Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3622. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): If there was ever any doubt about the Hon Simon Bridges the contribution that he has just made in the House puts to rest any doubt that he has well and truly drunk the Kool-Aid. He got up and made actually not a very good defence of the Government’s policy on social housing. He showed a lack of understanding of the detail and really just kind of parroted the most superficial lines that he gets from Paula Bennett about what is really going on with this social housing policy. Here is the big lie. Here is the big lie about National’s social housing policy. National wants the country to believe that it is all about making homes warm and dry that it is about innovation and that it is about giving power to the community. We heard Simon Bridges say that local communities can always do it better than someone in Wellington making all the decisions. So this legislation is dressed up in the language of empowerment of community and of modernising the housing stock. It is none of those things.Let us talk about what is really going on here. In November last year Bill English was basically caught candidly telling the truth to the New Zealand Herald when he said that the purpose of this policy is simply to get rid of State houses off the Government’s books. He thinks it is a lazy use of capital for the Government even to own housing. He wants someone else to own the houses. He does not care who. He said that on the record. He said: “We can sell them to anyone. It could be the Salvation Army it could be property developers.” He does not care whom the Government sells the houses to. He simply wants to get the Government out of the business of owning houses. The model that the National Party wants to move to is one where anybody can own the houses and the State will simply pay a direct subsidy into the pockets of the landlords. It is the accommodation supplement on steroids. It is exactly what happened in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and in countless other countries around the Western World.Bill English likes to get up in this House and say: “We’re old-fashioned in New Zealand. It’s time we caught up with the rest of the world.” Well I will tell you Mr Chairman what has happened in much of the Western World in the last 20 years. The State under right-wing Governments has retreated from the provision of social housing for the most vulnerable citizens in society and has handed that job over to the market. It is rolling back the lessons that were learnt all around the world during the 20th century—that the market alone will never deliver a sufficient quantity of decent housing for society’s most vulnerable citizens. That is what this Government is doing and it has said it. Nick Smith has said it and his officials have said it. The point of this “ideological burp”—as Annette King has described this policy—is to try to create an artificial market in social housing. As Grant Robertson said this is Bill English going back to the 1990s when National introduced market rents and flogged off 13000 State houses which ended up in the hands of property developers and private landlords. This is simply a continuation of that neo-liberal quest of Bill English to get the Government out of the business of providing social housing.Rather than listening to the mealy-mouthed platitudes of Paula Bennett we can actually look at the National Government’s behaviour to judge whether it is in fact seriously interested in providing more decent housing for New Zealand’s most vulnerable people. Let us look at what it has actually done rather than listen to its rhetoric. Since National has been in Government it has stripped Housing New Zealand of its core functions. It is now as we have been saying simply a State-owned version of Barfoot and Thompson. It is no more than a letting agency and this bill takes away one of the last vestigial functions of Housing New Zealand—that is its ability to do research to evaluate its programmes and to advise the Government of the day on social housing.National has sold down housing all over the country. In fact mostly what it is doing is shifting State houses out of regional New Zealand and into the north. It is taking State houses away from Dunedin away from Gisborne and away from Palmerston North and it is stripping out a valuable social and economic asset from regional New Zealand. It is not building any new State houses. More than anything that gives the lie to the rhetoric of Paula Bennett and Bill English. In the middle of a housing crisis—in the middle of a housing shortage—when people are living in cars and garages it is not doing the obvious thing which is increase the supply of housing and build more houses. In the middle of a housing crisis the National Government is using Housing New Zealand as a cash cow. It has taken half a billion dollars in dividends out of our country’s main social housing agency and that money has gone straight back into the consolidated account.When Bill English was asked “What are you going to do with the proceeds from the sale of State houses? Are you going to build more houses with them?” he said: “No why would we do that? We don’t want more State houses. What’s the point?”.Hon David Parker: He used to say that. He said that until 2008.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes. Yes he did and then he changed his tune.The Government has also tightened the eligibility criteria. It is so tight that even the poorest people in this country cannot even get on the priority waiting list for Housing New Zealand. Every MP on this side of the House who represents a community knows that there is massive unmet social need that there is hardship and that there is poverty in our communities. People cannot even get in the door because they have to ring an 0800 number. And worse than that they have no prospect of getting on the Housing New Zealand waiting list because this Government has tightened the eligibility criteria in a cynical cynical move simply to cut the waiting lists. The effect of that policy is that there are 3000 vacant State houses sitting around this country while people are languishing in expensive cold damp substandard rentals.There are thousands of vacant State houses and that completely gives the lie to Paula Bennett’s claim that this Government is about housing more people and looking after the tenants. It is a manufactured crisis where the Government is leaving dozens and dozens of empty State houses sitting boarded up and attractinggraffiti in regional centres all around New Zealand and that is the excuse that it uses for then selling off those houses. We know that Housing New Zealand has been offloading these State houses all around New Zealand—in every regional centre town and city around this country—at significantly below their Government value. It is flicking them off with no regard for the taxpayer’s value and is selling them straight into the hands of property developers and private landlords. That is what this Government is all about.It has subjected hundreds of tenants including families with young children the elderly and the disabled to needless anxiety and stress notwithstanding the fact that Nick Smith stood in this House 4 years ago and promised that he would not do that. The Government broke that promise. It is throwing people out on the street because they have committed the crime of earning enough to pay a market rent while living in State housing. These are the policies on social housing that the National Government is implementing. They are destroying the dream in this country that people should be able to have a decent roof over their heads no matter how much they earn. Paula Bennett and John Key stand in this House and I do not know how they can do it—how they can stand up with a straight face—to dismantle and dismember the very system of social support that gave them a decent start in their lives. It was OK for the taxpayer to give John Key and his mother a decent house in Christchurch in the 1960s which gave him a start in life but now apparently according to the National Party State house tenants are the undeserving poor. Government members demonise them; they parody State house tenants. Nick Smith gets up and says that there are Mercedes Benzes parked out the front of State houses. That is the political cover that the National Party uses to destroy the system of State housing in this country.This bill gives flexible purchasing arrangements. What a euphemism. It gives the Minister wide discretionary powers to do sweetheart deals with property developers so that the Government can flick off billions of dollars of State houses. It does not care whom it sells them to; it wants to get rid of them by hook or by crook. The current arrangements that the Government has where it can pay an income-related rent subsidy—the difference between a market rent and a social rent—that is what gets paid to Housing New Zealand. The Government has not been able to sell off these houses to the Methodist Mission the Salvation Army or anybody else. This bill is its “get out of jail free” card. It enables the Government to flick off those houses and do sweetheart deals with property developers.