Shaw JamesJAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Maybe I can change the tone a little bit in my next contribution in the House. But I would like to start by picking up on the tone of the last speaker Mr Brett Hudson the National Party candidate in Ōhāriu who said that I had made some comments—or who implied that—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member has the floor. He is making his contribution.JAMES SHAW: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I would like to just say for the record that I have said precisely nothing about tax thresholds in terms of the definition of someone who is earning more or less than $50000—Brett Hudson: On TV ONE news Mr Shaw.JAMES SHAW: I certainly did not say anything. This is a debating chamber so Mr Hudson is largely entitled to say what he wants but he should try to stick to things that have some factual basis rather than just making crap up because he has gotten hot under the collar and has a political point to make.Having said that I would like to move on to some of the substance of the bill which has been so avoided by the previous speaker—it was hard to hear whether he had anything to say over the sound of his own voice. The kind of core of the debate tonight really does come down to how well targeted this bill is. Mr Bishop said earlier in the debate that the Labour Party has decided that this is targeted only towards the rich—that is actually a misrepresentation of the position. I do not believe that anybody here has said that this bill is targeted only at the rich. The point is that actually when you have an across-the-board cut like this what happens is it also benefits people who are on higher incomes and actually that money would be better targeted at people on lower incomes. That is the great reservation about the design of this.If the tax thresholds had changed only to keep in line with inflation—which they needed to do because clearly over the course of the last few years there has been bracket creep inflation and so on and things have changed there—that would be equivalent to about $900 million worth of forgone revenue out of the Government accounts. But this package comes in at about $1.9 billion. So there is actually a whole additional $1 billion there above and beyond bracket creep.The question is: OK if you are going to you know look at that $1 billion what is the best use of that money? What the Government has decided is that it is going to go for an across-the-board tax cut and that $1 billion tax cut essentially includes a whole lot of people who are on higher incomes as well as those who are on lower incomes. What that means is that that $1 billion is then not available for more targeted support for those who need it most.A lot of the rest of the debate has been about the extent to which those families on lower incomes who are you know receiving other forms of benefit in the form of changes to Working for Families or the accommodation supplement and so on—whether that is so kind of paltry under the terms of this package and this bill that it actually might have been better rather than to have a $1.9 billion tax cut to actually use that $1 billion of additional revenue and to actually target that more at those families at the low end. That is why as we have said we think that the design of this is poor because it actually ends up benefiting a whole group of people who are on higher incomes who not only do not need it but actually do not want it.I think my colleague Jacinda Ardern said in her contribution in the first reading that while travelling around the country and engaging with the public there was precisely nil appetite out there for mid- to high-level tax cuts. Actually what people know is that even when they are doing well they are really conscious that there are a lot of Kiwis who are being left behind as a result of the way that the National Government has run the economy over the course of the last 8 years. They are really uncomfortable with that and actually they want to do something to support those families to ensure that those people can trust that they are able to make ends meet that they can have a roof over their heads and that their kids are not ending up in the hospital every winter because they live in cold damp homes and so on. We would have preferred that this package was designed more that way and we will be introducing amendments tomorrow when the House resumes and goes into Committee to that effect—to try to target this package more effectively than it is currently being targeted.One of the examples that I wanted to raise in line with this is that the Government is sort of making some hay—just as it did with the so-called $25 benefit increase a couple of years ago—that this is some kind of grand move that is going to make an enormous difference to people. When it comes to Working for Families Working for Families actually peaked in 2013 and has been declining for the last 4 years because families have moved out of the range of Government assistance but they have not moved out of the range of hardship. So you have actually had people who have been moving off the Working for Families programme but are actually still in a great deal of hardship. So in many ways all this package does is start to play catch-up with people who have been going backwards and falling through the cracks over the course of the last 4 years.I said in my first reading speech that we have always had some criticisms about the design of Working for Families because it obviously supports only people who are in work and actually by definition families where neither parent is working are the hardest-up families. All they have to go on is the unemployment benefit. We have created amongst the most hard-up families in the country a two-tier system whereby people who have jobs and who are lucky enough to have some form of work are receiving an additional benefit through the Working for Families wage subsidy. But those who are not working do not. So you have got people who are getting into real trouble there and this package of course does not help them. If you are thinking about how we support people who are on the lowest incomes we have to think about a more universal approach at the bottom end rather than something that has this kind of more piecemeal approach. Mr Bishop referred to some of the things that the Child Poverty Action Group had said in its submission earlier—that this package does not go far enough. I think one of the things it would say is that there is still a great number of families who are going to be left in exactly the same situation they were in before—or worse—after this package goes through.One of the other contributions earlier was around At what cost?". I think it was my colleague Chris Hipkins who was saying that one of the reasons why this package becomes possible is all of the things that the Government has effectively cut over the course of the last 8 years through a sinking lid that takes no account of inflation or population growth. So in real terms spending on a number of things has actually gone backwards creating the fiscal conditions that it is then having to use to repair some of the damage caused by having withdrawn that funding in the first place. So it is a kind of circular argument that the Government is making on this.In relation to that I wanted to bring up the home insulation scheme because it was referred to earlier in the debate. When you think about the fact that there are 40000 visits by children to the emergency rooms in hospitals around this country every year because their homes are actually making them sick and when you consider there are 1600 people who die in the winter months above what happens in the other months of the year as a result of cold damp homes you have to wonder why this Government is withdrawing funding from the home insulation scheme—Hon Member: Bring on Prosser.JAMES SHAW: —because that scheme saved lives. It had a benefit-cost ratio of $6 for every $1 that was invested. I hear some interjections from members opposite who want me to move off the fact that their policies are leading to increased deaths in the winter. I can imagine why they would want me to move on from that point. But it is a very real point. This is not simply a theoretical change to tax brackets that is going to upset people. It does in fact affect people's lives. Thank you."