Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Estimates for social development votes. Let us get real. Let us get real and look at the reality of the situation. The member who has just resumed her seat Parmjeet Parmar is trying to convince New Zealand that emergency housing in this country is well covered. Well why are people sleeping in cars? Why are an increasing number of people sleeping in garages? And why are people in Te Awamutu resorting to sleeping in recycling skips? Those are the questions that I want to pose to that Government. If it truly believes that these Estimates mean that emergency housing is well covered it needs to get real. It is completely out of touch with the situation that is developing at a rapid rate in our country. The Estimates in fact make things worse for housing problems in the regions. Dr Smith looks confused about why that is but it is pretty simple actually. Paula Bennett rolled out her last-minute desperate plan to pay people $5000 to move from Auckland to the regions. Some of the places that she is trying to encourage those people to move to are places like Hamilton are places like Ngāruawāhia are places like Te Awamutu—places where we already know we have our own developing housing crises thanks to that Government. We know that there are increasing numbers of people who are facing homelessness. I just want to remind the Committee of the tragic story that I thought we would never see in Aotearoa New Zealand let alone a relatively wealthy society like Te Awamutu where a man who fell on hard times ended up sleeping in a recycling skip and ended up losing his life in that process. That is a story that that Government should be deeply ashamed of because it tells a story of what is really happening in the provinces and the homelessness that really exists. These are the places that Paula Bennett wants to spend $5000 bringing people from Auckland down to those same towns in order to make the housing crisis worse for the people who are already trying to live there and cannot afford to live there. The nonsense of the Estimates saying that the Government will be prepared to fund 7 days of emergency housing for people whom it is putting in hotels and motels—that is what emergency housing amounts to in New Zealand under the National Party. When it comes to weeks like we have just had in Hamilton with the Fieldays and the hotels and the motels are full what chance is there for emergency housing for any family over the course of that week? Well none under its failed emergency plan that it says is well covered according to the National Party speakers. In the New Zealand Herald today there is a story about a family from South Auckland. They are in a hotel because that is their emergency housing option. They are a mother with three children. The children are aged 13 12 and 10. They are paying or will have to pay back $2013 a week in rent for that emergency housing—the hotel in Papatoetoe—a one-bedroom hotel in Papatoetoe that is their emergency housing option. For the first 7 days the State is going to pay that but after that that family is going to rack up $2013 a week which they are going to have to pay back at some point. But here is the really shameful fact that the Government needs to take on board—these four people were moved into this one-bedroom hotel to stay together at that cost because what they had been doing up until then is that they had been in a Housing New Zealand house that was not theirs. They had moved in with family members. Two of them were sleeping in the garage. The mother and the 13-year-old were sleeping together in a bed in the garage and the other two children were sharing another bedroom. They had to move out of there because their niece who was threatened with eviction if that continued to happen had to move them on. They made three applications to Work and Income to try to get their housing needs met. The first time they were completely and utterly declined. They had nowhere to live but they were declined. The second time Work and Income lost their application. How many times have members of Parliament heard that story as constituents come to see us and see the shambles that Work and Income is in?