Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Te Aka Whai Ora is gone; the Māori Health Authority is gone Māori education has been slashed Māori housing programmes are being cut in this bill and in this Government's Budget because this Government has delivered an austerity Budget for Māori that takes New Zealand backwards. It takes all New Zealanders backwards because of the way it impacts on some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders.To have David Seymour come to this House today in this debate and ridicule the previous Government's record on Māori housing—which stepped forward not only Māori home ownership but Māori conditions of living of Māori in rental situations in sub-standard—Glen Bennett: Embarrassing. ARENA WILLIAMS: It is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment when we have a Minister of the Crown coming to this House and saying What's a Māori home?" A Māori home means something to those whānau who call that their kāinga; for whom that is not only the centre of their family but that is their connection with their land; that is a part of their identity and Māori have no other home. We are the indigenous people of this country and our home ownership aspirations are being crushed by that Government.In this Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill the Government has gone out of its way to cut the increasing Māori housing supply appropriation that the last Government introduced. It didn't have to do that. It was penny-pinching—penny-pinching $7 million from a fund which enabled Māori to realise some of those housing aspirations which have been held back; that the Minister David Seymour came to this House to rubbish. Because he doesn't believe in Māori home ownership but Labour does.Because Labour knows that actually the history is more peppered than that Minister understands: that in the 1930s Māori home ownership was higher than any other group in New Zealand but over successive decades—because of choices of colonial Governments and the kinds of economy that disenfranchised Māori in not only our urban centres but from their rural lands—Māori home ownership declined more steeply than any other group. And now Māori home ownership is less than 30 percent; it has declined in recent years at an even steeper rate than the decade previous.It's also quite alarming—and I think I'd like to offer the Minister some education on this—that 40 percent of Māori live in damp homes. That is double the number of other ethnicities reporting that they live in damp cold homes. Māori are less likely to be able to heat their living spaces and to be able to afford to do so and to be able to live in properly insulated properties too.So what did the Labour Government do? It introduced a number of special Budget appropriations to actually tackle that inequality head-on. Things like He Kūkū Ki Te Kāinga which is the increasing Māori housing supply appropriation which this Government has removed were four initiatives like Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei's kaumātua housing at Bastion Point. It was a small appropriation to allow that building to get to completion and they have cut that; they have taken it away from kaumātua kuia who need that housing and for whom they would have been able to contribute to the visions and aspirations of that iwi to return to return not only to their whenua and to that place in Auckland to reclaim that history but also to be around their grandchildren their tamariki mokopuna who were growing up there. It is a real shame that that appropriation is something that these members are proud of cutting.It is a real shame that they are cutting things like the support for the Papakura Marae with its housing builds that enabled not only older people to live around the marae but people who for generations have been locked out of the housing market through transitional housing. Not only was that fund being used for proper housing to be built there; it was also wraparound support to get people into home ownership and ready for home ownership.Those are initiatives that Labour is proud of. Those are initiatives which that Minister David Seymour has rubbished in this House and I challenge him to tell us why he doesn't believe that Māori should own their own homes and should aspire to that. Because he is part of a Government that has cut first-home buyers' grants which will continue to lock out first-home buyers from the market. He is not only happy to lock Māori first-home buyers out of the market; he's happy to lock all first-home buyers out of the market. And to advance a programme of work which incentivises large-scale investors to buy properties at the expense of those first-home buyers by reintroducing interest deductibility which doesn't increase housing supply at all—it simply encourages large investors to buy them up.This is a Government with its priorities all wrong but Labour will defend Māori home ownership next time."