Eagle PaulPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Madam Chair thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on this the appropriation for social development and housing. What a year 2016-17 was. I was leading the housing portfolio for the Wellington City Council which included social development also so can I say it's a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the experience on behalf of ratepayers taxpayers and everyone else that these guys the Opposition served on the New Zealand public from a Wellington perspective at least.I want to focus on the Better Public Services targets. It's been talked about. It was result area No. 8 and it talked about better access to social housing. I guess this was the start of where things went horribly wrong. If you look at what was the previous Government they didn't have a housing Minister for a long time. Instead it was split over three portfolios and that sort of reflected on their narrow just dismissive approach to housing in general. Can I say having to deal with the then Government from the other side as a key stakeholder in the process it was tough stuff. We then the Wellington City Council wanted to have a housing conversation about the full continuum: housing supply and I'm going to focus on that today; homelessness; social housing; cold damp homes; and homeownership. When we tried to have such conversations we were regularly referred to the Better Public Services document. But as I said it only talked about better access to social housing.To cut through all the waffle in that document as a lot of it was the reality really for social housing was to set up—and we heard a member of the Opposition talk about it—to transfer or to give away really the stock to other people. We saw then how the Salvation Army the then Salvation Army said No thanks not us. Don't quote us in the media. We're not interested." So there was this sort of quasi - Crown council operation set up the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company but really it was just a halfway house for transferring most of the social housing in that part of Auckland to an entity that would undermine in fact the Housing New Zealand Corporation the Government's own property company because it had become that. I say that as a property company because they had taken the people focus out of that business and transferred it to the Ministry of Social Development. What a mess. I mean I'd never been confronted with such a messy dismissive and just an unappreciated part of a core Government business and that is the provision of housing.Look the stats are there around housing supply and they talk about the need for 71000 houses. Interestingly enough nine to 10 years ago the need for houses was sitting at nil but what do you know? Ten years on and from a Wellington perspective it sat at about 6000 homes; 4500 of those being social housing a portion of that being for temporary and emergency housing. But none the less the only mechanism during 2016-17 that could be brought fought for consideration was the HASHA Act the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas legislation that was meant to bring more supply. It was developed for Auckland and really imposed on local government throughout New Zealand because if you didn't pick it up and you didn't take it on board you were given the cold shoulder. That's how it felt when we had to retrospectively approve a housing accord that had no percentages in for affordable housing. When you actually unpick what the special housing area legislation is all about you'll find that very few houses were actually built.I could speak for hours on this but I won't. What I will say is that I'm really glad that we've got a whole raft of new home building happening across Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you Madam Chair.Reports relevant to the Social Development and Housing Sector noted.Clauses 1 to 9 and Schedules 1 to 5 agreed to.House resumed.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted."