Hague Kevin: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9097. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I will just take a brief call to respond to some of the Minister of Building and Housing’s comments and to ask some further questions and also to express my appreciation to the Minister for being prepared to answer questions in the chair—it is very helpful. I am very familiar with Orchard Street which the Minister has brought up. I do not think I have ever heard it referred to as “the Bronx” but perhaps the Minister moves in different circles from those that I do in Nelson. It is certainly true that that street is an example of some of the shameful neglect of the State housing stock that has occurred and certainly the Nelson Tasman Housing Trustbecoming involved is actually I think something that the Green Party would welcome and that I know would be welcomed by that community.We are debating Part 1 and the profound and unusual provision in clause 4 of Part 1 is entirely unnecessary for the kind of transformation that the Minister has referred to—completely unnecessary. The Minister so far has not actually addressed that point around clause 4. That provision is sweeping in its effect. So the Minister “may perform and exercise the functions powers and duties of the Corporation”. That is a reversal of one of the underpinning tenets of the way we have established the State sector. In the State Sector Act we made explicit—or Parliament made explicit—that we were separating out political decision-making which would remain the domain of Ministers from implementation of policy. Implementation would stay with those with subject expertise in their ministries. That is why we have agreements between Ministers and ministries.There were various objectives of that reform not all of which I support. But several of them were these: one was to protect citizens from the capricious actions of Ministers from the arbitrariness of political decisions being made almost randomly; another was to ensure that citizens would continue to have recourse to the remedies of administrative law and those remedies are far less certain in a situation where decisions and implementation is undertaken by Ministers. I can see no reason at all in the objectives that the Government has for this bill for this extraordinary reversal of the State Sector Act’s provisions and intent that occurs here in clause 4 new section 2A(2) in particular.So not having transparent rules around that is a very deep problem and I would like to ask the Minister a series of questions about that. Why if the Government believes that having powerful Ministers is essential has it not yet made out the case for that? What is the case that the Government has for Ministers taking on these actions and not simply instructing Housing New Zealand on the criteria and the situations in which it would wish particular actions to be taken? Instead there is this almost “Henry VIII” power that Ministers will retain to themselves. The bill as it stands contains no test—no criteria at all—for the Minister’s action. It is entirely a matter of political choice on the part of the Minister.I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Nick Smith to explain to the Committee why the bill contains no criteria and why it could not? Will he be prepared to insert some criteria so that even if the Government retains its case for Ministers taking on this power there would be at least for the public some level of protection about the circumstances in which Ministers would take on this extraordinary power. I will leave it at that. Thank you.