King Annette: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: General Debate[Sitting date: 21 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12685. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):We have had the truth of the week today. We have had the moment of truth today. In fact we have had the quote of the week and it came from Tony Ryall. For the members opposite who did not hear it Tony Ryall said: “We are focused on growing our debt.” That is what he said. He said: “We are focused on growing our debt.” Yes and he is absolutely right. He is focused on growing our economic debt our social debt and our moral debt. That is what this Government has been doing.Let us start with housing. What a slap in the face for New Zealanders. What a boot in the backside for the first home owners who received this Government’s feeble pathetic and belated attempts at trying to put housing policy in place. It had 5 years to look at housing policy in New Zealand but in the last year it has been floundering around trying to find a policy. For 5 long years in Government National could not give a damn about first home owners in this country. For 5 years it was not interested in affordable housing for New Zealanders. In fact it was not interested in healthy homes for low and modest earners in this country.We heard excuse after excuse. We were told that there is no housing crisis. Well that was said many times about Christchurch after the earthquakes—“There is no housing crisis.” Of course that is ostrich-like behaviour because now National has had to pull its head out of the sand and admit that there is a housing crisis in Christchurch and now it is belatedly trying to find some ways to address it.Then we had the Minister of Finance saying low interest rates mean that New Zealanders are getting into more homes. Well we have fewer homes being built in this country and fewer people getting into homes because of the so-called low interest rates.Hon Craig Foss: That’s a lie.Hon ANNETTE KING: Yesterday was the final insult to first home owners Mr Foss—and you would know a lot about it being a lie. You would certainly know about that with your background. But you would want to know what this Government finally did to first home owners yesterday. It is prepared to subsidise wealthy New Zealanders with enough spare cash to be able to buy shares in assets that they already own while opposing a policy that would assist the building of more affordable homes in New Zealand underKiwiBuild.The Government can subside the wealthy to get shares in an asset that all of us own and God knows how much this subsidy is because what did we hear today? No costings have been done. Ministers take a Cabinet paper to Cabinet with no costings of what this subsidy is for the wealthiest New Zealanders who are going to buy shares. The Government has no idea what the poor hard-working taxpayer is going to stump up with so that some people who have got a bit of money in their pocket can buy a share but the Government denies that we need a policy in this country to build more affordable homes.Well it has been called the “Harvey Norman”—pay now no interest. Of course they are even going to get two or three dividend payouts before they have to cough up with all the dough for the shares that they are getting. Well I think I agree with BrianGaynor. BrianGaynor whom National members like to quote when it suits them said itis desperate. He called it a desperate policy—buying votes. But National is not prepared to help those buying houses.The biggest joke of all today was hearing Tony Ryall saying that he is on the side of nation-building—he is on the side of nation-building. He is not on the side of building houses. We need to build some warm dry affordable homes for New Zealanders. If this Government is really interested in having warm dry affordable homes why not put it in legislation that they all must be insulated and they all must have heating? Why is that not part of its agenda? No it is all fluff for the Government. It is all blatherskite and there is no substance. There are lots of pieces of paper lots of little meetings lots of little committees but when it gets down to the hard detail National is not prepared to have homes built that low and modest income New Zealanders—Hon Craig Foss: All State houses insulated under National—it’s called nation-building.Hon ANNETTE KING: This will not worry Mr Foss who has probably got many homes—a millionaire. It is of no interest to him. All that he can do is interject. But it is time that this Government took housing seriously and it certainly does not.