Henare PeeniHon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I want to begin my contribution today first with an apology to the good member from East Coast Bays for causing any offence that I have. I want to apologise to her because I have huge respect for her. Secondly I want to be unapologetically proud of the housing policy that we have announced very recently. Four weeks ago I stood in front of the Māori Housing Conference. The Māori Housing Conference was made up of whānau iwi and hapū. They are made up of community housing providers who know the pain of our people the pain of our people through homelessness through the inability to be able to secure tenure for rent the inability to even be able to aspire towards owning a home. They were rather confronting stories. They confronted myself and a number of my colleagues—the Hon Megan Woods the Hon Willie Jackson the Hon Marama Davidson—and they made it quite clear that in order to do something to solve this crisis for Māori people we had to do something aspirational. Yesterday that happened. I am proud of the work that the Hon Grant Robertson and the Hon Megan Woods have done to shift the dial for homeownership for my people—the Māori people. I can tell you that I have a nephew who's fresh out of university just qualified as a teacher. He's looking for a job by the way and I said I know the Minister of Education but I digress. He rang me yesterday to say that he is extremely proud of the announcements. Why? Because he and his partner can aspire towards owning a home—aspire towards owning a home. Here is a young 23-year-old Māori male who has been written off if you look at the statistics amongst Māori and Pacific people. He said Uncle this is awesome. I can now aspire to getting a good job and owning a home and raising a family." And I cried for my nephew. Why? Because for many of our young people that dream has been ripped away. Over years and years—decades in fact—of poor policy of a lack of houses and those effects have fallen squarely on the shoulders of Māori and Pacific people.I'm super-proud. Why? Because when I spoke to those housing providers at the wānanga they made it quite clear to us that they have the whenua. And the number one barrier to building houses for their people was quite clear: it was infrastructure. Iwi are already partnering with local council. They have made it clear that in partnership we can build homes for our people. The biggest barrier was infrastructure. Yesterday's announcement allows off the top of my head from that conference over a dozen projects now to be in the pipeline ready to build homes for Māori whānau—right across the country not just in Tāmaki-makau-rau where the need is acute but also in regions like the Hawke's Bay Te Tai Rāwhiti Gisborne Tai Tokerau Taranaki—all those places where we know we have families living in cow sheds. We do not want that any more and yesterday's policy is a step in the right direction.The Minister of Finance in his contribution today also said "Let's not just pin it all on that; let's look towards more opportunities to do better." He said it in his speech—that looking towards May we will be looking for more opportunities to support Māori housing providers to support iwi and to support hapū to be able to develop and build homes for their people. I'm excited for that opportunity and I along with my colleagues look forward to working with him.One of the other things that was highlighted by the Minister of Housing and of course the Minister of Finance was the announcement yesterday also includes whenua Māori and papakāinga. That's important because one of the biggest barriers was the belief amongst developers council and our people that whenua Māori has far too many fish-hooks to allow us to build homes. Yesterday's announcement removes those fish-hooks. It allows us to consider whenua Māori to build papakāinga for our people.One of the other barriers that was raised with me was the lack of workforce—for example in Hastings they're resourcing their workforce from Taupō and Wellington. That clearly isn't good enough. We have families there who are looking for work looking for opportunities. The apprenticeship scheme that this Government has rolled out has been hugely successful and we look forward to supporting it and yesterday's housing policy certainly did that.In conclusion on behalf of my Māori caucus colleagues of which there are a large number we know the pain that our people have been suffering with respect to housing and collectively we want to acknowledge the hard work of the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Finance to recognise this challenge and we want to work collaboratively with them with iwi with hapū and whānau to solve the crisis. And the only way we can do that is through partnership and building our way out of it."