Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātou katoa. I am proud to belong to the Labour Party the Labour Party that in its DNA introduced social housing to this country—not like that lot who flog off who dismantle and who do nothing. This Monday I had a housing meeting in my electorate of Maraenui in Napier. I want to bring the human face to the impact of that Government's sleeping at the wheel when it comes to housing. Mary-Ann is due to have her baby in 3 weeks. She has a 6-year-old and an 11-year-old. Child Youth and Family (CYF) is getting involved. She rings Work and Income (WINZ) on a daily basis to try to find a home. She is terrified that if she does not get into a home then CYF will take her children. Kimberley has been on the waiting list for a home for 2 months. She needs urgent housing. She has four children: 12 10 9 and 7 years old. The children are sleeping on the floor in damp conditions in a Housing New Zealand property shared with others—an overcrowded Housing New Zealand property where a total of 11 people are living. Dee registered on the waiting list in February in Hamilton. Two weeks later she moved to Hawke's Bay. She has five children aged 4 8 9 13 and 16. In the last 3 months she has moved between families and at times has had to split her family so they could be accommodated. They are now living in a shed. The tenant of the two-bedroom property lives with nine others and needs his shed back. The emergency housing provider said that she can ring the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and it will put her in a hotel or in a holiday park. This option Dee refused because she did not want to wear the extra debt burden. She was also told that if she had a car then she was more likely to get a house. Unfortunately Dee does not have a car. Jamie has three children whose ages are 1 4 and 6 and was living in a car with them until 2 months ago. She has been boarding at a Housing New Zealand address for the last 2 months. The property is rented to a family of four. The family took her in only temporarily and is frightened they may be asked to leave as the house will be classified as overcrowded. This is the real life situation that is facing the people in Maraenui Napier Hawke's Bay and throughout my electorate. At that meeting as practical as the people are they came up with some solutions to some of the housing issues faced particularly by the people of Maraenui. They wanted to see the return of tenancy managers. Once upon a time they had a tenancy manager based in Maraenui but now that is all shut up and people have to ring an 0800 number—which we all know is never answered. They talked about the reintegration of the services offered between WINZ and Housing New Zealand. At the coalface the agencies are often not talking to each other and we are dealing with different people at any one time. They asked whether we could consider reintegrating those services. The other wish list they had was emergency housing. You know I have no emergency housing throughout Hawke's Bay—the closest emergency housing in my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti is in Palmerston North. We need emergency housing and we need it now. The fourth innovative solution that these people came up with on Monday was to do with the so-called homes that are contaminated by P. There is this rumour going around that they are contaminated by the cooking of P. We do not promote any drug use in the home but there has been some feedback from tenants or neighbours themselves that P has been smoked in houses and that they can be cleaned by a decent domestic clean. These people at this hui on Monday night offered to put their hands up to go into homes in Maraenui that have been tagged as P contaminated and to clean up to allow more supply to house those who are on the waiting list. Yesterday I came into this House and I asked the Minister for Māori Development whether he believes that the Government that he is propping up is doing more to help those people living in cars and sheds. I want to share some statistics with the House. This is taken from the Ministry of Social Development's own website where it talks about the housing register: 43.6 percent of all people on the housing register are Māori and 38.8 percent of all those people on the transfer register—i.e. those who are in a house waiting to be transferred—are Māori. That is a total of 42.5 percent of all people registered on the Housing New Zealand waiting list who are Māori. Kia ora.