Estimates Debate — Vote Housing

It is wonderful to stand up in this debate and talk about housing. It is something we on this side of the Chamber are proud to speak about. It is an area where this Budget builds on previous Budgets in determining the difference between a Labour-led Government and the rest. What did those members on the other side of the Chamber do in the 1990s to fund their tax cuts for the wealthy? They sold 13,000 houses.

💬 Hon Steve Maharey: How many?

They sold 13,000 houses, which can no longer be lived in by the poorest families in this country. That is how members on that side of the Chamber fund tax cuts. Let us make no mistake about it—they would do so again. The National Party spokesperson—and apparently there is one; I think it is David Carter—

💬 Hon Steve Maharey: No.

Is it somebody else now? National has had about 15 in the last year. [Interruption] Is it Shane Ardern? [Interruption] Surely not!

The spokesperson went to Auckland and said that National would sell State houses again. That is what he told the property investors. They would have lapped it up, because they would have been buying the houses, rather than the low to medium income families this Government helps into housing through things like KiwiSaver. We will not sell State houses; this Budget actually talks about more State houses. There is more money in this Budget for houses to be built, which will provide employment, skill development, and housing for the low-income families of this country who need it.

Over the next 4 years, $134 million will be spent to provide 1,300 new homes for those in need. I congratulate the Minister in the chair, the Hon Steve Maharey. He is doing a wonderful job for the families out there who look to Labour for traditional things such as a roof over their heads that they can afford, not more of the market rents of the 1990s. When this Government came to power we got rid of those. We brought back income-related rents, and families in our communities benefited.

Judith Collins smiles. She pretends she represents the people of Papakura. She could not care less about the poor families of Papakura who paid market rents under the previous National Government. She was on the Housing Corporation. She implemented the policy. She was proud of the market rents and the sell-off of houses, and she would do it again if she were given the chance. But nobody is stupid enough to give her that chance—not in this country. [Interruption] She thinks screeching like that makes some sort of difference. She cannot hide from the fact that this Budget provides 1,300 new homes for low-income families, many of them—whom she ignores—in her electorate. The previous National Government sold 13,000 houses to fund the tax cuts of the 1990s. When we took over, hundreds of millions of dollars were built into the Budget from the sale of houses. Our biggest spend in our first year in Government, back in 2000, was not selling those houses. That is what cost our Government the most in the first year—we had to forgo all that revenue.

That is how National funds tax cuts. It attacks the lowest paid, the weakest, and the most vulnerable, and it sells their houses. Its mates on the Auckland City Council thought that that was a good lark, and they sold the pensioners’ houses as well. That forced this Government to come up with $80 million to buy those houses so that the elderly were not tipped out on the street by those Tories. Thankfully the people of Auckland decided that that was no good and they tipped those Tories out of the council, just as they will reject that horrible lot over there who say: “We’ll give you $13 a week, or $6 if you’re low paid, but, by the way, we’ll sell your State houses to do it.”—just as they did in the 1990s.

What does the National Party care about people in rural areas who have been living in sub-standard housing for far too long? This Budget puts an extra $22.6 million into that area over the next 3 years. We have State housing areas that have been run down and are not up to the standards of modern living, and we have allocated another $7.4 million for community renewal programmes in about five or six areas of New Zealand.

Healthy Housing is a wonderful project that deals with overcrowding. I heard the Māori Party slagging that and saying that we should be doing more of it. Well, I do not know where the Māori Party has been, but we started the Healthy Housing programme 5 years ago in my electorate, which has had the worst rate of meningococcal disease in the country, and we are making those houses better and healthier for Māori and Pacific Island families in particular. I expect the Māori Party to support that, not to slag it and vote against it. I expect National Party members to applaud it, but no, we will not hear that from them.

I would like to pick up on a subject that is dear to my heart, and I must note that the previous speaker failed to mention it. In 5 minutes, he failed to mention anything about leaky homes. That just shows that this Government does not care about them. The member does not give a damn about it.

💬 Hon Mark Gosche: It’s the wrong programme.

Mr Gosche says that it is the wrong part of the estimates. Well, I would remind the member that it is definitely part of the Department of Building and Housing, and that very little money is being put aside to compensate people who own leaky homes for the problem. During question time I listened to the Minister for Building Issues, Mr Carter, talking about weathertight homes, and he made a joke of it. Once again, this Government made a joke of the leaky homes debacle. The Minister made a complete joke of the whole situation. He does not have the ability to really comprehend what a travesty this problem is for those people who have it. They face a serious crisis. Their homes are rotting and falling down around them. The value of their houses has gone through the floor, along with some of their furniture. It has reached the point where those people are devastated, because all their life savings were tied up in their properties.

💬 Dail Jones: And what’s New Zealand First going to do?

What are we going to do about it? New Zealand First wants to make sure that those people have an opportunity to have their properties repaired quickly. Then we will worry about going through the long, slow Weathertight Homes Resolution Service process, because the longer people leave it, the worse the problem becomes in the home. People’s homes rot around them while they are waiting. Those people have seen some of the $18 million appropriated in this particular vote for the 2005-06 year being spent on—wait for it—Sound of Music and Cowboys and Indians ventures around the country. That is not solving the problem; the Government is just sitting there, thumbing its nose at those people, and saying: “We are having a good time. We hope you get off the planet and do not worry about it.”

Over 3 years the Government has allocated $53 million for the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. There are 3,500 claims before the service, of which only 10 percent have been resolved. That is about 120 claims being resolved per year, and that is not good enough. Today the Minister stated clearly that the average settlement is $46,000. That is absolutely ridiculous! For most of those property owners, most of the money they have received has gone into the cost of removing the cladding and of inspections, and into having lawyers—and they do need lawyers—and experts front up to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service to make sure that they get a fair deal. Most of the money they have received has gone in costs. It is an absolute disgrace, and this Government is sitting there, thumbing its nose at those people.

Let us look at one of the things that has been blamed for this situation. Everybody has been blaming everybody else. They are pointing their fingers and saying: “It’s not me. It’s others who are at fault.” The Building Industry Authority was one of the parties to this situation. The Department of Building and Housing, which absorbed the Building Industry Authority, is being protected in every possible way from any legal proceedings. It is blaming untreated timber for the problem. If we think about what timber is, we know that it rots. It is a natural product and it rots naturally. So if we expose it to the natural elements, it will rot. Clearly, by putting it into a house after treating it with untested systems, it will rot. During 1995-98 the Building Industry Authority actually approved kiln-dried, untreated timber for housing.

I am pleased to respond to the previous speaker, who was involved with the building inquiry and the Building Act, and who knows very well that this Government has done a great deal about the weathertightness of homes. We have had an inquiry and we have had a bill, and I thank him for the work that he did on the bill. He knows very well who was the chair of the Building Industry Authority when the complaints first came forward and who ignored them. It was George Chapman, a former National Party chairperson. The member also knows that the causes of leaky buildings are multiple and are part of building development. He knows that the problem is one of timber and design. He knows that it is a problem with regard to certification, and he knows that it is also caused by not having qualified, certified builders to do the work. He knows all that, and that we have just passed a huge Building Act, which he helped us to work on. It was 2 inches thick, and it has revised our building law. So the member should give us credit, and he should give himself credit for the work that he did on that bill with us, because—as he very well knows—the causes of leaky buildings are multiple and they are being addressed. I thank the Labour Government for actually doing something about that problem, and I say more shame on people like George Chapman, who just ignored the advice he was given and was going ahead with deregulation. Deregulation was one of the major causes right throughout the time of that building industry problem. We have turned the situation around, we have a new Building Act, and we have got things back on track. So let us put the record straight in this Chamber.

Let us also talk about housing. I thank the Minister of Housing for the wonderful job that is being done. As Mark Gosche has said, 13,000 State houses were sold off, which was a crying shame for working people in New Zealand. Many people in New Zealand had their start in life because their family got a State house. I thank Michael Joseph Savage and all the good Labour people who ensured the provision of that basis of life—a decent home to live in; a home in which to bring up our kids and give them a good start in life. That is vitally important, so I say thank you to Labour. In my electorate we are acquiring 90 houses a year, and many of them, thankfully, are lovely little two-bedroom units for older people. Older people are moving out of the big State houses and into new, smaller State houses. They are brick State houses, and have garaging with internal access, doors wide enough to get a wheelchair through, and walk-in showers. I thank Labour for having the insight not only to build new State houses but also to build ones that care for the needs of people in our electorates, and for caring for the people who need them. So a good deal has been done.

What is the result of State housing? It is, as our local schools will tell us, more stability in people’s housing. What is the result of that? It is that children stay at the same school, succeed, and pass their maths and English tests because they have decent houses to live in. They are living in the same area and going to the same school. Let us not forget income-related rents. People forget the good things that are done in good times, but they are things that make life better for Kiwis in this country. Another result in my electorate is that people are saying that the demand on food banks is down to a minimum. What did we have under Jenny Shipley? I would just remind the Opposition members that with Jenny Shipley we had tax cuts, superannuation cuts, benefit cuts, and job cuts. That is what we had under a National Government—and we will get it again, and people in New Zealand know that. People who care—the superannuitants, the grannies that I speak to every day, and the older people who can remember poverty and depression—will vote for a Labour Government, to make sure that we have not only economic growth but also stability for our people and decent social services. Jim Bolger used to talk about that—we should bring back Jim Bolger, if anybody from National. He used to know about having a decent standard of living for decent Kiwis, who will live in this society and not be sold down the drain by some bribe made at election time by Don Brash, who knows only about money, in his 1953 style. He is a 1950s man, and that is all he knows about. Let us have people in Government who know about real Kiwis who are living real lives in this country.

I rise on behalf of United Future and I want to pick up on what I believe is a natural disaster in this country with the leaking homes situation. The Hon Mark Gosche, who is a man I personally respect, has really laid out a policy that New Zealanders had heard about. He talked about housing. He said that he was proud to stand up on the housing issue, but he was talking about houses that the Government owns. He was not talking about houses that hard-working New Zealanders own. He was not talking about the houses of young people who had saved up for a deposit and had put all their life savings into a home that they wanted to be safe and secure in and had expected to be watertight. They did not expect to have mould growing on the walls. They did not expect their home to be a safety hazard or a health hazard.

What did we hear from this Labour Government? We heard that nanny State knows best. The Government said: “We will look after what we provide for you. As for what you provide for yourself—tough luck.” Well, I say that the people of New Zealand are absolutely sick and tired of that type of mentality. There has to come a point in time when we will again support people who are prepared to work for themselves, and who are prepared to put their money where their mouth is, yet we have this natural disaster in housing in New Zealand—a ticking time bomb—that absolutely nothing has been done about.

If people want to pick up on an important election issue, I would suggest it is that thousands of New Zealanders are living in such bad housing conditions. If it were a workplace situation, there would be inspectors coming in to say it was a health hazard or a safety hazard. Why do we have concerns about the workplace? Because somebody else pays to fix workplace problems up. But with this issue, the Government really has to pick up the responsibility. We cannot let houses deteriorate as they are without taking some form of responsibility.

I have a set of papers here that were taken, I admit, off the website. There are 42 pages on how one deals with the problems in one’s house—but the house continues to leak and the damage continues to get worse. People have to go to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, and there are many technicalities involved in doing that, yet they cannot get legal advice and they miss out on opportunities.

I believe, and United Future believes, that this is a very serious issue facing New Zealanders at the present time. It is not only to do with safety; it is to do with long-term effects on the health of families. From my research, I find it is not just mono-clad homes that are affected but also brick homes and precast concrete homes, because if water gets in and cannot get out, we have major problems. I believe that we need to take responsibility. We need to put a plan into place so that repairs can begin on those homes.

There is only a 10-year limitation period on claims relating to building work. I can tell people, as one who has been in the car industry, that if we bring a 7-year-old car into this country we have to give it a warranty as if it is a brand new car, yet for a claim on a person’s home—his or her lifetime home—we say “10 years and you are out”. We in United Future say that the clock has been ticking for far too long and that we cannot continue to bury this issue. I believe the public of New Zealand is demanding some action from the Government and, as politicians, we need to get together and put a plan into place so that people can begin to get their homes fixed.

What happens if a State house begins to deteriorate? The Government will move in and begin to fix it and put it right. But anybody who owns his or her own house gets no help, and we believe that that is totally unacceptable.

I shall begin my comments this evening by saying something about the previous Minister of Housing, Mr Mark Gosche, who spoke earlier in the debate and pointed out how important it was to have introduced a measure such as income-related rents. One of the priorities when we came back into power in 1999-2000 was to introduce that policy, and I want to pay Mr Gosche the compliment of saying that he drove that policy through rapidly. Although some of us do not have, I imagine, a great deal to do with the State-housing parts of our electorates, those of us who have would have seen an immediate difference. Even Mr Maurice Williamson, who is smiling over there, is happy and knows that even though he is a man who believes that the market should deliver everything, absolutely everything, he understood that there were certain things that the market was not doing well. This is called what he would recognise as market failure. Housing was not being delivered. So in his electorate, income-related rents had the immediate impact of people suddenly having money in their pockets.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: I don’t have State houses.

Actually I do understand that Mr Williamson is as out of touch as he appears. He does not have any State housing in his electorate. But for those who do, we understand what happened, for example, with our local schools—the population stabilised. People stayed in their houses. Kids were able to go home and not have to be in an overcrowded setting. Their parents had some money in their pockets. They thought about people such as Maurice Williamson who, as part of the National Party, never knew anything about those who were poor, never did anything about people in those circumstances, and never thought about the circumstances that were caused by not having income-related rents. And in 6 short years later of a Labour Government, he still has no contact with people who actually have to make a bob each day.

He himself, of course, if I remember rightly, said he was coming into Parliament for only 9 years, and then over his dead body would he stay in Parliament. He must be up to about 18 years by now, and we will be pleased to see Maurice Williamson go. I think it is time to release him back into the market, any time he wants to return. I think that would be a very good thing to do.

But I come back to the point of Mr Gosche’s time as the Minister of Housing: that was an amazing step forward, for people who were on low incomes to have a house, money in their pockets, able to be stable in their house, and stable in their community. This has had an enormously positive impact on New Zealanders.

We have just released a book on 100 years of State housing. It is 100 years since we had the first State house in this country. It is interesting to read that book, because it shows that time and time again, people such as Maurice Williamson have come into power in New Zealand, begun to believe that the State did not have to provide State housing—[Interruption] I tell Maurice Williamson that it is a symbol of the market—and once again ruined the investment in State housing, and it has to be rebuilt by people who understand that the market simply does not always provide for people who cannot afford to buy their own house or afford a market rent.

That is exactly what we learnt in the 1990s. That is exactly what we are doing at this time—rebuilding the State housing sector, because without it we see poverty grow. We see all sorts of problems that grow from poor housing. We see all of the issues that were there when we came back in 1999.

Let me just say what we have done. First of all we have begun to provide houses again. Thirteen thousand houses were sold. The rest of the stock was on the block to be sold if the National Party had returned. They were sold not to the tenants—not to the people who lived in them—they were sold to anybody else. In many cases, that meant that speculators were buying those houses, taking them out of the hands of people who were poor, and making sure they never returned to those kinds of people. We are rebuilding that stock once again, and we will not sell that stock. We have to put ourselves in a situation where people who are in poor circumstances can get hold of a good-quality house.

Can I also say what the National Party did. It not only sold houses to people who actually did not need them, it sold the better stock. So if people go to Auckland, for example—and Maurice Williamson would not know this, because he does not go near people who are poor—and look at State houses, they will find that the houses that were sold were in places that were sunny, for example. Houses that were not sold were in places that were not sunny. They are cold. They are damp. They are places that are hard to insulate. That is the kind of stock we have been left with. We are now making sure that not only are we getting stock again, but we are building well-designed insulated houses that people can raise families in and feel proud of.

I have to say that time and time again I have been to fantastic new State houses that I would be proud to see any New Zealander in. We on this side of the Chamber, and I include my colleagues in United Future, want to see New Zealanders in houses that we as people who represent government in this country can be proud of. We want to know that those houses will be there to last, they are good quality, and they are good places to raise children.

We are also modernising houses all over the country. We are building houses in rural areas. Do people remember that when Labour came into power we were confronted by the fact that people had moved back to places like Northland, and their houses were literally burning down? We had the tragedy of children dying in houses in that area. The National Government had done nothing about that. It probably would have sold the candles that people used to light those houses, if it could have. We went back into those areas and we have begun to build houses, to move houses into those areas, and to pay for modernisation, pay for basic services like sewerage and water, so that people can live again in those kinds of areas.

One of the most important things, too, that we have set up is the innovation fund. In my area, for example, it means Lutheran churches can partner up with Housing New Zealand to get housing together for older New Zealanders and get them housed in decent communities. All over the country now, iwi, churches, and city councils are approaching us and saying that they have land, or money, or something they can put into a partnership, and we can then build more houses to enable New Zealanders to live in decent conditions.

We have also got back into home ownership. Don Brash says that New Zealanders should not be worried about owning houses. Unfortunately for Don Brash, they do. They regard owning a home as an asset, they regard it as part of being a Kiwi, so we introduced the Mortgage Insurance Scheme to ensure that people who are on lower incomes can buy their houses. Five thousand Kiwis will own their house in any one year, from that scheme alone. On top of that we have now introduced the KiwiSaver programme, which means that Kiwis will be encouraged to save their money so that they can buy a house and be independent.

I say to Don Brash that owning a house is the Kiwi dream. That is what New Zealanders believe should be their right, and they want the opportunity to do it. I know that Dr Brash, on a salary of $500,000 a year, working for the Reserve Bank was probably able to buy his own house. But other Kiwis who work hard in factories, for example, and who are on low incomes, need to get that step up into independence so they can buy their own houses. The Mortgage Insurance Scheme and KiwiSaver are two practical ways that Kiwis will be able to do exactly that.

I say to New Zealanders that there will be a very, very clear choice at this election. They can have a few dollars of tax cuts in their pockets, they can have the Government borrowing again, so that interest rates rise, or they can continue to invest in good-quality State housing, into an innovations programme that builds houses, and into programmes that allow New Zealanders to buy their own homes, raise their kids in their own homes, and have an asset to build up during their life. That is the trade-off. Either we have tax cuts of a few dollars, or a continued investment that is transforming the lives of tens of thousands of New Zealanders. I know, Mr Chairman, that you have to be impartial but I bet even you, sitting there, would be saying: “I know what I would vote for.”

Housing is one of the iconic brands of the Labour Government, and I am really proud of the initiatives we have undertaken since Labour has been in Government. I came in in 1999. We were selling our Housing New Zealand stock in Rotorua. It was disappearing underneath our very eyes to private landlords who were then, in turn, charging exorbitant rentals to poor families.

However, only last Friday I went to look at our urban renewal project in Rotorua, run by Housing New Zealand in Fordlands, which is a very deprived area in Rotorua. It is incredibly exciting. The whole community has come alive. What are they doing? They are doing up their houses, retrofitting their houses, and 36 houses have been retrofitted by Housing New Zealand. The children living in those houses, which were once overcrowded, have not been admitted to hospital this winter with bronchiolitis, pneumonia, and asthma. Parents have said that this is simply the most profound thing this Labour Government has done for their families and their children. This is not only about the houses that they live in. It is about putting the heart back into the homes of families, and poor families, around New Zealand.

I also saw urban renewal in Te Whaiti, a rural aspect in my community—a very remote village. All the houses there are being renewed by Housing New Zealand, with “sweat equity” going into the retrofitting of the houses. Those people, unbelievably, are also losing weight. One might ask what on earth that has to do with urban renewal, but they are coming alive. They have a reason to live. They have pride restored and self-esteem, in terms of doing up their homes. They are all going off to the primary health organisation for cheap doctors’ visits and have decided they will lose weight. Twenty-three of the families in Te Whaiti are now doing adult education—they are going to better themselves. This all came about because of this Government’s housing policy, and I am so proud of it.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Who wrote this?

The other thing we are seeing happening at home is that groups like Women’s Refuge—and Maurice Williamson might know something about Women’s Refuge—are now getting help from the innovation fund to find accommodation to help women, to restore them back to their families, and to give them decent housing for the first time.

The other innovation fund project that is being led jointly with our district council is to find homes for the homeless. Housing New Zealand is working with the innovation fund to find a suitable house, in order to flush out those poor, desperate people who are living on the streets in poverty, and to get them decently housed in a house for the homeless to be run by the trust.

That is innovation. That is this Government going out on a limb for people in our communities, and people do not forget that. They have not forgotten about the ability to have pride in the home in which they bring up their children and their families. So this is not just about income-related State housing; it is about putting the hearts back into communities. That is what this Government cares about.

It cares about student debt, too, with the announcement made today, which is huge. Children are now saying: “I’m not going to be indebted forever. I can afford to start to save for my own home.”, and that is another KiwiSaver scheme. Today I phoned three of my children who have student debt. They said: “Mum, we can now look forward to saving for our own home, through KiwiSaver.” I say: “Well done, this Government.”

Vote agreed to.

Vote Research, Science and Technology