Mackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Mackey Moana: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16693] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a real concern if that speech is an example of the kind of thinking that is sitting around the Government Cabinet table in New Zealand. A Minister has just risen and said that ordinary voters will not support having to pay more for an emissions trading scheme. That Minister sat in a Cabinet that pushed tens of billions of dollars of costs away from the polluters of greenhouse gases and on to ordinary Kiwi families who are already struggling. He is a member who made the ordinary voters of New Zealand pay more so that the polluters pay less. I say to Mr Coleman that he might want to take that comment back. 
The previous speaker also talked about debt. Thank God we had a Labour Government that paid down Government debt instead of giving the tax cuts that the National Party screamed for for 9 years. We are not in the same position as Portugal Ireland and Greece. Do members know why? It is because they have Government debt of between 80 percent and 144 percent of GDP. What does New Zealand have? We have Government debt of 25 percent. Most of our debt sits in the private sector—90 percent of it is in the private sector not in the Government sector. So to say that New Zealand is in the same category as those countries which have incredibly high Government debt is misleading. As Selwyn Pellett said it is mischievous at best and dishonest at worst. But if that is what our Government actually thinks then we have no hope. The Government will be trying to fix problems that do not exist—the wrong problems—and as we know it is all a smokescreen for the Government to do what it wants to do all the time which is to slash Government services and make ordinary Kiwi families pay more and get less from their Government. 
The Prime Minister’s speech had no vision it had no plan and more and more I am starting to think that being Prime Minister is just another thing that John Key wants to tick off his bucket list. There was only a cursory mention of housing in his speech. I think that is very unfortunate because housing could have played a very important role in this Government’s response to the recession. 
I will talk a little about the state of the nation in housing 2¼ years on from the election of this National-led Government. The Minister of Housing Phil Heatley commissioned a report last year. He received it in February and released it a few months later. The report told him that New Zealand currently is short of 70000 dwellings—that was in April 2010 when the report was released. The report from the Department of Building and Housing which was released in September-October last year also pointed out that we will have a shortfall of another 15000 houses in the next 5 years and another 10000 in the decade following. Minister Phil Heatley urgently responded—urgently—in January of this year to the Department of Building and Housing report that came out in the middle of last year. His response was that he would send a pretty strong message to local government that it needed to have more dense housing developments. That is true but it is certainly not nearly enough to address the incredible housing shortage. 
An estimated 20000 New Zealanders are already homeless or in inadequate housing. There is enormous pressure on State housing which is still there from the 1990s when the then National Government hocked off nearly 13000 State houses mostly to its developer mates. That Government carried out no modernisation whatsoever. In 9 years of a Labour Government we had to try to repair that damage. We had to try to rebuild the housing stocks. I pay tribute to all the Labour housing Ministers at that time who despite a housing boom managed to add another 8000 houses to the State housing stock in order to address the shortage and to carry out urgently needed maintenance work at the same time. We would have loved to do more had the money been available but of course Labour was left with an economy in crisis after the last National Government so we did exactly what we could. 
The State house waiting list with Housing New Zealand Corporation is nearing 11000 families and we know that there are more out there who would be on the waiting list if they felt they had a genuine chance of getting a State house. The Government in last year’s Budget slashed the money for the acquisition of State housing and maintenance of State housing by 80 percent. Housing New Zealand Corporation has been told that it has to build new houses out of savings within baseline because there is no more money for State housing in New Zealand. 
We are facing a crisis in the rental market. Rents are up by 25 percent in some parts of Auckland and that is in 1 year. There has been a 25 percent jump in rents in 1 year and rents across the country are up by 9.5 percent. Auckland listings on TradeMe dropped 24 percent compared with the same time last year and had an 8 percent increase in demand at the same time. I thank my colleague Jacinda Ardern who will win the seat of Auckland Central because she is on to this issue. She is working with me on the issue of housing in central Auckland while the current National member is part of a Government that is sitting on its hands and doing nothing about the rental crisis. The supply of rental properties is also down in the Bay of Plenty by 22 percent and in Northland by 14 percent. 
When it comes to housing affordability prices have dropped by only about 5 percent since their peak which means that a first home is still out of reach realistically for most of those who want to get into home ownership. A recent survey showed that housing affordability in New Zealand when compared with income was on a par with New York. In Auckland and Tauranga housing inaffordability is on a par with New York yet this Government does nothing. 
We have a building sector in crisis. Jennian Homes cannot remember a quieter time. The number of dwelling consents issued in December was the lowest since records began in 1965. We are losing skilled workers overseas. What was the Minister’s response to this? He stated: “It was a pre-recession issue and it will be a post-recession issue.” In other words he will not do anything. He then said that building activity will rebound. But of course as the chief executive of the Registered Master Builders Federation Warwick Quinn stated: “When the bounce comes … if we keep losing capacity as a result of the low building activity now we won’t be in a position to respond properly.” We will not be in a position to respond properly because we will not have the skilled workers and that will only exacerbate the housing shortage. 
The Minister of Housing has tinkered around the edges. He is shifting assets around. He is not doing anything to add to the housing stock. The tragedy is that we had a real opportunity to make housing a key part of the recovery plan for New Zealand. Why would we have done this? We would have added houses to the housing stock and reduced the housing shortage. We would have kept people in work we would have saved our residential building industry we would be purchasing local products in local stores and keeping local businesses afloat and we would have been stimulating our economy. That is what we could have been doing over the last 2¼ years of a National Government. Instead all we have seen is the building industry crisis worsen the rental sector crisis worsen and a Government that is sitting on its hands on all these issues. 
We have heard a lot of talk about Australia. We were going to catch up with Australia at one point. The Government has stopped talking about that quite so much now. Let us look at a country that did include housing as part of its economic stimulus plan after the global financial crisis hit. The Federal Government in Australia came out with a social housing initiative. Do members know how much money it put towards this initiative? It put in A$5.638 billion over 3 years for social housing in Australia. That Government planned to build 20000 more social houses and upgrade 70000 dwellings. It has actually exceeded that I have been told. It has exceeded the number of dwellings it has been able to upgrade. That was back in 2008-09 and as of 30 November last year of the 20000 homes that were part of the Australian Government’s economic stimulus package 18000 are already under way and being built. 
One does not need to accept this from me; accept this from some of the builders in Australia. We can look at Monash Victoria where affordable housing and social housing was part of the Government’s stimulus plan. Holden Peel Builders which is a local building industry in Monash said that this time last year it had no work booked for the year ahead. Now thanks to that Government’s investment in housing it has work locked in for the next 18 months. Its company director was asking himself where the work would come from. He said: “Because of this project instead of laying blokes off we’re putting on … new apprentices.” He also said that all the guys who work for them are from the local area. He said: “If you believed the press [for us it was going to be] financial Armageddon.” Now he says that they are feeling good and employing people. They are not laying off workers they are building houses and they are stimulating the economy. Maybe that plan is why Australia did not go into recession despite what the Minister of Finance said yesterday.