Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'm quite pleased to pick up on the theme of housing as the previous speaker Gerry Brownlee just finished on. I will start from the essence that housing should be a human right and that we know in this House—Hon Gerry Brownlee: No one's arguing that.MARAMA DAVIDSON: —that everyone simply needs a home. Mr Brownlee has just commented that no one's arguing that and I'm going to pick up on this and drill down into it a little bit more. An understanding across this House that everyone needs a home is a core public good especially right now in light of the waiting lists for public housing that we have got and in light of the level of unaffordability that we have reached that has consequently put Work and Income and income assistance lines into perspective—into our conscience—that has driven and contributed to the highest levels of homelessness that we have ever faced and that is also continuing to see an over-presence of unhealthy homes. We just I think a few weeks ago saw research from the Otago University that linked unhealthy homes to children's admissions to hospitals. We still have this continuing. So I start with that premise: people simply want—like all of us—to be able to put down roots in their community in an affordable home that keeps their family well.I think I'll start with after I've outlined some of the big challenges that we are facing the Vote Housing and Urban Development and that it mentions in the committee report that we saw an increase of 40 percent of the number of applicants on the public housing register. My understanding is that the household list is now over 12000 on the public waiting list—that actually equals over 70000 people. So for me this highlights an urgent and large-scale need to increase public and State housing builds especially right at this time. I would hope that we could get a cross-Parliament mandate to not just rely on the current model of redevelopment which still relies on some of the land sell-off offset to be able to fund ongoing State houses. I simply point out that we are in a situation where a large and urgent upscale of State housing builds is certainly a decision on the table amongst all of us at this time.I start with that conditional position I suppose and I then go into picking up on the delivery of the Greens' confidence and supply priority which saw the progressive homeownership initiative the $400 million allocation—a reallocation decision made in Budget 2019—to commit that Budget amount to that supply and confidence priority. I absolutely appreciate working with Minister Woods and Minister Woods' office in being able to announce that commitment.It is very important that we take good time to design and come up with good models and that is why we will look forward to the further details on that before the end of this year. What myself and the Minister have already signalled is that we have got well-established community not-for-profit housing providers who have already been doing this work and showing us that it is possible to be able to build affordable housing to allow those families currently not even hoping for a chance to not just pay off somebody else's mortgage but actually put down some security and roots of their own to look to having the choice at least of owning a home. I again condition that that this is not at the expense of public and State housing; that this is seen as another important difference that a Government lever can make to assist along the continuum—[Bell rung] Madam Chair? Thank you Madam Chair; appreciate that—as part of being able to make a huge difference in allowing for more people currently who have given up their hope of owning a home to actually be in a position that you know some New Zealanders have the privilege of being in many of whom require family assistance to even think about putting down a deposit for example or having some assistance to apply for a mortgage. When those people who are able to hold down rent at this time have stable but not high incomes have no extra ability to save for a deposit then we can put up both Government-backed and working with community housing providers and iwi for example to be able to provide that assistance that only too few have got at this very time. I want to in this situation acknowledge Metiria Turei and the longstanding work that she championed to be able to put up this progressive homeownership type of initiative and long fought for right back to the policy announcements in 2015 or 2016 or so and it pleases me that we are seeing this come to fruition. It's one of the proud policy achievements that I'm very very pleased to be able to keep working on and keep pushing through. What I then wanted to move towards is that I mentioned before that we have seen a link between damp mouldy housing and hospital admissions for young children with respiratory infections. I welcome and worked excitedly with Minister Twyford on the healthy homes guarantee improving our minimum standards towards homes that allow people to feel secure that it is not going to make their children or their elderly people sick. We are continuing to hear stories of people having to miss work children moving from throat ear and nose infections through to rheumatic fever. We are still facing unacceptable conditions when it comes to far too much of our housing stock in this country. I welcome and hope that we will see progressive and urgent enforcement of the healthy homes guarantees that we have worked on and you know I've been very public and clear that the Greens would like to see a warrant of fitness for these minimum standards so that in future votes we might look at how we would set up investigators and assessors to be able to—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): But we're not debating that; we are debating the Estimates in front of us.MARAMA DAVIDSON: Thank you Madam Chair. So that was looking through the Estimates for vote housing still continued. I hope this is OK—it's related in vote housing that we then also go to Vote Social Development. I talked about housing unaffordability and then I wanted to go into Vote Social Development. It is absolutely interconnected when it comes to people's incomes and even the Social Services and Community Committee noted that the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommended an increase to main benefits of between 12 to 47 percent and that this would make an incredible difference to helping to bring down living costs—or helping to meet high living costs I should say—and to helping contribute to stability and dignity for people on low incomes. Again the Greens have been very clear that we support the recommendations of that committee that Welfare Expert Advisory Group and that in the committee's report—I've lost the actual page but it said from memory that the committee noted that it does not yet have a plan in the details of when the recommendations from the welfare report are going to be put in place; that the Minister did relay that the Government is working on a three- to five-year plan to respond to the group's report. I continue to look forward to that plan of how we are going to make a big difference. Again when you've got people like the business leader Phil O'Reilly on mainstream media—who was on the expert group—championing an increase to main benefits because this will also allow not just for dignity but for cash moving around in communities the Greens absolutely agree with that leadership. Thank you Madam Chair.