Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 29 June 2026

Well, kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. I trust you all had good weekends. Look, there has been a lot of talk recently about the need for New Zealanders to build bigger nest eggs so they can retire with greater financial security and more choices in their retirement. That’s why our Government increased the KiwiSaver default contributions in last year’s Budget with a new default rate of 3.5 percent taking effect on 1 April this year and, of course, moving through to 4 percent in 2028.

It’s also why National is campaigning on being even more ambitious for KiwiSaver. We have a policy to further increase default contribution rates to 6 percent each for employers and employees by 2032. And just over a week ago, as you’ll be aware, we announced our policy of making KiwiSaver compulsory for all workers from 1 July 2028, automatically enrolling babies at birth and providing a $1,500 Baby Boost payment, supporting moms and dads on paid parental leave to keep building their savings, and of course, requiring employers to keep contributing for workers over the age of 65.

But higher retirement savings not only delivers big benefits for individuals, it also means having a much larger pool of domestic capital to help fund the infrastructure, the startups, and the housing that we need to grow our economy, to create jobs, and to lift incomes. This Government sees investment in infrastructure as an investment in building our future. When we came into office, New Zealand had a bad habit of making it incredibly difficult to get things done and built. Projects that could create jobs, that could strengthen our economy and improve New Zealand’s long-term prosperity, were getting stuck in years of progress—in progress and delay.

That’s why we introduced our fast-track one-stop shop into Parliament in our first 100 days in Government. Since then, 24 projects have been approved through the fast-track system.

Several of those projects are already under construction, and many more will follow in the months ahead. Together, those 24 projects are expected to support at least 200,000 jobs and inject at least $11 billion dollars into New Zealand’s economy over their lifetimes. Those projects span housing, and roading, renewables, mining, and quarrying, and industrial development right across New Zealand.

Last Thursday, I announced National’s policy to increase uptake of solar energy at a household level. We want to make it easier for property owners to install solar power and battery storage in order to build more energy security, more resilience, and more control over their power bills. I spoke then about the fact that more renewable energy projects have been delivered in the last two years than in the previous eight years. That’s because widespread regulatory reform, like fast-track, is helping to enable a record-breaking pipeline of renewables. Fast-track is helping to unlock investment, to create jobs, and get important projects moving. Of course, as I said, it’s part of our plan to build the future, and it’s working. And with that, I’ll hand over to Chris to talk a little bit more about fast-track and its progress.

We’re really proud of fast-track. It is delivering for New Zealand. We are expecting to see around 50 decisions from panels by the end of the year. It was introduced in our first 100 days but didn’t come into effect until February 2025, so to have 50 decisions approved by the end of 2026, I think, is pretty good going. Twenty-four projects have already been approved: housing, renewables, infrastructure, mining, quarrying, and industrial development. 9,000 homes have been approved through fast-track. That’s nearly 9,000 homes for Kiwi families that would otherwise be tangled up in red tape. 400 megawatts of renewable generation. That’s equivalent to around 5 percent of current generation capacity. That’s enough to power 160,000 homes.

We’re also seeing major infrastructure and industrial projects move ahead. One project that I know a lot of people have been interested in is the green steel project in the Waikato, recycling 200,000 tonnes of steel using lower-emissions production methods, expected to create around 200 skilled jobs. The Port of Auckland expansion, the first project to receive approval, is underway already, expected to contribute up to $6 billion to the economy over the next 30 years and over 100,000 jobs. The Waihi North mining project is expected to generate $5 billion in additional export earnings and 1,000 jobs, and we’ve got two quarry expansions in Auckland with 260 million tonnes of aggregate over the next century, helping ensure we have material for roads, homes, and infrastructure.

The average time for a project to receive approval is 117 working days, and it’s fair to say that is a fraction of the time many major projects have historically spent navigating these quite complicated consenting processes. The Ports of Auckland, for example, estimates it would have taken five years for their project to receive approval. That’s underway right now, and there’s many other examples that had a similar delay estimated. There are 20 projects currently before expert panels with decisions due in the coming months. Seven other projects are undergoing pre-panel checks, and there are 55 projects working their way through the system at the moment.

It’s fair to say that fast-track is just part of the Government’s broader planning reform programme, but it is a visible manifestation and tangible example as to how planning reform can help unclog the arteries of growth in the economy. It is helping generate more homes, more renewable projects, more industrial development, more jobs and growth. And it’s helping us build the future for New Zealand families. Prime Minister.

Well, thank you, Chris. Why don’t we take questions with respect to the infrastructure/fast-track conversations, and then we can get into general issues of the day?

That’s not 100 percent accurate. What happened is they applied. As Minister for Infrastructure, I took advice on the application. It met the criteria. I, therefore, referred it into the process. They then lodged their substantive application. It is fair to say that there are mixed views within the energy sector, including from the Minister and the officials, as to the appropriate outcome there, and they are working their way through that. The decision’s before a panel right now so it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment further than that, nut just to clarify the exact process that’s got us to this point.

Yes, so, and that’s entirely appropriate because they’re different—his role is a different statutory role to my role as Minister for Infrastructure. And actually, in the referral process itself, when I receive an application, there’s a convoluted—well, it’s not that convoluted but it’s a bit of process by which I seek comments and feedback from other Ministers and in fact councils and other stakeholders when it comes to a referral decision. So these things are designed in order to achieve a robust outcome, like I’ve just talked about.

Yeah, look, I mean, I think my Ministers are there to set direction. I think the CEOs are there to set the operations into motion. It’s not surprising that there will be performance, you know, criteria, or performance management criteria. It’s not just peculiar, I imagine, to just this one issue. There’ll be a range of considerations or KPIs or deliverables that would be expected and that a CEO would be holding a manager to account for, but ultimately it’s an operational issue for MSD.

Tama’s in charge of emergency housing so I wasn’t aware of that specific instance. We have made it really clear to MSD exactly what our expectations are, and the expectation is that those who need emergency housing support get it. And people do get it, despite the fact that some people say the system has been abolished. It hasn’t. There is emergency housing support available.

But we’ve also said there—and we’ve made this clear: if MSD frontline staff can find alternative support for people that is not emergency housing, they should do that. And that might, for example, be transitional housing. It might be social housing. It may be—

Private rental.

It may be private rentals with some additional support offered by MSD to help them with their bond payments, for example, because getting a bond together and getting a tenancy that is sustainable is an issue, and MSD run a whole variety of programmes that they work with people on.

Well, the—in relation to people in Auckland, one of the reasons why we funded some additional Housing First places is that that is an alternative pathway for those who are rough sleepers. In fact, in October last year, we specifically rolled out additional Housing First places, which is a proven programme that works, that uses social housing places, and crucially puts in place the additional wraparound support.

I’ve visited the Mission at least three times in my time as Housing Minister and I’d like to think I’ve got a good relationship with them. In fact we’ve just provided some additional support for them.

And, Jo, what—

And Government doesn’t—

The Government traditionally does not fund night shelters.

Yes, yes.

Well, Jo, what I’m aware of is since we put $10 million of extra funding in in October last year, 300 extra Housing First places, those places plus another 374 actually in transitional housing and other housing has been taken up as well. And so there’s been very good work and very good progress made since September.

As I said to you—as I said to it earlier, MSD will always provide housing for people in genuine need, but that may take alternative forms than just emergency housing.

Okay, thanks. Tom. Let’s go to Tom.

Sorry, Jo, we’ve had three questions. Go to Tom, thank you.

What’s her question, sorry?

Personally no, but I’m comfortable with the Government’s programme and the amount of investment that we’ve put into housing, and I just want to back it up a little bit because I think actually I’d put our housing record up against the previous Government’s any day of the week. We have more affordable housing than we’ve ever had and more first home buyers purchasing homes, which is fantastic. We have actually made—we’ve got rents actually stable, if not—if not falling, having been up $180 a week.

We’ve taken something like 6,000 people, 6,000 people out of state social housing waitlist. Yes, we’ve moved thousands of people out of emergency housing and they go through to the priority one programme under the state social housing, they go through to transitional housing, they go through to private rentals. And we’ve put $10 million in September last year, and earlier this month, I think, we put another $14.5 million, because the programmes that we’re working in Auckland and Christchurch and Hamilton and Wellington, we now want to take those initiatives and we want to roll them out into other new locations as well.

So, you know, I think—you know, I just would ask you to think about the whole gamut of housing and what we’re doing there, and the effort that we are making around rough sleepers and homelessness in particular.

Well, as I said to you earlier, there’ll be a range of things that a CEO who’s responsible for operational matters at MSD will have for performance management, and that, you know, I imagine there’s a range of things more than just one thing, frankly.

It’s an operational issue for MSD. What I’m interested in is making sure we get people into houses, whether they can own them, whether they can rent them, whether they get access to social housing, and whether we get rough sleepers off the street and the proper support around them.

Well, as we’ve talked about, they’re two separate issues. With respect to move-on orders, our police actually will use—will use very good operational practice to make sure they’re plugged into the social services should they be needed. But each case is very complex, each case is very specific, as you know, and police have existing relationships with many of our social service providers and are quite capable of actually hooking people up into those services.

That’s a hypothetical. What we’re there for move-on orders is to make sure we’re dealing with antisocial and disorderly behaviour. We want people to feel safe in our cities. That’s what that’s about. We don’t want intimidation, we don’t want disruption, and we don’t want disturbance and so, you know, that’s why we’ve got the move-on orders there.

Rest assured, in many ways, in much the same way you pushed us hard with respect to police wouldn’t be able to implement gang patches, it’s the same thing here. Police will build up operating procedures and practices. They have well-established relationships with many of the social service providers across our cities, and are very good at plugging people into those services.

Well, again, I’m just saying to you we’ve got move-on orders for a good reason— there’s either disturbance, disorderly behaviour. I would just ask you to compartmentalise a little bit the move-on orders from rough sleeping and homelessness.

Well, I’m just saying to you that actually we’ve got two issues at play. One is about making sure we stop disorderly behaviour and it’s not causing intimidation to other Kiwis and other residents in the downtown area, and yes, we are going to implement move-on orders. But our police will do that intelligently, working with individuals that have quite complex and unique needs.

I haven’t had that conversation with them, but I’d just say to you—

Well, it’s just reasonable to say we want to get Kiwis into housing, so I charge—

No, no, no, just hear me out. Hear me out.

No, because that’s an operational issue for MSD to work out how best to deliver against the—you know, the country’s objectives around getting people into housing. That’s a perfectly reasonable, legitimate way. How a CEO operationalises their team and how they distinguish between the performance of different managers is up to them to sort out.

We have clear targets about what we’re trying to achieve, which is we want housing to be more affordable. We want rents to be stable. We want more people off the wait list for social and state housing. We want to make sure we get people out of emergency housing into proper dry homes, whether they’re state, whether they’re private rentals, whether they’re transitional housing. And we also have put a lot of support into rough sleeping, into homelessness across the country, and so—working with a lot of social agencies, working with local councils, you know, and we’ll continue that work.

But we’re making some good progress. The initiatives that we put in place in October last year are working, are making progress, and as a result they’re being rolled out into other places across the country.

Sorry, what?

Well, they didn’t actually.

Well, it’s a pretty [Inaudible] because it also doesn’t work, so they didn’t.

[Inaudible] assumption there, Henry.

Yeah, so—

No, no, that’s not the way we roll. The answer is it’s a good idea and there’s merit in the idea. Yes, you’re right, we inherited a mess, and like most things from Labour, it’s a total executional mess. But the good news is that with a great Minister, he’s actually made a lot of improvement in terms of making sure we’ve got new governance structures. We’ve got a brand new programme director. We’re making sure the partners that are there to support us are doing it. It’s not—it’s too—it’s too hard and it’s too far down the road to actually stop it completely. As you know, it’s already being implemented and rolled out across Christchurch, I think, from memory.

Yes.

So, for our point of view, you know, it’s not great—we’ll do a review at the end of it—but our job is now to fix it and that’s what Chris has been doing.

I’ll just say a general point. The management of Government IT projects is atrocious. It is abysmal. I’ll be really honest with you. Coming from outside the system and you look at how large-scale IT projects are managed, it’s pretty poor. That’s why I’ve asked for the, you know, the Government CTO, essentially, to be reporting in to the Public Service Commission. That’s why I brought outsiders in, in the form of Simon Moutter and Adrian Littlewood and others, to help give us advice how best to structure this going forward so we can better manage IT projects in general across Government. We have a huge opportunity with the public sector reforms to make sure that we are technology-enabled, that we’re actually much smarter and much better at getting value for money out of the spends that we’ve got going across the system. So there’s a micro-issue on this project but I’m just saying as a general point I’ve been pretty unimpressed with how IT projects are managed.

I’m as annoyed about this as many New Zealanders are. A couple of points. One is that the reason NTS exists is that all of the public transport operating systems, whether it’s Hop in Auckland or Snapper or Metro in Christchurch, are all coming to the end of their life, right? So the question is, for Government—which we fund, by the way, the operating systems, basically. The question is: what do you do about that?

And the decision was made way back in the day, it would be better for the Government to go out and buy one system and rather than ECan, GWRC and Auckland go out and buy their own new systems, which the Government would end up funding at greater expense. So, if we—if we carried on operating the systems that are already there, we’d be up for, I’m advised, $1.1 billion of operating costs over 10 years. So the national ticketing system, the operating costs of that are $830 million over the 10 years, so it’s cheaper than just continuing with the legacy systems.

So it’s actually—that was the idea. It obviously has not happened as quickly as I would have liked, in fact anyone would have liked, and it is very frustrating. We have made a series of changes. The governance has changed, that I—that I essentially forced through, through NZTA. We’ve now standardised the concessions.

One of the reasons why it has taken so long to roll out and has been so complicated is that every public transport authority, every regional council, insisted on every single one of their concessions being part of the new national system. So you might think that that a child, the definition of a child is the same. It’s not. Every region had their own concession. You might think that Community Services Cards are easy. You know, think again. It’s not quite that simple. Every single particular route that attracted a concession, even down to the finest-grained detail, had to be part of the system. So we’ve now—we’ve now made real progress on that and standardise those concessions.

Greater Wellington Regional Council have put some more money in but all they’ve done is extend Snapper by another year. It doesn’t include the concessions. So it just means that you can use your Snapper card, it doesn’t include the concessions—and it doesn’t work half the time. There are regular reports of Wellingtonians getting on buses and the system’s just not working because it is end of life, which is why we are replacing it with the new national ticketing system. So I’m as annoyed about it as everybody else is—

No. You can’t tell from the way your voice—

—but my job is basically to fix it and try and make it work.

Yeah, exactly.

And we are showing some progress. There’s been 1.5 million trips in Christchurch since the 10th of November, and we’re rolling it out in other parts of the country. It’s going to take too long, I’m annoyed about it as you are but, you know, you can either—we can’t just walk away, it’s too far gone.

We’ve got to fix it. Okay, Ethan.

I’ll let Chris talk to that one.

Yes, we—that is true, we did—we did do that. We have not made any progress on that.

Well, I took some initial oral advice, from memory, and the short answer is it’s way more complicated than we thought it would be, and so we’re not—we’re not intending to progress that.

Well the good news is we’ve done KiwiSaver for farmers, so that’s great. Yeah. OK, Adam.

It’s one of those things that you just put in the ‘it was a nice idea but it’s too difficult’ basket.

Yeah, look, I’m well aware of the complaints. It’s now being investigated, as you know, by the IPCA and also police. I’m not actually going to comment too much on that. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me or any Minister, frankly, to be involved with it at this point in time.

Yes, I do support him, but there’s a process going on at the moment where an investigation is underway, and it’s entirely appropriate we let that run its course.

Yes, I do.

No. There’s 10,000 men and women out there every day putting their lives on the line for New Zealanders and keeping the community safe. They’re doing an exceptionally good job, as evidenced by the fact we’ve had a 100 percent increase in police out there on the beat. We’ve got 46,000 fewer victims of serious violent crime. I think we’ve had something like a 22 or 25 percent reduction in serious youth offending. So, you know, police are doing an exceptionally good job and they are deeply trusted by New Zealanders.

We cooperate and collaborate on many, many things. We have a fundamental difference on the Indian FTA and that’s OK. We compartmentalise that. The reality is that, you know, Winston Peters’ New Zealand First never supported the China FTA. They’re not going to support the Indian FTA. We did a negotiation with the Indians. Everyone’s happy with what we negotiated. What we’re going through is a normal process, as we’ve done on every other FTA. So, look, we’re just not going to agree. You know, he stridently disagrees and thinks the Indian FTA is bad for New Zealand. I happen to have the complete opposite view. I think he’s dead wrong on it and so that’s why I say so when I—when I get asked about it. And that’s OK. I mean, it’s OK to have those differences. That’s fine.

Well, he’s entitled to, you know, to state his view about what he thinks about that. New Zealand First, as I said, has had a long history of opposing FTAs. I look back on the China FTA being opposed in 2007. I look at how much it’s generated, almost $42 billion in two-way trade. I look at what’s happening here in India. Already since we started talking about India two years ago, I think trade’s up almost 70 percent, and that’s before we’ve even got an FTA in place. And when you look at the potential of this—and I’d just say, you know, Mr Peters was in the Hawke’s Bay on the weekend. Well, go down and talk to those growers and ask them what they think about it because when you can have a fourfold increase in the quota of kiwifruit going into India, that just creates more jobs. It creates more opportunity. It creates more investment. So the bottom line is it’s happening, we’re moving on, we’re getting it done, and we want it into force by the end of the year.

Well, as I’ve said to everybody and you’re going to hear ad nauseam from me until 7 November, if you want a National-led Government, you’ve got to party vote National. Simple as that.

Sorry, I want everyone to have a question.

It’s not something we’re considering right now. I mean, the key thing for us is, as I said, to step up the contribution rates over time, make sure we make it compulsory, get the Baby Bonus in place, the over-65s. And, you know, that’s really the key focus of us in our superannuation agenda at the moment.

Sorry, Jenna, I don’t think you’ve—sorry.

Yeah, good question. I mean, as we’ve said before, you know, we set up temporary, timely and targeted, and the criteria for that was that we need to see 91 below $3 for four consecutive weeks in a row. I think, you know, even just talking to you a week ago about that crisis, what we’re seeing is it’s incredibly fragile, it’s incredibly volatile, every 24 hours it’s changing, and so that’s why we have been prudent and responsible, putting funds aside, as you know, in the Budget should we have to help people further down the road.

We want that to be de-escalated, that conflict. We want those parties to get around the table and negotiate a final settlement. We want those ships moving through the Hormuz Strait. And as you’ve seen, it’s been on, off, on, off, on, off, and the breakout of hostilities is not a good thing. So we’ve got a long way to go but for us, yes, the test is if we get four weeks below $3. You know, that’s our commitment around making sure it’s timely and targeted.

I think what we’ve articulated from the very beginning of the year, as difficult as it may be politically, you know, at times, is to say, look, we are going to make a virtue out of being the responsible grown-up adult financial managers of this economy. And we have said that at the beginning of the year. We’ve said that again as we did my national economic speech. We said it again going into the Budget.

And as we hit this crisis on 28 February, I mean, we’ve been very clear from day one that we actually need to keep an eye on the fiscals and actually the fiscal repair job that we still have to do in the medium and long term, and we don’t want to just spray the cash around like we saw in the COVID experience. And let’s be honest about it, you know, over the period of time where debt tripled, we were in a place where we’ve used up the rainy day fund, we’ve maxed out the credit cards and now we get credit warnings from banks around the world, so we have to keep an eye on that and manage that well.

That doesn’t preclude us from doing what we’ve said and set up as the frame that we will do timely, targeted, and temporary support, so that’s why we put $450 million aside in the Budget. Should we need to use that, we will, and—but again, at this point in time, you know, the criteria is if fuel goes below $3 for four consecutive weeks. That’s a return to pre-conflict levels. That’s the—that’s the deal that we did around making sure we could support people as best we could.

Yes. Yes, but there is a difference between a Minister, who essentially is setting a direction, and a CEO of a Government agency that has executive responsibility and operational responsibility for deployment and for delivery of the goals of the Government. That’s across the whole of the public service. That’s what it—you know, how it’s designed.

So each of my Ministers come in with great clarity. Think about Erica Stanford. We want to lift attendance. We want to improve numeracy and literacy. They are the three problems that we’re trying to fundamentally solve for. We have a commonsense plan that we’re trying to now deliver and execute and implement so that we can get better results. Think about what we saw in violent crime, youth offending, sentencing: a commonsense plan—problem we had coming in, you know, a commonsense plan to deal with that on law and order, and now we see improved results. So that’s the—that’s what I expect my Ministers to provide into here.

And in this case it’s been about making sure we do a hell of a lot better than having families and kids languishing in motels, which is unacceptable, so we have prioritised them through Chris and Tama’s work into the social state housing waitlist. We have got them into transitional housing. We have got them into private rentals.

Well, again, I expect my Ministers to be on top of their briefs and I’m asking them to deliver on the goals that we as a Government have. So if you think about the healthcare targets, we’ve set five targets in place. We’re sending a very strong message to the whole of the healthcare system: that is what we want you waking up, going to work to do, and deliver on each and every single day. The model that we had before, frankly, where we hired a hell of a lot more people and achieved worse results—I mean, we left Government with 6,500 people on a state house wait list. We came back and there was 26,000 people on it. We left with 1,000 people waiting for elective surgeries, and we came back and there was 30,000 people on that wait list, essentially. So, you know, that’s the reality of why you need targets.

There’s a point there about making sure they’re not gamed. We expect our CEOs to make sure the quality of the result, as well as the what and the how, are delivered well. That’s not an unreasonable expectation I have of any CEO or any business person.

No, no, he’s done an exceptionally good job —

—getting kids out of emergency housing and into permanent warm, dry homes. That’s a really good thing. OK. Last question, Thomas.

Yeah, I think, you know, when we actually look at families that have been languishing in a motel that were supposed to be a 12-week deal and it turned up being months and months and months, and kids not being able to attend school because they’re not part of a community or in a proper home, in a proper house, delivered through social, state, transitional, or private rentals, we’ve got to a much better outcome. You’d have to say, hand on heart, this is a better place to be than where we were when we started.

That’s not what we’ve done.

That’s not what’s happening.

That’s not what’s happening.

No, that’s an unfair allegation.

2,400 kids are now living in houses because they went to the top of the wait list.

Priority one.

Priority one, and that started in May 2024 and since then 2,388 kids have been housed because we put them at the top of the wait list, because we said living in a motel, as a child, is like the single worst thing you could probably do to that child’s life outcome. So they’ve been moved into houses.

Yeah, sure. But you’re dealing with—I mean, firstly, first point is this is a 20-year problem for New Zealand and there is enormous social deprivation in some parts of our communities. And the advice I’ve received is that in tough economic times, which New Zealand’s been through for the last few years, those social problems tend to bubble up a bit and tend to become a bit more visible. You’re also often dealing with people with a range of really complicated social circumstances going on, from mental health, through addiction, through disabilities, both physical and other forms.

And the responsible role for Government faced with those circumstances is to do all the things we’re doing on planning, and actually that is a really important part of the solution. It’s to invest more in social housing and reorient the social housing system towards priority cohorts of people, which is exactly what we’re doing. Housing First is a response to that and we put a lot more money into Housing First, which is a proven programme that is working, and the PM’s given you the numbers as to how that’s rolled out in Auckland Wellington and other places.

And then also the on-the-ground support, working with trusted providers like the Wellington City Mission or the Auckland City Mission or the Christchurch Methodist Mission, all of which we fund for outreach services to work with the people most at risk who are rough sleeping, and they are doing that and we will continue to do that. It’s a completely legitimate role of the state to do that. But it is also fair to say that you are dealing with people in quite challenging circumstances and—

Complex needs.

—we should be honest about that.

Sorry, Thomas, I just want to say, you know, any homeless situation, there is a complex set of needs at an individual level as to what’s going on in that individual’s life. Just to say that because we’ve made progress on emergency housing and everyone’s ended up on the street, that’s not fair in the sense that we know that what we’ve done in terms of social state housing waitlist—we know what we’ve done in terms of transitional housing and putting people in private rentals. We spent $1 billion on emergency housing and homelessness went up 37 percent under the Labour Government. So these are hard issues for us to work our way through, but we have found initiatives and programmes that are working, as I said, with the $10 million investment in October, the progress that we’ve made there with Housing First places and other transitional arrangements, and we’re going to roll that out across the rest of the country.

So I think, you know, we—I’m not denying, you know, that there are challenges still for us with rough sleepers and homelessness, but we have—you know, we’re not just talking about it and admiring the problem, we are actually putting actions into place to actually help get us to a better place.

Yeah, so Housing First is a programme specifically designed for, exactly as you say, people who are in that kind of long-term form of housing, who need housing support, and the money we put in October last year is essentially to expand that with a priority focus on rough sleepers because there has quite rightly been, you know, a major public focus on people who are rough sleeping. And, you know, the aim has been to get those people either onto the register—because many of them are not even registered for social housing in the first place—get them on, get them into a house, and we’ve specifically designed the programme to take rough sleepers off the streets. And Housing First doesn’t just work by giving someone a house, because that kind of goes so far but if you can’t sustain the tenancy and you don’t have the social support, particularly if you’ve been rough sleeping for a year or so, it’s not much good. So that’s why Housing First is important.

We work really closely with the City Mission. I was up there a year—a month or so ago meeting with them and they have an outreach service, they have a cafe, they have health services there, so—and what we’re trying to do is work towards a system where people who are in trouble on the streets in Auckland can get access to support through the Mission. And the aim is, once they’re essentially on the books of the Mission and they’ve built a relationship with the people working there, and have started to receive a bit of fellowship and some kai, the Mission can work with them to get them registered for health services, get them registered for Housing First, get them some wraparound support, and then get them into a place. We’re also working with Kāhui Tū Kaha on the same basis. There’s a range of other providers in other cities as well. So, yes, the doors shut at 5 o’clock, but I think the Mission itself would be—would be upset if you said that their support stops at 5 o’clock. It doesn’t. It carries on through the night.

And the other good thing is—

They should—they should—they should go and talk to the City Mission and the range of other providers there, and they should also talk to MSD, who will connect them with many of those providers who will provide support to them. There is lots of it available and if there needs to be more, we will fund it. But to be honest, it’s not a money problem, because between 2018 and 2023 the number of people in severe housing deprivation increased—

—and the country spent—the country spent billions in that five-year period. It’s not a money problem, it’s a coordination problem and it’s an effectiveness of programme problem, and that’s what I am trying to fix as Housing Minister.

OK. Thanks, Jo.

Yes, there are beds available.

Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone. Have a good week.