Turia Tariana: Standing Orders—Suspension 
Turia Tariana: Standing Orders—Suspension 
[Volume:641;Page:10947] 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Tena koe. Tena tatou katoa. The Maori Party will also be supporting the motion tonight as we also think it is important that the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill is resolved as quickly as possible. 
When the 6 o’clock bells ring on a Thursday night everybody is thinking about home sweet home. But for far too many New Zealanders their thoughts of home are anything but sweet. Although this bill addresses—rightfully—the need to ensure that remedies provided by the Weathertight Homes Tribunal include general damages for mental distress and anxiety the Maori Party has continued to raise the issues of the ongoing mental distress and anxiety occurring in too many homes in Northland East Coast and the Bay of Plenty homes where Maori whanau try to live the sweet life despite the building failures that they live in. 
 The Maori Party has with constant regularity profiled the low-quality workmanship that has seen too many homes in too many Maori communities end up rotten leaking and ripe for public health disasters. Worse still the question must be asked about building inspectors who work for councils. Who is it who approves the substandard workmanship? We have written to the Minister of Housing attended local meetings and talked frankly about the state of mould and damp in houses labelled as substandard. We have shared stories from the far north from Ruatahuna Morrinsville Waitahanui and Ruatoki and we will keep profiling these stories until we are heard as we are not a political party that refuses to face up to the challenge of conflict. We will always stand up proudly despite the numbers being against us to defend Maori rights and uphold Maori aspirations for the best interests of Aotearoa. Every family has the right to a warm home built of quality materials to a quality standard but sad to say many Maori homes fall very short of this requirement and no one takes responsibility—not the inspectors not the builders and not Housing New Zealand Corporation— 
Bob Clarkson 
: Or the Government. 
TARIANA TURIA 
: —and the Government. 
We have stood throughout this debate and supported the amendments to ensure that deficiencies caused through the penetration of water into a building and the associated damage or loss of value caused by these problems are properly dealt to. We have acknowledged how such amendments are necessary to give adjudicators and the tribunal the same abilities as courts of law to make awards for general damages for relevant mental distress. But we cannot stand up for the rights of those affected by the leaky home syndrome and turn a blind eye to the crisis of substandard housing or overcrowding that is collapsing around us. 
More and more New Zealanders are going home to caravans garages and low-quality boarding houses where health and well-being are compromised. The Child Poverty Action Group has identified the particular implications on children of overcrowding in South Auckland homes and it has pointed out that admission rates at Starship Children’s Health for readily preventable diseases—the diseases of poverty—are a national disgrace. There are national and international studies that show a high association between the prevalence of certain infectious diseases and crowded and substandard housing. We know that if our house is not weathertight our home is likely to be cold and damp resulting in poorer health status. 
There are also educational impacts. If people are jostling for space in an overcrowded substandard home the chances are that there will not be a place for a young person to study nor a warm safe environment to help that young person achieve. Who are the New Zealanders most at risk from the substandard and overcrowded houses syndrome? Well the  
Social Report 2006 
 makes it clear that 41 percent of those living in more severely crowded situations—that is requiring at least two or more bedrooms—are Pasifika families and 38 percent are Maori. A quick calculation makes that 79 percent of New Zealand families who are living in severely crowded situations and they are Maori and Pacific families. So is there one standard for all? I do not think so. 
So much has been said about violence this year and I remind the House of the great soul of India Mahatma Gandhi who believed that poverty is the worst form of violence. Is it not time to consider the housing crisis as another manifestation of the violence of poverty that impacts adversely on our children? Children are more likely to live in low-income households than any other group of New Zealanders. Children bear a disproportionate burden of the costs of substandard and overcrowded houses and because Maori and Pasifika children have a far higher likelihood of being in low-income families it is therefore those children who are faring worst from the housing fallout. 
The Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill is primarily forward-looking and the provisions of the bill will apply to claims currently lodged but yet to be determined. It is likely that the majority of those claims will be from middle-class families. In much the same way would it not be a great day in the House if we could be forward-looking in addressing the chasm of despair that currently sits between those who have and those who have not? Would it not be a great day when we could look forward to a time when caravan parks were not overflowing when Starship Children’s Health was seeing only children whose health was compromised by unpreventable conditions and when families were stable rather than constantly shifting to find a place to live? 
The Maori Party will support this bill at its third reading and we will also continue to speak out about housing affordability overcrowding and the substandard housing that our relatives our whanau our constituents and our people live in. No reira tena koutou.