Luxton Jo; Rurawhe AdrianJO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call today in this debate on the Prime Minister's statement. I'd like to wish everyone a happy New Year. It's good to be back here in the House; although it didn't feel like that at 6 o'clock this morning when I realised that I would have to be getting up and coming in. But anyway I want to talk about change.The Hon James Shaw talked about change earlier on and that New Zealanders voted for change. At the last election they voted for change very clearly. They'd had enough of the status quo. Yes they had Mr Simpson. You might shake your head but I'm standing on this side of the House and quite clearly this is the side that is in Government and that the public of New Zealand voted for.Now I've been sitting here listening to things and I want to talk about the change side of things. Some people don't like change right? But the reason that we are actually all here is that we ourselves—and that includes the people sitting opposite—wanted to make a change. We want to make things better; we just have different ideas about how to get there or what that might look like. But what we knew on this side of the House when this Government was sworn in was that the status quo was not an option. Things had to change. Our people—our mums dads brothers sisters and our elderly—were living in or close to poverty. We had families who couldn't afford to send their children to school in the correct uniforms and with all the books and things that they need. We had elderly people choosing not to turn on their heaters in the winter because they simply couldn't afford the power bill. We had a new working poor where we had two-income families barely able to make ends meet. State houses were being sold off. Kiwis were becoming less and less able to buy their own home. That dream of owning our own homes was slipping away.Chris Penk: How's it looking now?JO LUXTON: That's a really good question. Actually we are rebuilding our homes. I've heard lots of criticism from the Opposition around KiwiBuild. The Hon Nikki Kaye called it KiwiFlop". Well I tell you you say that to those people who are living in those KiwiBuild homes that have been built that they have shifted into and that they could afford to buy and live in which they wouldn't have been able to under the previous Government because how many homes did the previous Government build? What was it? Oh that's right: zero.They chose to sell off State homes. They chose to let them sit and rot away and do nothing about it. Well we won't do that. This is a Government of change. This is a Government that is doing things differently. When I say "differently" I mean "better"—far better. We are bringing kindness and compassion back to the forefront as well as ensuring that we have a strong well-performing economy. We are running surpluses. We've got the lowest unemployment we've seen in many many years. Over the past year we've achieved great things with our children and families being at the centre of the things that we make and at the heart of our programmes. We are fixing our hospitals and our schools. We've got the winter energy payment. There have been elderly people who have said to me that that is one of the best things they've ever had available to them so they can turn their heaters on in the winter and not worry about it.We have lifted 350000 families' incomes throughout New Zealand with our Families Package and I am so proud of that. I am proud that our families are not having to live in poverty and that they are not having to choose whether they should pay the power or whether they should buy food and they are not having to make those really difficult decisions. What I really like though is that with the rise in the minimum wage the necessities of life are no longer going to be "nice-to-haves" because necessities should not be "nice-to-haves". That's not fair. We are raising the minimum wage this year to $17.70 an hour. As the Hon Kelvin Davis mentioned before people have said—or there's the rhetoric going around saying—"Oh jobs will be lost." etc. etc. That is unproven and has been every single time the minimum wage has increased. In May we are going to see a well-being Budget introduced—a world first and I congratulate Minister Robertson on that. I am so proud of the work that this Government is doing and we are only just beginning.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes."