rental of about $320 for a three-bedroom home. In Hamilton that figure is up to about $350 so there is not much difference. In Raglan in Kawhia in Whitianga and in Whangamata people will tell you—and pensioners will tell you—how much their rates have increased over this period of time how much their power bill is and that as a result of their limited fixed income they are struggling to make payments. Those are the stories I hear when I go out and about and I am concerned. In a recession people generally understand that in difficult times people have to pull their belts in. I think that is well understood across the House. But when we have a jobless recovery where those pensioners are starting to see their kids put out of a job having to take redundancy and with no job prospects in their immediate community the whole whanau starts to become a little bit stressed. 
General practitioner fees for example are going up sadly. I got an example in the weekend where an elderly person who is over 80 is paying $35 to go to her general practitioner—$35. It is unbelievable. Grant Robertson our spokesperson on health is absolutely right that the amount of money one pays to go to after-hours care just does not stack up and people put it off until they can afford it. It costs $69 to go to accident and emergency if one accesses services after hours. People will wait and sometimes waiting makes all the difference between being in hospital and having something more critical wrong. That is the type of choice people are making. 
I will read a real-life story from a constituent; she will not mind that I am reading this. Ann Newland who lives in Taupiri—I do not know her—talks about the pressures on her family about the cost of living. She says: “The health system has become a joke. Engari we are not laughing. To make a decision to go to the doctors has become a burden. Knowing you have to go to the doctors but there are other things you have to buy like kai pay bills like the power have petrol in the car and trying to meet the needs and wants of your children going to the doctors gets moved right down the list. Due to the price of the doctors one puts their own well-being last. I have experienced in the last year that if you have money people will jump to help you but if you don’t have any money or not enough nobody really wants to know except the Salvation Army may God bless them. And when it comes to our young people well that is a really sad reality of what is happening. Unskilled lack of motivation some have no dreams for their future and some of this is to do with the education system. There seems to be no solution or methods to help whanau with their young people who are already feeling the burden by society.” 
We hear the Minister for Social Development and Employment talking about all the good things that are happening in the area of youth employment. Yes Job Ops and Community Max are short-term opportunities but they are just that—short-term responses to some very challenging needs of our young people. We need to invest in their skills. We increased the investment in Modern Apprenticeships training which was a long-term investment to ensure that we were lifting the skilled workforce of the next generation. Under this Government that is not happening. Community Max is a short-term response to the long-term challenge of making sure that we invest in the skills of our young people. Quite frankly on the youth unemployment front we are sadly lacking in the way we are meeting the needs of many young people—Maori Pacific and Kiwis alike—throughout the whole country. We have to do better on that front. I was quite dismayed at the fact that the Minister did not show any lead on what the opportunities might be in terms of pathways beyond Community Max into further training and tertiary study. In fact in the tertiary sector we see many universities having to turn students away and polytechs as well are under pressure in terms of their enrolments because of the policies put forward by this Government. 
In early childhood education we heard a number of representations from the Government that 80 percent teacher-led services are OK—they are OK—and that parents would understand that. That is a direct quote from the Hon Paula Bennett. But I tell you what. If National had campaigned on cuts in the early childhood education sector and parents had a real choice between quality 100 percent teacher-led education and 80 percent teacher-led education I bet members that every time parents would have chosen 100 percent teacher-led quality education for their kids. Every parent wants to know that they are putting their young people in the hands of people who are qualified to look after them. Paul Quinn went on to ask about kohanga reo. If he had visited kohanga reo they would have told him that they struggle to reach 80 percent Maori language teachers in their kohanga so actually they are not doing too badly by this. But they will always always want to try to lift investment to increase the number of qualified Maori language teachers into kohanga. 
We need to set the record straight because quite frankly we have not heard the Government members articulate its plan to grow the economy to grow new jobs and to stop people getting into the dole queue. One hundred and ten people were released by AFFCO in Horotiu today. That is not good enough. They are seasonal workers who will be hurting as a result of a recession that has a jobless recovery and there has been no response by the Government to try to address the real needs of real families out there. Time and time again Labour has been putting those issues in front of the Government because quite frankly the Prime Minister’s statement has fallen short of identifying the Government’s plan. If privatisation is the Government’s answer and National members are saying that Maori will be the big investors and will cash up their relativity clauses to be able to invest in State-owned enterprises they can think again. Those issues will have to go back to iwi before any decision like that is made. It is all huff all puff more smoke and more mirrors. The Government has failed good working New Zealanders and good families in our country because it has not shown a clear plan for the future.