3. Question No. 3—HousingCHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 3—Housing3. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Housing: Is she satisfied with the performance of Kāinga Ora?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Yes. I am particularly satisfied with how Kāinga Ora has turned around what was essentially a sales unit six years ago into an agency that not only builds thousands of public houses but also has a national urban development function to ensure that housing is enabled across the housing continuum. Kāinga Ora has built or enabled a gross number of 14000 houses since October 2017 across public and transitional housing KiwiBuild and large-scale projects. Based on current staffing levels this is one staff member per two houses built or under construction compared to two staff members per home under construction under the previous Government.Chris Bishop: With reference to that answer to the primary and particularly the reference to KiwiBuild is she saying that the Government's success in building 2000 KiwiBuild homes in the last six years is actually a success?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: What I pointed out to that member is that Kāinga Ora is an agency that has turned around from being a sales unit for flogging off State housing to building a Government housing programme that not only contains the record number of State houses built since the 1970s but that also contains market houses and KiwiBuild houses. This is a Government that builds houses and we are proud of that.Chris Bishop: Why does Budget 2023 allocate $3 billion to Kāinga Ora and forecast that to build 3000 houses at an average cost of $1 million a house?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The member is simply incorrect in his calculations. What Budget 2023 does is allow a borrowing facility of up to that amount. Of course if Kāinga Ora were to build 3000 houses—which it won't because the community housing providers will be building some of those—that would be a net number. In order for Kāinga Ora to deliver say net 2000 houses it actually has to build around 1000 houses. I compared before I came down the construction cost of our community housing providers compared to Kāinga Ora and actually Kāinga Ora has in the last financial year delivered two bedroom units at a lower cost than all of our providers.Chris Bishop: Why does she have any confidence Kāinga Ora will deliver these extra houses on budget when Budget 2023 allocates an extra $7 billion to the agency which is more than is being allocated for the national resilience plan?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I have confidence because the operational funding that was allocated in the Budget is for just that: operations. It is the money that is required for the operating supplement and the income-related rent subsidy—something that member is going to have to get his head around in terms of what a real commitment to public housing looks like.Chris Bishop: What's more of a failure: spending $2 billion on KiwiBuild for 2000 houses or spending $3 billion on Kāinga Ora to deliver just 3000?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The member is incorrect in both instances. KiwiBuild has not had to exercise the discounted underwrite on any of the properties. There are 1700 New Zealanders that are in affordable first homes over six years under our Government compared to less than 100 under National over nine years. So I will put that record next to theirs any day of the week. And as I pointed out in previous answers the member has simply got his mathematics wrong.Chris Bishop: Is she comfortable with the billions of dollars that Kāinga Ora has borrowed in the last six years relative to a State house waiting list that has quintupled under her watch?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I am more than comfortable because it's to fix the decimation of a housing programme that happened under nine years of National. Not only did they end up with 1500 fewer public houses held by either Housing New Zealand or community housing providers than when they started they failed to deliver. If they had delivered at the rate that we are we would have 20000 more State houses in this country. But not only did they sell them off and fail to deliver; they also raided the coffers of Housing New Zealand and took out over half a billion dollars rather than building houses with it.