Faafoi Kris; Borrows ChesterKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to speak to the Estimates debate. As many of my colleagues have I would like to focus on housing. I would like the Government to do more on housing with the money that it spends over the 12 months. Do I have confidence that it will do that? I have absolutely none. That is because the Government has been playing silly buggers with semantics and words over the last week. For the last 2 or 3 months it has not managed to say the word crisis" but for the last 3 or 4 days it has been getting a little bit over the top with the word "comprehensive". When you say a word in Parliament you should really mean it and you should back it up with facts. So to think that the Government's plan is comprehensive is laughable. I will tell you why it is laughable with a few local examples in Porirua. If you come to Porirua and go up to Cannons Creek there is a street called Castor Crescent. In 2011 this Government demolished a number of houses and sent letters to the people living around there saying: "We promise we will rebuild the houses that we've demolished here for your community." If the Minister for Building and Housing is offering to accept invitations to visit places I would like to invite Nick Smith to Castor Crescent to see the abundance of houses on that land where those houses were demolished. He will find what looks like a council park and not a bustling community of houses which the Government promised to replace. Sue Moroney: Well they could always park their cars up and sleep in them.KRIS FAAFOI: That is right. About a month ago we held a public meeting in that community to say: "Hey. I know they made the promise. What would you like to see on that land?". They overwhelmingly said: "Hey why doesn't the Government stick to the promise it made 5 years ago and build those houses for our community?". These are the kinds of people who have families living in overcrowded houses. They are probably the friends and family of people who are living in cars who desperately want their friends and family to live in what we would call a decent house. So why does the Government not as part of its comprehensive plan stick to its word that it made 5 years ago? It actually wrote a letter turned up to the community and said: "We're going to rebuild these houses." But there is absolutely nothing there at all and that is an unkept promise to that community.Can I also just acknowledge the work of Housing New Zealand staff. I think it is one of the most under pressure departments in our Public Service at the moment. If you are going to talk about starving the beast this Government is starving the beast in terms of what it is doing to Housing New Zealand. I want to use another good example of some homes—people have been moved out of them for what I understand is earthquake proofing. The houses are now vacant and they have been boarded up. The problem is that vandals have been in there. The houses have been broken into. There is lots of broken glass. No one would like that. The issue is that they are right next to one of my local primary schools. The staff there have heard the kids talking about those homes—about them going in there and playing in those homes. If it were the school that was ramshackle and had broken windows we would not let these kids in there but these houses border the school. For the benefit of Parliament this is what those houses look like: a broken window and broken glass on the second storey of those houses. And there has been little to no action from Housing New Zealand to make these houses and these areas safe. I do not blame the staff there because they are under pressure. When you have one tenancy manager to about 800 or 900 homes they are going to be a little bit snowed under. But this is the result of what happens when you starve the beast—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member but the time has come for me to report progress.House resumed.Progress reported.Report adopted."