Andersen GinnyVIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): This Government has a plan and this plan is about rebuilding the social deficit left by the last Government. In all the talk we've heard about raising taxes and rubbish along those lines it is important to remember that there has been a significant deficit. I would like to talk about what that looks like in real terms—what that deficit actually looks like to people on the ground and how that hurts what those people are doing on a daily basis—and I'd like to look at some examples where I come from in the Hutt Valley. More importantly than just talking about where that hurt affects families let's also talk about what Labour's plan is to fix that—to fix the deficit that has been left by the previous National Government.There is a severe shortage of housing in this country and that's no secret. With winter ahead I am quite fearful to think about what families in New Zealand will be going through given the severe lack of housing that we have right now. At a time in the Hutt Valley when we had a 25 percent increase in property prices we saw State houses torn down. We saw State houses torn down and land lying vacant for five years—going on nearly six years now. In that time while land was vacant we had families in garages. We had families living two and three to a house. We had parents put under incredible pressure both mentally and financially and we had children not in school and not attending school because of the lack of housing.What are we doing about that? What are we doing to fix that problem? Well we're building some houses which has not been done previously. We're taking land like Ēpuni in the Hutt Valley and building units on that that will be KiwiBuild and that will be able to be purchased by first-home buyers who would otherwise not be able to buy a home in this market—who have otherwise been cut out of the rental market. Right now on the waiting list for Housing New Zealand we have 266 families waiting for a home. That's just the ones who get on the waiting list—just the ones who get on those that are always still living in circumstances that don't give them the best start in life. That's why we need to be building homes and that's why I'm looking forward this year to all the processes going through for those housing developments to kick off and people to start getting into those KiwiBuild homes in the Hutt Valley. That process will be starting this year.The second one I'd like to touch upon is mental health which is always the window into the well-being of our population. Yes we heard already that there's been a $2.3 billion underfunding and there's been no accounting or calculation for population growth. And yes we've seen how that overtly manifests in sewage down the hospital walls or outright decay of buildings but some of the real hurt—some of the real unseen hurt—is yet to be seen and that's in mental health. Some of the causes on district health boards and the pressure that has gone on to keep those doors open have resulted in ongoing cuts to mental health services to New Zealanders and that has meant that people in urgent need—young people in urgent need of mental health services—have had to wait three months or more to be seen. That in the face of one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the OECD is unacceptable.So what happens now? Because the Labour Government has undertaken to look at a comprehensive mental health inquiry the response we have from the National Party is to laugh—is to laugh that this is yet another inquiry group another inquiry. Well if talking to people in front-line services talking to people who can't access services and going around the country to find out what this problem actually looks like is a laughing matter then clearly that's not right. This is an area where we need to fully understand where the people of New Zealand aren't being serviced in order to make sure we target those resources in the right place and that is what this Government is doing. It is rebuilding the social deficit left by the last National Government in order to give our people the best start in life. That's why our schools our hospitals and our homes will be rebuilt from the ground up to give people in New Zealand a good start.