Me poupou tetahi aho, me korewa tetahi. Kei nga ihoiho o nga maunga whakahi, kei nga wai whakatere taniwha, nau mai, tahuti mai ki Te Hui. Ko Mihingarangi tenei, e mihi atu nei. Welcome to The Hui, Maori current affairs for all New Zealanders. E taro ake nei. We speak to a recovering meth addict, homeless since being evicted in Housing New Zealand's flawed meth testing regime. I slept outside the Mission with everybody else. Poto Kingi opens up about the drug that's costing people their homes and their hope. Addictions are like a disease, really. You can't stop. And the CEO of Housing New Zealand fronts up to answer the hard questions. So Housing New Zealand has effectively lost New Zealand's most vulnerable families. I wouldn't say we've lost them. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018 Karahuihui mai. Poto Kingi is a former ward of the state, a recovering meth addict, and a former Housing New Zealand tenant. Like hundreds of others, Poto was evicted from her home as part of Housing New Zealand's meth testing regime. She's sharing her story so other people can understand the challenges people with addictions face. She believes even meth addicts deserve a place to call home and Housing New Zealand should do more to help them. Anei te purongo. Housing New Zealand is meant to provide a roof over the heads of New Zealand's most vulnerable people. People like Poto King, a former Housing New Zealand tenant. You have grown up under the care of CYFS, Child, Youth and Family? Yes. What was that like for you? Um, hard. I wasn't raised with just one family. I mean, passed around. I wasn't settled. Two years in one house, two years in another house, about four years in one house. Yeah. So moving into a place of your own, how did that feel? Cool, actually, yeah. Cool. So, where I stayed was in Central Auckland, Greys Avenue. For me, it was my own place and my own rules. Somewhere I could have my kids. The minute I got my keys to the place, I was ringing up my kids' dad saying, you know, 'I'll have the kids for the holidays. I've got my own place.' I was over the moon. What set you off on the spiral of drug-taking? My best mate committing suicide. And the only thing that would suppress me from feeling down and out was to smoke P. Which I did 24-7. Did you ever reach out for help? Um, tried to. But there was always someone there to give me a pick-up or... I had someone that was feeding me up on the P and... I dunno, I just... wasn't thinking clearly. What was one of your worst days? Just when I was in the house by myself and I had no one to talk to. And, um, yeah, tried to (BLEEP) myself out. Just didn't feel like I was worth it any more. Poto admits as an addict she smoked P in her Housing New Zealand flat. Even so, the tests found the level of P was less than the New Zealand guidelines. She was evicted anyway. Do you think you deserved to be kicked out? Um, sorta yes and sorta no. I just didn't think that being somebody that just smoked was come under the meth-cooking testing, you know. I was already told by my cousin that it's for people that cook inside houses ` that's where the meth testing fell under. Since you've been evicted from that Housing New Zealand flat, have you spent time on the streets? Um, yeah, for the first, uh... six months of me being evicted, cos I was still smoking, and I slept outside the Mission with everybody else. So, yeah, I did sleep on the streets. What's it like sleeping on the streets? It's cold, and you've got people... um, tormenting... Um, specially the ones that are sleeping outside the City Mission, they torment them. They throw eggs at them from the building across the road. What do you want people to understand about meth addiction? That it is hard to kick. People use it as... Some people use it as an antidepressant now. I used it as an antidepressant. To me, it was my way of suppressing things. I think... If anything, I would've rather have received help than have to have done it on my own. Do you think they have an obligation or responsibility to get help for people like yourself who are addicted? Yeah, I think they should help people that are addicted. Especially when they're evicting them. I mean, breaking apart families, they just set them on a new down. Instead of just kicking them out on to the streets, they could've put them in rehab or something or offered them a different place and gave them guidelines that they'd just, you know, watch over them for a little bit until things were smoothed out, I suppose. Yeah. And so how long have you been clean from P now? Um, one year, six months and 13 days. Yeah. Are you proud of yourself? Definitely, yeah. Proud as. I'm normal now. (CHUCKLES) I don't know what normal is, but, yeah. Since being clean, Poto is now working with Auckland's ever-growing homeless community. Now I work with the City Mission as the chairman of the homeless committee. We have meetings every Monday and talk about activities that we can put on for the homeless or things that we can do for the homeless. Feeds ` we put on public-holiday feeds. Are you dealing with homeless who have a meth habit? Yes. I have a few people that talk to me on Facebook and face to face about how far I've come. Cos a lot of them seen me when I was not myself, and how far I've come. There's a lot of people that wanna get off, but they haven't started, and, um, I want to help them. But I'm sorta going through my own stages of still, um,... not being tempted by anything. So what's your living situation? Um, currently just been couch-surfing since I moved from Greys Ave, yeah. So you have been blacklisted? Yes. They told me that I wasn't allowed to apply for a house between one and three years. Where do you think Housing New Zealand thinks you're gonna live? In a lodge. They told me to go to a lodge somewhere back in the city, and I've already tried to tell them that that's somewhere I don't wanna be. Because there's P there? Yeah, because that's temptation area. I guess some people watching this would say, 'Oh well, you smoked P in a Housing New Zealand house, 'so you don't deserve to be in one.' What would you say to them? Addictions are like a disease, really. You can't stop unless you either want` You gotta have the willpower to stop. Not many people can do that. They don't know how to get out of it. What do you want to say to those people who make those decisions in terms of the people that you're working with, the homeless that might have addictions or been meth-tested and evicted? Help them get clean. Instead of just chucking them out on the street and having so much more homeless people. People just need help. Taihoa e haere, hei muri i nga whakatairanga ka korero ahau ki te tahuhu rangapu o Te Kaporeihana a Whare o Aotearoa. After the break, the CEO of Housing New Zealand fronts up. Welcome to The Hui, Maori current affairs for all New Zealanders. E taro ake nei. Housing New Zealand CEO Andrew McKenzie has apologised to tenants evicted as a result of his organisation's flawed meth testing regime. In a statement to The Hui last week, Housing New Zealand said it was transitioning to become a more empathetic landlord. Hundreds of whanau were issued with eviction notices after their rentals tested positive for methamphetamine. I spoke to Mr McKenzie about the impact of this now defunct testing. How does tossing children out on the street, which is what your organisation did for the perceived crimes of their parents, how does that fulfil any vision that Housing New Zealand had? I can't justify the past; it has happened. But what I can do is talk to you about what we're doing in the future. I just wanna talk about some of those kids and those families that we're dealing with now. Because we're still dealing with them as a result of some old policies that you're the head of the organisation. So not only did they turf them out on the street, but then they dialled up Oranga Tamariki and they accused the parents of being P users. Can you assure me today there are no children in state care as a result of that failed meth testing? So, I can't give you that reassurance because I'm not aware of the exact instances you're talking about. What I can say` But you've been there for two years. Surely` No, I can't` Surely you would consider that as the priority. These are specific issues you're talking about. What I can say is that we, as every other government agency, have a responsibility where we come across incidences where there may be issues for children, then it's our responsibility to report them. The exact decision on how it is that those issues are dealt with are left to the other agencies to sort out who are responsible for` OK. That's their responsibility. How many notifications did Housing New Zealand give to Oranga Tamariki or CYFS at the time? I can't tell you the exact numbers. Why not? I can't tell you off the top of my head. But have you looked into it? That's a level of detail. If` Have you looked into it? If I've been told that that's a question you wanted to ask me, then I would have obviously boned up on it and got the research. I could tell you that number. I sent in those questions three weeks ago to your people. Well, I wasn't told that we were gonna talk about that here. What I can do` I didn't know I had to ring the CEO. I just told your media team. (CHUCKLES) In terms of what we do with people, first of all, we don't throw them out on the streets, OK? We make sure they're rehoused. Secondly, if we do see an issue there as it relates to children, that's not something we stand by and leave to go. We have a responsibility to go and talk to those agencies that are responsible for looking after the welfare of our children. So what are the conversations you've had with Grainne Moss, then? Because you must know that children have been caught up in this flawed meth testing regime. So, the reasons for Oranga Tamariki deciding that somebody ` a child ` should leave their parents are always way more complex than whether or not we have detected meth in their house. So when you talk to them about why they make decisions as to what is the best way of caring for children, they'll explain the complexities of those situations. I can tell you that we have dealt with a family that didn't smoke meth but was accused of smoking meth in their house and did lose their children. Yeah. So, you'd have to talk to Oranga Tamariki on why` We've tried. That's why I'm asking you to. I'm not Oranga Tamariki, I'm Housing New Zealand. We have to home` We don't have the responsibilities for the children. Does it concern you, though, that there could be children caught up in this? If I go back to it, we've changed direction. Our purpose is to help people to have stability in their lives. Does it concern you there could be kids caught up in this from some of the policies that Housing New Zealand had before you arrived? In terms of the impact on children of a stable home, we're really concerned that we make sure that kids have that stability. We know that educational achievement, social skills ` a stable home environment is really, really important for them. So we provide the home for that, and we're gonna do everything we can to keep people in those homes. There are nine scientists within government ministries ` the Ministry of Health has one; MSD; the prime minister has one. Why wouldn't Housing New Zealand go and get a second opinion? So, Housing New Zealand did seek advice, and the Ministry of Health` From...? From the Ministry of Health, who had the guidelines. So obviously they're the people who are experts in the health of people. And their guidelines were for meth labs. That's right. But they were the on` Not homes. Well, no, no, they're for homes where meth labs have been present. They were the only guidelines that were present, so obviously there is a danger from meth contamination and the residue, and they were the only things that were available to use. Now, you take a 'safety first' approach. No one would thank us if we had said, 'Oh well, there isn't anything there. 'We'll just let people live in it' and the scientists had come back and said, 'Well, that's dangerous.' No one is thanking you for turfing hundreds of families out on the street. First of all` Well, hundreds of families were moved out of homes; not necessarily on to the street. Most of the ones that we've dealt with have been rehoused. Those homes were deemed unsafe to live because of the contamination levels that were in them. So there's` As a landlord you are responsible for your` Let's be careful about this, because it's not contamination levels of a house that's being used as a P lab. Some of those houses had traces of P in them. That's right. So the question was asked, 'What's safe?' Nobody could say, when you don't have cooking; when there's been use and there are contaminant traces there, no one had a standard. The standard was developed in 2016. So the organisation at that point in time was faced with does it just let people live in these places. It knows that at 0.5 it's unsafe and there's been cooking. There's nothing else there. Again, you don't put people's lives and health at risk. How long have you been in the role, then? Just over 18 months. Because Phil Twyford, he's been in his role for only a few months and he's already revealed the guidelines of a role. Why did it take so long for Housing New Zealand? There's a difference of views, but a process was worked through by Standards New Zealand in which they came up with guidelines. Again, we rely on other people who are expert in this area. Professor Gluckman has a different view. But we went through the standard-setting process that involved ESR. That question is being looked at at the moment by the government through Minister Faafoi, who is looking at the standard-setting process. Were you doing it in a scientific manner? Were you testing houses scientifically? Well, we used the testing processes that people said were the right ways to test. So people came in with` There were no baseline tests. That's different from saying were we testing appropriately. So when people come in, they test to check whether the residue's there. And those tests obviously come up with a result. And then, when you found them, you evicted people and you suspended them from applying for houses again without doing a baseline test. So, the second piece is what do we do once we've moved a person out. Do we rehouse them or do we find them alternative accommodation. What did you do? As I say, in the vast majority of cases, people would be` would find accommodation. Since I've been chief executive, we have made sure that in all cases where we're moving people out, we find them alternative accommodation. So we don't evict people. We don't stand them down. We've removed all people who've been stood down from being able to access our housing. Families that were caught up in the meth testing regime ` does your organisation know where they all are? Uh, no, we don't. We're working with MSD to find out where it is that all those people who were in our homes have ended up. As I say, the vast majority of them were rehoused. So Housing New Zealand has effectively lost New Zealand's most vulnerable families. I wouldn't say we've lost them. Where are they? Our role is to provide them with a home. They're still in New Zealand. But you evicted them and now you don't know where they are. But we don't have a responsibility once they've left our home to keep tabs on people forever. You evicted them` No, hang on a second. You evicted them from your homes. Wait on. We don't have a responsibility` You tore up families because they had to go and live with this auntie and that auntie. Some mums went in cars and put their kids in with their sisters. You did. You tore up families because of this meth testing regime. So my question is ` isn't it your responsibility to now contact them and give them a house? So as I said to you, that's part of what we're doing, absolutely. But you don't know where they are. We've gotta find them. So we have to work with other agencies, and that's what we're doing. We're working with the Ministry for Social Development, for example. They'll have them in their database. Following your statement that you provided for us last week about the suspensions being lifted, a mum that we've been working with with two young children, Belinda Riritahi, she was really happy and she rang the line. And she was told she was still ineligible to apply for a house. She was told that she had to go out and prove that she'd been searching the private rental market. OK, that's a different system. That's not Housing New Zealand, that's the Ministry for Social Development. So there is an eligibility thing. We don't handle` So, the way the system works, is you go to the Ministry of Social Development and they'll assess your need and work out what the most appropriate way to support you into housing is. Is it the accommodation supplement or the income-related rent subsidy? And then they'll come to us. So they do have to work through that process. Isn't that your responsibility? You evicted her, and now you're saying, 'That's not my department, that's MSD.' First of all, we'd have to go into the individual circumstances surrounding that particular person. What I can say is that the Ministry for Social Development determine need for people, and they will refer them to us, and they have a process they go through. So I can't comment on that. What do people like Belinda Riritahi do when they don't have The Hui batting for them? They work with the Ministry for Social Development` And they get rejected. Well, she's got a process she has to work through with them. She has to jump through hoops. That's what she has to do. But that's what happens when you seek support from the state. There is a process you work through. But it was Housing New Zealand who turfed her out under a flawed meth testing regime. She's not a meth dealer. She's not a meth user. She's a mum who's trying to get by. So, again, the Ministry for Social Development will work out what kind of support she needs to get into accommodation. A ko ake nei, ka korero ahau ki te Tahuhu Rangapu o Te Puni Kokiri. Poto Kingi opens up about the drug that's costing people their homes and their hope. Hoki mai ano. Maori Development Ministry Te Puni Kokiri has been around for a quarter of a century. Established in 1992, its tagline is 'realising Maori potential'. But with Maori over-represented in homelessness, poor health, incarceration and unemployment and a recent funding cut, the organisation has its work cut out. So to discuss what its priorities are I'm joined now by Te Puni Kokiri's CEO, Michelle Hippolite. Tena koe. Kia ora. I guess just explain to us what the core role or the functions of TPK are. Well, over the 25 years it's actually moved around a little bit. So, I'd say there's probably three things that define what we do. One is that we connect Maori whanau, hapu, iwi with government. And they can do that by themselves, but we help them to do that. We advise both within government, and particularly as policy is being reviewed and developed ` what does that all mean; we also advise at the local level with our regional offices, keeping connected with what happens locally. And then thirdly, we partner, usually in the form of funding resource to work alongside whanau, Maori organisations, to see actually how those aspirations can be met, and find the vehicle of working alongside them is quite critical to not doing it to people but working with them to achieve their goals. Is it their whole well-being, the cultural well-being, you know, their physical well-being? Is it reo and all those kinds of things too? Yeah, well, that's the beauty of what we're doing to work with this government is it's about inter-relationships, interconnections. Because nobody lives their life in one little silo. So we've been really privileged to look at reo. And I consider that's quite fundamental. Te reo being a tikanga is so important to Maori development and what we do as a people and what we as a government agency can do. But then at one end, it's what happens economically and how that can grow, and then, of course, you know as well as I do that there are whanau in different circumstances where their well-being is impacted. So trying to look across all of those. What do you think that Te Puni Kokiri has done well in the last year or so? In the last year or so, we've really been able to work with communities, particularly on papakainga and housing developments. So we're trying to understand what happens in Housing New Zealand, what happens with Social Development, so that we can get the connect. But also make sure we're not duplicating or doing the same things that other agencies are doing. So in the papakainga developments, we've worked with whanau on their whenua to say what is possible, starting right from the beginning of 'what's your dream and aspiration' all the way through to turning some soil and getting some homes and kainga built for those whanau, and helping them learn along the way what they need to do and what they need to know. I think it's Te Kotuitui Hanga Whare, which is the Maori housing budget, I think it had $19.6 million in the last` Yes. How many houses have you been able to build with that? Because we support the front end of the infrastructure, the planning and the development, the number doesn't spring to mind, but I know in different communities there's a street that has five. In what we've just turned in Kokohinau there's a few. In the north, in the work we did up the north, there's` Have you got a round-about number? Cos I guess people would like to know, for $19 million, what has Te Puni Kokiri been able to realise for the potential of Maori housing. Not at the moment, but I know why you're asking the question, because it is important. But what I want us to remember is it's not just the home that we're building. We're actually working with whanau for them to realise what they might want to do to grow more about understanding what money means and how to use money. That actually they are having conversations with their whanau. If we look at the Turner whanau, what they've done together, all from a Whanau Ora plan, it's the totality, not just the house that's built that matters. But living in a home is important. Yeah, that was the story I think we covered a few years ago now, so I was looking for some new examples. But we'll come back to that. I'll follow up on that, if that's all right. In 2013, Te Puni Kokiri came under the spotlight for a massive overspend on contractors. Have you been able to bring that back into line? It's an area to continue to work on. And the government has said, 'Look, we don't want you to rely on consultants and contractors.' Yes. It was a third of your whole budget in 2013. Yes. Was that too much? I think it was at that time. What was it in 2017? Part of it is related to specific projects where we're not sure, if it's gonna be an ongoing commitment, what we do about that. But I have an intention to bring that down. What was it in the last financial year? Sorry? What was it in the last financial year? In terms of proportion? Yeah. Uh, I would say, um, about... might be 25%. So still quite a bit. What would you like to bring it down to? I think you had a number once when I interviewed you. Like to bring it down to 10%, 15%. Because I still think there is a role for contractors. Because we don't need some skill and knowledge full-time. But we do need to use it in moderation rather than` I guess when you're looking at how many houses are built and then you're looking at 25% of your budget's been spent on consultants, some people might think, you know, 'Hey, can we balance these books up a wee bit?' But some of those are to help build some of those houses too, so it's all within context. But yes, I do want to make sure that we're not dependent on consultants and contractors. Looking forward, what is the single most important issue for Maori, do you think, from where you sit? Um, enabling whanau. So I think getting whanau development is really important. Some of us are able to carry on with our lives, but we know that there are some whanau that have different circumstances and experience. So it's good, the work we are doing with the Whanau Ora commissioning, but we've got much more to do with our colleague agencies to move that forward. Putting some rangatiratanga back into whanau. Yeah. Enabling them to be in charge of their future without being dependent on other parts of the system. Ka pai. Ko pau te wa ki a taua. Thank you so much for coming on this morning. Kia ora. Kia ora. Hei tera wiki, i runga i a Te Hui. The fight to save Weraiti, a sacred maunga in South Waikato. So, whanau, this is Weraiti, these are the quarry works, and this is why we're saying no. We don't want any more destruction of our maunga or our water any more. A burial ground, a cultural icon and an environmental landmark under threat. This is part of our natural heritage. And once it's quarried, that's the end of it. Now the iwi is taking on big business to protect their maunga. It makes me feel angry, it makes me feel sad, and it makes me want to go and do something about it. It makes me want to go and stand on that maunga and say no. Kua hikina Te Hui mo tenei ra. Newshub Nation is next. Pai marire ki a tatou katoa. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018 ALL: He mea tautoko na Te Mangai Paho. The Hui is made with support from NZ on Air.