Street Maryan: Imprest Supply Debate 
Street Maryan: Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:628;Page:460] 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak in this imprest supply debate which is all about making sure that there are sufficient resources going forward from here to implement and progress the programme of this Labour-led Government. In order to address adequately the needs going forward we need to traverse a little history which I am pleased to do. 
Before entering this House and before running as a candidate in the recent election I was for the last 5 years a member of the Housing New Zealand Corporation board and for the last year or so I was its deputy chairperson. I want to take this opportunity to talk about housing. I want to talk about where we are going with housing under a Labour-led Government because it is a good story and an important story. I will be interested in every interjection of the National Party because housing was a key area of complete blankness in its policy in the election campaign. In fact it was worse than that. When National’s leader was asked what his party’s policy was on State housing he could not remember. I want to talk about some of the things that have been done in housing in the last few years and about why housing is such a critical issue for us to advance in the next 3 years. 
One of the first things I did when I was on the Housing New Zealand board was to attend meetings in which we used to go around and visit different parts of the country at different times to see what was happening. I am not sure whether I see the member for Northcote here but one of the first things we did was to visit the North Shore. I had a look at the kinds of conditions that people were living in prior to the State housing renovations and urban renewal programmes that have been implemented recently. I had a look at some of the old Housing New Zealand blocks and I looked at the backyards. Looking out the back window of one of those properties I saw a couple of children kicking around in the backyard and all they had to play with was a rotary clothes line—there was nothing else. I went back home to my comfortable house in central Auckland and I cried because I saw what my daughter was fortunate enough to have in her backyard to play with and the comparison was distressing. 
Since that time I have watched the progress of Housing New Zealand Corporation as it has reversed the degenerative processes that were in place under the previous National administration. I want to talk about some of the things we did and why we need to continue to do those kinds of things. There is no reason to have Third World housing in this country. In my time on that board I saw an enormous number of quite fundamental changes in the maintenance and refurbishment of existing State houses. There have been some cases where the State houses have been knocked down and replaced with better ones—more modern more appropriate housing for the kinds of families who need them. We have done more than 5500 retrofits under the Labour-led Government. The retrofits are about very basic things. They are about water-lagging—putting lagging around water pipes to retain heating—and about energy conservation. We have fitted hundreds upon hundreds of smoke alarms into State houses but beyond that also into privately owned houses that were identifiably in need. 
Projects that were approved and generated by this Labour-led Government have addressed some of the most grotesque housing situations in Northland East Cape and the Bay of Plenty. The circumstances of some of the people who live in private houses there were such that we intervened. We hear a lot from the National Opposition about there being too much Government. Well there are some parts of our communities our society that still need some assistance and will continue to need assistance. A Labour-led Government does not shy or shrink away from providing that. We have assisted private housing to come up to standard for the sake of the health standards of the children who live there or to prevent houses—or crates—from burning down because people who are not reticulated to an electricity supply are using candles. That is not tolerable in this country. I challenge the Opposition members to defend a withdrawal of Government services in those areas where the need is so blatant. When one visits some of those places and sees the houses sinking into septic tanks that have not been maintained and have not been appropriately sunk in the first place then one realises that the health of the children in particular who live there is the most critical thing that needs to be addressed. 
The things we have done and why we need to continue forward are the obvious things. We restored income-related rents for State housing so that the qualifying low-income tenants pay no more than 25 percent of their income in rent. We stopped the bulk sale of State houses—a programme that the previous National Government embarked upon—and we have increased the stock. Now we have more than 6000 additional State houses. But more than that some significant joint exercises are being carried out by Housing New Zealand Corporation under the direction of this Government with organisations like Counties Manukau District Health Board and the Auckland District Health Board. Those are the Healthy Housing projects and they are about making sure insulation is right that people do not have mould on the walls and moisture running down on the insides of their houses and that the kind of overcrowding that contributes to the health difficulties of families does not occur. 
I want to talk briefly about why we need to progress the things we have committed ourselves to doing like the KiwiSaver programme. We have said quite clearly that we are implementing a KiwiSaver scheme that provides a $1000 kick-start for each KiwiSaver account. Yes that is Government intervention and I am not ashamed of it. I am proud of it. If we look at a recent report written by the Salvation Army called  
A Home I Could Own 
 we see that everywhere across the country it was reported in relation to low-income clients of the Salvation Army that saving for a deposit was the key barrier to their owning a home. 
Why is the National Party opposed to a scheme like the KiwiSaver scheme? Why is it opposed to that when in fact it concerns a fundamental item? Aspirations for home ownership are greatest in fact amongst Maori and Pacific Island people. Ownership of their own homes is a key aspiration and it remains a key aspiration of New Zealanders. How do we assist them to get in there and own their own homes? We do it through programmes like KiwiSaver which I am proud to have this Labour-led Government continue.