White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Mr Speaker. I have the great privilege—and it was a squeaky lucky privilege—of representing Mt Albert because I have a very very slim majority. I've lived in that area for 32 years so you can imagine how incredibly wonderful it is to be the MP for an area that you have such a strong commitment to and know like the back of your hand. I want to talk today about a couple of things which really I've thought about in terms of the role that I've got in terms of the value that I can really bring to the area. There's this interesting role that you're playing—I sometimes think our role is a bit like an octopus: it's got all these tentacles all these places you can go. One of the big disciplines that you have to bring to the job is making sure you're not just exploring things; you're bringing it back to the hub of what you're doing so that you're actually producing stuff for your community. Because we're in central government there are some things which we can have a big influence on and some where we act much more as guides and leaders and encouragers in our community.So I want to give the House an example of one of the ones where I think that an MP can make a real difference and that's the housing policy in an area. Now one of the things I've become increasingly interested in is long-term rental and that's happening in my community thanks to Simplicity which is a KiwiSaver provider. It is building houses that aren't for ownership; they are for long-term secure rental. Now I have relatives who will never be able to afford to buy a house. I don't come from a family with lots of money and I was lucky enough to buy a house when they were much cheaper. So I have relatives who've never owned a house. If you have long-term rental you have a possibility if you are one of those people to actually have a home not have as my Green colleague was talking about somebody worrying about where you're putting the Blu Tack. What Simplicity do so well is they maintain those houses and they provide that kind of secure rental. There's a huge development going up in Morningside Drive; I think it's 256 houses going in there and there's another one further in the electorate of 56 houses. So this is providing ordinary people with an alternative to ownership.It's actually really really helpful for our economy too because it is allowing people to spend their money in the productive sector. They can put it into their small businesses they can put it into the sharemarket which actually helps us build businesses in New Zealand. Housing is very dubious in terms of what it does if we all invest in housing so long-term rental is a definite part of the solution. We had a whole lot of things when the Labour Party was part of the Government which were to incentivise this and I'd urge the new Government to keep on thinking about new incentives because some of those incentives have been taken away because of recent changes. So it's really really important we keep our eye on this ball because it's important to communities like mine.I want to just briefly touch on some of the other things that make a community great where we might not have the same influence but I certainly recognise the value of them. One is gardens actually. There's a garden called Sanctuary Gardens and there's a big dispute at the moment about it because its land was promised as a garden and there is an issue about whether the land will be used for that purpose because it's in the middle of a housing development. It's something I can't influence in the same way but I can encourage all the parties to think very seriously about the value of that garden to the community because there are people participating in that community and they bring great joy to lots of people those gardens. They allow people to get in there and work in the garden and that's incredibly good for them. It's got an archaeological significance that garden because I've seen some of the things that have come out of it because it's been a gardening spot for apparently a very very long time because it's in perfect soil.I'd also like to talk about the small businesses in the community. They're so important. They give Mt Albert the Mt Albert electorate some of the best food I think in the world. It's a wonderful place for food. It is reasonable it makes our city vibrant and it is punching above its weight. So a shout-out to the small businesses as well. Thank you.