Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): I am very proud to rise tonight in the House to support my colleague Kavin Delvis—Kelvin Davis: Oh kia ora Marama.MARAMA DAVIDSON: Kia ora Kelvin Davis—sorry. The Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill proposes to build 10000 affordable homes which is over 10 years 100000 affordable homes. We absolutely need more affordable homes. This country is facing a housing crisis the likes of which we have not seen and the Government owes it to New Zealanders to admit that we have a housing crisis to actually just say the words: We have a housing crisis."Homelessness is driven by a lack of affordable housing. Again that is what this bill is wanting to fix. Again this Government will not commit to ending homelessness because by denying that there is a housing crisis in the first place that lets it off the hook for actually trying to sort it. At the moment the homelessness we are facing again is a detriment that we have never seen before—41000. In 2006 homelessness was at a level of 1 in 120. Now it is 1 in 100 people who are homeless. So the cost of doing nothing which is what has happened to our country under the leadership of the National Government is incredibly expensive and morally and disgracefully wrong.We saw how expensive it is for example with the emergency funding blowout where this Government is putting people up in motels because there is not enough housing State housing social housing or affordable housing to be able to have everybody in a home so $2 million was set aside for the year earmarked for this particular emergency cause. But instead nearly $8 million was spent in only a few months—in only a few months—because this Government does not have a handle on the extent of this crisis and what is actually happening around our country.Another example of how this Government is trying to undermine exactly what is happening can be seen with the major discrepancies in the number of social houses and how social housing places are even counted. We have the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment saying that there are just shy of 61000 social housing places; except social housing Minister Amy Adams says that there are 66000 social houses so undermining the extent of the crisis as well as trying to make the fix-up look better than what is actually going on. Also we have a waiting list of 6000 people for a State home amidst a Government State house sell-off. We could go on all night about the failure of this Government to address housing and to ensure our people in our communities do have a warm dry and secure home to live in.But it all goes to the Government's denial of the crisis so that it does not have to fix it. Why does it not want to fix it? Because it is more important to protect speculation which is the buying of houses as a business than it is to actually uphold the core responsibility to ensure everyone has a good home.Building more affordable homes in the thousands in the numbers that we actually need is absolutely the step that we need to be taking. The Government owes it to properly commit to having a plan to actually get us there. It was unfortunate to hear the member Joanne Hayes feeling quite outraged at this bill—she was quite outraged by the end of her speech. She drew some pretty long bows and compared this legislation with wasting time in the House. What is this House for if it is not to debate the housing crisis? She said: "This Government works for all New Zealanders. We have got everything sorted." That is offensive to the realities of what is actually happening to our people in our communities today. I am quite appalled that she stood to say that. Thank you."