Twyford Phil: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: General Debate[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:648. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):What a riveting speech from the cigar-smoking Minister of Health from Northcote the greatest friend this Parliament has ever delivered to the tobacco industry. In fact I am worried on behalf of Jonathan Coleman about where he is going to get his supply of cigars now that the National Party has recruited half of the New Zealand tobacco industry into this Parliament. I am worried that his supply of free cigars is about to dry up.I want to talk about National’s great State house sell-off because this has been an utter shambles for the last 4 weeks. It is a shambles. Let me count the ways that the Government’s social housing policy has been a shambles. First how many State houses does National intend to sell off? How many? John Key said: “Well a few State houses.” Paula Bennett told Patrick Gower when he asked whether it was as many as 22000: “Logically maybe.” She said: “Well it could be thousands.” Rawdon Christie asked John Key: “Is 20000 homes an accurate figure?”. John Key said: “I don’t think so no.”Well the other big question that New Zealanders are wondering about is where will the money be invested the billions of dollars that will be generated from the sale of State homes? Bill English said: “Well um we’re not going to rebuild houses with it. It could go into the consolidated account.” On another occasion he said: “Well if we want less housing stock there is no point in rebuilding houses with it.” Will the homes be sold to private landlords? Well Bill English said: “We could sell them to anybody.” Bill English said: “We’ll just go to the market and see who turns up basically. Generally financiers and developers are not interested in social housing because it is too hard. What drives their interest is wanting to do a better job with tenants.” So it is a shambles. They are looking at privatising up to a third of an $18 billion public asset that has been putting a roof over the heads of vulnerable Kiwi families for 80 years now. I think New Zealanders deserve a bit more clarity.But what is clear behind the bland Crosby/Textor assurances that trip so easily from the tongue of Paula Bennett—“wraparound services” “We’re working with the community.” “We’re all about the people.”—is that nothing could be further from the truth. What is clear here is that Bill English has had a back to the 1990s moment. He and Treasury are on an ideological crusade to end State housing as we know it. Bill English’s answer to the housing crisis his answer to a shortage of affordable housing is to blame the councils blame the Resource Management Act and flog off what State houses the Government does own. He has basically said to the New Zealand Herald that he just wants to get the $18 billion State housing asset off the Crown’s balance sheet. He wants to get the Government out of the business of actually owning houses and simply pay a subsidy to landlords.There are three reasons why this is a really dumb idea. First shifting tens of thousands of New Zealand families out of State housing and into a voucher system as Paula Bennett describes it—effectively putting money directly into the pockets of landlords—will undoubtedly drive up rents. You do not increase supply but you fuel demand by pumping subsidies in just as National announced before the election by subsiding first-home buyers in an overheated market. It will drive rents up. Second social housing tenants under this system will inevitably end up competing with first-home buyers and other renters making an already difficult housing market much worse. The third reason is that owning houses and having them earmarked for the express purpose of social housing means that even when the market gets tight as it is now at least you can be sure that there is a pool of housing there for the people who need it most. Under Paula Bennett’s voucher system you do not get that kind of security. If private landlords and profit providers are in the mix as Bill English has said they will be they will naturally go to where the best profits can be made.There is some kind of bizarre determination by this Government to somehow build an artificial market in social housing. But the market has never ever delivered affordable decent housing to the people who need it most.