Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): How dare that Minister Anne Tolley stand here and say that the State is going to do right by our children with the reforms to Child Youth and Family alone? We all know that this is a Government that has tolerated low wages that perpetuates low benefits and that keeps families trapped in severe poverty in this country and that poverty is the greatest risk to our children's well-being in this country. It is the greatest risk and we have a Government that keeps those families in poverty and drives more there. That is what the housing crisis is showing us. So when this Minister sits here and says the State needs to take responsibility for the well-being of New Zealand's children I wish it would. The first thing that it could do is to make sure that families have got enough of what they need to live a decent—not flash—life in this country. How dare that Minister stand here and say that work is the solution to their poverty? It might have been under a different Government; it certainly is not under National. Under National we have seen increasing numbers of working families driven into the streets driven out of their homes and into their cars. How many times have we seen night after night on the television families whose kids are going to school and doing their best to succeed whose parents are working full-time jobs but who do not have the income to afford a decent home in which they can take care of their children? That is what this Government has driven our country to. It is intolerable for that Minister to stand there and say that she will do better for New Zealand's children and ignore the single greatest threat to their well-being.Housing has become in the last few years the key point at which those issues of poverty those issues of low wages and of family insecurity and instability have made themselves real. We have a Government that is failing one of its core responsibilities as a Government and that is to provide a stable housing market with warm dry and secure housing for every one of the families who live in this county. No society can operate effectively if its citizens are sleeping under bridges are living in cars and are in substandard housing that causes their kids to get sick. That is a symbol of a failing society a society being failed by its Government. We have a Government that is in denial about one of the most fundamental roles that it is required to perform which is to make sure its citizens are safely and securely housed.So how did the National Government let this become its Achilles heel? How did housing become the Achilles heel of National? How did National bring itself to abandon New Zealand families to the vagaries of a market that is pushing house prices way beyond what an ordinary family can afford because abandon families is what National has done. And it has not just allowed it actually but it has encouraged it over the last 8 years. The lowest homeownership rate in 65 years is under National. The biggest gap between incomes and house prices in decades is under National. The highest level of homelessness—[Interruption] Well you can sigh sir but your Government—the Government you are part of—has overseen the highest level of homelessness of some 40000 New Zealanders in a generation. Over 8 years the country has been driven to this under this National Government.We heard quite a bit today about National's supposedly comprehensive housing plan. It was a long list of things that have clearly not worked. We have Auckland house prices at 10 times the median household income the highest rate of homelessness and high rates of child poverty that continue to remain high. At even six times or 10 times the household income we know that the economic risk of this housing bubble is likely to cause more problems for families in the future so where is the plan to deal with that? We have economists from the banks from councils from consultancies and from the media all saying there is a serious economic problem coming with housing being priced so out of families' reach and where is the Government's plan for managing that? Where is the Government's plan for managing that?National has overseen the biggest increase in house prices in decades. It has no concept of when those house price rises are going to end and people are warning of a crash. A crash in the housing market is totally unacceptable. The harm that that would cause to families and to the economy is totally unacceptable so where is the plan from the Government to protect New Zealanders to protect our economy and to make sure our families have access to a fundamental human right which is warm dry and secure housing? How could this Government let this country get to this point?The only way that we can protect New Zealand families is to make sure that there is a plan to both increase incomes and bring house prices down so that there is a soft landing in time. That is the hard truth. It is a hard truth. Nobody likes to say it but it is the truth and unfortunately this Government will not even address the fact that there is a housing crisis let alone the reality that in order to be a responsible Government you have to have a plan for managing that so that families do not get hurt. It is not a big ask actually for New Zealanders to ask the Government to manage the housing crisis in a way that will protect them. How has that gotten so complicated? How has that gotten so ideological by National that it cannot even make sure that New Zealand families are warmly safely and securely housed?The plan does not have to be complicated. New Zealanders will accept that it will take some time—we are talking 10 15 years. People know that these kinds of policies need time to come into play but what they cannot see—and understandably so—is that this Government will take their family issues seriously. They are concerned about their kids not being able to buy a home. They are concerned that their grandkids will not have warm secure and stable housing for them to grow up in. These are the real concerns of New Zealanders every day and they look to the Government for some leadership and they see nothing—look blank faces—from National because National has nothing to offer because it has deliberately created this mess. I mean was that the point of the comprehensive housing plan National—to actually drive us into the worst housing crisis we have seen in generations? Was that the point of your plan? Because that is what has happened.And the National members are not the ones who are going to be suffering for it right? It is ordinary New Zealand families it is the working poor who are living in their cars and it is people on benefits who are continually harassed by this Government because of their poverty. They are the ones who are suffering every day. This is why we need a change of Government. This is the only option that we have got. A change of Government is what will turn this around.Dr David Clark: Hear hear!METIRIA TUREI: We will provide a plan—thank you. We will provide a genuine plan to protect families to raise incomes to provide housing affordability for New Zealanders and to reduce and then eliminate child poverty from this country. Only a change of Government will deliver on that because as we have seen National members have had their go they have failed us they have failed families they have failed our kids and they have nothing new to offer. We saw that today. Even after 4 weeks away they still had nothing new to offer. And in fact National is just recycling Labour and Green policy as we saw with the tax holiday the dividend holiday for Housing New Zealand.Housing should not be such a hotly contested political issue because there should be consistent approaches across parties around housing because it is so fundamental to New Zealanders and to families' well-being. It has become a hot political issue because National's ideology is driving families into their cars and on to the streets. That makes National fundamentally irresponsible and incapable of governing for the benefit of the country as a whole and the sooner it goes the better. The sooner we get a change of Government the better. New Zealand families deserve better. Thank you.