Housing crisis a ‘pigment of people’s imagination’

There are few things more irritating to ministers than having their gung-ho quotes reheated and served up to them at Parliament’s question time for everyone to laugh at. Still worse is when they’re served up to the prime minister to explain.

John Key has been using a combination of rebuttals this week: that ministers’ embarrassing quotes about there being no housing crisis were either taken out of context; or the Opposition was flat-out making them up.

To be fair, when Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith insists he never said the housing crisis was ‘‘a figment of people’s imagination,’’ he’s probably correct. Given Smith’s tendency to malapropism, he would almost certainly have said it was a pigment of people’s imagination.

For the rest, Key was yesterday downplaying car- and garage-occupancy by the homeless, extolling the ‘‘extensive measures’’ the Government was taking to address the non-existent housing crisis, and hanging out for today’s inevitable big subject-change. As Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett soothingly consoled the Opposition, ‘‘It’s only one sleep’’ till the Budget.

‘‘Two sleeps in Gerry’s case,’’ interjected an anonymous Opposition wit, a dig at Defence Minister Brownlee’s preternaturally relaxed demeanor.

When issues like the social housing shortage are running hot, it’s customary for non-Government MPs to tot up ministers’ pet projects and ask how many hip operations, anti-cancer drugs or, in this case, homeless people’s accommodation could be funded by them.

When ACT’s David Seymour presented a list of questionable state spending, however, he was not thinking of new, affordable rentals for the poor, but tax cuts.

Would people rather have more of their hard-earned money back to spend as they saw fit, or see $600,000 of it spent on Professor Jane Kelsey’s study into ‘‘transcending neo-liberalism in international legislation’’? he asked. Exhibit B was a similar sum for the TV programme Find Me a Maori Bride 2. Exhibit C was $1.2 million for the Ultimate Waterman stand-up paddleboarding and surfing skills contest.

Seymour made clear his conviction that this money would have been more productively deployed in the hands of taxpayers, who could decide for themselves whether to use it to transcend neo-liberalism, look for love or go paddling.

Brandishing a photo of Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce holding a paddle board while announcing the water skills grant, Seymour asked whether Joyce had ever used it. Joyce could be seen muttering through an acidic grin, in the manner of one who would like to deploy the paddle board on the cheeky young pup’s behind.

Finance Minister Bill English tactfully skirted the question, saying, ‘‘There is nothing I have seen minister Joyce have a go at where he does not prove himself to be a master of the required skills.’’

Undisputed master of the skills required to send up ministers, however, was Winston Peters. Belittling current progress with housing, the NZ First leader said Smith made his predecessor in the Building portfolio, Maurice Williamson, ‘‘look like Keith Hay Homes!’’ Unused to any attention since his backbench exile, Williamson beamed.

There followed unusually goodnatured banter in which Key said Williamson probably had once lived in a Hay starter-home, and then teased Winston about his own barefoot North land-boy back story .‘‘ That member started living in a log cabin.’’

This started Labour’s Carmel Sepuloni muttering, ‘‘A log cabin’s better than a car . . . ’’ at which point the Speaker hastily moved questions on lest the House fall to reprising the Four Yorkshiremen sketch from Monty Python about living in ‘‘paper bag in’t middle of t’road’’.

Belittling progress with housing, NZ First leader Winston Peters said Smith made his predecessor in the Building portfolio, Maurice Williamson, ‘‘look like Keith Hay Homes!’’