Ngaro Alfred: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16064. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]5.ALFRED NGARO (National) to theMinister of Housing: What progress is the Government making in growing the Community Housing sector and redeveloping Housing New Zealand homes to better match today’s housing needs?Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Housing): We are making excellent progress in growing the community housing sector with an all-time record number of houses to be built this year. We have got projects like Weymouth with 282 homes; like theMatanikolo Housing Project which I opened last week with the Pacific Islands Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga; and around a dozen others that through the Social Housing Fund will enable us to treble the size of this sector over 3 years. Housing New Zealand’s redevelopment projects are also gaining real momentum such that the Government will this year directly build more houses than in a decade. This includes the Infill 500 project in Auckland the new developments at McLennan and Hobsonville and the 700 new houses that are being built in Christchurch over this year and next year.Alfred Ngaro: What specific initiatives is the Government taking to improve the quality and safety of homes?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Our first major goal was to insulate every State house that could be and we successfully completed that project last year with 48000 homes done. That is on top of the 244000 homes that have been insulated under the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme. We also last year embarked on a $30 million driveway safety programme where over the next 4 years we will install fences signage gates and mirrors on 13000 State houses to address New Zealand’s poor record of hospitalising a child every fortnight and killing a child every 10 weeks in vehicle driveway accidents. We are also trialling a Housing Warrant of Fitness scheme on Housing New Zealand homes to ensure we have a far more systematic approach to ensuring the quality of our State houses.Alfred Ngaro: How are his housing agencies assisting the Government to achieve its goal of reducing the incidence of rheumatic fever by two-thirds by 2017?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: New Zealand’s acute rheumatic fever levels are 14 times the OECD average and the rates are 25 times and 44 times higher for our Māori and Pacific Island families respectively. I noted the interjection from Labour members opposite but I note that in 9 years Labour did nothing. Poor housing contributes significantly to the risks and that is why the Government has changed the social housing allocation system to support this important health goal of reducing the incidence of this disease by two-thirds. In August we set up a fast-track system in Auckland for families at high risk of rheumatic fever. We had planned on extending it after 1 year to other high-risk areas but on Monday Cabinet decided to bring this forward. On 1 March this fast-track system will also apply to eight further district health board areas covering tens of thousands of families.Phil Twyford: What advice has he received on the number of non-functioning power points in State houses or the number of dripping taps or smoke alarms that go beep in the night and if these are in fact a problem why does he as Minister of Housing not just issue an instruction that they be fixed instead of announcing a pilot scheme; and why will he not tackle the real problem here which is substandard housing in the private rental market?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I want to say that substandard housing in the State sector was a huge problem for this Government when we came into office in 2008 and the last members in this House whom I am going to get a lecture from about the quality ofhousing are members opposite. In respect of the member’s claim that all we need to do to get quality housing across those 69000 State houses is write a letter to the Housing New Zealand actually what you need is a proper system for measuring quality. That is why what we have announced in the trial today ensures that up to 50 different areas of houses are checked on a 3-year rolling basis—so that we can ensure that our State houses are of a high quality.