Davis KelvinKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): An inspired choice Mr Chair. Thank you very much. It is a great day to be in Opposition I have to say. It is a great day for the Opposition. This has been a day when the Opposition members have been able to talk at length non-stop about our suite of housing policies and at the same time highlight the complete dearth of policy coming from the Government benches on homelessness and the fact that we need more houses built. I just have to give credit to my colleague Phil Twyford for all the amazing work that he has been doing developing our policy. I believe that Housing New Zealand lost its soul when it decided that it was going to be there just purely to derive a profit from people who are using its services. It has become an organisation that does not see people as an opportunity to actually do some good for the country. It just sees people as problems and it treats them in that way. National has taken $523 million out of profits from Housing New Zealand including a $118 million dividend for the year 2015-16 alone. Imagine how many houses how many families how many people could be supported in order to live in warm comfortable affordable houses if that money instead of going into the Government's coffers was actually reinvested back into building houses for our people. When people come into our electorate offices there are four organisations that comprise the majority of complaints. First of all there is Child Youth and Family there is Work and Income there is ACC and the fourth is Housing New Zealand. I can tell the story—this happened over a year ago—of a family of mum dad and three kids who arrived in Whangarei and they were living in their car. They went to Housing New Zealand and because the only house available had five bedrooms and they really needed only four they were actually declined that house. That is just ridiculous. The rules around Housing New Zealand and its policies just sometimes do not make sense. Instead of just thinking what is the right thing to do for people what is the best way that it can support their kids to grow up in a warm safe dry comfortable house so that they can get to school and be prepared to learn—instead of thinking about the ways that it can provide a home for parents so that they can look after their families it puts every single barrier in the way of these families that it can think of. As I said earlier instead of looking at ways to help it sees people as problems and that to me is totally unacceptable. What is the social cost in years to come?" is the question that I ask. What is the social cost in years to come if children are growing up not in warm safe comfortable affordable homes but where parents are struggling with rent and struggling to get by in poorly maintained homes? There is a social cost to the country in years to come that is far greater than the cost of actually just providing a house in the first place. When we talk about affordable homes one of the submitters at the homelessness inquiry last week in Kaitāia spoke about his ability to build an affordable home—and Housing New Zealand could take this idea on—a 100 square metre home for $100000. He can construct it in a workshop in 4 days and erect it on site in 3 days. He was saying that he can build homes all around Tai Tokerau—a 100 square metre home for $100000 and a 200 square metre home for $175000. How many houses could that $118 million dividend pay for and erect all around the country if the Government had just looked at and attended the homelessness inquiry? Government members were not there at all. These were ideas that could have been taken to Housing New Zealand. The Minister for Building and Housing could have said "Hey look. Here's a really good idea that's come out of the homelessness inquiry that Labour the Greens and the Māori Party have established." and we could use some of these ideas to build—"