Twyford Phil: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19172. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):I came down to the Chamber to listen to that excellent contribution from my colleague Poto Williams but having had to sit through Alfred Ngaro’s—how do I describe it? It was “inciteful”—it was an incitement to disorder listening to the bland platitudes the justifications of that member. That is the member who claimed to come from Glen Innes in Auckland but he has been the worst—the champion the apologist who justifies the disgraceful behaviour of Housing New Zealand kicking out the elderly kicking out the disabled from homes they have lived in for decades. He is the apologist for that sort of awful behaviour that even a select committee unanimously criticised Housing New Zealand for. That member has been the apologist for that kind of behaviour. He stands there justifying the policies of this National-led Government which has done nothing about the housing affordability crisis. That member stands up there like a pious vicar justifying the complete failure of the National Government’s housing policy.There are no winners in the current housing crisis. Let us look at it. In Canterbury the near-criminal negligence the failure of this Government to actually get the residential rebuild going has seen fewer than 1000 of the 12000 to 15000 houses that are needed after the quake actually built after 3½ years. Mr Ngaro the party that you stand up for and justify in this Chamber is responsible for rents going up by more than 40 percent in Canterbury and people living in sleepouts and sleeping in cars. That is the policy that you are proud of. In Auckland this Government has presided over skyrocketing house prices. In the last year in Auckland house prices on average have gone up by $72000 because of this Government’s total failure to do anything meaningful about a dysfunctional failing housing market.First-home buyers all over the country have been locked out of the dream of homeownership by loan-to-value ratios of a 20 percent minimum deposit. If you are earning the median wage in a place like Ashburton or Masterton of something like $28000 and you are paying tax on it it is impossible to save the $60000 $70000 or $80000 deposit that you would have to have to even get in the door to talk to the bank manager about a mortgage. But Alfred Ngaro would not know about that; he would not care about that. He is too busy justifying the failure and inaction of this National-led Government.In the regions because of this Government’s failure to crack down on speculators people are losing equity in their homes. In Southland in the last year the average house price has gone down by $22000. There is no housing crisis in Southland. It is because of the failure of this Government to do anything about speculators in Auckland that people in Southland—the other half of the population who do not live in Auckland and Canterbury—are paying the price of that Government’s failure of a housing policy.There are 285000 kids living below the poverty line. More than half of those kids are living in substandard private rental accommodation. But the best this Government can do about it is a lame pilot scheme of its own State houses that it is too weak-kneed to ensure are properly insulated and are warm and dry. Instead of doing something about the private rental market where those kids are languishing in cold damp homes and ending up in hospital every winter Nick Smith tries to look like he is doing something by announcing a pilot scheme.Alfred Ngaro talked about a comprehensive programme on housing. There is nothing of the sort. What has this Government done in housing? The only thing it has got is a lame housing accord in Auckland that has resulted in zero new houses being built a year after that policy was announced. Not a single new house has been built in the special housing areas as a result of that Government’s housing accord in Auckland. What a total waste and a failure.The Government has been talking about reforming the Resource Management Act to speed up the consenting of residential development for the last 6 years. We have got something like 7 House sitting days left before the House rises and it looks like it probably will not even pass the legislation on reforming development contributions. It has announced that it is not prepared—