Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour and a privilege to rise and make a contribution to the Social Development and Housing Sector part of the appropriations debate. Can I start by just acknowledging the great work of our Minister for Social Development the Hon Anne Tolley in this space. She is totally committed to the young people of New Zealand and to the vulnerable young people of New Zealand making a difference in their lives and being aspirational for them so that they expect what every Kiwi kid expects—a great upbringing. If I can reflect on the last week I attended the Grey Power meeting in North Canterbury. There were 200 senior citizens who turned up to that meeting. I was able to have a talk to our superannuitants in North Canterbury. It is fair to say that in North Canterbury our superannuitants are fairly buoyant. I know the member across the House from Waimakariri will be down there tomorrow just to touch base in North Canterbury. They are thinking that things are looking good. It was great in these appropriations and in Budget 2016 to see an extra allocation of $41 million for the SuperGold card. When you look back it was not that long ago in 2008 when there were only a few hundred services available on the SuperGold card. That has been expanded now to about 12500. That is great for superannuitants across the country but of course in my home patch of Waimakariri they are grateful for that. It was interesting over the adjournment to see a quite confusing press release from Phil Twyford the Opposition spokesperson on housing. He has a sort of scattergun approach to putting out press releases. He put one out about the temporary housing village in Kaiapoi—that it should be used for homelessness. Well I suppose possibly that is a good idea. One detractor from that is that it is on council land and I am sure it can do what it wants with that. Secondly the temporary housing was sold to community providers. But most importantly someone wrote in to the paper—because Phil Twyford said it could address the waiting list in Christchurch—and said: When will Phil Twyford realise that Kaiapoi is not in Christchurch?". So it just goes to show that you can have this scattergun approach but really you need to drill down and understand the need. In the "Waimak" we have one of the lowest percentages of people on the waiting list per head of population. When you look at the $41 million that was invested in Budget 2016 for this appropriation it is much needed and it will do great work in that space. But what we have got to remember is that it is about ensuring that there is housing provision along the whole housing continuum whether that be community provision State housing or private tenure. I met with Housing New Zealand. We in the "Waimak" in North Canterbury are going to have more Housing New Zealand houses post-earthquake than we did pre-earthquake. A large part of that is because this Government fought very hard to free up land in Canterbury to increase supply to equal demand. It is as simple as that. When you look at annual house price inflation "Waimak" is the third - fastest-growing electorate in New Zealand and annual house price inflation is only 2 or 3 percent. In Canterbury it is about 5 percent. Then you get the double-digit annual house price inflation that we are seeing nationally. I think that Waimakariri is a good example that we can roll out to the rest of the country. By freeing up land it increases supply and equals demand. That is around private but also community housing and State housing as well. I just want to touch on something that has been missing in this debate to balance it up. It is the acknowledgment that we spend $25 billion a year on social services—about $12 billion or $13 billion on superannuation $7.5 billion on benefits and a couple of billion on student loans—but the reason we can do that is that we have such a strong and stable economy. We are back in surplus. There is very low unemployment high workforce participation low core Crown debt and a GDP growth rate that is the envy of all other OECD countries. We can have the most ambitious social policies which the Opposition will pitch up to us but the reality is that if you cannot pay for it it is all pie in the sky. The reality is that because of the good management of this Government we can spend $25 billion a year under the social services appropriation. I would like to take the time to acknowledge our finance Minister and all the great work he does. Thank you."