O'Rourke Denis: Housing Amendment Bill Housing Corporation (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill (No 2) Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill (NO 2) — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Housing Amendment Bill Housing Corporation (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill (No 2) Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill (NO 2) — Third Readings[Sitting date: 18 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9179. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): If there was ever legislation that truly defined the character of this Government it would be this legislation. Despite the protestations from the members on the other side it is National Party ideology to the core. It is that Government’s intention to privatise everything it can get its hands on and now State houses and land held for those purposes are up for sale as soon as possible to anyone it can find who will buy it.If there was ever legislation that evidenced the failure of this National Government’s housing policy and programme it is this legislation. It demonstrates a failure to regulate the housing market and to moderate the housing market producing a deep and now intractable housing crisis—especially in Auckland—and that of course places massive pressure on social housing facilities. Yet the Government’s priority strangely is to sell off State houses instead of investing in more State houses and upgrading them.This Government says it wants to involve the private sector who is anyone who will cooperate to do the Government’s job for it and it will transfer housing assets to them but all the legislation is actually doing in fact is changing the name of the owner of those assets. That is all it does. It does not actually increase the housing stock. It does not actually improve the quality of that housing stock. It makes no contribution whatsoever to stopping or reversing the housing crisis that we have here in New Zealand today.The legislation empowers the Minister to direct the sale and transfer of Housing New Zealand Corporation homes for stated housing objectives but the real objective—the real objective—is just privatisation which is business as usual for the National Government. The means for that is a direct executive power for the Minister—in fact far too much direct executive power—sidelining and usurping the role of Housing New Zealand and creating far too much scope for what could amount to corruption with no checks and balances and no accountability. This Parliament needs to be vigilant about just that kind of legislation because clearly this Government will not be. There are at least 2000 houses to be fast-track sold by this method—potentially billions of dollars—so we do need to be careful about where the money goes who gets those proceeds and what they are going to be used for.The Housing Amendment Bill says that the proceeds “must be paid to a Crown bank account”—a Crown bank account—and that is actually all it says about that and I have heard nothing from the other side about this either. There is no information about what the Government’s mandate for that money will be and no information about what it is going to do with that money or how it could be used. Nick Smith made an attempt in his speech yesterday to explain it. He said that Housing New Zealand has a house-building programme for which the money could be used. But that is not what this legislation says. We actually have no idea from the legislation or from what members opposite have said about what this money is going to be used for at all.We do know that if Housing New Zealand was the recipient—and if it was by the way to be the recipient why is that not in the legislation specifically? But if that was to be the case then how do we know that it will still be used for new social housing or any social housing purpose whatsoever? Even if Housing New Zealand did get the money—and we are talking potentially about billions of dollars here—will that money or even part of it actually go back to the Government as a dividend from Housing New Zealand or even as a special dividend of a very large amount? How do we know that would not take place? There is nothing in this legislation about that. Members opposite have said nothing about that. So what we could find is that these properties will be sold off and the money just goes back into the Government’s funds to be used for other purposes or just to create an artificial surplus in this year’s Budget. I would not put it past the Government in fact to do exactly that. If that happened it would be a disgrace because Housing New Zealand and the Government should be spending all of that money and more—a lot more—on the provision of new and better State-owned social housing in New Zealand. The sector is crying out for just that investment.So the Government should be spending much more—much more than even the sale proceeds from these properties—on housing in New Zealand and yet some members opposite have pretended that they are doing a great job. Well I am sorry; they are not doing any job at all nor can they expect the private sector to do so because it simply does not have the resources or the capacity to do it in this country when you look at the size of the crisis that we have now. We can be sure that this Government’s real intention is simply to sell as many State assets including State houses as possible. The result will be to deepen the housing crisis because no new State houses will be built as a result of this legislation.Lastly I want to refer to the parts of the legislation that refer to the objectives because that is the crux of this legislation—those objectives. It simply says in new section 50E(1) in Part 5A inserted by the Housing Corporation (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill (No 2): “The Minister may enter into a contract … if the Minister considers that the entry into the contract is for the purpose of any 1 or more of the social housing reform objectives:”. And then in the following subsection: “(2) A transfer contract may be on any terms and conditions (including as to consideration) that the Minister may agree with the transferee.”These are very very wide powers. The Minister can sell to anybody on any terms and in reality for any reason whatsoever. All the Minister has to do is relate it to the specified social housing reform objectives. They are pretty wishy-washy. They are pretty general. They refer to for example social housing being of the right size and configuration social housing tenants being helped to independence and the fact that there is more diverse ownership or provision of social housing. How could any of those objectives justify the sell-off of State houses or land held for those purposes? Another objective says that there is to be more innovation and more responsiveness to housing tenants and communities. Another one refers to the supply of affordable housing. It does not even say “social housing” just “affordable housing” and yet this legislation is supposed to be about social housing.What we will see is properties like the Redcliffs School which the Government wants to sell being gazetted as State housing land and then being gazetted under this legislation as being for sale—referred to in terms of the objectives as affordable housing—and then sold off to anyone as the Government thinks fit because nobody really knows what affordable housing is.I say this finally. This is just privatisation. You can see it from the objectives. You can see it from the Government’s record. And it is wrong. This Government should be investing more not selling.