Willis Nicola; Woods MeganNICOLA WILLIS (National): The Minister in the chair Megan Woods has just told the committee that she continues to have confidence in Kāinga Ora. So I want to ask the Minister whether that confidence is based on her understanding of what has gone on in that organisation since revelations were made last week. She has said she was concerned by those revelations so I would like to know: is the Minister aware that no internal communications went out to staff at Kāinga Ora about what had occurred until Saturday morning and that it was on Saturday morning that staff at Kāinga Ora were told that they best be careful to adhere to the expectation of political neutrality. Does the Minister think that was a timely intervention by the leadership of Kāinga Ora or does she think that that should've happened days weeks or months earlier?Furthermore is the Minister confident that the leadership of Kāinga Ora has taken her concerns seriously in light of this email which I am about to read? This email says I feel compelled to email you this morning Nicola. I work in a share space and I am surrounded by an increasing number of employees of Government departments most of them from Kāinga Ora." The email goes on to say "While I was getting my coffee today from the kitchen beside one of our conference rooms I observed laughing and joking from the main boardroom. It was one of the regular Kāinga Ora team meetings and it soon became clear to me that the topic of conversation was the current Arena Williams - Kāinga Ora email saga. What was also clear to me was they all including senior members consider this a bit of a joke and the tone and theme of conversation was 'Bummer we got caught—bit of a laugh.' etc. which indicates to me that this event is clearly not being taken seriously with the agency." I would like the Minister to respond to that.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I will just address some of the inaccuracies in the statements that member has just made that in fact there may have been another email sent out on Saturday of this week but in fact there were one-on-one conversations with the staff members that were directly involved with it several months ago. But of course this is all now subject of the Public Service Commission and the work that they are doing to look at that question. The member asks how I can have confidence in that board and the fact that things will change. I think that I can have absolute confidence that the communication I have had with the chair of Kāinga Ora is that he absolutely accepts what happened was unacceptable it should not have happened it will not happen again and that we need to take a robust look at it.But I will note that this is actually not something new. If we look back to the Mt Roskill by-election actually Nick Smith as the then Minister of Housing was pulled up for directing housing officials to help with Parmjeet Parmar's by-election at that time. I think documents revealed that "Parmjeet Palmer has expressed a keen interest in hosting a roadshow. She is keen to raise a local profile in Mt Roskill in case of a by-election." an email from housing Minister Nick Smith's private secretary said.Now I can accept that what happened within Kāinga Ora was simply unacceptable. But I'll tell you what did not happen: my office was not involved in it; I did not know about it until I read the email. So I think that we can accept things go wrong but I think some members should be careful of throwing stones."