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Speaker 1: The social housing resets on. They're selling the ones worth

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Speaker 1: a lot in rebuilding new ones for less, so they're

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Speaker 1: selling nine hundred ish fifteen hundred get built. The Housing Minister,

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Speaker 1: Christ Bishop is with us. Very good morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: The debt issue they carry, how quickly does that get sorted?

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Speaker 2: The debt will be about one point eight billion dollars

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Speaker 2: lower in three to four years time than it is

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Speaker 2: than it was forecast to be, which is good. They

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Speaker 2: will still carry debt and you'd expect that because there's

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Speaker 2: a large entity with a large number of assets. So

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Speaker 2: that's fine, but of course we have to fund all

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Speaker 2: of that debt as taxpayers. That comes off our the

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Speaker 2: Crown's box, the government's box, so it is important that

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Speaker 2: we get that debt under control. We've got a balanced

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Speaker 2: plan here where we're continuing to build more houses, but

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Speaker 2: as you say, sell five value ones, sell ones in

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Speaker 2: the wrong location, ones where they're just simply uneconomic to upgrade,

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Speaker 2: it does make sense just to sell the house or

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Speaker 2: sell the land that the house is on. So it's

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Speaker 2: a balance plan where we've got a plan to invest

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Speaker 2: and keep the housing stock the same, but have much

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Speaker 2: more focus on cost control. So KO was building at

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Speaker 2: about twelve percent above what the market was building at,

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Speaker 2: for example, and so that's unsustainable. And I think everyone

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Speaker 2: listening on many people listening will have stories about KO

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Speaker 2: coming to town with the big checkbooks from the last government,

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Speaker 2: plenty of easy money, plenty of cheap debt. KO comes

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Speaker 2: to town and the price goes up for building materials

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Speaker 2: and for land, and you know, there's a whole lot

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Speaker 2: of quite crazy decision frankly, and so we're put it

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Speaker 2: all under control.

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Speaker 1: That mix and match stuff that you're talking about. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's a big cue of people twenty thousand, most of

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Speaker 1: them want one beds. Why put a one betty person

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Speaker 1: in three bedroom and remy, we're are worth two and

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Speaker 1: a half million dollars. Is that lack of rigor or

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Speaker 1: is it simply you can't forecast what people are going

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Speaker 1: to need twenty years down the track.

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Speaker 2: It's a lack of rigor, and it's the system not

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Speaker 2: responding quickly enough or effectively enough. So we're changing the system.

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Speaker 2: And one of the things we'll be working on really

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Speaker 2: hard this year is moving to a much more deliberate

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Speaker 2: purchasing role for the Crown when it comes to what

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Speaker 2: people need, and we're going to be really looking at

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Speaker 2: individual customers and individual clients and what they need. So

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Speaker 2: as you say, fifty percent of people on the register,

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Speaker 2: they just need a one bedroom unit. They don't need

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Speaker 2: a three or four bedroom unit. They just need a

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Speaker 2: one bedroom unit. And actually we can build that really cheaply,

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Speaker 2: and some of the stuff we're doing on the granny flats,

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Speaker 2: for example, make it easier to build one and two

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Speaker 2: bedroom granny flats on properties will make a real difference there.

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Speaker 2: So they just need a one bedroom unit. But it's

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Speaker 2: fifty percent of the register, twelve percent of what KO owns.

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Speaker 2: They've known about that for twenty years, frankly, probably longer,

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Speaker 2: and it's just successive governments, particularly the last government, have

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Speaker 2: not been really clear about what they're trying to build. Basically,

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Speaker 2: the story of the last government was they gave them

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Speaker 2: billions and billions and billions of dollars of debt and

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Speaker 2: operating funding and just said, build as many houses as

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Speaker 2: you can, and we don't really care where they where

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Speaker 2: you book them, and we don't really care what they cost.

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Speaker 2: We just want houses. As a result, the organization had

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Speaker 2: to scale up really quickly. They did build quite a

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Speaker 2: lot of houses six in the last two three years,

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Speaker 2: but those houses have come at huge expense of seeing

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Speaker 2: those one point five million dollar apartments in Auckland, for example,

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Speaker 2: I mean, Chao should not be building massively expensive ornate

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Speaker 2: apartments with Juliette balconies and all sorts of bells and

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Speaker 2: whistles and things like that. Where did weep the board?

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Speaker 1: Where were the board that you've got rid of? Will

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Speaker 1: they quit? Were they under riding instructions or were they incompetent?

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean all I can say is we changed

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Speaker 2: the board and that was one of the first recommendations

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Speaker 2: for the independent review we did in the first quarter

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Speaker 2: of last year was to refresh the board. I don't

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Speaker 2: want to get too much into the details of it,

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Speaker 2: but I suffice to say we've been We were unhappy

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Speaker 2: with the organization and opposition. We were unhappy when we

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Speaker 2: came to government. The review born that out and we've

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Speaker 2: made the changes.

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Speaker 1: Well, good luck with it. Chris Bishop, Housing Minister. I

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Speaker 1: think he answered it without answering it didn't he for

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Speaker 1: more from the mic asking Breakfast listen live to news talks.

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