Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): What a pleasure it is to follow on from the Minister who presided over the biggest housing crisis that this country has ever seen. His main criticism seemed to be that this Government is planning on doing more than one thing at a time and I can tell that Minister that this Government will be delivering better health services as well as delivering a foreign service that is capable of building and enhancing our country's reputation on the world stage. Of course it's understandable to hear that from that Minister because he was incapable of doing the one thing that the people of New Zealand needed him to do which was to build the affordable homes that our families lack so badly. At the end of that Government's time in office the homeownership rate in this country was the lowest since 1951—that is the record of that member and that is the record of that Government which we have thankfully replaced.I am very pleased to be here just one week away from the new Labour-led Government's first Budget in office and what a Budget it is going to be. We're going to rebuild the social the economic and the infrastructure foundations of New Zealand that have been left so tattered and so underfunded under that previous Government. I just want to speak about a few of those important foundations.The first one is having foundations for a transport system that finally gets Auckland / Tāmaki-makau-rau our biggest city moving after years of gridlock and neglect under that Government. What a great thing it was to see the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and the Minister of Housing and Urban Development and Transport Phil Twyford standing up today only six months after this Government was sworn into office with a fully-funded $28 billion infrastructure plan to get Auckland moving and that sits alongside a transport plan for all of our country.We're going to invest to make sure that we have safer roads to get the record road toll down that was left to drift upwards under that Government. We're going to invest in our regions because they deserve safe roads good regional rail and proper transport networks as well. We're going to invest in urban growth because unlike that party over there that has such a myopic conservative and miserable vision of our cities we believe in investing in urban growth so that we have international cities that can compete on the world scene and that have high-quality public transport. We are going to get Auckland moving.I just want to add one thing on that note: one member on that side of the House who I haven't heard any criticism of the light rail plan from is of course the Hon Nikki Kaye. I suspect that she is about the one member in that caucus who actually understands some of the urban growth issues that Auckland faces as the MP for Auckland Central and I look forward to her contribution and seeing whether she rubbishes the light rail scheme as much as her colleagues on that side of the House have today.The Budget next week is going to build the foundations for the health and well-being of all New Zealanders and one of the things that I am most proud of is that this Budget is going to put our kids first. This Government has actually got the spine has actually got the gumption to embed in our Budget targets for child well-being and reducing the stain of child poverty in our country. That is something that grew under that Government over nine years. It's a problem they wished away. It's a problem they wouldn't face up to. It's words that they wouldn't even utter—they couldn't utter the words housing crisis"; they couldn't utter the words "child poverty". This Government says we acknowledge those problems after nine years of neglect and we are going to do something about them and we're going to hold ourselves to account to them as well.The health and well-being foundations that we are rebuilding have been mentioned as well by colleagues like Clare Curran who's pointed to the $1.5 billion investment in Dunedin Hospital. We believe that people no matter what part of this country they are living in deserve access to modern First World first-class health services—that is the ambition of this Government. Yet as I sat in the Finance and Expenditure Committee with some of my colleagues in the Chamber this morning and we read through and heard from Treasury on their four-yearly Investment Statement we heard that 19 percent of the buildings in our health sector are rated by Treasury—by Treasury themselves not by the Labour Party; by Treasury who have looked at this independently—as not being fit for purpose. Through our investments in health and education we are going to undo that record of neglect as well.Finally I want to say that we are going to rebuild the foundations so that every single New Zealander has a warm dry and decent place to sleep. We've invested already $100 million in emergency housing to make sure that we don't have the scandal of homeless people dying on park benches again this winter because of neglect and homelessness and we are going to work to make sure that every single family in this beautiful country has a decent place to live. We're proud to be rebuilding those foundations. Mr Speaker thank you."