Henare Tau: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Henare Tau: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7720. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Mr Deputy Speaker it would be churlish of me not to congratulate the new Speaker so I will congratulate the new Speaker on taking my job. I am sure that the new Speaker will do a fantastic job. He has been in the job really only 1 day and already he is making his mark on the House. 
I want to cut to the chase. In 2014 this country goes to a general election. From an article today a member of this House is quoted as saying: “I will not stand by while [his daughters’] rights and freedoms of other New Zealanders and Westerners are denigrated by a sorry pack of misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan.” That is what one of these MPs said today. 
Hon Member 
: Disgraceful! 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: It is disgraceful it is shameful it is racist and I have never heard—never ever heard—something worse than that come out of the mouth of one of the MPs in my time in the House. Yes we have come close to it; I will own up to that. But never ever—never ever—have we come even to the verge of being racist. I want to say this and to put out I suppose a challenge to everybody in this House not only that they say they dislike or are ashamed of that sort of talk but also that they would distance their party from being in a coalition—in a coalition—with that member’s party. 
I know for a fact that that sort of language would not come out of the mouth of members of New Zealand First except for one. He has done it before so it is no surprise. It would have been a surprise if Andrew Williams had said that. It would have been a surprise if somebody else had said that. But it was Richard Prosser I am sorry to say. 
You know there is a price to pay for living in paradise. But it is not a paradise if the Government is going to be Labour Green and New Zealand First. So I call on the Green Party and the Labour Party to distance themselves now from being in a coalition with a member who thinks and actually speaks like that in public. 
Shane Ardern 
: They won’t. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I do not know whether they will or not. You know in something like 22 months’ time we go to an election and all we can hear from the pretenders—and in saying this I will most probably put some of my colleagues off me; well maybe put more colleagues off me. But at least the Greens actually believe in what they say. They come to this House with a purpose and to see a whole lot of changes which they talk about incessantly. I know that upsets us but I kind of like that. 
Shane Ardern 
: They won’t have you mate. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: On the other hand—no they will not have me! On the other hand we have the New Zealand Labour Party. All we get from the Labour Party and from Trevor Mallard is— 
Kris Faafoi 
: Oh! Let it go. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: “Oh!” he says “Oh!”. Mr Faafoi says “Oh!”. Well here it is in black and white for Mr Faafoi from Porirua: “Stop thrashing dead horse and work on imaginative tools appropriate for New Zealand.” I have not heard something better than that from Russel Norman. It is about finding the tools that are appropriate for New Zealand. All Mr Mallard can come back and say—well I do not want to go there. You know what we are seeing is a party bereft. I mean the New Zealand Labour Party. I am not attacking the Green Party because it believes in the stuff that it trots out. 
I want to talk about housing just for a minute. The New Zealand Labour Party has promised us 300000—is it 300000 homes or is 100000 homes— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: 100000 homes. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: —100000 homes at under $300000 each over 10 years. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: That’s roughly. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Did you hear that? It was very quiet. It was very quiet—“roughly”. It was “roughly” $300000. Well here is the thing: I was brought up born and bred in Otara. For those in Otara and for those in Porirua Freemans Bay Kaiti Tikipunga all— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: How affordable is Freemans Bay now Tau? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well I do not know. I live on the peninsula. I am not looking for a home in Freemans Bay at the moment. Here is the thing: if you want people to live in houses that are purchased or valued at under $300k a year then all you are going to do is build more slums ghettos and poor neighbourhoods like the one that I was brought up in because all the houses were the same. They were all the same—little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Although it suited the Labour Party to have those policies although it suited my mother and father while bringing up four children and although it suited my neighbours to do the same all it did was push the problem into one area. And now why do you think that South Auckland is a bit of a mess? Why do you think— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Why are you selling Housing New Zealand stock? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No no sorry I am not going to listen to it any more. I am not listening to it any more. 
Here is the thing: one person—one person—from the Labour members actually comes out of Otara and that is William Sio. In fact he and I were in the same class. Admittedly I was a year in front of him and that was second-year fifth. But here is the rub. Here is the rub. Those people over there talk on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden. What a load of rubbish! What a load of rubbish! They should try to be downtrodden try to be underprivileged for a change. All those people across the way have gone to university and have gone straight from university into a job—oh that is right—as a member of Parliament. And if they did have a job beforehand it was with the unions. It was with the unions. I did it differently: I went from the unions to the National Party. 
I want to say in the 2 minutes that I have got left that I have immense faith in the Hon Dr Nick Smith as the new Minister of Housing because in his mind there are ways and means to make housing affordable and I hope that one of my ideas gets a bit of a run. That is you know in the old days—in the days of my mother and father—it was easy for them to actually put a dwelling on the back of their property and to have that dwelling for themselves with no cross-leasing fees no development fund for a developer and certainly no Resource Management Act to get in the way. You are not allowed to do that these days. It is at least $100000 more to cross-lease and to build— 
Andrew Williams 
: It’s called slum infill housing. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Oh infill housing. Well we cannot all have a 10-acre lifestyle block full of lemon trees Mr Andrew Williams. We cannot have that but the fact is that there are things that we can do to make it better for young people trying to get their dream home especially on the Te Atatu peninsula—just like Phil Twyford. Kia ora.