Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Mr Speaker malo ni. Fakafetai lahi lele. It's a pleasure to take a call in the general debate this afternoon. I'd like to first of all commend our Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern for her leadership of our Government. We've been in Government now for 12 months. I would also like to thank New Zealand First as well as the Green Party for working with us.We have done a tremendous amount of work. We came in with a plan and we are focused on what matters for New Zealanders. Housing is an issue that is number one not just for members of Parliament from South Auckland but for many of our members of Parliament right across Aotearoa. For so long now we have been told by a lot of our constituents that many of them cannot afford the rent for houses. Many of them are now homeless living in cars and in garages and we as a Government are committed to ensuring that we build the houses that our people need to live in.As a Government we came in and we promised that we would build 6400 public houses. One of the things we've done as a Government is we came in and stopped the sell-off of State houses because we know that when we are experiencing the highest level of homelessness when compared to other OECD countries this is something we need to do. In order to solve that issue we need to build more houses. We've also banned foreign speculators and we've clarified the landlord-tenant obligations in protecting our renters.One of the other things that we've done as a Government of action concerns the 800-odd families who were wrongly evicted from Housing New Zealand State houses under the National Government's meth-test hysteria—we are addressing that. We've also opened up a new Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to help us build our way out of this national housing crisis and overall over a period of 10 years we will be building 100000 affordable KiwiBuild homes.The other thing that we've done as a Government is ensure that there is a coordinated coherent construction skills action plan. For the first time we have nine Ministers that are focused on ensuring that we have skilled people because when we came into Government we were confronted with the fact that we are short by 30000 skilled people in building and construction. Before we can build the houses we know that long term this is an issue we need to focus on and as a Government it is taking us nine Ministers to ensure that we move in the right direction.When we talk about health this is also an area of responsibility and priority for our Government. We are determined to ensure that we improve the well-being of all New Zealanders. One of the things that we have implemented as a Government over our last Budget is to ensure that doctors visits are cheaper—either free or cheaper for at least 600000 New Zealanders. But we're also looking at fixing up our hospitals. In our last Budget we put aside $850 million compared to $150 million under the previous Government because we know that a lot of our hospital buildings do need to be fixed. Just last week for instance the right honourable Prime Minister and the Minister of Health announced a $224 million investment which will provide 120 additional elective surgery beds for four new operating theatres at the North Shore Hospital and in addition some new facilities at the Whangarei Hospital. For our seniors we have resumed the contributions to the Superannuation Fund to help safeguard the provision of universal superannuation at age 65.In the area of education our Government has an ambitious goal of building the best education system in the world. I would like to acknowledge the honourable Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins because he is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting in this area. We're also listening to our people. The honourable Minister had two summits one held in Christchurch and one in Auckland and the Ministry of Education opened up an online survey. Over 25000 New Zealanders have let us know what it is that they value in the education sector.In addition to those surveys I've gone out as the Associate Minister of Education to seek additional voices from ethnic communities as well as specific communities because we are very focused on ensuring that we get the voices of our ethnic communities and Pacific communities heard as we look at the education system moving forward. Thank you very much Mr Speaker.