Mark Ron: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — First Reading 
Mark Ron: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — First Reading 
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RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to take hopefully just a short call. It is interesting is it not? I actually enjoy listening to my colleague over there Dr—Captain—Wayne Mapp. But I have to say that I get tired of these Maoris who cannot pronounce English who are all the time standing up and talking about “New Zillun”. Mr Mapp had me wondering for a while which country he was referring to. Here in New Zealand we have had— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Blame my Kiwi accent. 
RON MARK 
: I am sorry Mr Mapp is not Maori—that is right. Not being able to pronounce the Queen’s English properly is the sort of mistake that we often get accused of. 
I guess the fact that we are talking about affordable housing here in New Zealand says a lot in itself. Many of us simply want to focus on ensuring that those vulnerable New Zealanders have housing. Affordability has become the issue because of a range of things that have happened in this country. We must remind ourselves where these things started from: they go back to the 1980s. There was a time in New Zealand when people considered that it was part of the great Kiwi dream—it was a right—for every New Zealander to aspire to owning his or her own home. That was something that we just took as read. It was not taken for granted; it was the way it was in this country. I remember very very clearly as a young boy growing up in Pahiatua that New Zealand was known as the country of the quarter acre section pavlova and the flagon of beer. We proudly talked and joked about New Zealand being the home of rugby racing beer and homeownership. That was the way it was.  
I remember a great leader of this nation a man whom many of us admired. Having lived in the Waimakariri for so long and in Canterbury on and off for 30-odd years and having campaigned in Kaiapoi I am very familiar with that great man Norman Kirk. When I came into this House I actually quoted one of Norm’s statements. His words—and I hope I get them exactly right—were: “People don’t ask for much. They simply want somewhere to live somewhere to work someone to love and something to hope for.” That pretty much summed it up did it not? That is the Kiwi dream. In a nation that has always prided itself on being very egalitarian classless and very conscious of its obligations socially to those less advantaged housing was always key to that.  
I guess what is sad is that in the argy-bargy that goes on between the two old parties Labour and National both seem to forget a couple of things. The reason that Labour is in this position of trying to do something to make housing affordable and therefore available to those who have been priced out of the market is largely due to the economic reforms of the 1980s and the way in which philosophically the Government of the day—in fact there were two of those Governments one after the other—moved towards user-pays and a businesslike approach through all of the social agencies. 
Sue Bradford 
: That’s right. 
RON MARK 
: Sue Bradford agrees with me.  
It is interesting that the National Opposition of the day railed against many of these changes. It debated and campaigned and told the whole of the nation that Labour was a horrible nasty Government that had forgotten its roots had forgotten where it came from and had forgotten what it stood for. Then National got into power in 1990 and by crikey it ramped things up. It set to and sold State homes from one end of this country to another and none of us will forget the fact that certain members of Parliament within the National caucus profited out of that. They took advantage; they bought some of those State homes. That is the history; that is the background.  
Then of course to compound the problem we had these two Governments which one after the other opened up the doors to rampant uncontrolled immigration and we got the consequential effects of that. When I got to Parliament in 1996 I opened up my electorate office and started taking in work as a list MP—we all do that and some people tend to forget that list MPs actually do constituency work particularly in constituencies where the constituency MP is lazy or is not particularly liked; one gets a heck of a lot of work out of those MPs and one quickly comes to know who those MPs are. One of the things that really annoyed me was finding New Zealanders citizens of this nation who had paid taxes worked hard and strived to bring up their children who were in desperate situations—like a matrimonial break-up or a mum with two kiddies—and were quickly trying to get into a home only to find that there were no emergency homes available in Christchurch because they were chock-a-block full of refugees asylum seekers and other people who had been brought into this country and given priority over New Zealanders.  
New Zealand First members shake their heads. Pita Paraone has asked the previous Minister of Housing Mr Chris Carter so many times why it is that the prioritisation of housing allocation in this country does not go to New Zealand citizens. Why is it that we have all these foreigners who are given the privilege of residency and of coming into our land to take up employment and who get here on the basis that they have the means and the wherewithal to support themselves being given a Housing New Zealand Corporation house while a whole bunch of New Zealand citizens who were born and bred here end up on a waiting list unable to get one? New Zealand First is absolutely unashamedly for putting New Zealanders first not foreigners who have been given the privilege of residency and who are allowed to come here and work.  
That is one of our great disappointments when we look at the Labour benches and at the Labour Government members particularly Chris Carter. He just did not get it did he? He still does not get it. It is not a question of saying to those residents who have been given that privilege that honour of coming to our land and starting afresh that they will get some assistance. We have given them the assistance; we have let them come here. They said in their applications that they had a job to come to they had qualifications they fitted all the criteria and they had the money to support themselves and to look after themselves. But then hello somewhere along the line they get a Housing New Zealand Corporation house. Then we wonder why we have a housing issue for New Zealanders—citizens of this land.  
New Zealand First will support this bill going through to the select committee because we are interested in hearing the debate. We have heard some good arguments put up by Phil Heatley and we have heard the counterarguments on the other side of the House. Those arguments are best played out in the select committee so let us hear them. Let us not delude ourselves: the reason we are in this situation is that there has been faulty flawed foreign investment and a faulty flawed immigration policy and we have no understanding of the pressures that we create in the real estate market when we allow people to come into this country and simply buy up what they want then move offshore and manage what they have bought from offshore. We have no care and no concern about the impact on low-income or moderate-income families who simply want one thing: somewhere to live someone to love and somewhere to work. They want that Kiwi dream and the right to own their own home and we need to remember that when we manipulate the economy and start talking about market forces because the losers are always the vulnerable.