Kieran McAnulty: Labour's housing spokesperson on the Government's new Kainga Ora plan

The opposition is criticising Kainga Ora's turnaround plan. 

The Government's told the landlord to focus on its core service: social housing. 

It's announced savings including ending sustainable housing certification requirements and shedding a quarter of its staff. 

Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty told Andrew Dickens he's perplexed that the Housing Minister calls this a success. 

He says the need for social housing continues to grow and the governments answer is to not build houses. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kayger Order has come up with a new plan to
help save the agency. The turnaround plan will refocus on
getting back to basics. They will still build and manage
social housing by selling nine hundred homes a year that
are no longer fit for purpose and renewing older homes
that needs And they say the number of state homes
will not change, but then again, nor will they increase.

(00:20):
And under the plan, debt is forecast to be one
point eight billion dollars lower in twenty seven to twenty
eight compared to the twenty twenty three forecasts of a
couple of years ago. So Labor Housing spokesperson Kieren mcinnaughty
is with it now? Hallikieren? Oh, sorry I double clicked Hallakieren.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
So the government and the chairman and the CEO says
that the refocus is necessary because the agency is in
financial strife. Do you agree and do you agree that
something had to change?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
No? I don't agree, And I'm quite perplexed that the
Minister will stand up and celebrate this as when the
need for social houses continue to grow, the housing crisis
committees to get worse, and his solution seems to be
not building houses but yes.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
The chairman and the CEO also said there was financial
strife and you can't build houses if you don't have money.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, actually the same bloke said in front of the
Select Committee of Parliament that any organization with their level
of assets would be quite comfortable with the ratio of
debt that they hold. The chairmen and the CEO are
doing what the government ask that's what they do. The
Minister has made it quite clear heading into government that
they believe that there is no role for the government

(01:39):
to build state houses. The problem with that position, of course,
is that if the government is it involved in building
state houses, they don't get built and people don't get homes.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
True, but the chairman also said the king Aura had
significant growth over the past five years. That's under your watch.
You delivered thirteen thousand homes. You refurbished three four hundred
of them. But that growth was unsustainable. So it's time
for a cup of tea.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
There was always changes under way at cling Oral. Let's
not forget it was a brand new organization when the
Labor government came in in twenty seventeen. The New Zealand
Housing Corporation existed solely to sell state houses. Previous government
ended up with fifteen hundred fewer than what they started with.
And then you're right, we built pretty much fourteen thousand homes.

(02:28):
That is a massive amount of growth, and there was
always efficiencies happening along the way. But because that was
happening at such a fast pace, there's no excuse to
turn around and make a case that is unsustainable. If
you remember when the Prime Minister and the Minister stood
up and made this case at the podium in Parliament,

(02:51):
they talked about the death. They didn't once talk about
the value of the assets in the way that that
has grown, which has actually grown at a faster rate
than the debt. There's forty seven billion dollars worth of
assets under kying Aura's books. They don't talk about that
because we knew. Compare the assets to the debt, it's
a completely different story.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
So if you were still in charge, you would be
facing the same books. You've already said that the pace
of building that happened under your charge previously was extraordinarily fast.
Would you have continued that fast pace and continued to
throw the agency into even more debt crisis.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Well, we've got to be careful with their wording here,
I've just explained to you that there was no debt crisis.
There is a large amount of debt, but there's also
considerable amount of assets. This is a jack up in
my view. The report that established this case was flawed,
that contained factual errors, and it just coincidentally landed with

(03:49):
the same recommendations. Then was exactly where the previous National
government were. This was always going to happen. What I'm
concerned about is that they have walked away from building
houses to those people that need them. So let's compere
what was happening when there was up to five thousand

(04:09):
homes being built a year and now there's going to
be no growth. So you extrapolate this over the years,
how many people are going to miss out on a home.
We've already seen homelessness grow. We've seen stories of people
living in cars and garages and tents and on the street.
It's only going to get worse. It's the exact same

(04:30):
situation that this country was left in the last time
the National Party were in government.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Kieren Mechanltie, thank you for your time. For more fam
Earlily edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Listen live to News Talks.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
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