Street Maryan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Street Maryan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14133] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Minister of Housing) 
: 
 There is a fundamental arrogance that says that even when a person speaks nonsense people will believe that person and that is what the National Party peddles and believes. The member who just resumed his seat said in the course of his speech that National aspires to increase wages. That is the party that year on year refused to support the increase of the minimum wage. Year on year the Labour-led Government has improved the minimum wage because we are the party that can be relied upon to do that and the National Party is the party that can be relied upon never to do it. The kind of language we have just heard—the dull empty language from the National member who has resumed his seat—will not wash will not be sufficient and will not be believed by people who remember these things. 
I turn to the issue of housing. I am delighted to pick up where the Prime Minister left off in her speech today and talk about the issue that is at the heart of some of the greatest need in our society and that is the issue of affordable housing. The Labour Party has a long history of being the party committed to housing and this Labour-led Government under Helen Clark continues that fine tradition. When this Government came into power in 1999 we inherited a nightmare and it is one that will be repeated on the hustings. People ought never to forget that the last National Government in a fire sale sold off 13000 State houses mostly to property developers and speculators and not to the people who needed them. This Government has put a stop to those sales and during our term we have managed to increase the State housing stock by some 7500 and we are continuing to do that. That number is growing by the day. 
We have also reversed National’s market rent policy which ripped State housing from those who needed it and have reintroduced income-related rents. We have also improved a large number of the State housing stock through intensive maintenance and modernisation programmes. We have reduced over-crowding by assisting people into more appropriate homes. In addition the Healthy Housing programme has helped to insulate thousands of homes and improve the health status of those families living in them and we plan to do many more. There are plenty of statistics and pieces of evidence to support that. 
I want to talk about our future interventions because unlike the members opposite we actually have a soundly based programme to move forward to address the issue of housing affordability. Although we have done a number of really important things to stem the decline in State housing that was left to us by the previous administration our job is far from done. In the last few years we have seen a steep increase in the rise of the price of houses in New Zealand. This is not a problem we have on our own; we have it in common with other comparable countries. That is why the Prime Minister today outlined an ambitious and comprehensive programme to help make housing affordable again. 
I just want to highlight three or four of the points of that programme. First the Government plans to develop—and is in fact developing right now—large-scale housing developments involving partnerships between central regional and local government and the private sector to increase the amount of affordable housing being built. There are two immediate examples of this. One is Hobsonville and the other is Tamaki. In Hobsonville in Auckland where houses are desperately needed there is a brand new development going on. Right now the infrastructure for that development is under way. We will see the first houses go up next year. We are looking at 3000 houses. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: How many? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: We are looking at 3000 houses to be built in Hobsonville. Five hundred of those will be for people who need housing provided by the State. Another 500 will be affordable houses for those who are on low to modest incomes in order to assist them to get on to the homeownership ladder. Apart from that there is room for an additional 2000 houses out of that 3000 to be developed by the private sector and sold on the private market. That is a mixed housing development starting from a brand new starting point at Hobsonville that can be linked in easily to existing roads and infrastructure and will be the kind of mixed community that we are ambitious to create in our society. 
In addition to that there is Tamaki. In Tamaki we are talking about Crown-owned land as in Hobsonville but this time it is what we call a brownfield site—in other words one that is already established and being lived in. We are talking about another 3000 houses all of which would be available either for affordable housing or for sale on the private market. So we are going to get a mix again of the State house tenants who are already there the private sector owners and renters who are already there and in addition another 3000 houses. 
This brings me to the second point one of the points that the Prime Minister made this afternoon. A very significant part of our programme moving forward is to assess how much Crown land is available for residential development. What have we got out there that is that is appropriate and available for residential development? This is somewhere where National Party members have not gone. They have not had the wit or the ambition to think this far. Their sole answer to the problem of affordable housing has been to expand urban sprawl into the green belts around cities and nobody wants that. The other thing they propose is to take away the Resource Management Act which is the legislation that protects the environment and balances the need for development with the need to protect our environment. We have the possibility of Crown land being put into the private market for the purpose of residential development. Yes we will want some of that targeted for affordable houses—absolutely. We will insist that some of that be set aside for affordable housing. We will be able to deliver that. 
Those two things are initiatives on their own that indicate a serious thoughtful and very ambitious project and plan for affordable housing. In addition to those two projects there are more at Papakura and Weymouth that we are looking to develop through the use of Crown land for affordable housing. In addition to that we will assist the not-for-profit sector the third sector in the provision of housing. We are going to assist them to scale up their efforts so that they too can come on board to help all of the interested parties—central government local government and private developers despite the rhetoric of the Opposition—who have an interest in providing affordable housing. 
I say to Opposition members that they lack ambition. I do not see any plans coming from them. They have no scale and no idea about how or where they will effect affordable housing and make it possible for young families to get into their first homes. Young families are the people whom we want to get into their first homes. They are the people whom we want to assist because we cannot tolerate any longer this intergenerational problem where the cost of land and housing is spiralling out of control. This problem means that people worry for their children and worry about whether they will be able to afford to buy a house. The message from the Prime Minister’s speech today is that under a Labour-led Government people will have hope and will be able to own their own houses. Under a National Government there would be no show.