Turei Metiria: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5803. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Last night Philippa Howden-Chapman and Graeme Beattie spoke at the Speaker’s Science Forum about their respective research on housing and health. Their point was to talk with MPs about the evidence on which we as a community of MPs could build both cost-effective and health-effective policy in housing. This is an issue that was dealt with by the Social Services Committee in looking at the estimates and there has been some Budget provision for some part of some policy around home insulation but it is weak and will not prove to be as effective as it could be because this Government simply will not prioritise this level of evidence-based policy detail. We have seen today in the 2015 report on household incomes more evidence about the state of housing for families which should be driving urgency in this policy.In general the information presented last night was not particularly new to MPs. New Zealand homes are poorly built—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!METIRIA TUREI: Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No—sorry. The people behind you should know better. Thank you—keep going.METIRIA TUREI: Thank you Mr Chair. New Zealand homes are poorly built for our climate and for the use of families. They are damp and they are cold and this means of course that families spend an excessive amount on their power bills and too many especially the elderly and children get sick from the effects of this poor housing. According to the evidence Warm Up New Zealand the home insulation programme of the Greens and Labour and then the Greens and National has a cost-benefit ratio for grown-ups of nearly 4:1 and for children a cost-benefit ratio of 6:1 showing that there is enormous economic value in investing and warming up with good insulation and good heating in New Zealand homes for grown-ups and for kids. And yet we are still in the situation the evidence shows where 1600 New Zealanders die each winter. We have 1600 winter-related deaths—avoidable housing-related deaths—every year. We have 1600 people dead because of poor housing—that is what the evidence that was presented last night showed—and a very large proportion of them are of children.We all know what the solutions are and the evidence showed us that again last night. First improve the building standards on insulation heating and ventilation to remove condensation and improve heat retention. Secondly require rental properties to have and meet a set of warrant of fitness criteria to improve the safety of those homes. The study last night showed that there was a nearly 40 percent reduction in injuries based on home modifications and subsequently there was a significant decrease in the cost of ACC which is a major cost to all of us. Thirdly provide home insulation and heating subsidies to increase take-up across all households—not a select few but across all households. The evidence of that shows that hospitalisations fell by 27 percent in the first 12 months and by 61 percent for the most intensive insulation and heating interventions. These are three straightforward well-known well-costed well-thought-out policies that are well-understood and the evidence shows that they would be very very effective.The household income report that came out today shows that the number of low-income families with excessive housing costs remain at a historic high—50 percent of people getting the accommodation supplement are paying more than 50 percent of their income in housing. Of those families in households that reported major problems with dampness and mould 70 percent were on the lowest incomes so the lowest-income families are the most likely to suffer from the poor quality of New Zealand homes. And of course the evidence from this report today shows that housing is increasingly expensive degraded and unsafe for New Zealand families.At the dinner last night one MP noted that “Surely if MPs in the House knew that 1600 people die a year from poor housing - related illnesses we would be up in arms and do everything that we could to fix it.” but the fact is that we do know this. We have known this for years and no there is not an urgent drive to fix New Zealand’s housing quality. There is no urgent drive to increase the home insulation and heating subsidies or to make sure that there is a warrant of fitness for rental properties.