Cunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9007. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Only somebody who actually owns their own home could say what the previous National speaker said which was that ownership does not matter. It sure as heck does if you are renting or even worse if you cannot get a place to rent.I used to own a house. Now I rent a house. I dug the garden. I planted vegetables. I got it looking great. And then the owner said “Hey it’s looking so good I think I’ll auction it.” and I was packing up and down the road before I could say Jack Robinson. I have not got kids in the local school who were disrupted by that but plenty of families have.There is nothing more important to the Kiwi Dream than homeownership. There is nothing more important than the stability of families and the learning of children and having a safe secure roof over your head. In all of New Zealand’s history since Michael Joseph Savage in 1935 the State has had a role to provide public housing until this ideologically wayward Government started dismantling brick by brick frame by frame one of New Zealand’s most precious assets—its State housing stock.Here we are today to confer Draconian sweeping powers on Ministers to do lightning deals with Gold Coast developers to flog off New Zealand’s State housing stock. What are Government members so scared of? Why do they not want the normal processes of accountability and transparency? Why do they not want to go through the full rigour of parliamentary scrutiny? What dirty little deals have that crooked lot got cooked up with those developers?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I think the tone of the member’s comments is now a breach of the convention of the House and I would ask him to take more care.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: I will take more care and I apologise. I am a little bit het up about this because I am the MP for an area that this summer has witnessed homelessness in public parks. Only yesterday I was walking around an area that the so-called rough sleepers of New Lynn have recently vacated. It has recently been cleared. The community brought down blankets and food and local community agencies and State services have belatedly got together and placed those vulnerable people in—temporary at least—accommodation. There is no place in this beautiful country for homelessness. Bad luck bad stuff can happen to anybody whether they are a distinguished member of Parliament or somebody who comes from a well-to-do business background. Bad luck ill health family breakdown—anything can happen and members opposite would do well to remember that when bad luck strikes the helping hand of the State to get people back on their feet and back into productive employment and secure living is absolutely crucial.I abhor this bill. I abhor this bill which destroys the Kiwi Dream of homeownership working hard playing by the rules getting ahead and providing for your family. It is impossible to do that if you do not have a secure predictable roof over your head. We have some $20 billion of housing stock owned by the State in this country—or we did have before that lot started running it down. This bill confers on Ministers the power to sell off hundreds of millions indeed billions of dollars of assets that previous generations of Kiwi taxpayers paid for and to do so with sleight of hand beyond the normal parliamentary accountability. This bill is a travesty. It is a dog. It is a crock. It is just plain wrong.I say to members opposite that the public of New Zealand will have their say in 2017. They have had just about enough of Government by spin and being told that everything is rosy when patently the gaps are getting wider and wider and it seems suddenly to be acceptable to have rough sleepers fending for themselves in the rain in the bush of a major urban centre. It is not OK and we need our emergency housing stock. We need our social housing stock preserved and built up to give the next generation of New Zealanders a safety net to bounce back off.The Government says it has $2 million to spend on emergency housing Auckland-wide. What is it planning to do—buy one bedsit in Ponsonby or two garages? Or is it going to buy tents and distribute them around Auckland? That is how crazy this Government is how bankrupt of ideas how questionable of motive and how ridiculous this bill.