Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Gosh that was so negative and I didn't hear a single solution—a whole lot of problems no solutions. Now I also heard a lot of negativity from the finance spokesperson opposite Nicola Willis who talked about self-reinforcing negative feedback loops". Well the only self-reinforcing negative feedback loop I heard was Nicola Willis because this Labour Government is good for women and Nicola Willis knows it. The National proposition is bad for women and here's why—and actually when I say "women" I mean all women including trans women. My heart goes out to the communities today that were out on the front lawn protesting. That is the last thing that our rainbow and trans communities need: to be debating their identity when there is a lot of struggle going on in New Zealand. This Government is here to help New Zealanders through these tough times.The way that we are helping women is through the cost of living—the targeted support through the cost of living—but also the wages and the fair pay that the economic management is producing for women. The first two fair pay agreements around supermarket workers and hospo—those are clearly sectors where women are overrepresented. That is very good news for women in those sectors.We have reversed a freeze on income indexation for childcare. Let's remember that was an indexation that the National Government introduced in 2010. Now 54 percent of families with children can access the changed system. I'm really proud of that and it is making a real difference not only to women but to the children they support. We've also increased the Best Start payment to $69 a week as of 1 April.But the other great news came today that the unemployment figures for women are at record lows. That is really really good. There are 22000 new jobs in New Zealand in the first three months. The average wage is going up 7.6 percent and that is ahead of inflation at 6.7 percent. Why does that affect women? Well we know that women are in the lower tiers of working because more women tend to have fewer hours of work tend to be at home looking after kids. So these differences in wages make a real difference for women.What is the National Party doing? Well one thing they're not doing is getting the numbers right with the numbers of nurses leaving New Zealand. Whether it was misinformation or just bad calculation I'm not sure but we haven't heard the National Party say that they're going to do anything to increases nurses' pay. Nursing is clearly a sector which there is a lot of women in. What this Government has done has increased the baseline pay by 38 percent and the top pay by 43 percent. So for the registered nurses who are on the highest amount that has gone up since the Labour-led Government came in from about $66000 a year to $95000; that is a significant pay jump for a lot of people—particularly good for women in my electorate. We have the Dunedin Hospital we have lots of people in the tertiary and health sectors who are women and those pay changes make a huge difference. We have not heard National say they will do anything to increase the pay for women.What else have we done? We've of course got the winter energy payment which has just started this week. We've got paid parental leave which we've increased from 18 weeks to 26 weeks. There's the expansion of bereavement leave to include those who have had miscarriages; something that I'm really proud of and was an initiative that was started by my predecessor the Hon Clare Curran.Meanwhile National if they get in what will they do for women? Well they'll freeze benefits; they'll cancel the winter energy payment; they'll raise the age of eligibility for super and we know that super affects more women because women tend to live longer; they will give tax breaks to the wealthiest people who by and large are mainly men; and they will reserve the option to use dawn raids if they think that's necessary—that was an open statement by the Leader of the Opposition.I am shocked that Nicola Willis would be so negative about the progress made by this Government and talk about negative feedback loops when clearly for the women out there who want to see good government this is a Government that is delivering for you. National are not doing anything; they're grizzling and complaining. They're not helping the feminised sectors. They're not helping women workers. They're not helping mothers. They're not helping the children that mothers are looking after. Voters have got a clear choice coming this October and they need to vote Labour."