Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): I would like to first of all thank my cheery friend Erica Stanford on the other side of the House there. We recently took a trip over to the United States of America together on a political exchange and what we did was that we went around and we saw one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods that they have in America. There were people lining the streets. They had no homes but also they had no hope and unfortunately we have communities like that here in New Zealand. Unless we do something really real to turn it around we will be going down the same track that that Government had been on for the last nine years which was allowing the homelessness to happen allowing the lack of hope to continue and growing a problem instead of facing up to the problem and trying to do something about it. So to my friend over there on the Opposition benches I say cheer up my friend because Labour is here and we are going to sort things out. And we're going to do such a good job in our first term that we will be elected to a second term and maybe even a third term as well. So you'd best get comfortable over there on the Opposition benches. I echo the sentiments of our Minister of Finance when he said that it was easy for the previous Government to run a surplus because they didn't pay the bills. They didn't pay the bills. So unfortunately when they talk about all of the promises that we've made yes we have made promises but no we didn't realise that we would have to take 10 steps back to be able to get to what we need and that's exactly what's gone and happened. Slowly the wheels have started falling off the National Party bus—that's right. What's happened is that the bright blue that we've seen for the last nine years has started to become a very very dull grey and that's something that we're going to step up to. Labour are here. We're in a coalition Government with our friends over here in New Zealand First and also our friends over here in the Green Party and we are here to help solve some of the social problems that this previous Government has absolutely neglected. The previous speaker also talked about education and she was talking about how much of a mistake it was that Labour stumped up for free post-secondary education in the first year for those people that are going on to do vocational training or even go to university as well. Now I know she doesn't fully believe that because in fact we went to university together and she was just as much of a fighter for rights—SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask—when I stand up the member resumes his seat. Members cannot say that members do not believe what they say in the House—all right—for very obvious reasons because when you make that accusation you are making an accusation which is much more serious. If a member has said something that they do not believe then they are misleading the House or even lying. TAMATI COFFEY: Thank you for that clarification. What I meant to say was that our tertiary policy is sound. There are plenty of ex-student politicians in this House right now that believe in the prospect of young people going on to further themselves—and their families—to be game-changers by accessing higher education. That was what I was getting at. Let's talk about housing because as I travel around—and I've done quite a bit of travelling in the six months that I've been in this job—what I hear time and time again is the issue of housing and how much the last Government dropped the ball completely on housing. So as I travel around the rohe of the Waiariki which includes Tauranga—which is absolutely bursting at the seams and in real need of some solutions—then I feel sorry for them because unfortunately they weren't served well by the last Government. They spent a lot of money on a very big road and that was good but all these years later and after that big investment Tauranga is still gridlocked. In fact if we don't start sorting out the transport woes of Tauranga very soon they're going to be the Auckland—the gridlocked Auckland—of the future. So we as a Government have to step in there and I'm glad that we've got initiatives on the table to make sure that we're looking after some of our local roads and also looking after the safety of our people on our roads as well. I also want to just talk about some of the work that we are getting on with right? It's not been easy but we in our select committee have been sitting there talking about how we're going to make sure that if you're a New Zealand citizen and you want to buy a New Zealand house you have the right to. We have been committed to banning overseas speculators and that's not been an easy task. We have had to sit there and go through submission after submission but we've come to a very good point where we're ready to very soon report back to the House about that one goal of banning overseas speculators and the reason that we want to do that is so that we can create opportunities for New Zealanders to get themselves on the property ladder. We're hoping that we can create opportunities for getting more State houses into New Zealand and to also help to fix up the homelessness problem which has become terrible in my electorate. As those members are not able to stand here and say this in the House I'm going to stand here and say it: we are going to fix this problem together. Ka pai.