Flavell Te Ururoa: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4096] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker tena tatou katoa. I do not know whether you will remember Mr Deputy Speaker but I remember that when I was a young fellow I was hooked into a cult series in which an evil organisation KAOS attempted to take over the world. The forces of good were represented in an organisation called CONTROL which would constantly battle with KAOS to maintain order in the world. At the helm of CONTROL was the Chief with Secret Agent 86 Maxwell Smart who was anything but smart. The Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill is the 2006 version of  
Get Smart.  
The apparent crisis of overpayment of benefits is responded to with an over-the-top reaction of transferring vital details to any employees or agents of a host of agencies including the Accident Compensation Corporation the Chief Registrar of Electors the Department of Corrections the Inland Revenue Department Land Transport New Zealand the New Zealand Customs Service and so on. 
Following the submissions from the New Zealand Property Investors Federation it appeared that the Ministry of Justice was also considered suitable for the information-matching programme. Members might remember that Maxwell Smart in his fight against KAOS is assisted by his sidekick Agent 99. She is the beautiful one the one with class who attempts to talk sense into any project and any situation. As we come here today the Maori Party—playing Agent 99 to this Labour Government’s  
Get Smart 
 surveillance scheme—is obviously going to speak against this bill. We have picked up on the submissions from the Dunedin Community Law Centre which was concerned at the multi-type surveillance able to be brought to bear on one individual by a number of different agencies. 
As I understand it originally the bill’s provisions were to enable Housing New Zealand Corporation to disclose information about tenants and tenancies to the Ministry of Social Development which administers benefits and student allowances. But not content with the Ministry of Social Development alone the bill extends the target of its surveillance over a wide berth to help in the detection of fraud. The Maori Party will not condone the abuse of power and privilege that is associated with any fraudulent activity or behaviour but we have asked right throughout the debate on this bill what justification this control-freak control-driven Government has for targeting beneficiaries for increased surveillance and monitoring to a level that compromises their rights. If this Government was really committed to getting smart about housing provision in New Zealand there are plenty of other responsible actions or interventions that Housing New Zealand Corporation could make to support better services for tenants. Instead we have a reversal of the one-size-fits-all approach that politicians conveniently bring out for debate when all else fails. 
This bill unashamedly targets a particular population—the population of beneficiaries—for a mean-spirited attack on their rights. It is an attack that implies that if a tenant is a beneficiary that tenant has reduced eligibility for civil and human rights. We in the Maori Party have seen such discrimination in New Zealand State housing before. As Maxwell Smart would say “would you believe” that up until the late 1940s Maori were excluded from mainstream State housing on the grounds that their presence would allegedly lower the tone of State housing communities. There was also an assumption that few could afford the rent. These were the so-called golden days of the land of milk and honey; a time when one law for all meant one law for all except Maori. When Maori were finally admitted into mainstream State housing in 1948 through a scheme administered by the State Advances Corporation and the Department of Maori Affairs they were pepper-potted into Pakeha neighbourhoods seemingly to encourage their assimilation into Pakeha society. But the question of the “right” community standards returned and it was not long before the native neighbourhoods were shunted out to ghetto-like concentrations in Porirua and South Auckland. 
Discrimination in targeted housing policy did not reside just in the issue of location. The quality of housing provided was also ripe for analysis. At the inaugural conference of the Maori Women’s Welfare League in Wellington in September 1951 Dame Whina Cooper the foundation president instigated a survey of Maori housing in Auckland. The survey revealed that large numbers of Maori were overcrowded in unsanitary dwellings. The status and profile of tangata whenua were reflected in the provision of bare housing features in each house—a lack of insulation floor coverings floor space quality paint wall coverings concreting fencing sewerage and community facilities. The devastating data forced the Auckland City Council and the Department of Maori Affairs to demolish slums and provide a higher quota of State and council housing for Maori tenants. Nowadays more than 15000 Maori households are in State housing. This year marks the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. Perhaps it is timely to look again at the inspiration left behind by ”Te Whaea o te Motu”—the “Mother of the Nation”—and replicate the 1951 housing survey. 
The Maori Party is interested in what rationale the Government can spin around the creation of two categories of tenants with different sets of rights. Clearly the “one law for all dogs” argument that dominated the microchipping chaos cannot be said to apply to this bill. The Government cannot have it both ways and claim a “one law for all” position as it is currently doing in respect of the Geneva Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples then try to create a different set of rights for Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants. Both actions are actually a denial of human rights. 
This “Get Smart Bill” might never have needed to happen. However we say that there are already sufficient and considerable measures available in the Ministry of Social Development to extract the information that is supposedly needed. We are advised that the Ministry of Social Development can obtain the same information through informed consent and that ample powers already exist to achieve compliance. All this bill does is add another layer to its efforts to protect the benefit system. We need to ask what the more important protection is: the benefit system or the people. We agree with our friends the Greens that we would rather the focus be on people receiving the full amount of income support that they are entitled to than on introducing punitive measures aimed at cutting people off. 
This bill sets Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants apart from other tenants. The special privilege for Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants is that they will be subject to data matching with Work and Income. It is KAOS in its absolutely worst degree. One group of citizens is being infected again by this Government’s festering sore—its beef against beneficiaries. Of course we in this Chamber are all beneficiaries of the State. We are dependent on the generosity of the taxpayers of this land for keeping us in paid work. A considerable wealth of information is available on each and every one of us either through our own web pages or promotional material or through formal mechanisms such as the annual declaration of pecuniary interests. The difference between the beneficiaries in this Chamber and the beneficiaries in Housing New Zealand Corporation homes is that we can sit behind the protection of parliamentary privilege the power of position or the safety net afforded by the Official Information Act in resisting the free-sale trade of our personal information. No such luxury exists for the beneficiaries targeted in this bill. It is as big a contrast as between the class act of  
The Avengers 
 and the comedy antics of Maxwell Smart. 
The Maori Party will not stand by and tolerate the targeted injustice that we see represented in this bill and similarly in Working for Families. The Maori Party will vote against this bill.