Dyson Ruth: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18115. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I want to acknowledge the member Nicky Wagner who has just resumed her seat and particularly her comments about the high-quality education system that we have in Canterbury and in fact in New Zealandand also the commitment she has made—and likewise the Prime Minister and the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee—to the people of Canterbury who have been so displaced by the series of earthquakes numbering over 13000. I do not recall seeing that member once acting or speaking or perhaps even thinking in support ofPhillipstown School. That school so strongly supported by the community was threatened with closure. The community said to Minister Parata: “We don’t want our school to close.” The neighbouring community said: “This is a fine school. It’s got a great record.” It was clear that the assessment that the Ministry of Education did on it was totally flawed and not once did that member speak out in support of a local school under threat of closure within her own electorate.Moana Mackey: Which electorate is it?Hon RUTH DYSON: It is the Christchurch Central electorate. I hope that on 21 September we will be able to say that it is Tony Milne’s electorate because he is the Labour candidate there. He will stand up for the residents of his electorate if he has the privilege of being elected.I will say more about the citizens of Canterbury who have been so let down not just by this Budget. They did not expect anything out of the Budget actually because for over 3 years they have felt tricked and let down and abandoned by the broken promises that John Key made. He came to Canterbury and he said: “No one will be worse off.” Ha! That is a joke but it is a very sad joke for the people who have had to accept 2007 rateable valuation offers for their land and their home and if they do not have a home on their land they have been offered 50 percent of the 2007 rateable valuation in compensation for the Government compulsorily acquiring that land. It is the same for commercial properties. That is not making a truth out of the Prime Minister’s statement that nobody would be worse off.But I want to start by talking about housing. Frankly I do not give a toss what the description is of the situation we are in particularly in Canterbury but also in Auckland and in other parts of the country in regard to housing. I do not care whether we call it a crisis or we just say that people cannot afford to rent a home and they cannot afford to buy a home. If that is not a crisis let us not get bogged down in terminology. Why does the Government not front up to the fact that particularly in Canterbury and Auckland but also in other parts of the country people cannot afford to rent somewhere to live? That is not acceptable in our country. It should not be acceptable to this Government. But all it does in response is say that it is not a crisis as if that solves the situation.In my electorate I have a suburb called Linwood. It is a nice suburb—all my suburbs in my electorate actually are nice. It is a low to middle income earning area and the rental properties are not excessive normally. I just had another look on TradeMe—the Prime Minister’s source of all reference and analysis—and got a bit of a random sample of the three-bedroom homes for rent in Linwood. How much would a three-bedroom home cost to rent do you think in a low to middle income area in Canterbury? [Interruption] The member Denis O’Rourke knows the area well. He has represented it as a city councillor in the past. One three-bedroom home in Linwood was $1190 per week. Another one was $1015 per week. It has got hot and cold running water inside the home—that is an advantage. There was a bargain home at $799 per week for rent in Linwood. This is not an expensive area. How do people afford that? Well the answer is that they do not. They try to get into social housing. We have hundreds of homes wrecked. This is social housing owned by Christchurch City Council and I hope that it will be owned in the future by Christchurch City Council. I am very proud that our council is the second-biggest landlord in the country. But because the Earthquake Commission payments have not been resolved between Gerry Brownlee and theChristchurch City Council those social housing units are boarded up damaged and obviously have nobody living in them.It is the same with Housing New Zealand stock. Hundreds of Housing New Zealand houses across our city are empty and boarded up because Nick Smith has not put it as a priority to get those homes repaired. They are repairable they are empty and we have people squashed into houses living in garages or staying with friends and moving constantly as they burn up their relationships with friends or relations. It is just not acceptable. I found another house in a suburb that I used to live in inHeathcote. It is a magnificent suburb just under the Port Hills. A lot of people have been displaced in that suburb firstly because of rockfall—a lot of rocks came down into the valley—and more recently the area has been very badly hit with floods. A two-bedroom house inHeathcote—again this is not a high-income top-of-the-market place—is $1120. That is to rent a two-bedroom home inHeathcote. Let us not worry about the description. Let us not worry about whether it is a crisis. We have places that are being rented at prices that people cannot afford to pay. The market is not working and the Government is walking away and abandoning people in our city. That is not what the Prime Minister promised. He said that nobody would be worse off. If you cannot live in your own home and you cannot afford to rent somewhere you are actually worse off. There is no debate about that.I want to move on to another critical issue and that is the issue of employment and training. We raised this issue immediately post the September 2010 quakes and then again more strongly directly with the Minister after the February 2011 quake. We said: “There’s going to be lots of work in our city. Why don’t we start training young people now so that they will be qualified and have the skills as the recovery progresses as the rebuild programme rolls out so that we will have trained Cantabrians able to do the work that’s being needed?”. It did not happen. It did not happen. Eventually the Government said we should put some money into apprenticeships. I applaud that move. It was a great move. Any investment in apprenticeships is good. It was just 2 years too late. A lot of our young people could not get work because so many of our businesses have run down or closed so they left town. We are becoming a city where the people who are there are either the few who are going to make a lot of money out of the recovery or people who just cannot leave—they have got no option—and that is not the sort of mix that we should have. We want young people who are trained and committed to being part of the recovery and able to contribute in a practical way to the rebuild.So what was the great announcement that the Prime Minister and Paula Bennett came out with recently? It was that they are going to pay beneficiaries from all around the country $3000 to come to Canterbury and get a job. That is great that they are giving people on benefits extra money to get a job but I would like to see Cantabrians get preference with helping them get a job. They deserve it. They have been through the worst of times. Help them to step up to being part of the improving times. So why is it not for local people? The other question is where these people are going to live and there is no answer at all to that.I want to touch just briefly on an issue particularly relevant to my electorate and that is the issue of rockfall protection and the response that Gerry Brownlee has given. We have beautiful houses that are at risk of being damaged—and obviously lives are at risk as well—because of the threat of rockfall in future earthquakes. There are engineering solutions for a large number of these properties. They are called rockfall fences attenuators bunds terracing—any number of geotechnical-engineered solutions to make those houses safe. The geotechnical people say we should do it. The cost-benefit analysis says we should do it. The homeowners say they would love to be back safe in their own home and community. There is one obstacle and that is GerryBrownlee. He has said no to rockfall protection to make those homes safe and liveable. He has torn apart communities for no good reason and ratepayers and taxpayers are paying the price for what I can describe only as vandalism. Those families should be supported to have rockfall protection structures put up and be able to live in their home. Likewise the Port Hills owners of red zone land are still waiting for an offer. This Budget—