Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14509. Text is subject to correction.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): First let me begin with some comments generally about the Minister of Housing’s stewardship of the housing portfolio. Two words come to mind: utter shambles. We have seen in the last few weeks and the last few days one after the other aspects of the Minister’s portfolio that are in absolute disarray.The most recent is the loan-to-value ratio spending limits where it is blatantly clear to everybody that the Government has mismanaged the portfolio and this issue. It failed to take into account the impact on first-home buyers. It failed to consider that it would depress new builds and the imperative of increasing supply. It failed to properly consider the implications for provincial New Zealand. House prices in Auckland the most overheated property market are up 17.9 percent over the last 12 months. In Canterbury the Government is in denial. It insists that there is no housing crisis in Canterbury when people are paying hundreds of dollars a week to live in sleepouts and caravans and rents are up 25 percent in the last year. Government agencies are routinely referring people to live in campgrounds and interest rates are heading north of 10 percent.Those are the true key performance indicators of Nick Smith’s stewardship of the housing portfolio. There are numerous problems that are out of control but the Minister behaves like a jack-in-the-box popping up every few days with the media in tow to announce the fitting of a new door handle in some house somewhere around the country. He is desperately trying to convince the New Zealand public that the Government is not to blame for the housing crisis. He is running around like a jack-in-the-box desperately trying to convey the impression that the Government has got a handle on the housing crisis.This bill that we are debating this afternoon the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill is more busywork from the Minister. He will not do the obvious thing in the worst housing crisis the worst housing shortage in living memory. He will not do the obvious thing and increase the amount of State and social housing. All he is willing to do is shuffle the pack. That is all he is willing to do.Let me explain. Only 4 percent of the New Zealand population is currently housed by State and social housing—only 4 percent. That is woefully low by international standards. It is. The Minister is shaking his head but he knows that I am right. What does this bill do? It shifts housing stock out of the hands of Housing New Zealand into the community housing sector. This is something that I will go on to explain Labour isperfectly comfortable with in principle. It accepts all of the key arguments why it is a good thing for New Zealand to grow and empower the community housing sector. However this Minister insists on slicing up the pie in different ways but he utterly refuses to grow the pie.Secondly he wants to make all State house tenants subject to insecurity of tenure. Again we will talk in more detail about this. Under this legislation all State house tenants will be subject to reviewable tenancies. Instead of building more State and social housing the Minister wants to more ruthlessly move tenants through those properties. He is only shuffling the last few cards in the pack. That is all he is doing. He refuses—or perhaps it is his Cabinet colleagues whom he has been unable to convince because they absolutely refuse—to consider actually increasing the stock of social and State housing.Labour will not vote for a bill that gives Nick Smith the power to throw 80-year-olds out on the street simply because there are not enough houses. Labour will not support it even though there are some aspects of this bill that it supports. The fundamental objection Labour has is that this bill gives Nick Smith the power to throw 80-year-olds out on the street because there are not enough houses. That is politically and ethically bankrupt.We believe that this provision in the bill will create needless stress and anxiety. As expert submitters told the Social Services Committee it will actually pose a public health risk by piling that needless stress insecurity and anxiety on some of the people who are least able to cope with that. Only National would announce with great pride and fanfare in the Budget speech that its goal its objective is to kick 3000 State house tenants out of their houses. That is National’s idea of a State housing policy.I want to quote the Productivity Commission because that organisation is that Minister’s touchstone.Hon Dr Nick Smith: You called it an “ideological burp”.PHIL TWYFORD: It is that Minister’s touchstone. The Productivity Commission’s report on affordable housing is the bible that Nick Smith reaches for whenever he is in doubt. I have referred to the commission in this House as ideological dinosaurs because I believe that is what it is. But I am going to quote the report because the Productivity Commission is Nick Smith’s bible. On this issue of reviewable tenancies this is what Nick Smith’s intellectual mentor had to say. It said that “moving people through state houses [on the basis of reviewable tenancies] undervalues the stability needed for sustainable improvements in social outcomes … social housing is best thought of as a contribution to a complex set of social needs that typically occur in clusters. The current approach to reform”—that is the imposition of reviewable tenancies—“is not always in harmony with the desires of communities for stability and continuity which are often essential for addressing the needs of families requiring social assistance.”Well Minister I suggest you go back to your intellectual mentors at the Productivity Commission and consider for a moment what they have to say about one of the most important provisions in this bill. They do not support reviewable tenancies. They are advising you to do the opposite of what you are doing in this bill.Hon Dr Nick Smith: No they’re not.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes they are.I want to refer to the submission from an excellent organisation that is part of Otago University’s Wellington campus. The name of the organisation is He Kainga Oranga the housing and health research programme. It is headed up by Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman. This organisation is the gold standard when it comes to matters of housing and public health. It has carried out a pile of world-class public health research on this issue. It has won the public argument and established without any doubt thatovercrowding and poor-quality homes are directly attributable to the appalling statistics we have in this country in the hospitalisation of children for respiratory diseases. What Philippa Howden-Chapman said to the select committee was that the Minister’s insistence on applying insecurity of tenure to all State house tenants would pose a public health risk.I look forward when we debate this bill in more detail to going into the detail of the evidence that the Otago University academics presented to the select committee on this issue. What they showed us at the select committee was that taking away security of tenure from some of the most economically and socially vulnerable people in New Zealand would pose a public health risk to those people.The second thing that this bill does is enable the transfer of State housing stock to the community housing sector. Labour supports growing the community housing sector for all of the reasons that are commonly expressed. However we oppose the winding-down the cutting-back the de-powering of Housing New Zealand. That is exactly this Minister’s intention. This bill is a means towards his vision of remaking Housing New Zealand as just another tenancy manager. We may as well get Barfoot and Thompson to manage the State housing stocks because that is the Minister’s vision—that Housing New Zealand will be just another landlord competing in a quasi-contestable market for tenants and subsidies.The Minister does not see a future for a strong capable Government-delivered social housing provider just as Housing New Zealand is today. Labour does not support the Minister. It does not believe that growing the community housing sector by chopping up Housing New Zealand into little bits and divvying it out to the NGO sector is the way to do it. Labour believes that putting a roof over the heads of some of the most vulnerable New Zealanders is a core responsibility of the Government. In this bill Nick Smith is stepping away from that responsibility. We will not be voting for this bill.