Faafoi Kris: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:386. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker. Can I extend to you because it is Tokelau Language Week a very warm malo ni. The Tokelauan community has got a very exciting but not sexy week this week. Right up and down the country the people of Tokelau—some just over 7000 in New Zealand and only about 1500 on the atolls themselves—will be celebrating their culture and language. So a big malo ni to the rest of the House as well.Can I also extend to you Mr Deputy Speaker congratulations on your appointment as Deputy Speaker. I know that you will be fair. Also congratulations to Lindsay Tisch who has been very fair in the two parliaments that I have served in and to the Hon Trevor Mallard who I hope will be fair in this 51st Parliament. It is interesting to see someone who has massaged the Standing Orders and the Speakers’ rulings over his time in this Parliament now be so inflexible with them. Also of course to our Speaker David Carter congratulations on being appointed Speaker again. He is someone with good red and black pedigree.Can I also extend to new members a warm welcome to the House. Phil Goff actually stole quite a lot of my speech when he made his Address in Reply speech.Hon Phil Goff: I saw the notes on your desk so I thought they were mine.KRIS FAAFOI: He did. I have been listening to a lot of the maiden speeches and they are an opportunity where we get to find out what is behind the rosette with some of the people who come into this House and where we get the chance to be human beings. It has been very interesting to learn some of the backgrounds of people from all around the House. To the three new colleagues here on the Labour side of the House: to Adrian Rurawhe and Peeni Henare tēnā kōrua to you; and to Jenny Salesa another Pacific Islander on our side of the House a big malo e lelei to you as well.It is an absolute privilege to stand here and to be once again elected for the third time in 4 years as the member of Parliament for Mana. Can I extend my best wishes and thanks to the two other MPs who fought the battle in Mana for the third time. They are the Hon Hekia Parata from the National Party and Jan Logie from the Greens. It always is a fair battle. As the Hon Christopher Finlayson said of Rongotai there are no dirty tricks in Mana and it was very humbling to be returned to Parliament with an increased majority.I would like to thank a number of people from the local electorate who have helped me over the last 4 years—[Interruption] Not skiting; I didn’t mention a number. I did want to thank Matthew Swann and James Baigent who worked very hard during the campaign; Lynne Renouf who coordinated the delivery of thousands of pieces of deliveries and mail; Jim McAloon who made sure that we did not spend too much money; and Louise Fairbanks Irene Sylvander Sharon Elborn Phil Major and Andrew Frazer who all helped in some way. I know I have missed people out so to all the members friends and family who volunteered their time over the election campaign thank you. Very warm thanks as I am sure most members of Parliament are thanking their volunteer teams for all the effort that helped them get here to this Parliament.I spent the last 3 years banging on about housing in my electorate to the point where I think people were getting sick of it. I am very thankful for that because I think it is an issue—certainly locally and nationally—that this Government has not got on top of. Housing New Zealand - related work would take up about a third of the time of the staff in my electorate office and quite simply there is not just in the Mana electorate but right around the country a serious shortage of social housing. I commit to the people of Mana to continue that relentless local focus on housing and making sure that our local people are living in good houses. If people have a good solid home it is an anchor in that community. It means that the kids can stay at one school. It means that if it is safe and warm those kids are staying healthy and going to school. That is the kind of New Zealand that the Labour Party wants to make sure our kids grow up in.But there have been too many instances as we have heard certainly in this House today of people being pushed to camping grounds and people living in their cars. Over the last 3 years the kinds of incremental changes that we are seeing the National Government make in social housing have made the lives of people who are very vulnerable much much harder. It started with something small like changing to an 0800 number which made it almost impossible to deal with Housing New Zealand—huge waiting times—and the shutting down of offices in communities like Porirua where there are a huge number of Housing New Zealand tenants. When you put that together with what happened in April—when it was not just Housing New Zealand that was responsible for Housing New Zealand tenants it also became the realm of the Ministry of Social Development to assess people in their housing needs—things got very confused. I do not think that those two departments were very ready for that big change.There are a couple of examples that I wanted to pick up. They might seem small and they might have been small mistakes but they are creating a sense of unease out there in the community. One of them was the experience of someone who came into my office a lady called Losalina Sosaia. She went from having her rent reassessed at $272 per week to getting a letter in the mail saying that her rent had gone up to $9857—a huge increase in her rent. As you can imagine she did not speak English very well. She was very very upset at what this letter may have meant for her. Look from my perspective it was obviously a mistake but she did not know what was going on. So we spent an hour on the phone waiting for the phone call to be answered to try to help out Losalina. There were 320 other people in the same boat. They had very similar letters go out to them and they were shocked and fearful of what this meant. I know that this was an administrative error and it was a mistake that I am sure someone at the Ministry of Social Development was very sorry for but when you have got two departments now working with these vulnerable families sending out letters like these you are going to create a sense of unease and fear in the community.Another really sad example that came through my office was of a lady who had her income-related rent assessed again by the Ministry of Social Development and it was reassessed from $300 down to $90 a week. The unfortunate thing though is that the organisation that collects the rent is Housing New Zealand. Housing New Zealand staff were not told that her rent had gone from $300 a week to $90 a week. So she was paying $90 and accruing $210 of debt for weeks to the point where she was on the verge of getting evicted from her home. That lady came to us just before she was about to go to the Tenancy Tribunal which was about to kick her out of her house. The simple fact that someone at the Ministry of Social Development and someone at Housing New Zealand had not spoken to each other or sent a simple email meant that this lady was on the verge of getting kicked out of her home. These people are vulnerable enough already and these simple clerical errors should not put people on the verge of being kicked out of their homes that they are entitled to be in.I think those two examples speak to the kinds of things that can happen when you have a Government that is not committed to having any part in social housing in New Zealand. We have seen that in the last couple of weeks as this Government has made it quite clear that it does not want to have to do anything in social housing because it wants to sell State houses and also remove itself from the environment of making sure it is offering that pastoral care. There are probably about 150 homes that are still boarded up in the Mana electorate and people are waiting to live in those homes. Those homes have been boarded up now for nearly 2 years. There are families waiting to get into those homes. My concern now because I have heard a story from Trevor Mallard is that those homes which are desperately needed by people who cannot afford market rents will now go on the block and be sold.On this side of the House we do believe that a Government has a role to play in social housing. We have seen over the last 5 or 6 years incrementally this Government take a backward step in helping New Zealanders with the most simple of things—having a decent home to live in having somewhere that they can call home and if they cannot afford market rents quite at this stage the Government can stand in and help them for some time to make sure they can have a decent house that their kids can call home where they are stable and have that anchor in their community. This Government is removing that anchor for many of the families in my area. I give a commitment to my people in my area that I will make sure that there is good affordable housing for everybody because this Government is putting that at risk.