Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): We shall be waiting with bated breath Mr Little for I think the overpromising and under-delivering. I could just about write exactly what it will be at this time and I think that he may be coming back and apologising perhaps for his words that he has given us today on how great that announcement on Sunday just may not be as the case is. Really I am here to talk a bit about—you know you can see the wide-reaching inclusive work that has been going on across social housing in particular over the last few years. Previously when I was the Minister for Social Development I played a part in moving the wait list and the assessment of people in need into the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and that of course turned over in April 2014. So I do have moments when I kind of laugh about how all of a sudden there is this problem and all of a sudden we have come to the party when I could look back at the announcements that we have made and the work that we have done and see a really comprehensive plan that has been happening over a long period of time. When I left social development we had for the first time a Minister for Social Housing and it was the first time that portfolio actually went under one Minister and was not just a percentage of their time. That was because of the importance that the Prime Minister put on social housing recognising that actually it needed more of a focus and that is what it has had. We started with those changes to MSD as I have said and then we worked our way through trying to look at the whole needs of the person and around how we wrap more support around them for those who are in houses as well. I do want to clear up a couple of things though because Labour can say it as often as it likes but when the announcement was made around the $41 million that is going into emergency housing—it was made here in Wellington outside the night shelter; there was a lot of media there—it was really clear that it was going to be supporting places like the Wellington Night Shelter to keep its doors open. It had never had funding before from Government—certainly no certainty of it—and as such this played a significant part in it being able to not just keep its doors open and provide the beds it already had but equally add to it and make sure there were new beds. If Labour picked it up incorrectly and started running out and saying that it was all new beds then actually that is it and not us who took it there. The other thing that has been happening is that huge build programme. So I take you back to the Social Housing Fund which was introduced by Nick Smith about 3 years ago. It produced 890 places with community housing providers and as I say that was more than 3 years ago so it kind of belies the idea that there is a sudden panic going on and everyone was caught unawares. It has been a part of our social housing programme to bring more community housing providers in. A big step towards that was introducing the income-related rent to community housing providers giving them really access to a huge subsidy that goes against what it costs to actually keep one of those houses running each week. To give you an indication of the actual numbers on that we were spending something like $600 million on the income-related rent; we are budgeted to spend about $860 million this year and that is going to over $1 billion by 2019-20—a huge investment there. That is when a tenant pays on average about $100 a week and the Government picks up the rest of the tab or the taxpayer does. As you can see new homes are being built in places like Tāmaki and throughout New Zealand actually—the rent goes up for them because they are generally bigger they are cleaner and they make huge differences to the cost of them. We pick up that rent and that bill is going up for them which as we can see is happening. The difference now is that community housing providers can get a portion of their income-related rent as well. We are spending over $2 billion in total—over the next 2 years it will get to $2 billion a year. That is on that part which is the income-related rent as I said. Equally the accommodation supplement is helping about 260000 households in their rent each week and that is making a difference. Opposition members choose to ignore that the Government is making houses warmer and healthier when more than 300000 home owners and rental properties have had that this year. I am proud to be a cog in this very comprehensive housing plan.