Woods Megan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3629. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am very happy to take a call in this Committee stage as we talk about Part 1 of the legislation which of course is the enabling legislation for the great State house sell-off that we are seeing here today wrapped up in ideological rhetoric of “flexibility”. What we have had is the Minister—because none of the members opposite are willing to stand up and defend what is a terrible policy and a terrible piece of legislation—trying to justify how this really is doing right by the tenants. But if we look at what Part 1 actually does we heard the Minister wax lyrical but I would ask the Minister to take another call and point us to the provisions in the legislation we are here in this Chamber debating that do what the Minister claims. Point me to the clause that does what the Minister claims this legislation is going to do. He cannot because this legislation does none of that. The Government can purport that this bill is all about flexibility but this is about selling off State houses.We have not heard about how one more piece of social housing is going to be provided. My colleague Phil Goff just finished off his speech by asking that question. I too would like to put that question to members opposite. Tell me how this bill provides for more social housing in New Zealand. Tell me how more houses are going to be provided for the people who are currently struggling to find accommodation in this country. Tell me how one more person is going to get off the Housing New Zealand waiting list but more important tell me how one more person is going to get on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list. In the last quarter 4000 of the 6000 people who applied to go on the waiting list—not to get a house but to go on the waiting list—for a Housing New Zealand house did not make it and this legislation will do nothing to help those people.My colleague said that he imagined that members opposite were having to sleep with their spray-misters and their copy of Hayek. Well they are also cuddling up to their fluffy toy version of the Big Society. This is what they are trying to do in this legislation. But like experiments in other places in the world it is not working. We had the social service agencies lining up and saying that this is not going to work. They said they cannot see how the Government’s plan to sell off State houses will in any way benefit tenants. They are saying that they do not have the capacity and they do not have the infrastructure to manage a sizable housing stock such as the Government is imagining.So what are we left with? Who is the Government going to sell to? Surprise surprise it is going to be developers. It is what it always intended anyway wrapped up in the guise of non-governmental organisations who have told the Government they do not want a bar of it. That is why we are debating this legislation under urgency—so those non-governmental organisations do not get a chance to come to the select committee and tell the Government they do not want its offer. What they do not want is their private property developer mates coming to the select committee and saying that they are lining up to buy these houses. Are they lining up to buy these houses because they want to provide wraparound services that provide well for some of the most vulnerable in our country? No they are lining up to buy these houses because they see a chance to make a profit because that is what the private sector does. The reason why these houses need to stay in public ownership is that we have decided in this country that the Government should intervene and that the Government has a responsibility to ensure that we do have housing as a crucial and critical part of our welfare safety net and that when people need it it is there and we do not have families who simply cannot find a place to live.Many of us have spoken about the challenges that people in our electorates are facing and what we are seeing on the ground at the coalface every day and every week. I can only guess that members opposite do this as well. The job of a constituency MP is increasingly being taken up with housing issues. Increasingly housing is forming a major part of our workload. It is people who simply cannot find somewhere to live who cannot get on to the waiting list and who cannot deal with Housing New Zealand when they are there. I would like to use a couple of examples from my electorate. One is a woman in her 60s who cannot afford to be in the private rental market in Christchurch—