Heatley Phil: General Debate 
Heatley Phil: General Debate 
[Volume:668;Page:14860] 
Hon PHIL HEATLEY (Minister of Housing) 
: 
 I appreciate this opportunity to address the House. It would be fair to say that the National Government team the MP team and certainly the team in Cabinet are very very positive about the progress that we have made in the last 2 years while going through a very very difficult time. In the area of my portfolio I could not be happier with the way that Housing New Zealand Corporation has managed its work during this recession. There has been more pressure on the State house waiting list and on the stock than we have seen for a couple of decades. Why? Because during the worldwide recession many many families have come under pressure either because of the loss of jobs or because of reduced hours being worked. Because of the difficulties in a worldwide recession families have had to close their cheque books and their ability to spend on simple items such as rent mortgages and those types of things has become quite difficult. During that time Housing New Zealand Corporation has managed to maintain the waiting list at a level that has been typical of the last decade. We have not seen the waiting list shoot up by 3000 or anything like that; it has tended to oscillate at around the 10000 mark. 
I have to commend the corporation because it has done this through a variety of means. One of course is the Options and Advice Service which the National Government introduced. When people rock up to Housing New Zealand Corporation and say they need a State home instead of the corporation writing down their names and putting them on the waiting list it now takes them through some options. One option is to remain where they are. The corporation asks whether it can help them to remain where they are and outlines subsidies like the accommodation supplement. Another option is private rental—the possibility that they could rent privately. The corporation outlines subsidies for them to do that. 
Another option of course is homeownership. Here is a good one; this will fascinate members. In the last 18 months about 400 people have walked into Housing New Zealand Corporation—so that members do not misunderstand this I say thousands of people have walked into Housing New Zealand Corporation but they have included 400 people in particular who would under the previous Labour Government have been put on the waiting list. Can members guess what those people did after talking to the Options and Advice Service? Members will not believe this: they went to buy a home. The previous Government would have put them on the waiting list. They got some advice turned round on their heels went out and it was their intention to buy a home. The Labour Government would have put them on the waiting list. It is unbelievable. All that Housing New Zealand Corporation did was to ask them whether they were sure that they wanted to go on the waiting list. Those people asked whether there were other options and the corporation said yes there were options like staying where they were and the corporation would help them; renting privately; renting with another community housing provider; or even buying a home. They said: “Oh we could buy a home?”. We said that if they wanted to do that we could even help them to do so. 
The previous Labour Government would have told those people to go on the waiting list. They loved it for people like them to become welfare beneficiaries because then they would become dependent on the great Labour Party and vote for it for the rest of their lives. Well here is a crack-up: 400 people turned on their heels and decided that rather than going into a State house they preferred to go and buy a home. Many of them I understand have pursued that. 
For the very same reason we believe that it is worthwhile to look at the almost 70000 houses that we now have under the corporation’s management and to ask whether we are always housing the people who are most in need—because the answer is no. The reality is that when we have a couple in Mangere at this very moment who have a four-bedroom home and who originally had one adult child and two dependent children—so that is five people in a four-bedroom house—but who now live alone with three spare bedrooms those tenants could be matched to a one or two-bedroom home. We have another single mother with three children boarding with relatives in a garage in Mangere and they should be in the home that has three spare bedrooms. That is why we are not ashamed to make this conversation public and have a debate on the issue.