Williams Poto: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5640. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): That last speech was from a Minister Nick Smith the Minister for Building and Housing who has done such a poor job at housing that they had to put three people in his place. That is appalling.Let us start with the Housing New Zealand rebuild in Christchurch shall we? The new builds—700 new homes in Christchurch. When is the deadline? The deadline for that is December 2015. How many of the 700 houses have been built?Carmel Sepuloni: How many?Hon David Cunliffe: How many?POTO WILLIAMS: It certainly ain’t 700; I can tell you that. We are closer to 300. The last time I got the answers to our written questions we were at something like 296. Now how many does that mean need to be built by the end of the year?Hon David Cunliffe: 402.POTO WILLIAMS: That is right. How is that going to be done? I will tell you how it is going to be done Minister. How it is going to be done is that we will have a deadline that National puts in place which was going to be December 2015 and now it is going to be March 2016. So at the estimates discussion we hear: “No it’s not December 2015.” even though over the last 2 years the ministry has been saying that yes it will get these houses built because the people in Christchurch desperately need them. What did we hear at the estimates discussion? March 2016 at the earliest. Do you think that is good enough? I do not think it is good enough and I have been talking about this for a long time. I knew that that was ambitious at the beginning and I was right.Oh boy it makes me wild to know that this Government does not care about the people in Christchurch and their housing concerns. Let us talk about the housing accord in Christchurch shall we? Let us talk about the case of the disappearing $52 million. There has been $22 million spent on the housing accord for affordable housing in Christchurch and what has happened to the other $52 million? Well I will tell you what has happened to it. It has gone to Auckland. It has gone to Auckland to deal with the Auckland housing crisis. How do you think people in Christchurch feel about that Minister? They do not feel very good about that. On top of that let me quote from one of the city councillors Glenn Livingstone. What did Glenn Livingstone say? He is the chairman of the council’s housing task force and he said this was the first he had heard that the money was to go to Auckland. So this Government could not even front up to the council in Christchurch and tell the council that it was taking $52 million out of the housing accord to send to Auckland. It could not front up to it. The council got that information from this news report. How is that for relationship building with the Christchurch City Council—that the council had to find out from a news report that that $52 million was going to Auckland? I think that is pretty appalling. How did we find out about that money? Did the Government front up and say: “Hey we think Christchurch is actually doing OK. We’re going to send some money north.”? No it did not. This cynical Government left it to a backbencher to find the information in the Treasury dump of documents. That is what it did. Did you get up here in the Chamber Mr Smith and say to the people of Christchurch: “You are doing so well in your housing issues. We’re going to send this $52 million up north.”? No you did not.Let us see what reaction we had in Christchurch to that shall we from the Salvation Army? “From a Salvation Army Christchurch perspective it’s very alarming. There is still a major need and major issue [with affordable housing]. The impact that will have on all agencies is significant.” And let us see what the City Mission has said—