6. Question No. 6—Housing and Urban DevelopmentHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban DevelopmentQuestion No. 6—Housing and Urban Development6. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Is he confident that KiwiBuild will meet its targets?Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): The KiwiBuild unit is working incredibly hard to build homes. We've had to start from scratch and build development capacity within the Government to in turn build homes. So far we've contracted more than 3800 KiwiBuild homes and announced nearly 10000 KiwiBuild homes in our large-scale developments including at Unitec Māngere Porirua and Mount Roskill. There is still more to do but I'm hopeful we will meet our targets.Andrew Bayly: Has the Minister seen estimates utilised by the Reserve Bank for the November 2018 Monetary Policy Statement that assumed KiwiBuild will deliver only 7000 to 14000 additional homes by July 2022 between a quarter and a half of the number of houses he is targeting?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I don't accept those estimates.Hon Judith Collins: Is he aware that the Reserve Bank November forecast remains consistent with the forecast from Treasury that he criticised in May this year as being done by kids in Treasury completely disconnected from reality"?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I'm far more interested in how many young Kiwi families we get into homes rather than the level of residential investment that is modelled by those agencies.Hon Judith Collins: Does he stand by his statement in May this year that "I agree with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that Treasury's forecast is wrong." and does he now also view the Reserve Bank numbers as wrong?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It's always wise to agree with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance.Hon Judith Collins: Does he still believe that Treasury "is disconnected from reality" when its views on KiwiBuild targets have now been echoed by the Reserve Bank?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well I sometimes find myself agreeing with Treasury but much of the time I don't.Hon Judith Collins: When he confirmed his KiwiBuild targets did he consider how he would increase the capacity in the construction industry rather than simply displacing the private sector as the Reserve Bank believes he has done?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well we've always acknowledged the scale of the challenges that we inherited. We are 71000 homes short. We've inherited a building and construction industry that is locked in low productivity and already at capacity. There's a shortage of skilled tradespeople because of a failure to invest in our workforce. We have a planning system that restricts development instead of encouraging it and a broken system for financing infrastructure. In order to deliver our KiwiBuild targets we are tackling all of those obstacles that we inherited.Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I note that that was quite a long answer but my question was "When the Minister confirmed the KiwiBuild targets did he consider that he would need to increase the capacity in the building industry?" I don't believe he's addressed that.SPEAKER: And the member I think also talked about displacement didn't she? And he certainly addressed that part of the question and that's all he has to do."