Twyford Phil: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:269. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):There is a new game in town and it is called “Guess Which Hat the Prime Minister is Wearing”. We have seen it in the last few days in the House when the Prime Minister has been answering various questions about his many conversations with his close friend Cameron Slater the National Party’s paid attack dog and we never really know which hat the Prime Minister is wearing. We do not know whether he is wearing the Prime Minister hat. We do not know whether he is wearing the husband hat—Hon Annette King: What about the cat-owner hat?PHIL TWYFORD: —the cat-owner hat or the leader of the National Party hat. I have to wonder which hat the Prime Minister was wearing when he signed off on National’s policy to gut State housing. Was he wearing his Prime Minister hat or was he wearing his “poor boy made good” hat? Or was he wearing his “rich guy living in a $10 million Parnell mansion” hat? I want to know and I think we should know. We should be told which hat the Prime Minister was wearing.Was he wearing his Prozac hat? Was he the perpetually relaxed and comfortable Prime Minister—comfortable and relaxed and feeling good about everything that is going on and every decision that is being made including the dismantling of an 80-year tradition in this country of providing State housing to our most vulnerable families to ensure that every child growing up in this country no matter which side of town they are on and no matter how financially struggling mum and dad might be will get a decent roof over their heads? Under National that is all about to go.A few years ago at a National Party conference the Prime Minister told the audience: “we lived in a State house. I will always be grateful for the opportunities that gave me and I make sure this is reflected in the policies I sign off on as Prime Minister.” Well I have one word to describe that: doublespeak. This is the dark underbelly of John Key’s political persona. You see he is all about the aspirational message of “you can be like me” but actually what he is doing is pulling up the ladder. He is denying a new generation of New Zealanders the same security of housing the same decent roof over their heads that he and his family enjoyed growing in Christchurch.Paula Bennett is just as bad. She has made a career out of pulling up the ladder. As a solo mother she enjoyed the generosity of taxpayer-funded support—in particular the training incentive allowance which was designed to encourage parents back into the workforce. Then as soon as she became the Minister for Social Development she gave it the chop. She is an expert at pulling up the ladder. But that is how National rolls.Paula Bennett was on the radio this morning bemoaning the fact that people in west Auckland are living in the Rānui caravan park. It is a caravan park in the electorate that she represented for 6 years at the same time that she served as the Minister for Social Development but apparently it is not suitable. Well that is funny because when she was the Minister for Social Development her department was routinely referring people to go and live in that very same caravan park.For 6 years under National the housing crisis in Auckland got worse every single year. For 6 years the National Government never did a thing to increase the provision of emergency housing for the homeless and for 6 years National did nothing to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis like actually build more houses.But if you want the ultimate example of doublespeak it is National’s State house sell-off. National members do not talk about privatisation. They do not describe it as a sell-off of State housing. Bill English talks about helping more vulnerable families. In fact he talked in question time today about putting the needs of tenants first. He talks about modernising social housing. Let us look not at what National is saying but at what it is doing and what it is planning to do. What has become clear since the election and what National did not see fit to tell the New Zealand public before the election is that it is planning a massive State house sell-off of up to one-third of the 65000 houses that the taxpayer owns. That is a publicly owned asset worth $6 billion.Who is National going to sell them to? Well Bill English has said: “We’ve been talking to banks to property developers to iwi to the Salvation Army—we could sell them to anybody.” That is what he said. That is what he told the New Zealand Herald.Well what will happen to the proceeds when all these State houses get sold off? Bill English has refused to guarantee that the proceeds of State house sales will be earmarked for more State and social housing. He has openly canvassed the possibility that the proceeds of the sale of these State houses could go back into the consolidated account and you have to wonder—Hon Ruth Dyson: Make up another surplus.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes with National’s track record of flogging off publicly owned assets and then using them to fund its corporate mates like funding rural irrigation and using the so-called Future Investment Fund for the proceeds of asset sales to fund any number of boondoggle political projects. He was asked whether he would use the proceeds of the sale of State houses to rebuild more and more modern State housing. He said no. He said: “if we want less stock there’s not much point rebuilding stock with it.” Well you could not be much clearer than that.This is the end of State housing. The Government no longer intends to own the houses; it wants to pay a subsidy to landlords. It might as well just put all social housing tenants on the accommodation supplement because that is the clear logical consequence of what National is talking about.There is more gobbledegook and doublespeak. The Government wants—and we heard Bill English talk about it in question time today—a contestable housing market even though its own officials in Treasury advised it that it is not possible to run social housing at a profit. You might as well try to run the hospitals at a profit or try to run the public transport system at a profit. This is social housing that we are talking about. The market has never ever delivered decent affordable social housing for people at the bottom end of the market. It is a nonsense and it is only the ideological tin hats on that side of the House that think it is at all a possibility worth considering.Treasury was very clear that in order to get players to even enter a so-called social housing market it would require a massive taxpayer subsidy. Treasury said: “You would need to unlock the potential of the Housing New Zealand asset base.” Well it is pretty clear what that means. National wants to sell State houses at knock-down prices to its mates. That is what it is all about.So in the middle of a housing crisis when Government departments are routinely referring people to live in camp grounds when homelessness is on the rise and when we have got people living in cars and garages what does National do? It wants to privatise State housing. It wants to flog off $5 billion or $6 billion worth of State housing.The final chapter has now been written in National’s continuing running down cutting back and winding down of State housing in this country. This is the wholesale privatisation of Housing New Zealand. It is the end of State housing. It is an 80-year tradition a commitment that we have had in this country that the Government of the day will guarantee that the kids of even families who are really struggling to keep their heads above water will at least have a secure warm dry roof over their heads. That is as New Zealand as you can get and this Government is about to dismantle that tradition because of some ideological view that the Government cannot do anything right—that it can never even run State and social housing well. Well we reject that view.I want to quote Dita De Boni who was writing in the New Zealand Herald last week. She finished her opinion piece on the opinion/editoral pages with this statement: “It is astonishing that a Prime Minister who grew up in a state house and has gained huge political advantage from being able to trumpet that fact can’t see why it is wrong to pull the ladder up after him.” Well we will not allow the Government to get away with this. We will fight to ensure that all New Zealanders get a fair go. We will hold those members to account and we will fight this policy to the bitter end.