Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I'll start with the questions around the affordable housing fund that were put by the ACT spokesperson for housing. The affordable housing fund is an innovation fund. So in terms of how many that is something that we're going to work through with each of the providers. What we've done is we've made this geographically targeted to areas that are experiencing the most housing stress—so that's Auckland Tauranga Western Bay Rotorua Napier Hastings Wellington urban and Nelson Tasman. Now a really good reason why we simply don't know is that it depends on a number of factors like what kind of leverage is going to come in from some of the councils or community groups or iwi that might want to put money into that themselves and the expansion that we'll be able to get out of that. I'm pleased to say that we've had 60 applications that have come in to date. So this is a fund that is being well regarded by many across the sector. In terms of the questions from the Green Party about the detail in the paper about the financial sustainability of trade-offs with things like accessible housing fund; no that's not the context. The paper is a long-term piece of work that we have to do about how it is that we get financial sustainability around public housing in this country. It was missing for nearly a decade before it and how do we rebuild it? It's a fundamental piece of work. The paper talks about if you just continued in a business-as-usual approach these are the kind of trade-offs that you'd have to make. But it's actually an interesting paper and I suggest it's worth a read.The questions around interest deductibility from the National Party and the spokesperson for housing once again being surprised. Once again I'm surprised at the surprise because we first started talking about the work that we were doing around Build to Rent when we announced the housing package in March 2021. We signalled in the media and our speeches in the House and everywhere we could that we were continuing to do work around Build to Rent and further measures that may be taken. Indeed I answered questions in this House around Build to Rent and what further work the Government was doing. We first started working with the sector in January 2021 on this as a piece of work and have been working through about how it is that we could arrive at a good definition around it. In terms of the spokesperson saying this has now created an inequity for smaller investors I think one of the things that I would point those smaller investors to is that there is a 20-year carve-out of interest deductibility for new builds. It is a consciously put lever to stimulate more supply in our housing market. I would remind the member that the average ownership of someone who owns multiple dwellings in New Zealand is seven to eight years. So most of the people that are falling within that category are getting interest deductibility; the 20-year carve-out gives them that. So I think that I'd like to see some more substantiation around those claims of inequity given that the evidence simply does not stack up behind it. I'd also like to use the opportunity to update Te Paati Māori on the progress that we've been able to make with Māori housing. I think one of the things that has become abundantly clear to us is that in our mainstreamed programmes we are not shifting the rates of Māori home ownership we are not shifting rates in terms of KiwiBuild in terms of the number of people owning a home; that what it required was targeted intervention that was specifically for Māori by Māori and that those solutions needed to be put in place. My colleague Minister Henare is leading I think a magnificent piece of work in this area and we're seeing some really good progress across this. So of the thousand new houses—Hon Gerry Brownlee: What's your progress?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —that were announced in—Hon Gerry Brownlee: What progress?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Just hold your horses Gerry—in Budget 2021 I'm pleased to report that 700 homes have been approved and all contracted. So there's really good progress. That is of course a multi-year programme. So that is I think really a phenomenal success that we're seeing there and really shows the pent-up nature of the ideas and the aspirations that existed in our communities. Of course the prototypes that we've signed with a number of iwi is—we're getting very large numbers. So if I point to the Ngāti Kahungunu prototype which was the first that we signed up to not only is it delivering housing but it's delivering skills training; it's really looking at how a whole community can benefit. Hon Gerry Brownlee: How many houses?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Ngāti Kahungunu; 131 Gerry. So of the 700 homes that were scheduled to be repaired 236 of those have been approved. So that again is good progress. But the capability building in terms of building the by-Māori part of the sector has been a really important piece of this work. You don't just manage to contract 700 out of a thousand houses in the first year without doing some capability building in the sector as well. So I'm really pleased with the number of providers that we're starting to see and the spread that we're starting to see across the country there as well. Of course there was also money for infrastructure for 2700 additional infrastructure-enabled sites. We know the complexity of building on land that is owned by Māori—not only whenua Māori but land that is owned by Māori—is often the infrastructure that is there and there have been 885 infrastructure-enabled sites through the funding that we put in in Budget 2021.