Bennett Paula: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9117. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I would just like to address a couple of things that have come up—and one in particular to the member who was just speaking Carmel Sepuloni—in Part 2 of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. Housing New Zealand’s existing legislative framework was not designed for the social housing transactions and does not allow Ministers to execute transfers of Housing New Zealand properties. In particular Housing New Zealand is a Crown entity governed at arm’s length from Ministers and according to its own legislation. As such we do not want to change that legislation. We do not want to change the main purpose of Housing New Zealand. We certainly agree with much of what the member was saying. That is why we are putting this into the bill so that yes the Government has a programme where we are admitting transactions. Members have opinions on whether that is the right thing to do or not and that is perfectly their right. But what this does is it actually allows us to put the Government’s programme into place and not change what the board is there to do and what its role is.The member before Carmel Sepuloni Stuart Nash certainly spoke about the governance of Housing New Zealand and how he felt that this was putting undue influence on it and he certainly quoted what that meant—to be on a governing board and the responsibilities. I would say to him that that is exactly the point—that we want to ensure that we are making sure that the board members are true to what their role is what they govern for and as I have already said it is within their legislative framework that they are not designed to actually execute these transfers and instead of messing with what their governance role is we take that so that we can actually administer the Government’s programme. Going to the speaker before that Phil Twyford who talked quite a bit about how we ensure that there are a number of provisions to ensure that the transaction mandate powers are exercised appropriately—one of the first things that I would say is that we have two Ministers there. There is a reason for that. We have joint accountability and we ensure that that is there. We actually did not have to do that. It could have been just one but we felt that having the two gives it that “double trouble” I suppose.The power to execute social housing transactions as proposed in new section 50E in clause 8 can be exercised only for the purpose of one or more of the social housing reform objectives and we purposely put that in so that everyone can see what we are doing and that it is true to the objectives. The bill also ensures that there is public and parliamentary visibility as the member said—that they have to be gazetted in a notice outlining the transaction and it must be tabled in this Parliament. We purposely put that in to make sure that there is that visibility and we are actually there. Ministers are subject to the usual public and administrative law requirements to act reasonably fairly and lawfully. If a member of the public or an organisation or Housing New Zealand thought that the Government had executed a transaction that did not serve the social housing reform objectives for example they could apply for a judicial review. So all of the concerns that the members have raised we had actually thought through and implemented into this bill to make sure that we have the right checks and balances to ensure that what we are doing is ensuring that Ministers can administer the Government’s programme and that we stay true to the legislative framework of the governing board of Housing New Zealand. Thank you.