Collins JudithGENERAL DEBATEHon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Well today we have seen four years of failure in a housing market made worse by that Government. We've had the Minister say No the State houses are not being bought up from the private sector."—yes they are right through our electorates going anything under $1 million that's how much they spend now. They are now setting the market making it harder for first-home buyers and harder for the private sector to be able to provide housing. Four long years of failure. And we heard from the Prime Minister today that apparently it's all our fault—well who has been in charge for the last four years?They promised to get 100000 children out of child poverty and somehow they've managed to make it worse. They said it was terrible that National had some families who needed emergency housing living in motels; they've got 4000 kids now growing up in motels. They can't tell a gang member from a family member they're now saying things like "We asked the gang members whether or not they're gang members." Aww is that before they get the koha?We now have a generation of kids growing up whose name is going to be unfortunately "the motel generation". The Minister today Carmel Sepuloni—I used to think she was one of their better Ministers but I've now rephrased that one; mind you Kris Faafoi once looked OK too didn't he team? I mean my goodness what a mess—she said today that she's heard nothing about a problem in the regions with gangs. Has she not even listened to "red radio"? Radio New Zealand's been out reporting what's been going on and apparently this Minister doesn't want to listen to it.What's happened to house prices up $300000 under this Government? What's happened to rents up $100 a week? Their answer has been to attack the private landlords attack the people who actually provide housing attack the community providers and take all the money off them. They need to know that they have to do everything better from the Government. All they've done is to make it worse. How many houses did they say no to when they cancelled out the Ihumātao issue was it 480 houses? How many built? Zero. Not one; zero. How many started? Zero. Not one; zero.We have a Government here who has blamed everyone. Remember when it was people with Chinese-sounding names? That was their fault. That was Rob Salmond from the Prime Minister's office. He ran that one. We also had Phil Twyford running that and he's now in charge of disarmament. But given what they're doing to the military these days there won't be anything to disarm. We have in fact records being broken. What they've done too is that they have blamed speculators. So who are these speculators? Speculators apparently are mums and dads who have saved up paid off their own mortgage and bought a second property to rent out so they can keep themselves in a good situation in their retirement. They've picked on them gone after them and at the same time they have failed to produce the houses that needed to be produced. They've cut out the private market made it harder.And now this interest deduction which is a normal cost of business has been removed by this Government—this Government. Ten thousand people have signed a petition today we're presenting it to Parliament—15000 sorry—that shows just how seriously people take this. And the answer to it—what happens with it—is that the prices go up not down. There is a basic part of economics and theory of economics and principle that we know works all the time it is supply and demand. More supply is what the Government needs in housing—more supply. Yet they've arrogantly refused to ever actually adopt all of our ideas about getting more houses built. Instead in the middle of a pandemic what's their answer? Pay the nurses more? No. Help the doctors? No. Keep them in New Zealand? No. What they want to do is restructure everything and have another bureaucracy. Half a billion dollars in bureaucracy instead of to the nurses tells you everything they care about.They want to centralise everything. For them they think the Government is the only one who can perform. Actually if it's in housing if it's in health if it's in transport whatever it's in the Government is the only one that can never perform and that's their problem. Whether it's in transport—I heard today from Michael Wood how about the Eastern Busway? How about that 3000 people would be using that? He's put that on slow for a cycleway."