Mackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15771. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): That was an extraordinary contribution from Mr Todd McClay. He spent the better part of his speech talking about himself and thanking people. You were not winning an Academy Award Mr McClay. It was meant to be a debate on the Prime Minister’s statement but most of the first part of the speech was talking about himself and all the people who have supported him throughout his career and thanking them.The take-home messages from Mr McClay’s speech were these. One I want to justify tax cuts for the wealthy. His first message was that tax cuts for the wealthy which overwhelmingly go to people who do not need them and did not ask for them are good for this country. That was his first message. His second message was “Do not support children.” He said it is a bad idea to ensure that every kid in this country gets the best start in life. This is coming from the party that taxed paper boys on their income. We know that National does not want to support children—those little bludgers—it just wants to tax them on their paper routes. National does not want to see a Government that is going to take the tax cuts that were given to the wealthiest New Zealanders and distribute them to the most important people in this country who are our future: the children of this country. His final message was that you know what everything is great. Everything is fine.Well you know what Mr McClay? Everything is not fine. Everything is not great in New Zealand at the moment. The National Party might think that just by saying the Crosby/Textor playbook lines over and over again they are going to fool New Zealanders into thinking that everything is great but every time that Kiwi families open the power bill or go to the supermarket or have to pay their rent they know that things are not great. They know that this Government is not listening—that it arrogantly just wants to tell them that they are wrong. Do you know what? In the big end of town things probably are pretty good at the moment but most New Zealanders are struggling to keep their heads above water and too many are going backwards.I want to talk about a young single mum I met who came to tell me her story in my office. She said to me that she was on the DPB. She is trying to do good by her kids so her bills are paid automatically—they come out before she sees the money hitting her account. But then one week that did not happen so one week she ended up with a whole lot of money in her account. And she got a rush of blood to the head—she is human—and she spent it. She should not have. She rang the Budget Advisory Service because she was so upset. She knew that she had to pay it back. She did not know how she was going to do it. She was scared that she was going to get into trouble.The Budget Advisory Service staff went to see her. When they went around there they were expecting that she had spent the money on alcohol or cigarettes. Do you know what she had spent that money on? She had spent it on non-perishable food. She had filled her pantry with that money. She said to me that she knew that she should not have done it but she said that she just wanted that security—to feel that security that she had not felt for a long time of knowing where the next couple of weeks’ meals were going to come from. And she said that she wanted to say to her kids: “Tonight you get to eat until you are full.”When did food become a luxury item in this country? Because I tell you what it is under this Government.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish!MOANA MACKEY: In New Zealand food should not be a luxury item and for too many families it is. Nick Smith can say “Rubbish!” but I was moved by that young woman who came to see me because it shows that New Zealand has changed. And it has not changed for the better. Todd McClay and Simon Bridges can laugh but the fact is that that is the reality out there for too many of our families. That is the reality outthere for too many of our children and you tell me that $60 a week is not going to help. I tell you that it will and I am proud of that policy. I am proud of that policy.I want to talk a little bit about power prices—a little bit about power prices. Simon Bridges and John Key constantly tell us that power prices are competitive; that power prices are not too high. We know that that simply is not true. We have flattening demand for electricity in this country. We have an over-surplus of generation. We have a collapsed carbon price.Hon Simon Bridges: That’s right and you want to ramp it up. You want to ramp it up on poor Kiwis.MOANA MACKEY: If power prices are not going to go down now Mr Bridges they are never going down. So this side of the House is saying we are going to do something about that. We are going to bring down power prices.What is Simon Bridges’ response to this? That people can go on the website if they have a computer and access to the internet and use the What’s My Number campaign to change power retailers. That is your answer Mr Bridges. Well you know what Mr Bridges? For a lot of families they are lucky—Hon Simon Bridges: Why don’t you just ask me a question in the House?MOANA MACKEY: You do not need to scream at me. I know this is sensitive because you know that you have failed in this area. But most families I deal with are lucky if they can get one electricity retailer to pick them up. The idea that they have a choice Mr Bridges is pure fantasyland la-la stuff and shows how arrogant and out of touch this Minister of Energy and Resources is—just how out of touch the Government is. They are lucky if they can get one power retailer.Most of the difference in power prices actually comes from early payment discounts. That is the big difference. Well an early payment discount does not matter if you cannot pay the bill Mr Bridges. You do not get the early payment discount if you cannot afford to pay the power bill. Oh a little light bulb goes on over his head. So the What’s My Number campaign does nothing for the poorest families in this country. It actually does nothing for many of the middle-class families in this country. But that is this Government’s solution to power prices. That is this Government’s solution.So I want to come on to the issue of housing which my colleague Phil Twyford talked about. I want to talk about social housing a little bit because in the provinces what we used to have is a waiting list of categories A B C and D in declining need. And what this Government did is it said “You know what? Anyone who is category C or D we’re going to kick them off the waiting list. That category no longer exists because they’re not needed.”Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s not true.MOANA MACKEY: That is absolutely true. In the provinces—and I know in Gisborne—80 percent of our waiting list was categories C and D. And it is not that these people are wealthy; it is that the rents on which we base the income-related rents are lower than they are in the cities. So it is not that these people’s incomes are high; it is that the average rent is low. But we do not have enough landlords in provincial New Zealand to meet the need.Hon Simon Bridges: You haven’t been in provincial New Zealand in years.MOANA MACKEY: That is where social housing fills an incredible—I live in Gisborne.Hon Simon Bridges: No you don’t.MOANA MACKEY: Oh for God’s sake! That is how pathetic it is. I do not live in Gisborne when I live in Gisborne. That is what Simon Bridges is choosing to focus on. This is a man who in his electorate had a family living in a tent for 5 weeks. For 5 weeks they were living in a tent. What did you do about that?Hon Simon Bridges: I didn’t know about it.MOANA MACKEY: Nothing. Why do you not just talk about how I do not live in Gisborne? That is how seriously this Government is taking the difficulties facing families in this country.So if I go back to it what happens is we have State houses sitting empty right across New Zealand—3500 houses sitting empty right across New Zealand—while families are living in tents. How does that make sense? We have 4500 people on the Housing New Zealand waiting list and that is ignoring the 5000 people it kicked off categories C and D. This Government’s social housing plan is to kick people off waiting lists stop putting people into houses so it can then pretend that there is no need and then have an excuse to flog the houses off. That is what National did the last time it was in Government so we should not be surprised. We should not be surprised. It hocked off nearly 13000 State houses in the 1990s.When we were in Government we managed to rebuild nearly 8000 houses and that was despite the fact that we were going through a building boom and you could not get a builder for love or money because we had to rebuild that housing stock. We brought income-related rents back. We started the maintenance programme that had stopped under the National Government. You know what? In 9 years we did not get to repair all the damage wreaked by 9 years of a National Government—we did not. And had we won again in 2008 we would have continued to repair the damage done to social housing by the 1990s National Government.But unfortunately all we are seeing is history repeating itself. It is dressed up differently. Crosby/Textor has put a different spin on it but it is the same old Tory policies—kick people out of social housing. They do not deserve to be there. Kick them while they are down rather than using social housing and seeing social housing as the one opportunity that Governments have to provide security in a family’s life. We do not get to do it with any other intervention that we have as Governments. But with housing we do. We can give people a home. We can give them a community. When there is social housing we can connect them to the support that they need. Because let us be honest Housing New Zealand is often the landlord of last resort—it is. But if we just keep kicking people out of social housing where do they go? They do not disappear. They do not suddenly vanish and not be a problem any more. They just become someone else’s problem and we never ever get to the root of that problem.You see this with what you saw in Gisborne with an 80-year-old man who had a stroke. He was living in a Housing New Zealand house. Housing New Zealand approved his nephew moving in to look after the house do the maintenance and look after the gardens while he was in hospital. Well the nephew planted some dope on the property. The police came in. There was an investigation. The 80-year-old man was completely incapacitated after his stroke. He got evicted from his Housing New Zealand house because this lot are so inflexible when it comes to housing that they could not see that it was not that elderly gentleman’s fault. He had been in that home for 50 years. It was his home. Housing New Zealand staff locally were distraught that they had to evict him but they said that there was no wriggle room. They were no longer allowed to take—thank you Mr Heatley for that by the way—the personal circumstances of those tenants into consideration when making these decisions. That is the New Zealand we now live in. That is going to change this year when we elect a Labour Government.