Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): The Minister of Finance in his contribution spoke about New Zealand's growth rate and about it being the fifth-highest in the OECD. It is true that our growth rate is 3.4 percent or around 3.5 percent and that looks very impressive—until you dive into the numbers. People who are trying to feed their kids put a roof over their home or get their kids to school do not really care about a growth rate of 3.4 percent. They want to know whether they have got a job.We have got an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent and it is increasing under this National Government. We have got 90000 young people who are not in work or education and we have got the lowest rate of homeownership since the 1950s. A statistic that I found staggering is that in 1991 one in four 25-year-olds in New Zealand owned their own home. Today it is one in 20.These are the figures that really matter. These are the things that make people's lives more or less comfortable that give people an opportunity to get ahead or not. So the Minister can crow as much as he likes about the growth rate but the truth is that for far too many New Zealanders—a growing number of New Zealanders—life has gotten progressively tougher under this Government. Now why is that? If we have got such an amazing growth rate why is it that people are struggling so much? Well the fact is that if you look at GDP growth per capita it is anaemic and that is the nicest thing I can say about it. At 0.4 percent growth per capita is not delivering improved lives for ordinary Kiwis.The only thing that is making our economy grow at the moment is population growth. We have got more people therefore the economy is bigger. But on a per-person basis in terms of what the economy actually delivers for people—have they got a roof over their head have they got food on the table have they got a job to go to—this National Government fails to deliver year after year after year and it is only getting worse.We have to address the elephant in the room around population growth because the thing that is driving population growth is immigration. Immigration has always been important to New Zealand. When new migrants bring skills that help make New Zealand more prosperous everybody wins. When we get those skills and we grow our economy and we grow innovative businesses that pay higher wages people are better off. Unfortunately—the Minister in the chair at the moment Michael Woodhouse is responsible for this as is Bill English—we have got an immigration system at the moment that is being completely abused by the National Government. It is using it to bring in vulnerable workers who are exploited by poor employers. This Government is subsidising bad employers by giving them the opportunity to employ migrant labour and then failing to enforce basic employment law allowing new migrants to be exploited—not getting them paid properly not getting them paid for all the hours that they work not getting their holiday pay and not getting fair terms and conditions around health and safety. Under National rogue employers exploit migrant workers and they get away with it because we simply do not have a labour inspectorate that is sufficiently and adequately resourced to be out there in the areas that use a large amount of migrant labour to ensure that basic employment law is being adhered to.For goodness' sake in Marlborough where we have one of the highest concentrations of low-skill low-paid migrant labour in New Zealand there is an absolute paucity of labour inspectors. In Blenheim there is not one—there is not one. We have got vulnerable exploitable migrant workers crying out for an opportunity to actually raise their concerns about their employment situations but there is nobody there to actually deal with it and that is deliberate from this Government because it helps keep wages down. It helps keep conditions at work down. That is not just bad for the migrant workers but it is bad for everybody else.It is time that we get our immigration system back on track focused on the skills that will grow our economy grow our innovative businesses and create opportunities not just for our new migrants but for everybody in New Zealand. We also need to make sure that our population growth is at a sustainable rate that our infrastructure can keep up with. The fact that we do not have enough houses the fact that we have a transport system that is absolutely clogged up and the fact that people cannot get into the hospital or into schools is the fault of the Government because it has failed to invest in infrastructure but it is being caused by our population growth. It is time to take a pause and get our immigration system back on track.