Logie Jan: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9006. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on this bill which the Green Party—as has been previously stated by my colleague Marama Davidson—is proud to be opposing. I would just like to pick up on some of the points raised by the previous National speaker Todd Muller who was saying that there is no issue about who owns the stock—that that is not important it is about making sure there are roofs over peoples’ heads and too bad if there is a profit motive involved because people can still care. Well actually these are significant issues that are at the heart of this bill because on this side of the House there is an understanding that if there is a profit motive then there is lost delivery that is going back to that company in terms of profit that could otherwise be put into resource and support for the people in those houses that could otherwise be put into building more houses and that could go towards our collective good as a country which is being taken and channelled into the hands of a few. That is at the heart of what this debate is about.We are all for business in its place but when this country has an absolute crisis over housing affordability and enough housing then actually we know there is a role for a larger State provision because the State does not need a profit motive. Obviously Housing New Zealand has kind of been given a profit motive but that should not be the case. Housing New Zealand is our collective property. It has been built up by taxpayers over generations in this country to ensure that every New Zealander has a warm dry stable home not just some piece of shelter over their head that they could be kicked out of at any moment when policies change or profit motives dictate. It is about us as a country saying that we believe everyone deserves this.The Green Party knows that our communities are stronger when people are around long enough to put down some roots and when they are not made sick by cold damp houses. We have read the research that shows our economy is more productive when people have warm dry stable homes and we know we could take pressure off our health budget if we ensured all New Zealanders the right to warm dry housing. We also know that children are more likely to succeed at school and in life when they live in warm dry houses long enough to be able to become part of a school community. We know we have a housing shortage and too many people are homeless in this country or are living in unstable housing for a number of reasons. This bill will not solve any of those things. Transferring the ownership to businesses or even in some cases when the community housing providers as this Government has made them are required to apply limited tenure into their housing—even transferring ownership to them is not going to provide that tenure that is so critically important.So our view is that the housing crisis more than anything demands a substantial increase in the number of houses affordable for people on low incomes. We know that the Government has access to low-interest loans and has previously had experience in mass house-building enterprises—experience that no one else has. Property developers have told us they cannot deliver what is needed in terms of the number of houses. Community housing associations have also told us they do not have the capacity to meet the needs and many of them are not entering into this process because they do not have the capacity to get the houses up to standard. The one player in this country that does have the experience the access to the money and the capacity is the State.So here we are bringing to the House a bill that limits and reduces the State’s role in addressing our housing crisis. It is absolute madness. It gives the Minister an unprecedented amount of power to override Housing New Zealand to with very little scrutiny negotiate these deals. It will leave whichever Minister is in charge of this open to accusations of corruption because the checks and balances are not in place in the legislation. That should be worrying everyone in this country. This is an appalling piece of legislation.