Ardern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3674. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to speak directly to the title of the bill rather than the commencement clause. For those who are listeningin the gallery when we come to this stage of a debate it is always the point at which we have the ability to rename the bill if we feel that its title is not befitting of its content or of what it intends ultimately to achieve.An area that I think probably warrants a bit more discussion—and the title that I think is more appropriate for this bill is because of this—is that of Housing New Zealand being guttedfurther which is a consequence of this bill. So I would propose that the bill be retitled “The Death Nail to Housing New Zealand” because as Phil Twyford has pointed out although Housing New Zealand lost the substantive parts of its rolesome time ago this bill actually removes any role that involves Housing New Zealand giving policy advice direction research or information to the Minister. In fact in Subpart 2 clause 20 it repeals section 3B(b). The effect of the repeal is that Housing New Zealand no longer has an objective of providing to the Minister of Social Housing advice and information on housing. Housing New Zealand no longer has any role in saying to the Government that we have a housing shortfall—a social housing shortfall a homelessness issue a gap in the market. That is no longer its job. I would have to say that any officials within Housing New Zealand who are worth their salt would probably not want to claim that they have got that job right now given the response from the Government—because it has been particularly inadequate.In areas like Auckland we have seen house prices go up by $100000in the past year. There have been 40000 people who have moved into Auckland in the past year alone. We are simply not keeping up with demand and that is having a flow-down effect on our social housing market. People are unable to access homes. When you have groups like the Salvation Army coming to tell you that they have had new mothers leave hospital with a newborn child and sleep in the car because they cannot access housing you know that you have an absolutely critical situation. We have a Government department that no longer has the job of telling the Government that there is a problem or that there are solutions to fix it. This bill is not just about the sell-down of Housing New Zealand; it is also about the fact that Housing New Zealand itself has been gutted. It is essentially the Government version of Quinovic. That is what Housing New Zealand is. It is now simply a property manager and we on this side of the Committee feel extreme frustration about that.As I have also said I do see this as a bill that will exacerbate the problem in the social housing area. In my mind I think that to capture this it would probably be more appropriate to call it something like the “Continuation of Homelessness Bill”. Any bill about social housing should include some kind of provision to grow social housing stock. Labour has always said that it has no problem with the NGO sector being involved in social housing but it is incumbent on the State that it does not abdicate its responsibility for the provision of housing—Chris Bishop: We are growing it.JACINDA ARDERN: —and that is what this Government has done. The member on that side of the Chamber is trying to claim that they are growing State housing. Let me just tell you in the 1990s National sold 13000 State houses so it had quite a bit of ground to make up there.But equally Mr Bishop in my area of central Auckland with regard to the Auckland Unitary Plan in the submission from Housing New Zealand it engaged Beca Group to do an enormous amount of work where it was submitted to the council that every single Housing New Zealand house in the Auckland area should have any covenants that lay on themremoved. Where the house was a historic home it asked for it to be removed as a character home. Where there were any blocks on whether or not it could build upwards Beca Group asked for those to be removed. Why? Why would it have done that? Because it makes it much more profitable to sell the blocks to a housing developer when there are no restriction on the way it is able to develop the land. The intent is to sell—absolutely—and that is not just my speculating Mr Bishop; that is what is happening. In that area Housing New Zealand is selling stock as fast as it can. The one that we have at least been able to stop is Spring Street. To prove the lunacy of what is going on in the social housing area: Spring Street is one of the few areas where we still have pensioner housing. Housing New Zealand proposed selling the housing to a private developer so that it could lease back the units. That is absolutely farcical and yet that is what this bill is going to deliver us—more sales to private developers for no gain.