Cunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3543. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is déjà vu. Here we are in the dead part of the evening passing a Budget bill under urgency through all stages when it is not urgent. It is not urgent. The only thing that is urgent is to relieve the Government of embarrassment because New Zealanders do not want the Government to do what this bill does. I remember a picture of Bob Semple taking the first table into the first State house. New Zealanders loved Mickey Savage’s Government which built State houses so that New Zealanders who could not afford to rent a house got a roof over their heads. Then the Clark-Cullen Labour Government brought in the income-related rent subsidy to take some pressure off families who could not put food on the table.Well this bill undoes all of that. This bill empowers the Minister to flog off those State houses to for-profit developers in a grand payback to National’s business lobby mates. This bill gives the Minister the ability to change by fiat the 25 percent fixed income-related rent subsidy thereby costing hard-working New Zealand families the food off their table because they cannot afford the crazy prices of Auckland rents. This is a sad day and the Government’s pollsters know it. That is why we are here in the middle of the night passing this bill this shameful bill through all stages without a select committee hearing without the opportunity for New Zealanders to have their say because the Government wants it. [Interruption] There they are—sitting and chirping smug in the arrogance of a third-term Government. They are smug in the arrogance of a third-term Government. They just want it off the TV screens because they know New Zealanders fundamentally deplore what is being done in this bill.You know the housing crisis is about real people like the people in my electorate. We have three families with young kids who are living in garages. They have come to my office. We have a family of 12 in a two-bedroom property and the adolescent kids do not have rooms and they do not have privacy. We have got a family that is under abuse which could not get a safe house because there are not enough houses. And you know that the solutions to those terrible problems of overcrowding and abuse are not hard to think of. You build more houses and you get foreign investors out of the market because they are simply speculating and driving up the rents.Carmel Sepuloni: That makes sense.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: That makes sense. It is not that hard to understand but what is the Government doing? It is flogging the State houses off for profit and it is going to drive up rents by fiddling with the income cap. It is taking it in exactly the wrong direction because this is a Government that has hit the panic button—hit the panic button. It is well into its third term it has finally woken up to the crisis and the word came from the pollsters: “You’d better do something.”And there is no plan except profit with these guys—no plan except for profit which comes off the tables of hard-working New Zealanders. Hard-working New Zealand families like the family in my electorate—12 of them in a two-bedroom house—are waiting for the State house that will never come. So you know the Government said: “Well we will give it to the community sector like the Salvation Army or the Methodist Mission.” Well they are decent people who said: “We don’t want an unfunded mandate. What are we going to do with all of the liabilities when you are not giving us any money to buy them with?”. It is a travesty and the longer that New Zealanders have to hear about it the less they are going to like the Government that is flogging off their houses for profit and pushing up their rents. That is why we are in this House in the dead of night passing this bill without a select committee hearing. It is wrong. The bill is wrong. The process is wrong. The result is wrong and it will be part of the undoing of this selfish greedy Government which is acting against the interests of New Zealand families.