Annual Review Debate — Housing

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So I rise as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee which reported back on the annual review of Kāinga Ora Homes and Communities, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and Tāmaki Redevelopment Company Limited.

Now, rather than reporting separately on each entity for the 2022-23 annual reviews, we have considered the social housing sector as a whole. And so we conducted a hearing on those three entities, and we also heard from the Minister of Housing, the Hon Chris Bishop, for 34 minutes.

I’m just going to go through some of the key points that we considered and reported back on to the House. So, in terms of Kāinga Ora, in December 2023, the Government commissioned an independent review of the financial situation of, and procurement and asset management in, Kāinga Ora. When the review was announced, the Minister of Housing expressed concern over the current and projected growth of Kāinga Ora’s debt and deficit levels. So as of June 2023, Kāinga Ora’s total debt was $12.3 billion, more than four times its debt level in 2018, which was $2.7 billion. That represents a debt-to-asset ratio of around 27 percent.

So Kāinga Ora’s financial planning takes a long-term view of its financial sustainability, looking 60 years ahead, and it forecasts that under current settings, its debt will not be completely repaid over the 60-year period. They told us that by 2081, they project that its total assets will be valued at around $260 billion and will have around $9 billion in debt. That would represent a debt-to-asset ratio of around 3.5 percent. Its debt is forecast to peak at $28.9 billion in 2033.

Kāinga Ora told us that the three largest areas of expenditure were maintaining public housing, the construction of new public housing supply, and large-scale civil works, including its large-scale projects such as Te Mātāwai Greys Ave in Auckland. It said that it is working to improve efficiency and save costs across all three areas.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development told us that it’s been working alongside the Treasury and Kāinga Ora to review Kāinga Ora’s spending, funding, and financing systems. We noted that in 2022, the financing arrangements of Kāinga Ora changed so it could no longer borrow money directly from the private market to build and renovate public housing. Instead, it must borrow through New Zealand Debt Management, a business unit within the Treasury.

In terms of increasing public housing, both Kāinga Ora and the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company Limited advised that their goals are to increase public housing supply. And Kāinga Ora advised that in the 2022-23 financial year, they built 2,893 new public and supported homes against a target of 3,400 homes. So that resulted in a net increase of 2,526 homes to its public housing portfolio in comparison to its target of 2,200 homes. Kāinga Ora has said that in total it has built more than 11,000 homes in the last six years.

The Tāmaki Redevelopment Company reported that it has a target of building 10,500 new, affordable, and private market homes in the following 20 years and in the 2023-24 year constructed a total of 128 new homes.

Housing and Urban Development advise that it has a focus on place-based rather one-size-fits-all approach to addressing housing needs. Under this approach, housing planning aims to recognise and respond to the needs of each specific community, and it uses data such as the social housing register and median regional incomes to determine priority areas of highest need across the country. And the Minister noted that levels of housing affordability vary greatly across New Zealand.

In terms of maintenance, renewals, and retrofits, Kāinga Ora said that it’s guided by its Asset Management Plan, a system it first introduced in 2016, and in the 2022-23 year renewed around 750 homes. Now, the rising cost of construction and high inflation has contributed to an increase in maintenance costs. Housing and Urban Development also noted that it is focused on working with local councils to support growth in their regions and has said that it’s absolutely critical that local councils play a role that is front and centre, and that local councils can have a considerable influence over the housing sector.

In terms of infrastructure and urban planning, all three organisations emphasise that they face significant challenges related to infrastructure and urban planning, and we heard that a lack of supporting infrastructure can create roadblocks to being able to efficiently plan and provide for housing growth.

And finally, in the time available, it’s important that the work is being done with community housing providers, which we also reported back on.

Kia ora, thank you, tēnā koe. So my questions are related to public housing, just off of the back of what the previous speaker was reeling off facts about. My first question, and I’m really hoping to get a response to this, is around the sale of State houses. On 9 April, in question time, there was an exchange between Minister Potaka and Minister Bishop around the briefing that you received when you became the Minister. In that exchange, on 9 April, you talked about—I think Minister Potaka talked about his surprise to read about the impending sale of thousands of State houses. So I was wondering if you would be able to elaborate on that information for us.

The next question I had was around the public housing plan, and income-related rent placements, and the impact on community housing providers. Obviously, this is a critical subsidy and fund that helps community housing providers and Kāinga Ora to be able to build new public housing. So my second question is around who will actually build the public housing that is needed to clear the wait-list in reference to that strategic priority for Kāinga Ora and for the community housing sector; really interested to understand what funding they will have available to them to be able to build more public housing when there, I believe, has been no guarantee of those further income-related rent subsidy placements?

And, sorry, my third question is around the Sustaining Tenancies Framework. I’m really interested to understand a bit more about complaints in the previous year, and the fact that 45 percent of those households where there have been complaints have had children, and I’m really interested to know how those children benefited from the Sustaining Tenancies Framework being in place, because obviously that is about to be removed. I’m really interested to understand how those complaints were handled previously without completely getting rid of the framework, and how that is going to be, I guess, different going into a Kāinga Ora without the Sustaining Tenancies Framework. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for her questions. Let me take them in order.

The first question was around the sale of State houses by Kāinga Ora, particularly the reference to the 9 April exchange with Minister Potaka. It’s a matter of public record that the information that came to Ministers upon this coalition Government taking office is that the latest forecast from Kāinga Ora was that over the forecast period—so, in other words, from this year onwards—Kāinga Ora was forecasting the sale of over 10,000 State houses. So I don’t have much more to add to the situation than that. That has been made public by Ministers and is contained in the Treasury document that Ministers received. That is clearly something that the member finds alarming.

Kāinga Ora has on average, until now, been selling anywhere between 50 and 150 houses per year. The previous Government like to talk a lot about how they had stopped the “State house sell-off”, to use their words. Actually, Kāinga Ora continued to sell and demolish State houses, and some places are in the wrong location. Some houses are uneconomic to repair or remediate. It makes more sense to sell, in the same way that any other landlord would do, and so Kāinga Ora has been doing that. But, it is definitely also true to say that Kāinga Ora has forecast, at the end of last year, a significant increase—a surge in sales—and that is one of the reasons why the Government commissioned an independent review into Kāinga Ora at the end of year, on which we will have more to say shortly.

The second question was around the public housing build programme in relation to the income-related rent subsidy. Again, it is a matter of public record that future income-related rent—or IRRS, as we call it—subsidies for social housing places finish on 30 June 2025. That is next year. So, in the ordinary course of events, there would be a four-year budget forecast. That was not done by the previous Government. That funding is time limited and it expires, so, again, that is something that the current Government is having to grapple with. So her question was specifically about who will build new public houses in New Zealand, and the answer is, as is always the case, both the community housing sector, which does an excellent job around the country, and also Kāinga Ora, which plays a very important role in our housing system. It is in fact the country’s biggest landlord. It’s a $45 billion company. It is extremely important that it is run efficiently and effectively. So, in terms of the future, who will be building social houses—the answer is, the community housing sector and Kāinga Ora. In due course, the Government will make its intentions clear around that.

The third question was around the Sustaining Tenancies Framework. Ministers have asked Kāinga Ora to draw a different balance when it comes to sustaining tenancies. We have asked the board to replace the capital “S” capital “F” framework—so “Sustaining Tenancies” with a capital “S” and a capital “F”. We have asked them to replace that and strike a different balance between the clear benefits of keeping tenants in social housing but also making sure that they are accountable and responsible for bad behaviour.

We make no apologies for striking a different balance, because the social licence for Kāinga Ora to operate has been eroded over the last few years by repeated and wilful bad behaviour by a small group of tenants who the public see as very—no consequences or responsibility for that behaviour. So the name of Kāinga Ora has, in many communities, become synonymous with bad behaviour and antisocial behaviour. That is in no one’s interests, because it is very important that Kāinga Ora enjoys social licence, because they own 70,000 houses, and they frequently—very often—look after quite vulnerable members of our community. So, it is very important that Kāinga Ora has a good name, and that has not been the case in the last few years. So, we have asked the board to draw a different balance. Minister Potaka has responsibility for that particular part, and he may wish to offer some other comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to the Minister, or Ministers—and the questions are around the Māori housing area, Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme. Can I ask the Ministers, first of all, will the support for the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme continue? That’s my first question, and there are just a couple of others that I’ll add now.

With the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, what update has the Minister—and it may be Minister Potaka—have in relation to Toitu Tairawhiti and the programme delivery partnership agreement for the delivery of 150 rent-to-buy homes in the last 12 months?

Can I ask, also, how many whānau have benefited from having their home repaired over the past year through the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme?

Lastly, can I ask what is the total number of homes approved and contracted for delivery in Te Tai Tokerau, Tāmaki-makau-rau, Waikato, Tainui, Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, Te Tai Hauāuru, and Te Wai Pounamu in the last 12 months?

But if we could have some response particularly in terms of the continual support of this programme Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, we’ll be very pleased to hear the Government’s response. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I have a series of questions, and I know these work best when it is a question and answer – type format, so I’ll keep the first one brief. I’m interested to hear the Minister’s comments that when they came to office, they were presented with Treasury advice—this is consistent with the statement that he made on 18 February on Facebook and that the Prime Minister made in the state of the nation speech. I ask how he can rectify that, when considering response to written question 7084, that the advice in question was actually commissioned by the Minister of Finance later in December.

I’m not sure what’s inconsistent about that. The Minister of Finance and I are both responsible Ministers for Kāinga Ora. I’d have to go back and check the exact specifics. It was either a joint memo or piece of advice to the two of us, or it was a piece of advice to the Minister forwarded to me.

Nevertheless, neither of those equate to when they came into office they were presented with the advice. I would ask the Minister to respond to an Official Information Act request which answered the question, “What advice did Treasury receive from other departments on forecasts of the sale of Kāinga Ora homes?”, which says that Treasury did not receive formal advice from other departments on the forecast of the sale of Kāinga Ora homes; analysis that determined the 10,200 figure presented in the withheld document was conducted in consultation with Kāinga Ora and Ministry of Housing and Urban Development officials using Kāinga Ora’s own internal financial forecasting models; and the response that we received during the select committee hearing that confirmed that the model and the projection of 10,200 sale of State houses was contingent on a lack of additional funding post-2025?

Some of what the member talks about is commercially sensitive. But what I can tell the member is that, well, firstly, in response to his first point: if his point is that late December is not “upon coming to office”, I don’t accept that. We took office on 27 November, so three or four weeks later is, I would argue, “upon coming to office”.

The second point is in relation to—I wasn’t quite sure what he was saying in relation to the Treasury report. The Treasury report, as the member himself adverted to with his comments, is based on Kāinga Ora’s own internal information. So they base that on their own internal data, so it speaks for itself. Some of what he says is not factually accurate around the future funding requirements. It is a matter of fact and now public record that at the end of last year, Kāinga Ora was forecasting a significant surge in State house sales over the forecast period.

Is the Minister therefore saying that Ministry of Housing and Urban Development officials that presented to the select committee were incorrect when they said that forecasts—which are made and based upon the information they have available to them at the time; which are therefore based on a lack of funding post-2025—when Treasury was asked to commission advice on the future forecasts of Kāinga Ora based on a lack of funding past 2025—forecast that 10,200 homes would need to be sold, and that figure was landed to solely on the basis of a lack of funding, as confirmed by officials in select committee?

No, I’m not saying that. Forecasts, by definition, are static at that point in time and are dynamic and updated—so I’m not saying that. But I would venture to suggest that the member goes and talks to his colleagues who’ve been previous Ministers of Housing. They would not have found a situation at any time in the last 6.5 years in which Kāinga Ora was forecasting such a significant upsurge in State house sales.

Madam Chair, thank you. And thank you for the questions about Māori housing, which I will take a little bit of time to respond to. Certainly, the challenges that Māori have had in housing are well documented, whether or not it’s ownership or rental, or other challenges such as the large number of Māori in State housing—public housing—in either Kāinga Ora homes, community housing provider homes, or emergency housing. I think people know that some of the stats, particularly with emergency housing, are very concerning. In some locations, over 70 percent of those residents of emergency housing arrangements are Māori, such as in Rotorua and near to Hamilton.

The Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga strategy documents the tremendous aspiration to have more homes for Māori, but also “by Māori, for Māori” approaches to building homes. There is certainly some evidence of excellent success and exemplary success in the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme, particularly with Toitū Tairāwhiti, Ka Uruora, and other providers, but there are also some opportunities, however, for improvement, for value for money, and to make sure that the homes that are being built are not only affordable at the end point but also affordable through the construction methodology that is used. So there is a definite intent to look at how we can encourage and work more closely with those operating within the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga strategy to ensure greater efficiency and expeditious delivery of housing.

I think there was a question in relation to Cyclone Gabrielle, and then it merged into whether or not the rent-to-buy homes at Toitū Tairāwhiti were progressing according to the aspirations and the intent, and I can represent to the committee that there is some significant build programme in front of Toitū Tairāwhiti. One thing I like about Toitū Tairāwhiti is that they engage with young people as well, to get them involved as kaimahi, as trainees, and, as I mentioned last week in this House, some people who lost their jobs down at the timber mill in Gisborne were retrained to get into construction jobs. So that was a marvellous result for those people who were going to be laid off. Now they’re in construction, helping Toitū Tairāwhiti build homes. Toitū was actually involved in also building separate cabins and homes for those that suffered through the Cyclone Gabrielle process and those North Island weather events, and also raising the existing homes, not just cabins, to accommodate any further flooding in the future.

There were a couple of questions in relation to home repairs and the programme of home repairs which has been ongoing through Te Puni Kōkiri and the overall Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme. I can reflect that that mahi has actually resulted in some really good outcomes for people living in homes that have had a few challenges, getting them back up to scratch and up to speed, and I can come back with specifics on numbers for both that and the question around Te Pouahi up in Te Taitokerau, which is one of the iwi housing prototypes, which has just got started, and it started a little bit later than the other three housing prototypes. But it’s on its way, and it’s starting to get homes built for needy Māori and needy New Zealanders. Kia ora tātou.

Kia ora tātou. So I’ve got maybe three questions and I guess I’ll just talk through my notes and land on the questions in each one of them. Thank you. The context of this, if I can, is that of the reports that Minister Potaka was referring to—I built 16 of those homes in Aupōuri, and we did a few good things ourselves as iwi—I’m very familiar with Pouahi and very familiar with the home repairs, so, yeah, that’s doing good with what we’ve got at that time, so I’m just really hoping that it gets even better.

So, 2018: only 31 percent of Māori were in a position of home ownership compared to 57.9 percent of Pākehā countrywide. What strategies will the Minister put in place to reduce these inequities for Māori? I’ll keep moving, should I, or—

Hon Chris Bishop: Over to you.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Happy to. All right. Thank you. A report on Māori housing and wellbeing conducted in 2021 found that there were direct links between frequent moves between homes and poor health and wellbeing outcomes. Māori report higher moving rates between homes, at 8.7 percent compared to 5 percent for Pākehā. The reality of this is Māori having moved five or more times within five years. How can the Minister assure Māori tenants that the proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will promote longevity of residency, and thereby better health and wellbeing outcomes for Māori?

Proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act encourage landlords, mostly Pākehā, back into the rental property market. What assurance can the Minister provide for Māori who are, perversely, tenants on their own whenua, that the Government will protect their rights against the greed of landlords?

Māori housing deprivation is six times the rate of Pākehā—you can see the method I’m using in this description. Can the Minister provide current examples of what the Government is doing to improve housing outcomes for Māori?

Housing First, in their last quarterly findings, reported that of all people who access their services, 59 percent were Māori, based on the primary applicant from the participating household. Can the Minister provide evidence that the Government is reducing the need for Māori social housing?

And my final—there are quite a few there, aren’t there? How will the Minister ensure forced eviction of unruly tenants utilising Kāinga Ora services is not a measure used to disguise racist attacks and removal of whānau and tamariki from their kāinga? Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank the member Mariameno Kapa-Kingi for her questions. She’s doing well when she asks sensible questions rather than talk about some of the things she was talking about in the general debate last week. But let me deal with the questions in order. First question was about Māori homeownership: 31 percent was the figure mentioned; it’s too low. Homeownership for all New Zealanders is too low. In 2018, which is the latest figure we have stats for, homeownership was down to 63 percent. It’s a 30-year low, give or take, so it’s too low for everybody, and it’s particularly too low for Māori and Pacific.

We have a comprehensive plan across the housing system to improve homeownership. The centrepiece of that is the Going for Housing Growth plan, which is about unlocking land inside our cities and at the edge of our cities and sorting the infrastructure constraints that stop that land from being developed, and also working alongside councils to develop incentives for them to grow. Ultimately, as a Government we are focused on dealing with the underlying cause of all of our housing issues, and the social housing system—some of which we’ve been talking about—sits within that broader housing framework around land supply and infrastructure funding and financing. Unless that is sorted, we will not make progress on any of the underlying issues in our housing system, including homelessness and including emergency housing and including social housing.

So we have deliberately made a conscious decision to focus on the fundamentals, and that work is under way right now, but the driver of our agenda is to lower land cost, make it more affordable and cheaper to build, and over time that will lead to more affordable housing for homeowners and first-home buyers and for community housing providers, and Kāinga Ora as well, because Kāinga Ora also pays too much for land; Kāinga Ora also pays too much to build a house. My colleague Chris Penk, the Minister for Building and Construction, has work under way around lowering build costs, but as I say, the primary driver is around land supply and infrastructure funding and financing.

In relation to her second question around people moving around and the stability of homeownership, I agree with her, that families that don’t get stuck in the rental cycle of moving from year to year are able to put down roots, and there’s a sense of social stability that comes with that. Evidence tends to suggest kids go to school more often, they are able to build relationships—all of the benefits that come with homeownership and social stability. We’ve also got to balance that with the fact that we have a very tight rental market at the moment. The member will have seen the TradeMe data out last week that rents are at record highs. We’ve got a tight rental market, and the reality is many landlords left the rental market over the last few years because of a twin-pronged assault on landlords. The member calls them greedy. Actually, the New Zealand housing system would fall apart without private sector landlords, because they do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to providing accommodation to people.

The word “landlord” is a somewhat pejorative phrase. Actually, what a landlord is is someone who rents out something that they own to someone who needs accommodation. We have rejected the last Government’s policies when it comes to interest deductibility and restored a principled approach to tax policy which taxes profit, not revenue, and so that will be wound back and that will put downward pressure on rents. We will also rebalance the rental market to make sure that people who want to provide property to other people are able to do so. There are, finally, balanced judgment calls around things like 90-day notice periods and some of the fixed-term tenancy changes we are making, but I think they will, on balance, be a good thing, because they will send a message that those who wish to provide property are able to do so. In relation in particular to a market like Waiheke Island or Queenstown or Dunedin, for example, the fixed-term tenancy automatic rollover to a periodic tenancy has caused utter chaos, and my colleague Joseph Mooney, who’s the MP for Clutha-Southland, has been advocating for the changes that we are making, and rightly so. I think that deals with the third point that the member raised as well around the rental market, and, as I say, reject her characterisation about the greed of landlords.

If I just finish with this point: there are often solutions put out there to solve the fact that rents are too high. The Greens like to talk about rent freezes and things like that—economically illiterate, nonsense solutions. The ultimate answer to—

Chlöe Swarbrick: It’s your tax settings, Bish.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, that doesn’t affect it either, because as the member well knows, and I can’t believe we’re—I feel like I’m stuck in Groundhog Day, because, you know, the entire time I’ve been an MP and Chlöe Swarbrick’s been an MP, we’ve had this ongoing back and forth about capital gains taxes. I invite the member to go to Sydney and Melbourne and London and all the other countries and places that have, in some cases, quite punitive capital gains taxes, where you will find housing markets that are utterly out of control.

The actual point is this: the only sustainable, long-term way to make rents more affordable is supply of housing. That is the answer. As the member well knows herself, if she looks at the evidence from the Auckland Unitary Plan that was adopted in 2016, which has led to a big house-building boom in Auckland, particularly around apartments and terraced housing and other housing typologies that Auckland didn’t have enough of, there’s a wealth of evidence now available—and I refer the member to Stuart Donovan’s research and some other research by other urban economists that Auckland has experienced an increase in rents far less than other housing markets with inflexible land supply and restrictive land policy. So once we liberalised the Auckland land market and made it easier to build, people went and did it.

That’s got to be the thrust of our housing policy generally, which is why—and the member wasn’t here—I go back to the point I made at the start, which is: we are dealing with, or we are aiming to deal with, the fundamentals of housing supply, which is land supply, infrastructure settings, and getting councils to go for growth, because the political economy in too many of our councils is stacked against growth. We actually want to invert the situation so that councils don’t see growth as something to be ambivalent about or hostile to, but they see growth as good. That involves considering sharing the benefits of growth with them, and we’re taking on board the good suggestions of the ACT Party in relation to that. But the fundamentals are about land supply. It’s about density inside our cities, and it’s about growth at the city fringe where the infrastructure can be justified and the economics of that make sense. That is what we are focused on. That is the only sustainable answer to more affordable rents.

Everything else is tinkering. Everything else is sugar-hit economics. Everything else feels like the right thing to do but actually is counterproductive. The proposals often put about by the Greens—and I’m pretty sure the Māori Party has been on board this illogical train as well. Everything about rent controls is counterproductive. It means that landlords just simply don’t offer properties in the market in the first place and everybody else raises their rent, because when demand stays the—[Interruption] This is economics 101: when demand stays the same and supply falls, guess what happens? The price goes up, or, when the price is not allowed to go up because of, sort of, Stalinist-style rent controls, when the price can’t go up, they don’t offer properties in the first place. That has been the experience of city after city that has looked at the well-intentioned but misguided stupidity of rent controls and decided that that is a good idea.

Economists don’t agree on that much stuff almost universally, but there are two things: one, free trade is good. It raises incomes across the board. That’s the number one. And the second thing they almost universally agree on, with the exception of a few crank economists out there, is that rent controls are counterproductive and stupid policy, and that’s why we won’t be adopting them.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. The annual-review appearance at select committee was useful, and it enabled us to put some context in the claim that the Prime Minister made in his state of the nation speech, the story that, presumably, they lined up before that, which indicated that there was advice sitting on their desk when they got under Government that said that Kāinga Ora was going to sell 10,200 homes, because the appearance at select committee clarified that that was contingent on this Government not providing funding post-2025—a pretty important piece of context. And I can confirm that no such advice was ever received by any Minister from the previous Government. What they also confirmed at select committee is that if there is no funding certainty moving forward, Kāinga Ora and some community housing providers may not be able to continue with their plans to build houses. We’ve already seen Kāinga Ora announce some cancellation projects. We’ve seen community housing providers, like the Salvation Army, indicate that they have cancelled projects. My question to the Minister is: how many Kāinga Ora projects and how many community housing projects have been cancelled since this Government was formed?

Well, in relation to the member’s last part of the question, you’d have to put that in writing, because I don’t know. Kāinga Ora owns 70,000 houses around the country, and it’s $45 billion company. So, at any given time, there will be any number of projects that are rephased, deferred—some may have been cancelled. The market economics of building change literally on a weekly basis.

Hon Member: Ground conditions.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Ground conditions—there’d be any number of things. So, I’d have to go and look it up, and if the member puts it in writing—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: I’ll do that. That’s all good.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, we can have a look at that. But, as I say, at any given moment—and it would have been true in the last six years too; there are all sorts of projects that will have been cancelled. I mean, to give one notable example, there is Porirua East, which was announced with great fanfare in 2021, or perhaps even a touch earlier than that, which has been massively downscaled, which was done very quietly in mid-2023 without many public pronouncements—I suspect because the Government wasn’t very keen on it, but that’s what happened. So, as I say, at any given particular moment, there’d be any number of changes to projects.

Just to repeat the point and to deal with the member’s first point, it is a matter of fact that when the current Government came to office, the figures that the member is talking about around State house sales were presented to us. Yes, it is true that that figure is without any increase in support for Kāinga Ora, but it’s worth also bearing in mind that that is the situation we inherited. So it is not true that the outgoing Government had provided budgetary support or the fiscal support in order to avoid that situation. Kāinga Ora did its budget in December 2023, based on the settings not from the current Government but from the outgoing Government. So it was right on the precipice of the change in Government, and Ministers had barely been sworn in and had not taken any policy decisions whatsoever. So it is true to say that the situation in December was as has been presented by the Government, and that is one of the tricky challenges that we are going to have to deal with as a Government, and it’s one of the reasons, as I said earlier, why we have commissioned an independent review into Kāinga Ora, because that is an alarming state of affairs.

Members, our time with the Minister of Housing has now ended. We have the Minister of Police now available for 45 minutes to respond to members’ questions.

Police