2. Question No. 2—Housing and Urban DevelopmentHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban DevelopmentQuestion No. 2—Housing and Urban Development2. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Is it acceptable for Housing New Zealand tenants to smoke methamphetamine in Housing New Zealand houses?Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Methamphetamine is of course illegal and is doing immense damage to communities across New Zealand. Our Government does not condone the smoking of methamphetamine anywhere; however the member needs to understand the counterfactual: it is not acceptable for the Government—for any Government—to throw tenants and their children on to the street and make them homeless. We recognise that making people homeless does not solve a tenant's problems or help people overcome addiction; it just moves the problem to somewhere else and makes it worse for the person involved their family their children the community and the taxpayer.Hon Judith Collins: Where meth testing showed residues exceeding previous standards can this meth have gotten into Housing New Zealand houses any way other than smoking or baking meth?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No but there was no consistent baseline testing done by Housing New Zealand over those years. There is no way of knowing whether the hundreds of people who were made homeless under this policy had any personal responsibility for the contamination of those houses. Frankly I'm shocked that the member who used to be a lawyer would think that that is OK. Is this the modern compassionate face of the National Party?Hon Judith Collins: When he said that 800 tenants suffered by … losing their tenancies" is he saying that these 800 tenants were all wrongfully evicted from Housing New Zealand houses?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It depends what you mean by "wrongfully evicted". Clearly some of the 800 people—and I believe many of those people—had their tenancies terminated and were evicted without natural justice without proper evidence of the case on the basis of a bogus scientific standard. All of those people—all of the people who were evicted bar some for whom the standard of contamination was more than the 15 micrograms per 100 centimetres that Sir Peter Gluckman recommended as a sensible standard—were evicted on the basis of a scientific standard that the previous Government allowed to persist for years on the basis of no scientific evidence that exposure to third-hand contamination posed any kind of health risk to anybody.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has the housing ministry restored the fundamental principle that one is judged to be innocent until proven to be guilty?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I believe with the report released today Housing New Zealand has embraced basic concepts of natural justice of scientific evidence-based policy-making which is the exact opposite of what that Government allowed to persist for years. In fact they campaigned to drum up the moral panic and every day got up in this House and vilified State house tenants.Kieran McAnulty: What reports has he seen on Housing New Zealand's meth report?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: There are many contradictory reports swirling around on this issue but one that I've seen that makes a lot of sense is where and I quote "people were unfairly removed. If that's the case they should be compensated and Housing New Zealand management should answer for it." That's exactly what today's report does and that quote is from Judith Collins.Hon Judith Collins: Will people who smoked meth in Housing New Zealand houses now be given $2000 to $3000 compensation?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The point of the compensation is to compensate people who wrongly had their tenancies terminated and their possessions destroyed and who in some cases were made homeless. Those are the people who will receive a payment under the assistance programme.Hon Judith Collins: Will people who sold meth in Housing New Zealand houses now be given $2000 to $3000 compensation?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No.Kieran McAnulty: What reports has he seen on alternative approaches to meth contamination in Housing New Zealand properties?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well I've seen reports of an approach to meth contamination where Ministers have said and I quote "We will not tolerate any meth use in [Housing New Zealand] properties" and I quote "[State housing] is a privilege and abuse of that privilege won't be tolerated" and then who gloated over the fact that Housing New Zealand were "focusing more on meth use as opposed to previously targeting only home-based drug manufacturing". That approach led to Housing New Zealand wasting the best part of $120 million and it made hundreds of people homeless. And those statements were made by the Hon Paula Bennett."