King Annette: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3665. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): We are at this stage of the debate looking at the title of this bill. We have had a number of suggestions as to how we could better title this bill. I thought that I would remind the House that it is not that long ago that I think it was the Law Commission or it might have been the Legislation Advisory Committee that told this House that bills must have titles that reflect the intention of that bill. It is very important that we have proper titles on bills so that when the public picks a bill up and they read it or they see the heading they know what that bill reflects. I have thought for a long time that that was very good advice to give to any Government when it is bringing in a piece of legislation. It must be a title that reflects the intention of the bill.I have to say that the title of this bill does not by any measure reflect the intention of the bill because it is called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. You have got to go to the first word—that is “Reform”. “Reform”—what does “Reform” mean? It implies improvement—it implies improvement. We are being told that these reforms are improvements but no evidence has been given in this debate for improvement. No research no evaluation and no reports have been given by anybody that this is an improvement to social housing in New Zealand. I would have liked just one bit of evidence that this measure has been looked at properly but instead we are going to push it through under urgency—even though part of it has been done for 4 years—and no evaluation and no input from the public has been held.So how do we know that this reform is going to be an improvement? The word “Reform” should be removed from the title of the bill because that is what it implies—improvement. Then the next words are “Flexible Purchasing”. Well everybody knows what that means so why not just say what it is? It is the sell-off of State houses to other organisations but not to community groups. That was the intention when the Government had its regulatory impact statement done with a little bit of consultation with the community sector and had it published back in March. That was the intention but what happened in the meantime? Campbell Roberts who I think is one of the most respected people in the Salvation Army came out and said: “No we can’t participate in this great social housing reform involving a flexible purchasing arrangement. We can’t participate because we cannot afford to buy the houses because we would be in debt for 10 years and we would have to change what our philosophy and our approach is in terms of the provision of services by the Salvation Army.” Those services are there to help to protect and lift up the most vulnerable in our community.The Salvation Army told us that if its money and its attention had to go into buying houses under this community housing project it could not stick to its core values philosophy and principles in terms of providing those services. So the Salvation Army pulled out but the problem was that you had the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister going around New Zealand telling New Zealanders: “This is a great policy because the Salvation Army will take the houses. It will be part of the flexible purchasing arrangement.” That fell flat on its face.We do not now know who the flexible purchasers in the community sector are going to be because we do not know of any and neither does the Government. But what we do know is that there are flexible purchasers out there who are very very interested in buying up State houses cheaply. I have to say that my colleague Phil Twyford is correct—they are property developers. I understand that many National members are new constituency members so maybe they have not had so much contact with their constituents at this stage or maybe they do not have many State houses in their electorates but if they go out and look they will see that State houses are already being sold off to property developers at knock-down prices. There are plenty of examples. Go out and look. State houses sold to property developers at knock-down prices—how does that improve—