Sio William: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: General Debate[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:652. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere):Thank you for the opportunity. I do agree with the earlier speaker that there were some serious issues debated earlier at the beginning of this parliamentary session. However the public listening in to this debate would not have known that it was serious given the way the backbenchers of the National Party chatted grumbled and tried to interfere when Opposition members were making contributions.There is another serious matter that I want to raise and it has to do with the great house sale—the State house sale by this particular Government. Only the other week I heard Dr Shane Reti during his maiden speech make a comment that resonated with me. He made reference to the fact that he grew up in a State house. The point that I thought was important and I am not sure whether the rest of the House noted it was that he talked about the need for us to take responsibility for those following behind us. Unlike Dr Shane Reti there are members of this House who do not feel that way—who have a similar experience who had the advantage of being supported through a State house but who now in the positions they are in do not want to pass on that support to the rest of the population. I also heard Dr Lance O’Sullivan another Northlander say that when his parents could not provide for him his country supported him and now as a result of that he spends all of his days giving back to the community.That is unlike what I have heard from the Prime Minister who is somebody who grew up in a State house; the Minister Paula Bennett who grew up in a State house; Alfred Ngaro who I have no doubt grew up in a State house; and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga who grew up in a State house. It seems they have now taken a stance that it was OK for our country to support them but they have taken another stance that they do not want—[Interruption] Well that is probably because he is named Ngaro which is Pukapukan for somebody who is lost somebody who is forgotten. He has forgotten that the rest of New Zealand supported him and he has now forgotten that he has a duty to support those of us coming through who are less fortunate.There is a waiting list of 6000—more than 6000 people who are waiting to get into a State house because they cannot afford to pay the market rent and because they are currently living in someone’s garage sharing a relative’s living room in a boarding house in an emergency house or as we saw the other day living in a car or in a caravan park. These people shower at the public toilets. They use sports club facilities to get dressed and prepare their children to go to school. They do not have regular incomes because one week they will have a 40-hour week which they are paid for and another week they will not have any hours because of the casualisation of the work they are in.That is the reality. We currently have a housing crisis that this Government refuses to acknowledge. It refuses to acknowledge that there is child poverty. We do not hear Government members using that particular word any more. They continue to say something else to try to cover the situation the crisis we are in.Prior to the election a young woman came to my office. Her mother had passed away. There were three of them—she and her two young siblings. She was 18 years of age with a young sibling aged 6 and another one of 3 years of age. Housing New Zealand was determined to evict them because the house was in their mother’s name. These three young people could not live with a relative because the auntie already had a full house. Prior to the election we managed to convince Housing New Zealand to find sustainable accommodation for them. After the election guess what? Instead of giving them the proper notice Housing New Zealand then said that they had to move out to the private sector. They had to find—and this is a quote from the official’s mouth—“sustainable accommodation”. I could not convince those officials that these three young children needed a house to live in. In fact what they said to me was that it is against Government policy to house this group of young people who could not live on their own because their parent had died. So guess what? The Government knows there is a housing crisis but it does not care. It does not care one iota.