Hipkins Chris: General Debate 
Hipkins Chris: General Debate 
[Volume:668;Page:15181] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 Kris Fa’afoi’s chances of winning the Mana by-election just went up even further. Every time Hekia Parata stands up in Parliament or shifts so that she is sitting behind somebody who is speaking Kris Fa’afoi’s chances of winning the Mana by-election go up just a little bit further. The people in Mana like the rest of New Zealand know that they were sold a lemon at the 2008 general election. All of the promises that National made are being broken right left and centre; it had no intention of keeping them. Hekia Parata thinks that if she just screams a little bit louder about how proud she is of all the promises that National has broken then somehow the people of Mana will be gullible enough to vote for her and put her in as their member of Parliament. They are not as gullible as that; they are not as stupid as that. They know that National has not delivered what it promised. They know that they are not better off under National. 
There is no ambition for the people of Porirua under this National Government. Phil Heatley wants to take away their houses. The old people in Porirua who have lived in those State houses and who have raised their families in those State houses will have them taken away by Phil Heatley. They will have their houses taken away from them. I say to Phil Heatley that they are not just houses; they are homes. People have lived in those homes for many years they have raised their kids there they have neighbours whom they have known for most of their lives and their kids have gone to the local school. It is not just a house; it is a home. I think it is absolutely disgraceful that Phil Heatley thinks that it is acceptable to throw them out of the houses that they have lived in for all that time. Hekia Parata has said nothing. She has said absolutely nothing about Phil Heatley’s plan to throw State housing tenants out of their homes because he wants to give them to somebody else. 
Phil Heatley claimed that the previous Labour Government was a slum landlord. What has he done since he became the Minister of Housing? He has cut funding. He has cut funding for maintaining State housing since he became the Minister. I bet very little money is going into redeveloping State houses in Porirua just as very little money is going into redeveloping State houses in my electorate just across the hill in Rimutaka. In fact National has abandoned a whole lot of State houses. The houses are now in such bad nick it will not put tenants in them. Instead of doing them up it has just abandoned them altogether. It is leaving them completely empty. That is what this Government thinks is the priority in housing: turf people out of their houses turf them out of their homes and then leave the houses empty. That is this Government’s housing strategy and it is an absolute disgrace. 
The people in Mana will know. They will pass judgment on this Government in another 2½ weeks and the judgment will be clear. They have had a gutsful of the broken promises. They have had a gutsful of being told that they were going to get a Government that was ambitious for New Zealand. It was going to turbocharge the economy. Do members remember that? National was going to turbocharge the economy. What has happened instead? Unemployment has gone up. Bill English called the unemployed collateral damage. That is what Bill English thinks about the people who have lost their jobs. Those people are National’s collateral damage. National does not care about the people who have lost their jobs because of its bad managing of the economy. 
It does not care about the people who feel betrayed that it broke its promise not to increase GST. What did John Key say? He said that if National did a halfway decent job of managing the economy it would not need to increase GST. Either John Key was not telling the truth or he has admitted that National has done an appalling job of managing the economy. He said that if National did a good job of managing the economy GST would not go up. GST has already gone up. Less than 2 years after National became the Government it put up GST. It is another broken promise to add to the long list. 
National said it would not cut education funding. It should tell that to the parents in my electorate who send their kids to kindergarten because the Rimutaka Kindergarten Association has lost $1 million in funding. It has lost $1 million in funding at the hands of a Government that said it would not cut funding for early childhood education. That is exactly what it has done. 
Across the board the communities are feeling the pinch. They are feeling the effect of the Government’s funding cuts. Our elderly are struggling to make ends meet because of the rising cost of living. What does the National Government do? It cuts their home help hours. It cuts their home help hours which will ultimately lead to more old people ending up in hospital. It is a Government that is already out of touch with ordinary working New Zealanders like the people who live in the Porirua Basin in Mana. This Government is out of touch.