Twyford Phil: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers Questions to MembersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5937. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]9.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister responsible for HNZC: How much has Housing New Zealand spent in total on consultants and contractors for work related to selling State houses as part of the Government’s social housing reforms?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister responsible for HNZC): I am advised that Housing New Zealand provides an annual disclosure to the select committee on contractors and consultants that it uses across a full range of its activity for the financial review. Housing New Zealand is unable to provide the specific information the member seeks because consultants frequently undertake multiple tasks and individual tasks are not systematically recorded. However the value is likely to be small given that most of the work on the Social Housing Reform Programme is being undertaken by Government departments not by Housing New Zealand.Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This question was on notice. It is very simple. It is very specific. I cannot—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister gave a very full answer as to why he was unable to. That information is not collated the way the member has asked the question. That is the answer that has been given. The way forward is not to raise a point of order saying the question has not been answered; the way forward now is to use supplementary questions to delve further into the issue.Phil Twyford: How can he not know how much the Government is spending on its flagship policy which was the centrepiece of the Prime Minister’s state of the nation speech and involves selling assets worth up to billions of dollars?Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have said the value of the work—although it is not the answer the member wants—is likely to be small but it does depend on how you count some. So for instance because Housing New Zealand has been a State monopoly it had a poor understanding of the condition of its houses. And when we have gone to the market about whether people wanted to buy the houses they wanted more information about the condition of the houses and Housing New Zealand has had to spend more money finding out what state its assets are in. Actually it should have been doing that all along.Phil Twyford: Is the reason that he is ashamed to answer the question that Housing New Zealand spent $1.6 million on advice from Andrew Body on selling State houses and then tried to hide the fact along with his conflict of interest with a public-private partnership adviser from the UK John Laing?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Absolutely not. I am advised that that member has been trying to get that story up in the media but because he has not got his facts right the media will not run it. So he has decided to try to run it in here.Phil Twyford: Why is he refusing to release the names of 10 individuals or organisations that he or Treasury met with to discuss the sale of State houses when he had already released the names of 168 others and what is it about those 10 individuals or organisations that he is trying to hide from the public?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not know what the member is referring to but if he is worried about the Chinese names we could probably go and have a look and see how many of the 168 do have Chinese names. Frankly we do not really record people by their ethnic origin prospective residency or whether their grandparents came here for the Central Otago gold rush in the 1860s as many Chinese did.Phil Twyford: Why is it necessary to legislate to give him the power to directly sell State houses an approach his own officials have described as being without precedent and is it just so that he can do dirty deals flogging off billions of dollars of land and housing to his Cabinet club mates?Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The first part of the question can be answered and that is: “Why is this necessary under the legislation …”. The second part of the question is ruled out of order.Hon BILL ENGLISH: All aspects of the Government’s policy around social housing reform are readily available on the internet. I know that is a bit much for Labour Party members because they think a day’s work is sending a tweet and actually looking at a website would be a week’s work and he clearly has not done that. We are overcoming the legacy of 50 years of mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar asset and we are keen to get expertise from people who know how to run State houses better and do a better job for our tenants. That is what the Social Housing Reform Programme is about.Mr SPEAKER: Question—[Interruption] Order! If the two members wish to continue the conversation I would be grateful if they would take it out to the lobby.