O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): This Government has claimed that it has a comprehensive housing policy but quite clearly the people of New Zealand have not bought into it. The recent polls that have been published only last night or yesterday show that there has been a significant slump in the support for the National Government and the reason given—and I agree with it—is that the Government has not adequately dealt with New Zealand's housing crisis. If the Government has a comprehensive housing strategy then most people in this country say that it is a failed—a comprehensively failed—housing strategy. It is a strategy that has apparently been aimed at accelerating house prices in Auckland to almost $1 million and nobody in Auckland—apart from a few speculators—wants to see that. It is a policy that has apparently been designed to force skilled workers to leave Auckland or to stop them moving there simply because they cannot afford to own a house there. It appears to be a strategy that intends to have people on low incomes living in cars or in tents or under bridges or in anything other than a decent family home. That has been the result of this claimed comprehensive housing strategy. The Prime Minister said today: A sound bite does not make a plan." Well the Government's plan does not even make a decent sound bite and that is the truth of it. It is a failed and minimalist strategy if it is capable of being called a strategy at all. This Budget actually shows that that is the case because it pays very very little attention to the housing crisis and in fact the Government does not even admit that it is a housing crisis but a housing crisis it certainly is. And it is particularly cruel when so many poor families are really struggling to find somewhere to live—especially in Auckland but also elsewhere—and large numbers of them have to move continually as massive rent increases force them out of one property after another. So it is a reverse ratcheting sort of an effect where a person gets a property they can afford the rents go up they move downmarket to a worse property to chase lower rents and this goes on and on and on and eventually they end up living in cars. If that is a strategy then it is not a strategy that this country needs. There are clearly a number of significant causes behind this awful outcome and the first is obviously the Government's awful housing management which has caused house prices to increase to a level where very few people can afford to buy them anymore. It is caused by a Government policy that encourages uncontrolled immigration to the point where it causes New Zealand far more damage than it does good. It is a strategy that sees the selling off of State houses in the absence of an adequate State housing programme. Nobody would mind if State houses were sold and if more and better State houses were put in their place but that is not the situation that is happening in New Zealand today. In fact all the Government is trying to do is to cast off its responsibility for State houses to community organisations and that is clearly not going to work. When you look at the particular Estimates for the next 4 years you will see little or nothing that will solve the chronic New Zealand housing shortage. A total of $257 million over 4 years averages only $64 million a year of which $200 million or an average of $50 million a year—the lion's share of it—is simply to top up the income-related rent subsidy. So there is really actually nothing much new in that. There is also a provision of $41 million for emergency housing over 4 years but that is only about $10 million a year. That is a drop in the bucket when you consider the sheer magnitude of emergency housing in New Zealand at the present time."