Shearer David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3675. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I too am concerned that the bill here the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill is inappropriately named. It really should be called the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill” because that is effectively what it is. It does not in any way reflect what this Government intends to do with the social housing sector which is to gut it. This has been on the agenda of National Governments for generations and it does not stop here. We know what is going to happen. We saw what happened when the Salvation Army just the other day pulled out of the Government’s plan to push social housing towards it. The Salvation Army did the sums and it recognised that it was unable to run a social housing sector. This Government wants to push it on the Salvation Army in the way it has been done in Australia except that what the Government has not calculated is that the Australian model in comparison is much much bigger. The social housing providers in Australia are looking after tens or even hundreds of thousands of people whereas here it is much more embryonic. It cannot scale up to that sort of impact.We are sitting here under urgency pushing through a bill on social housing that will radically reform and change social housing in New Zealand. We are doing it under urgency because the Government does not want those social agencies to come before a select committee and actually talk about what the real issues are and what is actually going to happen should this bill go through. So this is the best way of making sure that the public are kept in the dark and that everybody else out there is kept in the dark about what the Government’s real agenda is which is to make sure that social housing is radically transformed from what we see today. What we are going to be seeing instead is that those social providers will not be able to cope with what the Government is wanting them to do. We will see a siloing effect within those community providers as well where we will not have the overview that we have today. But more important we will see many of these houses begin to drift into the private sector to benefit private landlords. If there is one amazing trend of the last few years under this Government both with the housing crisis in Auckland and what is going to happen here it is the enrichment of private landlords. The few landlords are getting richer and the rest cannot afford to get into a house. That is what is happening and will happen with this process here in this bill.This bill is wrongly named. It cannot be called the “Remedial Housing”—or whatever the hell it is supposed to be. It is the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill” because that is effectively what it is. It is putting private landlords and private homeowners before the rest of New Zealand. We have seen that all around. I have certainly seen it in my electorate. I have seen it all around the electorates where there are high proportions of social housing. We are seeing families and communities being disrupted because people are moving around after being turfed out of their house. Kids going to school are changing schools over and over. Many many schools have 25 percent or 30 percent churn. Kids cannot learn. It is disrupting communities. It is hindering kids and their education and most important it is ripping New Zealanders off. It is making sure that instead of helping New Zealanders who need it it is actually private landlords who are going to be enriched. Certainly the latest round of changes that have occurred to try to curb the housing crisis in Auckland are benefiting the private landlords.First home owners are not getting a look in. People who need social housing are not getting a look in. This bill is dismembering the social housing sector and ensuring that those people who really need help are pushed to one side and the few the rich few who put the money into the coffers of that party over there are the people who are being enriched and being favoured above the others. That is totally unfair and that is why the Labour Party is absolutely in opposition to this bill.