Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Thank you Mr Speaker. The member that just took her seat Paula Bennett told us that it beggars belief. Well I'll tell this House what beggars belief and that's waking up to news about the fact that a hospital in our largest city is covered in black mould and has sewage in the walls.It sometimes feels when one sees the reports of this like we're stuck in some kind of Dickensian kind of vortex where we've been suffering so much neglect by the ruling elite of the previous Government that they've allowed our hospitals to get covered in mould and have problems with sewage coming down the walls. You can look through there and it's like a combination of Bleak House and Oliver Twist I think—the state that the previous Government have left this country in—when we're now at a point where we're looking at needing $14 billion of upgrades and repairs over 10 years because the previous Government let things run into such a state of disrepair.And why was this? It was to have their treasured surpluses. Well anybody can have a surplus when you don't pay the bills and that is exactly what the previous Government chose to do. There is nearly a decade of neglect and dereliction of the part of the previous Government.We had district health boards who were forced to run surpluses by deferring maintenance and when the deferral of maintenance means that there are people in our country with respiratory disease being housed in a hospital with black mould where we have sick people in places trying to get well where there is sewage down the walls—this is not a record that anybody on the other side of the House can hold their head up about because they have absolutely let New Zealand down.But this Government has a plan to fix it and it's not only in health that we are going to have to fix things. We can look right across the neglect that we've seen in our transport system and we've seen that with questioning in the House today—the fact that this Opposition just doesn't realise the neglect that they had put in the fact that our regional roads have been neglected by that Government's failure to invest in them that we have maintenance issues that we have councils right around the country that are telling us that they do need that money to go into fixing their roads. This is an Opposition that can only focus on the highways of national significance because that is exactly the way they governed—it was by a myopic focus on a few small things and refusal to see what was absolutely around there.In a week where there has been so much happening—there are so many issues facing our country—the deputy leader of the National Party leads off with a beltway issue. Is she addressing their neglect in health? Is she addressing the neglect in education where that Government failed to account for what was coming in the future? Was she addressing the neglect in the housing crisis?So yesterday in the House the Opposition thought there was some gotcha politics when they asked the Minister of Housing and Urban Development what the square footage of the apartments in the Unitec build were going to be—the plan this Government has to actually provide affordable housing for New Zealand. Well I can tell you the square footage of every one of those apartments will be greater than the square footage of a car which is what the previous Government seemed to think was adequate housing for far too many New Zealanders.But this Government has a plan. We are not content to book out motels and think that that is a solution to homelessness. We are a Government that actually wants to build some housing for New Zealanders and what's more to make it affordable and heaven forbid warm and dry. [Interruption] That's right. We don't want mould running down the walls of our houses any more than we want mould in our hospitals.This is a Government that has the courage to think beyond the three-year term that has the courage to think about what New Zealand needs what our future needs—and it certainly isn't the levels of neglect that we saw from nine years of a National Government. We are a Government that will invest in our people that will invest in our future and that will ensure that we have health housing and education for our people.