Goff Phil: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3667. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): This bill cannot possibly go through under the title that is set out in clause 1 of the bill. The title that it is given is the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. We have all gone to school. We know what the word “reform” means. It means to make better to improve to make more effective to make more capable of delivering the results that ordinary working families need. There is not a member in this Committee not even a member on that side of the Chamber who believes for a moment that this bill carries out that purpose. It is a total misrepresentation. God knows that this House does need a social housing reform bill.I just want to take 1 minute of your time to read out this commentary which I picked from one of my local papers. It is actually from the electorate of the member for Hunua. This commentator talks about “desperate families two sometimes three families sharing a small house usually in South Auckland with the kids suffering from inadequate food poor clothing and often-poor health a direct result of over-crowding and rents consuming half of an average wage.” Do you know who that commentator was? Do you know who it was? It was Don Brash. That is what Don Brash the one-time leader of the National Party and the one-time leader of the ACT Party is saying in a publication in Andrew Bayly’s electorate. That is from just 2 weeks ago. I happen to agree with Don Brash in his description of the housing crisis that faces New Zealanders at the moment—a housing crisis that for the first time does not affect just the people at the bottom of the heap. This is a housing crisis that affects a lot of ordinary working New Zealanders who desperately hoped in this Budget and in legislation under this sort of title that they might have been given a break to get a decent roof over their heads and to bring their kids up with a chance in life.What we have seen is rents going up six times the rate of inflation in the last year in the city of Auckland—six times the rate of inflation. Rents have gone up on average by $1300 a year in Auckland in the last year—by $25 a week. It would take up the whole of the extra benefit given to vulnerable families who are on a benefit and it is affecting other New Zealanders as well. The price of a house in Auckland went up by $103000 last year—in 1 year by $103000. That is a 15 percent rise and that is putting pressure on those who are renting. People cannot afford to buy their own home and those who would normally have been able to afford to buy their own home are now competing with the most vulnerable for the rental housing that is available. A social housing reform bill would have addressed the problems of a housing shortage and housing affordability in Auckland which is now reaching crisis proportions. The National Party may have its head down but even its former leader Don Brash spoke the truth about the nature of that crisis.So what have we got from this bill that will help? Is this bill and this title about the Government stepping up to meet its responsibility? No it is about the Government opting out of its responsibility by facilitating the selling off of social housing to the private sector. It has cut social housing—1600 fewer State houses in its last term in Government—and now it is selling off a couple of thousand not to the Salvation Army which Bill English used to talk about the lovely Salvation Army that would look after people but to private developers and to private landlords. That does not solve the housing crisis. This is not a social housing reform bill; it is a bill to privatise social housing to gut Housing New Zealand and its ability to do the job that our forebears 80 years ago this year in this House set up which was to provide State housing so that every child in New Zealand had the chance for a decent life because they had a stable secure affordable home—warm and healthy—to enable them to have good health good education and a better life. That is what reform is about. This bill does the opposite.