6040 (2026). Hon Kieran McAnulty to the Minister of Housing

6040 (2026). Hon Kieran McAnulty to the Minister of Housing: How much, if any, of Kāinga Ora’s spend on building activity flowed to the compensation of employees/ contractors in each of the last five financial years and how many full-time equivalent jobs, if any, were supported through this spend?

Hon Chris Bishop: I am interpreting your question to be asking for the estimated flow-on from Kainga Ora's spend on building activity to the compensation of employees/contractors in the residential building sector. To work this out, I’ve taken Kāinga Ora’s annual spend on building activity, then used the Statistics New Zealand (Stats NZ) input-output tables to estimate how much of the spend would flow to the compensation of employees/contractors. I’ve then used the Stats NZ’s employer-employee estimate data to estimate how many Full Time Equivalent roles that spend would equate to. I refer the member to the attached table which shows this breakdown from FY 2017/18 onwards. I note that this table only includes Kāinga Ora social housing delivery and that Kāinga Ora is only about 5% of our residential construction market. This Government is delivering the social housing places that New Zealanders need. In Budgets 2024 and 2025, we funded over 2,000 additional Community Housing Provider (CHP) places for delivery from July 2025 to 2027, and since November 2023, 7,378 net new social homes have been delivered by Kāinga Ora and CHPs. The reason Kāinga Ora’s total spend in the attached table is reducing is because the Minister of Finance and I made our social housing delivery expectations to Kāinga Ora clear: get your books back in order, get build costs down, then we will consider additional places. Kāinga Ora are getting its books in order. Before the Turnaround Plan, Kāinga Ora’s peak debt was forecast to be $29 billion in 2032/33, the Plan brought this down to $21.3 billion, and now – a year into the Plan – debt is expected to peak earlier in 2029/30 at $19.5 billion. That’s a total reduction in peak debt of $9.5 billion, so far. Kāinga Ora’s build costs are also coming down. The previous government assumed Kāinga Ora would deliver housing more cheaply than the private sector through economies of scale. They were wrong: Kāinga Ora’s build costs were 12 per cent higher than the private sector. Kāinga Ora is focused on keeping its stock at around 78,000 homes while improving the quality and location of those homes through its renewals and retrofit programme. To help fund this programme, Kāinga Ora is selling old, expensive to maintain, and unsuitable properties such as multimillion-dollar, 1920s villas. By 2030, around 11,500 older homes are expected to be renovated or replaced.