Wilkinson Kate: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilkinson Kate: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13942. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri): This week two words come to mind. One of them that we have heard a lot of is “exodus” and the other one is “droves”. We have heard that categorically there is a widespread exodus of people from the regions and that people are leaving the regions in droves. My own region in Waimakariri is up 17 percent in population growth. It is hardly an exodus. Even Canterbury—where we have had the devastating earthquakes and some areas have been more affected than others—as a whole as a region is up 3.4 percent. We have heard of the income going down in the regions etc. but if we look at the official statistics in Canterbury my own region the real after-tax median income inflation adjusted has increased by 14 percent. So it is hardly an exodus from the regions and hardly a neglect of the regions.If we look at the progress under our growth strategy in what have been somewhat difficult times it is actually not a bad picture. We have got economic growth that is comparable with Australia’s. It is higher than almost every other developed country. We have got wages that are growing we have got cost of living increases that have been modest and we have interest rates at 50-year lows. I remember my own first mortgage was at 21 percent. It is a lot lower than that now. We have heard that New Zealand is the fifth fastest-growing economy in the developed world. After-tax wages are up 22 percent since 2008 which is over twice the inflation rate. Gross wages have increased 14 percent. This means that real after-tax wages have increased 12 percent since September 2008 and I think that is a good picture that we are painting. There are more than 60000 more jobs—that is 60000 jobs—in the economy than there were 2 years ago.If we look at what we inherited we inherited an economy where the current account deficit was almost 9 percent of GDP and now it is only 4.3 percent of GDP. So that is from 9 percent down to 4.3 percent. Good progress. We inherited an economy where the net external debt had blown out to 84 percent of GDP and now it is 71 percent of GDP. So that is 84 percent of GDP down to 71 percent of GDP. Again good progress. Inflation was then running at 5.1 percent and now it is running at 1.4 percent. As I have already mentioned mortgage interest rates averaged 10.9 percent and now they average about 5.9 percent. So under our growth strategy I think we would have to say that reasonable progress has been made.Then I thought well what is the growth strategy of the Opposition? And I found a speech that was delivered recently. There were two versions of this speech mind you. One was inside the conference and one was outside the conference to the media. I am not sure which one prevails but none the less I think I got the gist of what it was and it was a bit like this: the 90-day trial will be gone by lunchtime. This is a trial period that has actually proved to be successful. In its first year of operation it was credited with creating 13000 new jobs. At the time 5 years ago we were told that there would be queues of people queues of exploited workers who would come to us and say that it does not work. So we said: “Bring them to us. Give us the details of who those exploited workers are.” Did we get one? No we did not. So a successful policy—which created 13000 jobs each year—would be gone by lunchtime under Labour and Labour members think they care about jobs.Then we heard that the minimum wage would be immediately raised to $15 an hour. Well I think that is about 5000 jobs. So at the stroke of a pen: $15 an hour. It does not matter whether it is affordable or not; another 5000 jobs are gone. That is about 18000 jobs. Then we hear about this living wage. I am not sure what this living wage is. It is the policy that is being delivered by somebody out there who should know better. Aliving wage: $18.40 an hour. We are not quite sure what it is pegged to but I think that is 26000 jobs—