Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22002] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Housing) 
: 
 I shall begin my comments this evening by saying something about the previous Minister of Housing Mr Mark Gosche who spoke earlier in the debate and pointed out how important it was to have introduced a measure such as income-related rents. One of the priorities when we came back into power in 1999-2000 was to introduce that policy and I want to pay Mr Gosche the compliment of saying that he drove that policy through rapidly. Although some of us do not have I imagine a great deal to do with the State-housing parts of our electorates those of us who have would have seen an immediate difference. Even Mr Maurice Williamson who is smiling over there is happy and knows that even though he is a man who believes that the market should deliver everything absolutely everything he understood that there were certain things that the market was not doing well. This is called what he would recognise as market failure. Housing was not being delivered. So in his electorate income-related rents had the immediate impact of people suddenly having money in their pockets. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I don’t have State houses. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Actually I do understand that Mr Williamson is as out of touch as he appears. He does not have any State housing in his electorate. But for those who do we understand what happened for example with our local schools—the population stabilised. People stayed in their houses. Kids were able to go home and not have to be in an overcrowded setting. Their parents had some money in their pockets. They thought about people such as Maurice Williamson who as part of the National Party never knew anything about those who were poor never did anything about people in those circumstances and never thought about the circumstances that were caused by not having income-related rents. And in 6 short years later of a Labour Government he still has no contact with people who actually have to make a bob each day. 
He himself of course if I remember rightly said he was coming into Parliament for only 9 years and then over his dead body would he stay in Parliament. He must be up to about 18 years by now and we will be pleased to see Maurice Williamson go. I think it is time to release him back into the market any time he wants to return. I think that would be a very good thing to do. 
But I come back to the point of Mr Gosche’s time as the Minister of Housing: that was an amazing step forward for people who were on low incomes to have a house money in their pockets able to be stable in their house and stable in their community. This has had an enormously positive impact on New Zealanders. 
We have just released a book on 100 years of State housing. It is 100 years since we had the first State house in this country. It is interesting to read that book because it shows that time and time again people such as Maurice Williamson have come into power in New Zealand begun to believe that the State did not have to provide State housing—[ 
Interruption 
] I tell Maurice Williamson that it is a symbol of the market—and once again ruined the investment in State housing and it has to be rebuilt by people who understand that the market simply does not always provide for people who cannot afford to buy their own house or afford a market rent. 
That is exactly what we learnt in the 1990s. That is exactly what we are doing at this time—rebuilding the State housing sector because without it we see poverty grow. We see all sorts of problems that grow from poor housing. We see all of the issues that were there when we came back in 1999. 
Let me just say what we have done. First of all we have begun to provide houses again. Thirteen thousand houses were sold. The rest of the stock was on the block to be sold if the National Party had returned. They were sold not to the tenants—not to the people who lived in them—they were sold to anybody else. In many cases that meant that speculators were buying those houses taking them out of the hands of people who were poor and making sure they never returned to those kinds of people. We are rebuilding that stock once again and we will not sell that stock. We have to put ourselves in a situation where people who are in poor circumstances can get hold of a good-quality house. 
Can I also say what the National Party did. It not only sold houses to people who actually did not need them it sold the better stock. So if people go to Auckland for example—and Maurice Williamson would not know this because he does not go near people who are poor—and look at State houses they will find that the houses that were sold were in places that were sunny for example. Houses that were not sold were in places that were not sunny. They are cold. They are damp. They are places that are hard to insulate. That is the kind of stock we have been left with. We are now making sure that not only are we getting stock again but we are building well-designed insulated houses that people can raise families in and feel proud of. 
 I have to say that time and time again I have been to fantastic new State houses that I would be proud to see any New Zealander in. We on this side of the Chamber and I include my colleagues in United Future want to see New Zealanders in houses that we as people who represent government in this country can be proud of. We want to know that those houses will be there to last they are good quality and they are good places to raise children. 
We are also modernising houses all over the country. We are building houses in rural areas. Do people remember that when Labour came into power we were confronted by the fact that people had moved back to places like Northland and their houses were literally burning down? We had the tragedy of children dying in houses in that area. The National Government had done nothing about that. It probably would have sold the candles that people used to light those houses if it could have. We went back into those areas and we have begun to build houses to move houses into those areas and to pay for modernisation pay for basic services like sewerage and water so that people can live again in those kinds of areas. 
One of the most important things too that we have set up is the innovation fund. In my area for example it means Lutheran churches can partner up with Housing New Zealand to get housing together for older New Zealanders and get them housed in decent communities. All over the country now iwi churches and city councils are approaching us and saying that they have land or money or something they can put into a partnership and we can then build more houses to enable New Zealanders to live in decent conditions. 
We have also got back into home ownership. Don Brash says that New Zealanders should not be worried about owning houses. Unfortunately for Don Brash they do. They regard owning a home as an asset they regard it as part of being a Kiwi so we introduced the Mortgage Insurance Scheme to ensure that people who are on lower incomes can buy their houses. Five thousand Kiwis will own their house in any one year from that scheme alone. On top of that we have now introduced the KiwiSaver programme which means that Kiwis will be encouraged to save their money so that they can buy a house and be independent. 
I say to Don Brash that owning a house is the Kiwi dream. That is what New Zealanders believe should be their right and they want the opportunity to do it. I know that Dr Brash on a salary of $500000 a year working for the Reserve Bank was probably able to buy his own house. But other Kiwis who work hard in factories for example and who are on low incomes need to get that step up into independence so they can buy their own houses. The Mortgage Insurance Scheme and KiwiSaver are two practical ways that Kiwis will be able to do exactly that. 
I say to New Zealanders that there will be a very very clear choice at this election. They can have a few dollars of tax cuts in their pockets they can have the Government borrowing again so that interest rates rise or they can continue to invest in good-quality State housing into an innovations programme that builds houses and into programmes that allow New Zealanders to buy their own homes raise their kids in their own homes and have an asset to build up during their life. That is the trade-off. Either we have tax cuts of a few dollars or a continued investment that is transforming the lives of tens of thousands of New Zealanders. I know Mr Chairman that you have to be impartial but I bet even you sitting there would be saying: “I know what I would vote for.”