Gosche Mark: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Gosche Mark: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14195] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 Through you Madam Assistant Speaker I would like to begin by thanking fellow members of the House for the support given to me and my family late last year with regard to the death of my son. I would also like to wish Brian Donnelly all the best in his new job in a most beautiful part of the world. I know he is very well suited to the appointment and I say Labour wishes him well. 
In debating the Prime Minister’s statement I want to look at two or three very key issues that she spoke mostly about. The first is housing affordability. It has been heard in the House in the last couple of days that this Government—and I was very proud to be the Minister of Housing when we first became the Government—has actually added 7500 more State houses back into Housing New Zealand Corporation’s stock to go towards replacing the 13000 houses that were sold in the 1990s. We now see that 3000 New Zealanders have taken advantage of Welcome Home Loans and have been able to buy their first home and with KiwiSaver under way in not too many years’ time we will have people receiving substantial Government assistance for the deposit they will need in order to buy their first home. 
We have also implemented policies around Government land. When I was the Minister of Housing Hobsonville was a piece of land that we were able to purchase from the defence forces to be used in the future for housing. The Leader of the Opposition the local member for that area described that as economic vandalism although I did hear him this morning—I think—say that we had been too slow in getting that housing project under way. John Key is so ignorant about his own electorate that he is not aware that the land at Hobsonville is in a rural area at the moment and it requires the regional council to shift the urban limits before anybody—rich or poor—can build on it. 
This Government wants to have a mix of housing at Hobsonville. We do not want to repeat the OtaraMangere and Porirua experiments of the past by putting all the people there into low-cost rental housing. We want affordable housing for people to buy we want affordable housing for people to rent and we will have some housing on the open market so that people can live in a mixed community with different socio-economic groups which is what good urban planning is about and where there are schools and businesses—and there is a very good industry developing there in terms of boatbuilding etc. That is what this Government is about when it talks about affordable housing. 
In my area of Auckland in Tamaki the Minister of Housing announced last week a further move in terms of our already-started development. We are very proud of the fact that Talbot Park has been completed and is housing lots of people who would not otherwise be housed. In that part of Tamaki some million-dollar houses up on the hill are sitting on land that used to be occupied by State housing. We hear a lot from the National Party members about that. The National Government sold those properties. The properties are not occupied by people who need affordable housing; along the streets of Glendowie that once had State housing people will not buy a house for under a million bucks. Those houses used to be occupied by State house tenants but the National Party does not believe that they should have a right to live in those parts of Auckland. The National Government turfed them out and put them down on to the flat lands of Glen Innes putting them into horrible infill housing that is a disgusting mess even though it is only a few years old. 
That is the difference between that lot over there in Opposition and this Government. We will rebuild the Tamaki part of Auckland again with affordable housing for people to buy with the number of State houses that we have there but houses of better quality and we will charge those people income-related rents not market rents. Market rents were the prevailing philosophy of the National Party back in the 1990s and will be again in the future because at the moment the National members are pretending that it is all the same for them as it is for Labour when it comes to housing. I do not believe them nor does a single State house tenant who was a tenant in the 1990s— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: They bought their houses. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Tenants did not buy their houses I say to Dr Smith. He should go and find one of those people in Mount Pleasant Road—or whatever it is called now—in Glendowie who was a State house tenant. I know National might have sold some houses to its own members—one of them I thought bought nine State houses in Porirua from memory—but I do not think many tenants got to buy them. In fact tenants were coming to me as the newly sworn in Minister of Housing and saying they had never had a chance to buy their homes. Dr Smith should go to Auckland Central and try to find in the Ponsonby area a State house that was sold to a tenant. Those ex - State houses now sit at well above $1 million in value. They are featured on housing programmes about how to renovate old State houses and they are extremely expensive. 
The difference between National and Labour is that we really know what we are talking about with regard to affordable housing. What National members are saying is that they will sell off the best State houses to their mates and will chuck State house tenants out like they did last time National was in Government or they will charge tenants a market rent. 
On the other major point in the Prime Minister’s statement I say the $446 million that is going to social service providers in New Zealand is absolutely brilliant. I represent South Auckland. I was born in and have grown up in the area and I know it well. We had— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Lolly scramble! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: That member calls it a lolly scramble. I say he should go and tell that to the Women’s Refuge. He should go and tell the people in South Auckland who are delivering family violence programmes that it is a lolly scramble—a lolly scramble for people who work at the coalface with the most difficult parts of society. Dr Nick Smith says it is a lolly scramble to pay people what their work is worth. Those people who are the social workers and the youth workers in South Auckland— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You’re vote buying! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: That member says it is vote buying. In my community of Otahuhu just over a year or two ago three young people were killed—and Nick Smith says this issue is about vote buying. 
Our community took up the challenge. With the assistance of the Government we put three youth workers into Otahuhu. We made sure that every school had a social worker and a nurse. We made sure that there were more police and they are working smarter and working with the community. They are taking young people off the streets who are breaching their bail and who if they were left there would be involved in some sort of crime—and usually violent crime. The young man who was shot and the man who was dragged under a car were good hard-working New Zealanders. I knew the young man who was dragged under the car. He was working two jobs had several children and had been to school with my children. 
If that is what vote buying is all about I am for it. The people who work in those communities need the support of this Government and of the taxpayer. That is what we are doing with $446 million over the next 4 years. The Women’s Refuge people who pick up the pieces for mostly women and children who have escaped the family home to get away from the violence are ones who are going to receive that assistance. 
In my community on Friday afternoon in Otahuhu—and I just use Otahuhu as an example because this type of work is going on in Otara Mangere Papatoetoe Manurewa and other parts of South Auckland—we will have a family fun day in Sturges Park. It has been organised by the community with the help of all the people that this Government is funding. We will have alternatives for young people being developed in that community with the YMCA the schools and the churches running programmes and we will have the community backed by Government agencies and Government spending so we do not have a repeat of those sorts of deaths on our streets. That is what this Government talked about in the Prime Minister’s statement—and the Opposition described it as vacuous. It is vacuous to go into communities and stop that violence—to give young people an alternative to joining gangs! The National members described that as vacuous. I would have thought that was a very strange term to throw at it. 
Lastly I want to talk about the wages gap. On 1 April the minimum wage goes up to $12 an hour. Every commercial cleaner in this country—the people who clean our offices the people who clean all these buildings in Wellington and the people who clean shopping centres—will go from $11.30 an hour which is their current pay rate to $12 an hour. Does the National Party support that? 
Hon Members 
: No! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Absolutely not. The National members are always opposed to the minimum wage going up. That is why the National Government left it frozen for most of the 1990s. We have put it up from $7 an hour to $12 an hour in the time we have been in Government. That is action—$12 not $7. Who is really interested in the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand—us or them? The National members would have opposed that increase in the minimum wage and would never have made it. They are like their mates in the aged-care industry who took the Government to court in order to stop having to pay aged-care workers—some of the lowest-paid and most hard-working people in this country—an extra dollar an hour. The Government had funded them for it—we put it in the Budget last year—and the National members voted against it. They would have supported their mates in the aged-care industry because they are big business not paying that additional $1 an hour to the people who will look after them when they are in a rest home. When Nick Smith is in a rest home he will expect to be looked after by those people but he will not support them getting a decent wage. 
So it is just nonsense to say that this Government is not concerned about wages and the wage gap. We do something about it; the Opposition actually opposes that.