Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I want to speak to Vote Social Housing and make some comments about housing policy. First I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee under the able chairmanship of Gareth Hughes for the excellent work that the committee did during Estimates.Our strong sense is that the New Zealand public want the Government to fix the housing crisis. They want us to get on with it and build houses. This is our first Budget. It is the largest investment in housebuilding ever in New Zealand history. It's a foundational Budget. It's our first step in building our way out of the national housing crisis. We have a plan to tackle the national housing crisis right across the continuum of housing need. And I want to talk about that plan. We're working hard to end homelessness and increase public housing. The other theme that came out of the Estimates hearings in Vote Social Housing was that this Government is finally funding programmes that the previous Government talked about but never actually put up the money to properly fund.Now the centrepiece of this Budget's housing policy is that we are building a net additional 6400 public houses over the next four years—a net additional 6400. Now I want you to contrast that funded commitment—a net additional 6400 State- and community-provided homes—with the record of the former Government who reduced the number of State houses over nine years in office—a net reduction of 6000 houses and if you take into account community homes a net reduction of 1500 public houses over nine years in the middle of a housing crisis.Now we heard a lot from the members opposite about how they were going to build all these extra houses. The fourth-term National Government would have been an amazing thing to see because they were going to do all of these things. They promised the world after nine years in office when they reduced the amount of public housing—they reduced the amount of public housing. Apparently in the fourth term they were going to reverse all that and build thousands of extra houses. Well it took a change of Government to get a Government that actually put the money up to fund these promises.This Government is investing $4 billion—$4 billion—to increase the number of State houses by 6400 and upgrade and improve the existing housing stock. We are also upgrading through regulation every rental property in this country by passing the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act and setting decent insulation standards—not the half-baked ones that the previous Government did but proper insulation standards—plus a requirement for a fixed-model affordable heating source and also standards on draught-stopping drainage and weathertightness. These are real healthy home standards that have been passed into law and Housing New Zealand is now spending about $100 million improving every one of its properties including putting a heat pump in all of them. So that is the difference. That is a serious commitment to healthy homes.The Estimates hearing also focused quite a lot on tenancy management issues for Housing New Zealand and that's an area where we've seen a whole different approach from this Government—a more compassionate and tenant-centred approach. Over the last nine years Housing New Zealand—our public housing organisation—was stripped of its social mandate systematically by the former Government. When I became the housing Minister I met Housing New Zealand staff that told me they were doing pastoral care work with tenants on the weekend because they had been told that it wasn't their job to do it. Now under our Government it is the job of Housing New Zealand tenancy managers to do that pastoral care work. We have brought compassion and kindness back to the administration of public housing in this country.We also pulled the plug on the hysteria around methamphetamine contamination in public housing that was actively stirred up by that Government. They allowed the lack of a decent scientific standard to mean that Housing New Zealand over the last four years wasted the best part of $100 million on decontamination work that never needed to happen. At the same time private landlords were making insurance claims of on average $25 million a year for methamphetamine contamination most of which never needed to be done because of the total failure of political leadership under the former Government. It took us a few weeks in office to commission Sir Peter Gluckman to do that report and sweep away the moral hysteria that had been allowed to be whipped up under the former Government. That has all changed under this Government.Now we know that we need to do more. We've inherited the legacy of nine years of housing crisis that was allowed to spin out of control. That is why the housing register the waiting list for public housing is now bigger than it's ever been before. I found it amusing to hear the member Louise Upston earlier in this debate blaming a Government that's been in office for nine months for the legacy of a housing crisis that was allowed to get out of control for nine years. That shows a gall that frankly I find amazing—and admirable in some ways actually.The register is now the highest it's been—8108 in April and the figures are going up every month. We know that the hidden homeless that were reported on by the housing stocktake that we commissioned in our first few weeks in office—we know that the true scale of homelessness has been supressed for too long. We know that now there is a Government that cares a Government that welcomes people to come forward and get the help that they need those figures will continue to get worse before they get better.In Budget 2018 we committed an extra $100 million over and above the baseline funding for Housing First and emergency and transitional housing—an extra $100 million.Chris Bishop: Where is it in the Hutt?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We are rolling out Housing First in the Hutt in Wellington in Tauranga in Hamilton in Auckland in Whangarei in Napier and Hastings—the world-acclaimed approach to dealing with chronic homelessness. We have also finally funded the commitment that the former Government made to roll out 2200-odd emergency and transitional housing places that they promised but never funded properly. They also didn't fund the front-line staff needed to manage that programme. So we funded all of those things and we've in fact rolled out several hundred extra transitional housing places. That was our commitment to seriously tackling homelessness as part of the winter 2018 package. It's long overdue in this country that we put in place a decent safety net.I want to take the remaining minute and a bit that I've got to talk about some of the wider housing and urban development issues that this Government is tackling that really come under the building and construction part of this debate and I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa who as Minister for Building and Construction is leading a really ambitious programme of workforce and skills development reforming the whole product certification scheme and all of the building regulatory framework that we need to put in place to ensure that our KiwiBuild policy is successful.The other big enablers of the KiwiBuild policy are tackling the systemic problems that have caused the housing crisis and the fact that we are 71000 houses short at the moment as a result of the negligence and drift of the last nine years. We are reforming the financing of infrastructure that will allow our towns and cities to grow. We are freeing up the planning system to allow our cities to grow up and to grow out. We are putting in place an urban development authority that will lead large-scale urban development projects that will build not just housing but whole communities. These are the system-wide fixes to the housing crisis.