Little Andrew: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers Questions to MembersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4472. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]1.ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement “what I can say about the Minister for Housing is that he is outstanding”; if so what has been outstanding about his roll-out of the Government’s new Auckland housing policy?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; the outstanding housing policies include signing housing accords with seven councils including Auckland in order to speed up housing development; freeing up more land for residential development through more than 80 special housing areas; providing a $200 million loan to the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company in Auckland to develop around 7500 new houses; introducing the new HomeStart package to help around 90000 first-home buyers into houses over the next 5 years; developing land at Hobsonville Point and in other areas such as Weymouth funded through the Social Housing Fund; investing $446 million to insulate around 240000 homes through the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme plus around another 46000 through the Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes extension; and to ensure that we maintain this momentum the Budget confirmed that we will consider freeing up more Crown-owned land in Auckland for housing. New house building has doubled in Auckland over the past 3 years and investment in residential construction reached an all-time high of $2.6 billion in the year to March 2015. So the Minister is doing a good job and the previous Labour Government did absolutely nothing—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The Prime Minister will resume his seat.Andrew Little: Can he advise when the first house will be completed on the newly released Crown land in Auckland?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not have those details but what I know is that by October of this year the land will be identified in parts and from there on the first house will be built by 2016. I find it really odd that the Labour Party does not think that we can build a single house on Crown-owned land and yet the policy it took into the last election was to build theoretically 100000 of them.Andrew Little: I seek leave to table a letter published in the National Business Review online with a comment attached to it from Nick Smith pointing out—Mr SPEAKER: Order! No the member will resume his seat.Andrew Little: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The material published online is behind a paywall not widely available and therefore is entirely appropriate for tabling in the House.Mr SPEAKER: On the basis of the latter part of the argument advanced by the Leader of the Opposition I will put the leave and the House will decide. Leave is sought to table that particular letter. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Andrew Little: What is outstanding about the fact that his Government has built just 170 homes in Auckland special housing areas since they were announced in 2013 especially given his claims in Parliament yesterday that the Government built 8500 houses last year?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: One always has to be cautious with the Labour Party’s numbers but what I will say about the special housing areas is that there are over 90 of them in Auckland and as everybody knows from the designation of a special housing area you have to go through a process and that process includes infrastructure and everything else. The point was actually made by the Minister yesterday that Labour identified Hobsonville in 2003 and did not build a single house there.Andrew Little: Can he confirm that Minister Nick Smith told Tainui yesterday that they do have first refusal rights over some Crown land in Auckland; if so how does he reconcile this with Nick Smith’s impassioned denials that iwi have any rights at all over the land?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No I was not party to those conversations.Andrew Little: Given that answer does he now confirm that this is the situation: first the policy was leaked; second some of the land was occupied by power substations and cemeteries; third it turned out that 500 hectares was just a guesstimate; fourth some of the land was not even Crown-owned and other parts of the land were just conceptual; fifth Nick Smith said that he could sell land without giving iwi first dibs; sixth it turned out that the Government has already given iwi first dibs on some of the land; seventh Nick Smith admitted that he cannot sell the land without giving iwi first dibs and the whole thing is going to wind up in court; and finally he has admitted that no houses will be built for at least 18 months?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No and there are more points on the member’s list than people who voted for him in the election of his leadership.Andrew Little: When will the Prime Minister finally realise that the other outstanding failure here is his own failure to put in a Minister for Building and Housing who is actually up to the job?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think that at the start of my answer to the primary question I ran through the things that Nick Smith has done in his time as Minister for Building and Housing. What a great privilege it is as Prime Minister to be able to read out an extensive list that is actually making a difference to the people of Auckland—because if Helen Clark were answering this question this blank piece of paper is exactly what the list would look like. They did absolutely nada and that is why house prices doubled under Labour. As I said yesterday—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been answered.Andrew Little: Can he confirm that Nick Smith has been sent today to a remote part of the Bay of Plenty forest in order to avoid further embarrassment to the Government; and that if Nick Smith creates a fiasco in the forest and there is no one to hear it it is still the media’s fault?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No I can confirm that he has gone to the regions because National cares a lot about the regions.