Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Opposition leader Judith Collins have been squaring off in the final week of Parliament before the election campaign kicks off.
The first of the final sitting days began on Tuesday with Collins being asked if the National Party would commit to te reo Māori. Collins said "yes, of course" - but she couldn't count to 10 in the language.
"No, I'm not particularly good at that," Collins said, and when asked if she planned to learn the language, she added: "I have enough trouble with English."
The Prime Minister gave it a go and said it wasn't for her to judge Collins.
But things heated up soon enough as the two leaders went head-to-head in Parliament, Ardern mocking a National MP's "mythical" state houses claim as Collins ridiculed the Government's housing record.
Collins took aim at the Government's KiwiBuild scheme - just 589 KiwiBuild homes built so far with a further 1051 currently under construction, after a promise to build 1000 in the first year of the flagship programme.
"When her Government promised to build 16,000 KiwiBuild homes in the first three years of the KiwiBuild programme, then delivered only 452 houses as at 30 June 2020, was that a failure to deliver?" Collins asked Ardern.
The Prime Minister said her Government's housing record represents "more affordable houses that families are living in" than the last Government created. She said the housing programme built more houses than any Government since the 1970s.
Ardern took aim at National's housing spokesperson Jacqui Dean, who falsely claimed on The AM Show last week that the previous National-led Government built 30,000 state homes - when only 2670 were built in its nine years.
"We stand proudly on our housing record," Ardern said. "These are numbers which reflect real houses - not the mythical 30,000 that apparently National built which would be closer to reflect the number that was sold by the last Government."
Collins asked Ardern in Parliament why the number of people waiting to go into a state house more than trebled from 5944 in September 2017 to a "whopping" 17,982 as at May 2020.
Ardern responded, "Under this Government we reflect and take on board all need rather than changing the lists and cutting entire sections of the waiting list in order to engineer the numbers.
"Had that last Government, under National, built houses at the pace that we are currently, we would not have a waiting list for housing."
Between 1 November 2017 and 30 June 2020, the total number of public housing places increased by 5103, of which 3981 were new builds. The number of transitional housing places available for tenanting has increased by 1516 from 1718 to 3234.
Collins attacked KiwiBuild again, but took aim at the altered version of it. The programme was 'reset' under new Housing Minister Megan Woods last year after it failed to meet the initial targets under her predecessor Phil Twyford.
The promise of building 100,000 KiwiBuild houses in 10 years was dropped, with Dr Woods describing it as "overly ambitious".
Collins asked Ardern why the $400 million progressive homeownership scheme under the revamped KiwiBuild programme had "helped not one single person" purchase a home to date.
The Prime Minister pointed out that the homeownership scheme was only launched last month. The Government expects the first group of families under the scheme to be in their own homes by November this year.
"Again, I would point out to the member, that she's choosing to critique a record that stands far in advance of anything that the last Government did," Ardern said.
Dr Woods told Newshub she stands by the KiwiBuild programme.
"I think our Government has a record on housing we can be proud of... It is an easy political shot for Judith Collins to point to the KiwiBuild delivery rates," she said.
"I will put our record on KiwiBuild next to the National Government's delivery of 100 affordable houses through the special housing areas over a period of nine years any day of the week."
