Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): Following on from my colleague Phil Twyford I just want to restate a fact and that fact is that there is a housing crisis in New Zealand and no matter what National says New Zealanders know that that is the case. There are many examples from the Estimates hearing that I am going to refer to in my speech but before I even go there I want to give a very recent example of why and how we know we have a housing crisis in New Zealand. I have just got a written question back from the Minister for Social Housing. My question was simple: What is the definition of homelessness?". And the response I got was: "I am unable to provide an answer within the time frame that the member requires." All I wanted was a definition and the fact that they cannot provide that answer within the time frame makes us question how on earth Alfred Ngaro and the National Government could vote against having a homelessness inquiry especially when the terms of reference that we put up—Alfred Ngaro: In the 48th Parliament Moana Mackey did it—OK?CARMEL SEPULONI: —included defining homelessness Mr Ngaro. So Mr Ngaro—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): So back to the Estimates debate. This is not a general debate.CARMEL SEPULONI: I am going to go back to the Estimates debate and I am going to talk a little bit more about how we know we have a housing crisis and the Government's response to that.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You are tying it to the Estimates of course.CARMEL SEPULONI: We had the Minister Anne Tolley come to the select committee for the Estimates hearing and she was questioned in detail about her role in respect of the housing crisis and the special-needs grants in particular. The Government has announced that it will be putting an extra $9 million towards emergency accommodation with the purpose of addressing the very real housing crisis that we have. But when asked what the numbers are in terms of the money that the Government has spent on emergency housing she said: We don't collect that data." When asked "How then does she know that $9 million is the right amount of money to inject into the special-needs grant to address the emergency housing crisis?" she had no answer. When the Minister was asked "Does she therefore recognise because an extra $9 million is going in that the need for emergency housing has increased significantly?" her response was: "No." That makes no sense. Why then put extra money in there? Why then is every other New Zealander out there apart from anyone sitting in the National Government benches over there—why then do we all know that this is the very real reality? We had both Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley come to the select committee both of them answering questions about the housing situation and one of the things that came up was that the Government is so proud of the fact that it is going to inject some funding towards providing 7 days' free emergency accommodation for anyone who presents as homeless and requires emergency accommodation. They told us that the reason they were paying for 7 days is that their report says that that is the average stay that people are staying in emergency housing. I got a Cabinet paper last year that said the average stay is 10 days and it was a Cabinet paper yet Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley say it is 7 days. But on top of that I then got a written question back about a week ago that says that it is taking the Government 155 days—155 days—to house a homeless person. Actually that sits about right with me because the people whom I have coming through my office who are accessing emergency accommodation through Work and Income are staying in there for months. It is not a matter of a week or 10 days; it is months. One recent case covered by The Hui on TV3—5 months for this family. This was a couple with four children staying in motel accommodation. They now have thousands of dollars that they have to pay back and it is unacceptable that the Government continues to allow that to happen. We had a discussion at the select committee about housing and also about the debt in relation to emergency accommodation and the debt overall. What should be disturbing for most New Zealanders is that debt from Work and Income clients has significantly increased under this National Government. The Government would like New Zealanders to think that all of that debt is sitting in the benefit fraud category. But actually that is the smallest category of all the debt. The real concern is with the debt that is in overpayments which comes down to administrative errors by the Government's ministry. The other area of concern was of course the recoverable cost side. We have asked the Minister and the ministry to go away and come back and tell us how much money people are actually being charged and how much money the Government is forking out in loans for these people in respect of that emergency accommodation. We had Paula Bennett come to the select committee and tell us that one of the Government's responses to the housing crisis will be to pre-purchase motel rooms. As far as we are concerned that is an admission of defeat. That is not a plan; that is just saying that actually we have no plan to resolve this issue and so what we are going to do is try to make those motel rooms a little bit cheaper than what they have been to date. Even the Minister when we said to her—the Minister for Social Development now; I am talking about Anne Tolley—that 7 days was not enough given the length of stay that people would require said the reason that it had to be 7 days was that other people might require that place; other people might require that room. That was her answer and it is in the transcript. What a silly silly answer from that Minister. What do you do? Do you say: "OK your 7 days are up. Sorry family now you have to go and live in a car."? Is that the response the Minister is going to give? She may as well be saying that because we know that it is not going to take 7 days to house these families; it is going to take on average 155 days. So the Government's response to date has been abysmal. I think one of the things it comes down to in respect of John Key the Prime Minister is that he has made a crucial mistake with regard to this housing issue. He has assumed that those who already own houses will be greedy enough and just self-focused enough to care only about the fact that they have got their foot in the housing market; they have got their home. But actually what we are finding is that New Zealanders do care about the number of people who are homeless. New Zealanders do care about this generation Generation Rent who are unable to get into their own home. The National Government and John Key have underestimated the ability of New Zealanders to actually care about those who do not have as much as them. That Government is out of touch and I want to just say that it does not have a comprehensive plan despite the fact that it keeps trying to tell New Zealand that it does. Labour does have a comprehensive plan and it was great today to see the announcement of $60 million going to over 5000 places for people who are homeless so that they will have a roof over their heads. That is a part of a comprehensive plan and it would be great if the Government could follow suit and actually listen and maybe learn from what the Opposition has to offer. The Government is out of touch. We have rising levels of demand for everyday houses and what we hear from organisations like citizens advice bureaux is that the situation with regard to homelessness has become distressing. That is the point. This is not just about the issue being some sort of political football. The issue is we have increasing numbers of New Zealanders who are in this distressing situation who do not have the fundamental thing that as New Zealanders we know we have the right to—that every New Zealander should have the right to—and that is a home. We have increasing numbers of New Zealanders who are living in cars and living in garages. We know from the ministry's own numbers that two-thirds of the people who have been homeless—according to the statistics that the ministry has—have at least one or more children. Those people are living in cars and living in garages. It is unacceptable that the Government has continued to allow that to happen. There is nothing that was put up at the Estimates hearing by Paula Bennett or Anne Tolley that came close to even addressing the issues that we are facing as a country with this very real housing crisis. The first step really would be for the Government to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. The second thing that would have been great is for the Government to support the homelessness inquiry that we proposed particularly given the fact that it cannot even answer the simple question with regard to what the definition of homelessness is. Government members are too scared to answer that question or to go down the track of an inquiry because what will happen is that they will be exposed for having been wrong this whole time that the debate around the housing crisis has been taking place."