10. Question No. 10—HousingNICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 10—Housing10. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister of Housing: Can she confirm that neither the final design nor the criteria for the Housing Acceleration Fund have been decided on by Cabinet and by what date will that scheme result in a single new house being built? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): With the announcement this week that we've secured $3.8 billion for the Housing Acceleration Fund two months ahead of the Budget we can begin engagement with stakeholders about the next steps alongside working with Kāinga Ora on accelerating their large-scale projects. As I made clear to the member yesterday I'll be taking the final design and criteria for the fund to Cabinet by the end of June but in-principle decisions about the fund have already been made and work is well under way to understand the pipeline of projects that could be funded. In answer to the second part of the question as I also outlined to the member yesterday the intent of the fund is to create build-ready land for new housing and investments will begin to be made in the second half of this year. I expect to see new houses enabled by this infrastructure under construction in 2022. Nicola Willis: Why is it that despite having 2367 Government housing officials working for her she has failed to publish anything about how the fund will work beyond this one-sided piece of A4 paper? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: All the documents that sit behind this in a substantial body of work that sits behind this work have been proactively released. I suggest the member reads them because she's clearly confused. Meanwhile on this side of the House we're still waiting to see a single press release from the Opposition about it. Hon Grant Robertson: What lessons did the Minister learn from previous Government attempts to invest in the infrastructure side that underpins housing? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: While we were doing the work to put together this fund we certainly looked at previous infrastructure funding attempts. In particular as a group of Ministers we took good notice of the Housing Infrastructure Fund that was launched under the previous Government. It was around a quarter of the size. It was only going to be administered as repayable loans to councils who already were reaching their debt ceiling but one of the things that we were most interested in about this and we were keen not to replicate was that this funding was never tied to any agreement by councils or developers to develop the land for housing. One of the things that we did note: this was launched in 2016 the first project for the fund was announced a year later in July 2017 with the first funding approved another year later in June 2018 and not a single project has been completed to date. Nicola Willis: Why does the Government need yet another three months to finalise this idea yet it was able to progress 50 pages of new tax law within three days? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Because we certainly don't want to replicate the debacle that the previous Government did with the Housing Infrastructure Fund—not a single project completed to date. Nicola Willis: What is the basis of her claim on Monday that this scheme will result in 80000 to 130000 houses being built and why is this any more believable than the Government's back-of-the-car promise to build 100000 KiwiBuild homes? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think if the member does take the time to read the documentation that sits behind this what she will see is that there is quite detailed modelling of the number of houses that may be enabled: 80000 to 100000. Furthermore specifics are given around the large-scale project land that will be there in terms of the 18000 of State-enabled houses and a further 11000 of market houses. And as for the swipe re KiwiBuild as I say to that member frequently we'll put our 794 houses against their 100 affordable houses over nine years any day of the week. Nicola Willis: Does the Minister understand there are shovel-ready community housing projects ready to go up and down the country and why won't she use Government money to get spades in the ground building those houses tomorrow? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: That member needs to decide: does she want buy-ins or does she not? She seems to criticise them when Kāinga Ora do them. I have outlined to that member on a number of occasions the programme of work we have under way with community housing providers. I am not prepared to see the 77 buy-in rate we have seen from community housing providers over the last two years. I know that member has an aversion to building houses because that is the party that she belongs to. SPEAKER: Order! Order! I'm just going to caution the member about ascribing that sort of motive to a member.Nicola Willis: Point of order Mr Speaker. I seek leave for the Minister to table the extensive documentation—SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Order! Look the member has been around these buildings for a very long time. I'm considering whether I should—[Interruption] Right the Hon Simon Bridges—it must be Thursday again is it? [Interruption] Well I'm speaking. One of us speaks at a time and when I'm standing up it's me. Hon Simon Bridges: I was having a chat—I wanted a chat with my friend. SPEAKER: You were speaking—no it might be my new hearing aid but I can hear the member right up here. So he needs to learn—Hon Simon Bridges: Turf me then. SPEAKER: No. I know the member wants to go—that's the problem. He wants to go every Thursday and I'm just wondering whether I should reward him or not. I think I'm going to punish him by making him stay here until the end of question time. Going back to Nicola Willis' point I think she knows she's being disorderly. If she does it again she will suffer the consequences. Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order Mr Speaker. I think what my colleague was really asking was that if the Minister has relied on some documentation for the answer and I think it may not have been worded in the way it should be. SPEAKER: Sorry if your colleague really thought that she would have done it. Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well no—SPEAKER: No she's been around a very long time Mr Brownlee. She knows how to do it and I think that when she asked for a big pile of documentation and she looks at what the Minister's quoting from even that would be disorderly. Hon Gerry Brownlee: You reckon so? SPEAKER: I do. Hon Dr Nick Smith: 386.SPEAKER: Dr Smith do you want to have a go?Dr Nick Smith: I seek under Standing Order—I don't think you think that ministerial accountability is very important. The Minister has said that there is a heap of documents. Standing Order 386 says that where a Minister quotes documents relating to public affairs a member may by point of order require the Minister to table the documents. SPEAKER: OK the member will sit down. I saw the Minister with a very small number of sheets of paper in her hand. I think even the member's imagination wouldn't call that a heap of documents—all right? Hon Dr Nick Smith: That's what she claimed—that's what she said. SPEAKER: I'm going to ask the member: was she quoting from an official document? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: No. SPEAKER: Well that was pretty clear.