Salesa Jenny: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: General Debate[Sitting date: 09 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6437. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): As New Zealanders we are fast becoming tenants in our own land. In Auckland where a third of our population lives 57 percent rent. They are tenants. For Māori people only 28 percent own their own homes which means 72 percent of tangata whenua in Aotearoa rent. They are becoming tenants in their own land. For Pacific people the number is even worse: 18 percent of Pacific Islanders own their own homes so that means 82 percent of all Pacific people in New Zealand are tenants—82 percent—because homeownership is just so unaffordable for the majority of Pacific people in this country. Five years ago in 2010 our Prime Minister John Key stated: “I’d hate to see New Zealanders as tenants in their own country …”. He probably wishes that he had not made that statement because that is unfortunately the future that so many New Zealanders are faced with now: being tenants in our own land because people just cannot afford to buy their own houses. This is not surprising of course particularly in Auckland where the average price of a house is $855000 and climbing each week. South Auckland has suffered one of the worst fall-outs from this Government’s lack of control with house prices having risen by 79 percent since 2008 and rising by 19 percent since last year alone.The Government promised that there would be no more asset sales. That is yet another broken promise because that is exactly what this Government is currently doing particularly with the selling-off of our second-largest asset our State houses. That is exactly what this Government is doing—selling them off to their mates to their private developer friends and to overseas companies. Instead of keeping its promise of no more asset sales this Government is going ahead with selling off our farmlands selling off our school lands selling off our school houses and selling off other State-owned enterprises and State assets in addition to selling off our State houses.Is this a Government that listens to the public though? Well sometimes it does. Just recently in the last week or so it listened to the public when the public actually said that we should become good international citizens and take on more refugees—that New Zealand as a country should be more compassionate and should be more caring to those refugees overseas. But instead of waiting for polls and instead of waiting for the focus groups to tell the Prime Minister and this Cabinet and this Government to do the right thing with the refugees this is something that the Prime Minister should have taken leadership on without having to wait for those polls and those focus groups to tell him to do so.On the issue of selling off our State assets this Government has arrogantly ignored two-thirds of New Zealanders who last term voted against the selling-off of our State assets. They voted against selling off Mighty River Power Meridian Energy and Air New Zealand. Instead of developing and implementing a comprehensive economic vision members of this Government are just putting their head in the sand and hoping in respect of the economic realities—in terms of what they say when they try to make the economic realities appear as good and as positive as possible according to the National Government—that somehow the people of New Zealand are going to agree that everything is fine and that homes particularly in Auckland are not going through the roof.This Government would throw away one of our most precious assets—our homes; the homes that could house our most vulnerable the homes that actually already house our elderly the homes that house a lot of our disabled. These are our State-owned homes. The family of Emma-Lita Bourne is one of those tenants from my electorate in Ōtara. Emma-Lita unfortunately died because her family’s house was mouldy leaking damp and freezing—and she lived in a State house. This morning I heard the Hon Bill English saying on Radio New Zealand National that it is the responsibility of tenants—that it is up to tenants to let the Government agencies know that they have maintenance issues. Well in the case of the Bourne family that family let the Government agencies know—not once not twice but 48 different times—Hon Ruth Dyson: What?JENNY SALESA: —48 different times—that there were maintenance issues in their house before the unfortunate event of this little girl passing away. It would be great if this current Government instead of pointing the finger at the previous Government of 7 to 8 years ago took responsibility for things that happen on its watch. Thank you.