Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSocial Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) BillFirst ReadingHon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I move That the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a first time. This Government has embarked on an ambitious programme to improve social housing and support more vulnerable New Zealanders. This bill will allow the Government to build on the crucial initiatives announced in the social housing reform programme to increase the supply of social housing and support more people in suitable housing that meets their needs while they need it. The Government will spend more than $700 million this year on the income-related rent subsidy and that will increase by $154 million over the next 3 years. The number of social housing places available increases from about 62000 currently to 65000 by 2018.This bill does four things. The first and most important of these is the introduction of the ministerial direction power to allow the Minister of Housing in consultation with other housing Ministers to authorise the Ministry of Social Development to enter into tailored agreements to purchase social housing places. Currently social housing is paid for via the income-related rent subsidy. Income-related rent is paid by the tenant and is no more than 25 percent of their income while the second component the income-related rent subsidy is paid by the Ministry of Social Development and makes up the difference between the market rent and the income-related rent. The Ministry of Social Development is not able to negotiate prices or tailor contracts in any other way that allows social housing provision to be looked at differently and incentivises providers to enter the market. That is stopping the growth of community providers and means tenants are not always getting the best services. This bill retains the income-related rent payment in the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act so that providers who want to continue with income-related rent subsidy payments can do so. But it also allows the Ministry of Social Development to enter into tailored agreements so that the terms conditions and price can be negotiated to promote better social housing outcomes and attract organisations into social housing.To be clear nothing in this bill will change tenants’ eligibility for the income-related rent subsidies or how much they will have to pay in rent. What it does do is allow the Ministry of Social Development to explore other arrangements such as long-term fixed-price tenancies that meet the needs of the Crown provider and tenants. Longer-term contracts assure that when a provider has a place available this place will be offered to a person on the social housing register. Providers would have the certainty of a contract with the Government—that they will be paid to house a certain number of people over a certain length of time and they can still be paid for properties when they are vacant for short periods before tenants. This means that if they are looking to finance construction or buy properties they have the guarantee of an income stream that they can use to borrow against. Providers have asked for this certainty so that they can make long-term investment decisions. This will increase the supply of social housing and see more local organisations investing in homes for their communities. Long-term contracts will also guarantee the Ministry of Social Development’s supply so that it knows it can place tenants with providers as their properties become available.Tailored agreements will allow the Government to pay more or less for certain tenants depending on their level of need. Pricing for these sorts of arrangements should be able to focus on the actual costs of supporting people not just some pre-prescribed formula; it will be the ability to negotiate these kinds of deals that can help get the right providers who offer the best services and quality housing for different cohorts of people. For example the Ministry of Social Development may want to enter into an agreement with a provider who specialises in people with disabilities. It will be able to pay more for the extra services that these people might need. This bill is being passed through all stages under urgency so that we can help the community housing sector to increase the supply of social housing places particularly in Auckland as soon as possible.In December the Ministry of Social Development released a registration of interest to providers who are interested in supplying 300 social housing places in Auckland. There was a large response with 19 community housing providers taking part. Their feedback was clear: that they need more flexibility in contracting to provide more places in Auckland. This bill will allow them to do that. This is an opportunity for the Ministry of Social Development to relieve pressure on the social housing register and engage further with the community housing sector about the different types of contracting arrangements it needs. Tailored agreements are not restricted to just community housing providers. Housing New Zealand is the largest player in the market and tailored agreements will be available to it as well.The legislation also makes three minor amendments to other bills. It ensures that payments for residential social housing provision under these agreements are GST-exempt consistent with the current treatment of residential rental payments. It clarifies that Housing New Zealand is no longer required to provide policy advice to Ministers. This role has been undertaken by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and its predecessor the Department of Building and Housing since 2011. Minor amendments are being made to first-home withdrawal rules in the KiwiSaver Act. These ensure that any prior period of membership in a complying superannuation fund should count towards a 3-year eligibility period when the member transfers to KiwiSaver. This means that more KiwiSaver members have access to their savings to assist with the purchase of a first home.This bill is a major step in the Government’s social housing reforms and enables the Ministry of Social Development to be a smarter purchaser of social housing. We are backing tenants by creating a social housing sector that can house more people in housing that suits their needs provide essential support services and assist them back to housing independence where appropriate. I commend this bill to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): The National Party is trying to brand this Budget as a Budget of compassionate conservatism. What gives the lie to that particular piece of double-speak is that the very first piece of legislation they are trying to ram through the House after this Budget is legislation that basically is designed to help them flog off State houses to their developer mates in a fire sale and at knock-down prices. It is the big pay-off. It is the big payback. Actually it is not compassionate conservatism at all; it is Cabinet club conservatism. That is what this is about: flicking off State houses to their developer mates at knock-down prices breaking up communities and throwing State house tenants out on to the street. That is the hallmark of this National Government and of what it is doing to State housing in this country.The bill is all about flexible purchasing. It is so flexible that it is all about giving the Minister the flexibility to do sweetheart deals with property developers because the Government is desperate to sell off State houses to anybody who will take them. They know that our most respected social agency the Salvation Army looked at this policy and said that it would not improve the lives of tenants. The Salvation Army ruled itself out. It said: “We do not want to have a bar of it.” and so did the Methodist Mission. Bill English was forced to concede that only by flogging off these houses to property developers would they achieve their ambition of divesting thousands of State houses worth billions of dollars off the Government books. This Government has been a bystander for the last 6 years while the housing crisis has been getting worse and worse. House prices in Auckland have gone up 87 percent in the last 6 years. The average house price has gone up by over $100000 in the last 12 months. We have got families living in cars and garages and yet the Prime Minister is deep in denial. He says that there is no housing crisis. He says that there is no risk of a bust. Things are all fine in Parnell apparently.New Zealanders desperately wanted the Government in this Budget to finally do something about the housing crisis. That is what people wanted and they have been cruelly let down today even though all the evidence suggests that for the past few weeks since the Governor of the Reserve Bank gave the Government a bollocking in this Parliament for its failure to do anything about the housing crisis it has been in a poll-driven panic to try to come up with things that will make it look as if it is doing something about the housing crisis. We have seen its half-hearted measure to target property speculators which based on Treasury analysis will be lucky if it nets a thousand speculators a year and brings in $18 million a year. It will not make a blind bit of difference to the rampant property speculation in Auckland. Today the Government announced a very good scheme to use vacant Government land in Auckland to build housing on but it was an idea that was developed—and the study for it done—in 2008 by the Helen Clark Labour Government. The National Government has been sitting on its hands for 6 years. It has done nothing with the idea while the housing crisis has been getting worse and worse. But in a panic before this Budget it dusted it off and presented it as if it were a new idea.The biggest con job of all of the failed policies the photo opportunities and the deception that is this Government’s housing policy is its State house sell-off. In the middle of a housing crisis when we have a spike in visible homelessness and in people living on the streets and in caravan parksall over the country only the National Party would think it was a good idea to sell off the houses that it already owns. It tried to dress it up for months by saying that the Salvation Army was going to buy those houses but the Salvation Army has ruled that out. Bill English does not care who the Government sells these houses to. He said that. He does not care who it sells them to; he just wants to get rid of them. This bill is about making it easier for the Minister to sell off those houses and to put in place sweetheart deals that will allow someone—anyone—to take these houses off the Government’s hands.Let us look at what has happened to Housing New Zealand under this Government. It has stripped Housing New Zealand of its powers and its functions and it has given them to Work and Income. What was once a full-service social housing agency has been reduced to the equivalent of a Government-owned Barfoot and Thompson. It is now simply a letting agency and this legislation is the final nail in the coffin. This Government has been selling off State houses all over the country without telling anybody. In the past year it has sold 50 houses in Whanganui at an average of 33 percent below the Government valuation blatantly undermining property values in that town and flogging off publicly-owned assets below their market value. That is an absolute shame.This Government has milked $500 million in dividends off Housing New Zealand in the past 6 years. Half a billion dollars—it has used it as a cash cow to prop up its fictional surplus which never arrives. It has tightened the eligibility criteria so tightly that even people who are in acute need and acute poverty cannot get on the waiting list. It has subjected hundreds of vulnerable tenants including the elderly disabled and families with young children to the needless stress and anxiety of tenancy reviews—fearful that they will be thrown out on the street by Paula Bennett. The Government has closed offices sacked tenancy managers and forced tenants to use an 0800 number. This bill now strips away the last functions that Housing New Zealand has. It is no longer allowed even to give the Government advice on social housing—that function has been taken away. Housing New Zealand is no longer allowed to do research and it is no longer allowed to evaluate the work that the Government does.State housing has a proud history in this country. It is how we make sure in New Zealand that every child growing up in this country at least gets a decent roof over their heads no matter how much mum and dad may be strugglingfinancially. It is how we make sure in New Zealand that every kid gets a decent start in life. That is why the taxpayer subsidised John Key and his mother to have a State house in Christchurch in the 1960s. The security of the roof over their heads gave the Prime Minister a good start in life. Paula Bennett benefited from the same generosity of taxpayers. Now the two of them—the worst hypocrites this House has ever seen—are willing to strip away and dismantle the very system of social support that gave those Ministers their start in life. Paula Bennett is happy to pull the ladder up. She and John Key are happy to deny a generation of young New Zealanders the same opportunities that they had in life. They do not care—they do not care.Just imagine a young John Key in today’s generation sitting on a suitcase on the side of the roadin some suburb in some city in New Zealand thrown out of the house that he and his mother called home. He is worried night is falling and he has no idea where he is going to sleep the night and no idea where they will call home. That is the reality for families all over this country. That homelessness has been made worse by the policies of this Government and by their utter failure to do anything meaningful about the housing crisis. The worst cut of all is that in the middle of a housing crisis and a housing shortage Minister Paula Bennett is dismantling the system of support that provides decent housing to the 4 percent—the most vulnerable people and the most vulnerable families in our country. What an absolute scandal.Selling off State houses breaking up Housing New Zealand and dishing out the bits to charities reducing Housing New Zealand to being no more than a publicly-owned letting agency and moving to a system of direct subsidies for landlords—that is what Bill English and Paula Bennett want to do. Their agenda here is dressed up in lots of nice words: “We want to grow the community housing sector. We’re stepping up with wraparound services. It’s all about the tenants.” It is not about the tenants at all. Because do you know what? We asked Paula Bennett under the Official Information Act what evidence she had for the policy of privatising State housing and for shifting that responsibility to non-governmental housing providers and you know what she said? She said: “There’s no evidence.” There were no documents. The Government had nothing to say. There is no evidential basis for this policy but that Minister is happy to preside over the dismemberment and the dismantling of Housing New Zealand—the very organisation that puts a decent roof over the heads of the most vulnerable families in this country.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has expired.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is a great honour to rise and speak to this first reading of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. I would just like to acknowledge the hard-working Hon Paula Bennett and all the work she has done as the Minister for Social Housing. I must say as a new MP it is an honour and a privilege to be part of this National Government today which has delivered. We are working hard for New Zealanders and listening to New Zealanders.The purpose of this bill is to provide flexibility. It is right that we provide flexibility because in the care sector it is now a mixed economy of care. What I mean by that is it is no longer solely State provision. It is about the Government provision it is about private provision but it is also about community organisation provision as well. So it is right that we provide flexibility in a mixed economy of care. This bill is important as we negotiate and contract with social housing providers because it is about providing the right house to the right person in the right location at the right time.It reminds me of some statistics I read at the start of this year about Housing New Zealand stock. It was interesting that when we looked at demand for one-bedroom houses the demand was around 25 percent but the actual supply was only 9 percent—25 percent demand and 9 percent supply. Then you look at three-bedroom houses—24 percent demand yet 43 percent supply. That clearly evidences how we end up in this situation where we have one or two people living in three or four-bedroom houses. So it is right that we move to a flexible model that will provide people with the right housing at the right time in the right place in the right location.I know from my own experience—I worked in the United Kingdom in the social housing sector managing a specialist intervention team for people with needs in social housing. These people can have learning difficulties mental health issues possibly physical disabilities they might need education and training employment help and budgeting help. It is right that this bill will allow for and enable them to get wraparound services. What we know is that if people are put at the centre of their care their personalised care it enables them to become independent. We want people to go on and have independence in their housing. Not only do they become independent but their self-esteem grows their confidence grows and they go on to be productive members of society. I am very happy to support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I may have misheard the Minister when she started her speech this evening but it sounded to me like she said that the Government has started on a vicious programme of reforms. I thought: “She’s right—she’s absolutely right.” She is not denying it so I presume that is exactly what she said when she opened her speech on this new piece of legislation tonight. A vicious programme of reforms—that is what we have seen in Housing New Zealand under this Government.What we have seen in the last 7 years in housing policy has been a series of ideological burps. In other words nothing but a lot of hot air and gas wrapped up in the biased and unbalanced philosophy of the National Party. The greatest exponents of this ideological burping are Dr Nick Smith and Paula Bennett. The latter Paula Bennett is the architect of this latest iteration of dopey policy. That is what this policy is. This bill is another piece of National Party tripe. It is meant to give the Minister the flexibility to negotiate contracts with organisations that purchase State houses. What it is is code for the great State house sell-off Mark II. It is a continuation of an attack on State homes in New Zealand the sell-off of them by this National Party and the breaking of a solemn promise made before the last election that there would be no more asset sales. There can be no bigger asset for an individual in New Zealand than the home that they live in. This Government is prepared to sell off thousands and thousands of State houses and the Government says it is not an asset sale. The Government says it is not a broken promise. Well I would say there is a name for that but perhaps I will not use it today. That was a solemn promise—no more asset sales.This is part of the continuation of selling assets in this country. It has followed a pattern. What this Government has done to soften up the people of New Zealand those who perhaps are not in State houses is to first of all remove people from the State houses. You saw that—those of you who come from the Hawke’s Bay. You need only to go into Flaxmere and places like that. The Government cleaned the people out of the State houses. It left them empty. Then the Government would say “Nobody wants to live in those houses.” even though there were people who could not get a house and were on a waiting list—and the houses were empty. The Government said that no one wants to live in those houses.Then it says that these houses must be in the wrong place and the wrong size because nobody wants to live in them. The Government lets them stay empty. They lie empty and then the vandals come along and break the windows and graffiti the walls. The Government says it gets complaints about the security of these properties and the cost of this security. Then the Government says that there is a great necessity to sell them off because we do not need these houses any more. It is a pattern. It is a pattern that we have seen many times over.Now we have got as I said the great State house sell-off. They were all going to be sold to those very willing community groups. The poster people of this great State house sell-off were the Salvation Army. According to Bill English the Salvation Army was going to take all these houses. Well I have met with the Salvation Army and so have many others in this House and I have to say they were played as fools. They did not know the real effort that was going into this. They did not know the real agenda. When the Salvation Army people went away and did their figures and looked at their books they said: “There is no way we can buy these houses. We will be in debt for 10 years if we buy these houses. We cannot do it.” But we were told that the Salvation Army was a very willing buyer of community housing. Backbenchers might not know that. Go out and talk to your Salvation Army. Speak to those who run the Salvation Army. They will tell you the truth. You were sold a pup by the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister—you were sold a pup because the Government does not have any intention to provide houses to buy up houses for community housing in New Zealand.Then I had a look at the regulatory impact statement that goes with this bill. There are a number of questions. I always read these with interest because they usually tell you a little bit about what goes on in policy making. The regulatory statement asks the questions: “Are there any publicly available inquiry review or evaluation reports that have informed or are relevant to the policy to be given effect by this Bill?”. What would you think the answer to that would be? Do you think there has been any evaluation of this policy? What will be the effect on people? Would you expect the Government to know that before it brought some legislation into this House to pass through every stage tonight without the scrutiny of a select committee? Would you not want to know that before you did it? Well what does the regulatory impact statement say? “No”—there has been no evaluation report to inform or is relevant to the policy. So we are going blind into this. We have no idea what the outcome is going to be.Then we are asked: “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this bill?”. We were told the Ministry used the regulatory impact statement that was done in March and that was before the community housing groups knew what the real story was and before the Salvation Army pulled out of this whole approach. It also asks: “did the [regulatory impact] team in the Treasury provide an independent opinion on the quality of any of these regulatory impact statements?”. What would you think the answer to that would be to the members opposite? We are passing the bill through all stages tonight. We are going to put it into legislation without any scrutiny other than what is happening now. Did Treasury have a look at this? Did Treasury provide any independent opinion on the quality of this? The answer to that is no. It has not happened. Why do we not learn? There is no need to rush this bill through tonight. What is the urgency in passing this legislation tonight without the scrutiny the impact and the input from New Zealanders on this bill? So Treasury has not had anything to say on this bill either.Has any further analysis become available since this policy has been given effect by this bill? What do you think the answer to that would be? It is another big fat no. I think the members opposite who are going to speak on this bill might want to go and pick up the regulatory impact statement and then ask questions of your Minister. Backbenchers are so pleased and proud to praise her but maybe they might want to ask a few questions as to why this bill has not had the scrutiny I believe it deserves.Then I want to know and maybe the Minister will answer this when we get to the Committee stage—she is going to have the power under this legislation to make delegated legislation with ministerial direction. That does not come to the House either. All she has to do is gazette it and present a copy to this House having done some consultation. I want to know why the extension of this power is going to be needed Minister. Why is this going to be needed when we know there already exists in the Act powers that you can use? I would like an answer to that question when the Minister gets into the chair.We then get to what has really been happening to Housing New Zealand and why I do not trust this latest measure. Any members who are constituency members of this House would have seen what has happened to Housing New Zealand over the last few years. The Government has stripped away its functions. It has sold houses up and down New Zealand. It has milked the dividends out of Housing New Zealand. It has closed offices and it has sacked tenancy managers. That is what has happened. That is the legacy of the National Party State house policy.I have to give the latest story I heard and the Minister might like to answer this. There are two-storey Housing New Zealand houses in Dunedin. They have just been renovated in some way and they had fire escape ladders because if you are on the second floor you might need to get out in the event of a fire. Those ladders have been removed and Housing New Zealand said no that it was not going to replace them. That is a very good indication of what has happened to Housing New Zealand and State houses in this country. It is a mean vicious nasty approach because many members opposite but not all of them think that those people who end up in State houses deserve it. They got themselves there and they are getting what they deserve and the sort of housing that Housing New Zealand is prepared to provide.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I would like to just speak for a few moments on the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. I would like to perhaps start by helping the member Annette King who has just spoken. It is clear that her hearing is not quite what it used to be because what Minister Paula Bennett was talking about was flexible reform it was innovative reform it is people at the centre reform and it is reform that this Government is delighted to be able to push through and debate here this evening. It is not—Hon Member: They are angry.TODD MULLER: They are incredibly angry. It is not this side of the House that is caught in an ideological rut; it is that side of the House. This side of the House has people and tenants at the focus of our social housing reforms which is not what we hear on the other side. This bill is an important part of the Government’s social housing reform programme and as we have heard from Minister Paula Bennett it has the primary aim of introducing flexibility in the way that the Ministry for Social Development can negotiate and contract with social housing providers. This flexibility is important and from our side it should be encouraged. It is absolutely appropriate that we create the framework that this bill enables which enables the Minister for Social Housing to have the power to direct the Ministry for Social Development to enter into these tailored funding agreements with social housing providers.As we know the current set-up and environment is constraining for the Ministry for Social Development. There is very little flexibility and this bill enables the agencies to be able to get outcomes that will deliver more social housing places for New Zealanders. Examples of possible tailored agreements include paying more for tenants who may be more expensive due to higher needs such as older people or entering into a long-term contract with a provider for them to offer a certain number of social housing places for several years. Both of these options are not currently possible under the current law. This is a move away from a one-size-fits-all to something that is more tailored and more sensible and that will deliver better outcomes.We have heard over the last few minutes a reasonably impassioned view around how community housing providers are not going to respond appropriately and to use the words of the Opposition that perhaps this is a pup. I will return later this evening to talk about the experience in Tauranga and the appetite that exists for participating in community housing providers. I look forward to sharing that with the House later this evening. I commend this bill to the House.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Many New Zealanders look to the Nordic countries as a bit of a role model for how our country could be and typically look with some longing to countries that offer their citizens high standards of living and egalitarian societies that distribute wealth pretty evenly across their societies. It comes as a bit of surprise to many New Zealanders when they learn that the inspiration for those modern Nordic States was actually New Zealand in the 1930s. That is right—it was the Government of Michael Joseph Savage that provided the inspiration for the modern social democratic movements in Scandinavia. There is no image more evocative of that Savage Government than the picture of Savage himself and several other Cabinet Ministers moving furniture into the first State house at 12 Fife Lane. Savage of course talked about his programme not only of housing but also of social welfare and health care as applied Christianity. He said: “What is there more important in Christianity than to be our brothers’ keepers in reality?”. He saw the Government as the expression of our collective responsibility to care for each other.If the Government is not that then what is it? What is it for? It seems to me that those basic needs that must be met if we are indeed to care for each other must include warmth and shelter and they must include a right to housing. It is not just some matter that the Government of the day might choose to make a matter of policy but it is actually something that our Governments have collectively signed up to as part of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. New Zealanders have a right to housing. New Zealand Governments have an obligation to ensure that everybody is well housed.In some ways this bill may appear on the surface to be somewhat innocuous. There is a particular exception to that which I will come to a little later in this intervention. But the issue here is what this bill stands for—what it is emblematic of. I have to agree with the contributions made by Phil Twyford and Annette King to date that this bill is emblematic of this Government’s wider housing agenda. A flag is a kind of an emblem. We have got a referendum coming up on the New Zealand flag and the Government right now is running a consultation under the banner of “What do you stand for?”. Well the emblem that this bill provides for this Government—what it says this Government stands for—is a return to the neoliberal agenda of the 1980s and 1990s. It is a return to the economic philosophies of Hayek and Nozick. It is a return to an agenda of small government and of public choice theory. It is a return to the idea of core functions of the State being stripped away and devolved to the private sector. That is what is at stake in this bill.What we have seen from this Government in housing is it shuffling the ownership of State houses ahead of actually providing more houses at a time of crisis—at a time when people are living in garages in their thousands. What we have seen from this Government is the sale of State houses to private developers who inevitably will have a different agenda—an agenda that incorporates their own profit motive. We have seen no guarantee from this Government of the proceeds from those house sales going into building any more houses. Indeed we have seen no guarantee whatsoever of any more houses being built at any time. In relation to the income-related rentals scheme what we have seen is that the changes that the Government has made to that scheme have been driven by ideology—an ideological belief that exposing Housing New Zealand to competition from the private sector will somehow increase its efficiency. That is what sits underneath this reform. It is an ideological belief.In the advice that the officials gave to Cabinet before Cabinet signed off on that particular policy the officials pointed out that one of the likely consequences of that policy change would be that State houses would sit empty. That is right—at a time when we have what 6000 on the waiting list for State houses some of those State houses would sit empty because of the ideological need to spread income-related rent subsidies across both State provision and private sector provision. We have seen in a particularly despicable development tenancy reviews being expanded so that families that are just starting to recover from the chaos of lives without secure homes are being thrust right back into that same chaos. That is an agenda that services only the ideology of the Government. It does not put tenants and it does not put families in need at the heart of the agenda in any way.Part 2 of this bill contains three measures. Two of those are relatively innocuous and a third actually continues the agenda of the early 1990s—the separation of provider funder and policy maker. Just as a reminder to the House of what that separation was all about it was a policy that was driven by public choice theory and driven by an assumption that the public servants who were involved in those functions would be motivated by their own self-interest. It was policy driven by a culture of distrust in the Public Service a policy driven by the need to create the panopticon in Bentham’s ideas where everybody in the Public Service being observed and monitored would somehow result in better outcomes. The counter approach is for Government to instead create a culture of public service a culture of trust and to acknowledge that the experience of funding planning and providing housing might just be a pretty useful start when giving Government advice on policy around housing. It is an asset not a liability.I asked earlier what this Government stands for and this bill and its housing programme say it pretty plainly. What the Green Party stands for is a return to those ideas of the Savage Government—a return to the idea that everybody is entitled to security and everybody is entitled to a safe warm affordable and secure home. It is a return to the idea that we can trust our public servants. It is a return to the idea that the community housing sector has an important role to play. It deserves support it deserves capital to assist in building housing and it deserves regulatory reform to enable it to contribute more fully but the role that the community housing sector can provide should occur in addition to the role that the State itself provides not as an alternative to it. It is only in the zero-sum game philosophy of this current Government that those two have to be alternatives and not joint solutions to a problem that besets this country.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): This particular amendment bill is one that is typical of National Governments which are always seeking to find ways to reduce spending on social services while at the same time protecting their voter constituencies those on higher incomes and those whom it wishes to protect.Hon Paula Bennett: You’re just wrong Denis.DENIS O’ROURKE: That is not wrong. That is exactly what this Government is doing and most people can see it. This Government does not care whether or not its cost-cutting ways will damage the effectiveness of social policy. This is a bill that is badly researched ill-considered and based fundamentally on National Party dogma. It is a bill that will exacerbate not improve social inequalities and it will degrade the quality of Government services and not improve them. Nobody opposes sensible measures that will make the provision of Government services especially social housing more efficient or will provide the same services at a better cost—but never at the expense of worse outcomes for people. That I am afraid is inevitably what this amendment bill is going to do.There are common themes throughout National’s social housing legislation: firstly to minimise the role of the State; secondly to abdicate to others responsibility for social housing; thirdly to provide as little money as possible and to contract others to take responsibility; fourthly to push as many people out of State housing as it possibly can and to favour non-Government organisations which are not always capable of the function. We can reflect on the Salvation Army and the decision it made not to get involved. Probably the organisation in the country best able to do so chose not to do so and for very good reasons. This legislation allows the Government to pretend that it will provide social housing more cheaply but in fact it will not. It will just push it off to somebody else. It will allow the Government to avoid full accountability for social housing and it will fail to protect people against exploding rents—a huge problem in this country. Lastly the Government does not even try to support local councils in providing public rental housing or elderly persons’ housing in this country thus letting it off the hook too.The amendment bill is just as objectionable as the principal Act in two ways. First of all it relies on the policy of reviewable rents—a bureaucratic assessment of the ability of tenants to move into private accommodation—when the real problem is that rents in places like Auckland and Christchurch due to the simple unavailability of enough homes are the real problem. Secondly it will reduce the role of Housing New Zealand. This amendment actually takes that a step further by preventing Housing New Zealand from giving advice to Ministers thus sidelining that very important organisation. It now reserves that role for the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. That is a mistake because the ministry will only be a contract supervisor essentially and it will not have the institutional knowledge necessary to provide the service at the level we expect. And Ministers will of course be empowered to give directions about what is to be done and it is easy to see where that might lead.The results are likely to be social housing provided at very great arm’s length from the Government and its agencies. It will give more power to Ministers who are inevitably going to take a more political approach—a more dogmatic approach—not aimed at looking at the best interests of the most vulnerable people in the community despite what Government members say over there but aimed at financial results fundamentally. Ultimately that means more housing deprivation State houses being much too hard to get non-government providers imposing their own policies and practices—and we do not know what they may be—and most of all very uncertain outcomes for low-income people who are dependent on the State for their housing needs. That is not the Kiwi tradition and it is not acceptable as a role for the State in this country.The price of suppressing demand which is what this is really all about is much too high in social terms. It will cause reduced health and well-being and increased poverty. It will put more families at risk compromise social cohesion and exacerbate the creation of a disaffected underclass of people in New Zealand. Despite the Government’s aim that it will have a lenient approach when it comes to reassessing State tenancies people will inevitably be nudged out of their homes and effectively bullied out of their homes. The Government will continue to sell those homes but it will build too few of them. You only have to take a quick look at this Budget to come to the conclusion that this Government has no intention of trying to meet the demand that is already there—a demand that is not being met now. That is the real issue. This Government is not actually willing to meet the need and that is really what this legislation is about. It will seek to suppress demand artificially rather than try to meet the genuine housing needs of people in this country.The bill itself may be seen as a relatively minor provision but it is another step in the wrong direction. As others have said what is really needed in this country is a genuine social housing service—not just buildings but a true Public Service with the experience and the resources needed. This bill goes in exactly the opposite direction. The Government will instead transfer large sums of money to community housing organisations through contract payments but these are really still just subsidies so nothing much will have changed. The landlords will of course rub their hands in glee. These organisations will own the housing funded though by the taxpayer. They will profit from it and they will compete from it and as an inevitable result they will try to increase rents and that is not in the best interests of either tenants or the taxpayer—or indeed anybody else in this country. That is actually the most significant flaw of all in this whole new social housing regime of which this bill is just one more minor step in the wrong direction.There will be more diversity and that is potentially a good thing—potentially a good thing—but it is also a very risky thing if it is not doneproperly. I do not trust some of the providers to whom this function will be entrusted to do that properly. For all of those reasons New Zealand First opposes this bill. It is a retrograde step. It emasculates Housing New Zealand. It seeks to reduce Government accountability for housing and it should not be passed.JONO NAYLOR (National): Well it seems to me that the members opposite seem to be completely missing the point of this bill. This bill is for us to be able to deliver better services to those who need social housing. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that we have social housing in New Zealand that is fit for purpose. It is to create flexibility in those arrangements to ensure that we are accommodating people and allowing non-governmental organisations to work with needy people in such a way that is going to be best for their clients. It is part of a bigger plan to ensure that social housing in New Zealand is available to people in the size and the type that is most suitable to them. It is about giving flexibility to those groups maybe that will do a better job of housing them rather than simply assuming that because we are the Government we will always know what is best for every single individual which seems to be the kind of arrogance that we are getting from across the other side of the House.It is not about continuing with the status quo and assuming that just because that is the way we have always done it that is the way we should always do it. It is about moving forward. It is about delivering Better Public Services. It is about being better equipped to ensure that vulnerable people in this country are being looked after in the best possible way. This bill is one part of a very big machine that is ensuring we do just that. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Jan Logie—a 5-minute call.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call for the Green Party on this bill. We will be opposing this bill unfortunately. We see housing as a human right. Housing and shelter are at the absolute foundation of community of family and of individual well-being. Good warm stable affordable housing improves people’s health it improves educational outcomes it improves employment productivity it reduces costs to Government and it even reduces carbon emissions. What this bill does is nothing really to help us provide warm secure affordable housing for people in New Zealand. This is a shifting of the deckchairs on the Titanic.Right across this country we have people living on the streets or in their cars. We have heard stories from Invercargill from Tauranga from Hastings from Kaitāia from Auckland from Wellington from Porirua. All over this country people do not have their basic basic needs being met. This bill is not about building more houses. It is not about actually ensuring that those people get their needs met. What it is about is transferring to the community sector existing houses that are completely rundown as a result of generations of Government neglect. The community sector previously said: “Well OK we’re going to look at that because we think we can provide good wraparound services for people and maybe meet their needs a bit better than the Government.” But then it looked at the state of the housing and said: “Well actually no this isn’t really viable.”What this bill is about is enabling more flexibility to pass that over recognising the absolutely appalling state of so many of our State houses because of Government neglect. That should sit with the Government. We should acknowledge that this bill is a result of the failure of the Government to care for a key asset. The bill is not going to be increasing the housing available for people; it is just about selling it off. Part of that will go to private developers. We have heard from people in Glen Innes where as an example there has been a supposed transformation happening. Veterans were post-World War II given a house for life. They are no longer in that house. They had established a community. They knew their neighbours. They were connected. They had community. That has been destroyed by this so-called transformation.What this bill represents in part is more of this kind of transformation which is actually a destruction of community. It is a destabilisation of families that is going to disconnect children from their schools. It is going to put people in more fragile and vulnerable situations. I really struggle to see how anyone can think that that is going to be a good result. We are not hearing from the community sector that what it is being offered at the moment and being provided with is what it sees as part of the solution. We are hearing quite a lot of concern coming from those people. They know that a good thriving community housing sector will sit alongside a well-resourced Government State housing sector. We know that we have in Auckland as an example house prices going through the roof. Houses have been gaining and are earning more than most people in Auckland earn in a year. Again this bill is not going to help with that.This bill is reducing the function of Housing New Zealand even more. Housing New Zealand has already lost the ability to assess who will go into its houses and now this bill removes its policy function—its ability to provide policy advice to the Minister. So Housing New Zealand is being put intothe role of any other real estate agent as I think has already been said. If we think about that and about the fact that these are people who are the most vulnerable—because the Government has reduced the housing criteria by such an extent that anyone who is able to get into a house has to be in a pretty dire situation—none of that information and their needs will be fed through to the Minister. Is that going to be good policy making? I think not.ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te W’are i tō mihi mai ki a mātou i tēnei wāhanga o te W’are i tēnei pō.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker of the House in regard to your acknowledgment of us in this session of the House tonight.]I rise first of all to mihi out to all whānau who are in State houses tonight and who may be watching the broadcast tonight. They will be sitting there wondering what their future is in their home. They will be sitting there wondering hearing all of this kōrero about this bill tonight whether they are still going to have a home to live in. This bill merely provides a mechanism for the Government to sell State houses. That is how I see it. I think that the people at home in their State houses do not know what their future will be who their future private landlord will be or whether a property developer is going to come along and redevelop their home into something that they cannot afford. That is my concern about this bill. It does not do what the Minister has said it will do: provide more social housing. Well I do not think so.If you start with one set of State houses and then you sell them to someone else that does not actually increase the number of houses that you have got. Potentially I believe that it will reduce the number of social homes because the only way to increase the number of social homes is actually to build more. Under our KiwiBuild policy which we campaigned on last year that is exactly what we would have done. Our solution to the housing crisis in New Zealand is to build more homes—more affordable homes—for our people. This bill fails. It does not provide those. This bill does not increase the number of social homes.This bill actually is a reflection of core National Party policy. In the 1990s it sold 13000 State houses and this is a mechanism that the Government is willing to use to make sure that it gets rid of those homes so that it gets rid of its responsibility. Why I am here tonight is to tell the House that I believe that despite this bill the Government must never and can never transfer its responsibility for Kiwi families who require social housing. That is a fundamental way of life in New Zealand which people expect—that we should be able to have clean dry homes; social homes that people can actually afford to live in.This afternoon we have heard members on the other side of the House saying some amazing things and I have thought to myself: “I am hearing the words but they do not match up with what is on the Table.” They do not match up with what is being presented here in this bill tonight. This bill will actually create opportunities—not for families or for living in social housing but for property developers and private landlords. That is what this bill does. It attempts to transfer the responsibility of the Government to someone else and we are here to tell you that that is just not good enough. That is not good enough today and I think over the next few hours that we will be hearing a lot more about what should be happening in the social housing sector. Thank you. Kia ora.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): This is another great Government bill sponsored by the Hon Paula Bennett. It reflects again this National Government’s focus on delivering for families and children. This bill is a part of the Government’s Social Housing Reform Programme which aims to address the needs of families in need for social housing and better meet those needs. In this short call I just want to address one point that is especially coming from the Labour Party. Its focus is on properties per se—just properties per se; no focus on families no focus on families’ needs. That is what this bill is about: changing that focus from properties to families and their needs. I support the bill. Thank you.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): It gives me great pleasure to also add my remarks to this particular debate. I was caught off guard because I would have thought that given this is a significant policy introduction by this Government National members would utilise their full time in convincing us why this is an important piece of legislation. It is shameful to say the least that they spend not even a full minute on it.In my mind this bill confirms once and for all not only that the National Party continues to be in denial in terms of the housing crisis but also that it is now denying every New Zealander the opportunity to have a home that they can live in. You see for the past 7 years this Government has continued to deny that there is a New Zealand housing crisis. Even now the Prime Minister continues to deny it and does not accept it despite the fact that this is his third term. Government members are in deep denial about it. They continue to deny it because I suspect building more houses is just too challenging for them and building more houses reduces the profitability of the portfolios of some of their investor and property developer mates. Yes Mr Deputy Speaker I know that you will agree with me because those mates have been funding the campaigns of this particular Government.Mr Key and his Government have been bystanders while the housing crisis has worsened year in year out. In Auckland house prices have risen by 87 percent in 6 years. That is an increase of $100000 from last year. A generation of future New Zealanders are now permanently locked out of the dream of owning their own home. They have been locked out by Mr Key and this sad group of National MPs. More and more Pacific people are now locked out of ever owning their own house under this National Government—Hon Members: We’re not sad.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: I wanted to say something else Mr Deputy Speaker but I knew that you would pull me up if I did use those words. Any New Zealanders who find themselves unable to afford their first home today—their first home—according to the Office for Senior Citizens they will be poorer still when they retire without that particular asset. And while Mr Key and his Government continue to deny that there is a housing crisis house prices and residential rents continue to rise. The average Auckland house price will hit $1 million by next year while residential rents have jumped again by 6.3 percent to a median rent of—Kris Faafoi: They’re happy with that.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: Absolutely they are happy with that. More and more middle-income earners will never be able to buy their first home at those particular prices. How can they when middle-income earners have to front up with a 20 percent deposit before they can even secure a mortgage? That will push more and more lower-income earners into homeless situations of living in cars caravans garages and boarding houses. And what is National’s response to the housing crisis? Sell off those State houses—sell off those State houses. New Zealanders expected a plan to build more houses; instead all they are hearing from this Government is: “Sell off those State houses.”So far this Government has had every opportunity to do something meaningful to fix the housing crisis but it has not. It has not done anything meaningful or genuine to address the housing crisis. Yes it has tinkered around the edges of the crisis with half-baked policies. That tinkering has not halted the housing crisis. Every week there is a line of people applying to Housing New Zealandfor housing. They get turned away. They are told to go down to the Ministry of Social Development. They go down there and they are told: “You are eligible.” They go back to Housing New Zealand and it says: “Well we have got you on a list but you are not a priority applicant.” Every week there is a Housing New Zealand tenant being evicted by Housing New Zealand. In fact I have had cases where upon the death of parents Housing New Zealand was quick to notify the children that they would be evicted. In one case Housing New Zealand sent that eviction notice before the children had a chance to bury their parent. The lines to emergency housing offered by community social services continue to lengthen. Government tinkering in special housing areas has been an absolute failure; the special housing areas have just not worked. They managed about 170 houses in a year and a half but we are still short by 20000 houses. The Government needed 13000 houses just to keep up with population growth.Earlier I heard a National MP in this debate say that this legislation was to provide flexible options to New Zealanders. He said it was about getting the right house to the right person at the right time. What does that mean for goodness’ sake? I think what it means is: it is market speak. It means that it is up to market forces whether a person gets a house or whether they are ever housed at all. It means this Government is washing its hands of every New Zealander in a homeless situation. It means this Government does not want to take responsibility for New Zealanders who need a home of their own. This Government is selling off our publicly owned State assets to its private sector investor mates. Not to the Salvation Army or the Methodist Mission or community groups with a social conscience—it is selling them off to its investor mates.Remember how the Government couched the sell-off of State assets? It said that it would sell them off to mum and dad investors. That was a load of crock. That is the same technique that it is using tonight to cover up the fact that our State houses will be sold off to its property investor mates—the same mates who have been funding their campaign activities for the last 7 years. This is their payback. This is what it means when those members say that the bill is about flexible purchasing. It gives the Minister flexibility to flog off billions of State houses to the National Party’s developer mates. The biggest deception and con job of all is National’s State house sell-off. Most New Zealanders are wondering how on earth selling off State houses to developers and property investors will give them a home. It will not.This bill completely wrecks Housing New Zealand as we know it. The Government has got rid of the policy development feature of that particular ministry. It has got rid of people who managed tenants. Instead the tenants are faced with an 0800 number. You cannot talk to a real person when you are in need of a home. You are fobbed off in the line at the Ministry of Social Development youfobbed off in the line at Housing New Zealand and you are put in another line for the 0800 number. How on earth do people advance themselves when this Government keeps adding lines and making it difficult for people who want houses?This bill merrily transfers the responsibility onto the private sector and onto the market. The Government is going to tell people to go and find a house in the market. There is no help for them there. How on earth can people on the minimum wage afford the median rent of $420? On the minimum income you are earning about $500 gross. Less tax how do they afford the median rent of $420? These buggers—I will start using that word now—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: OK I will not use it. These people—these nasty people—have no care whatsoever for the plight of people in need. It is a basic human right to have a house. It is enshrined in international conventions. It is needed and yet somehow by introducing this bill the Government goes away making itself feel good that it is doing something. But it is not doing anything.All that this bill reaffirms in my mind and in the minds of many people in South Auckland watching and listening to this group here is that the Government continues to deny not only that there is a housing crisis but also that its legislation will deny every hard-working New Zealander the opportunity of either owning their own home or the opportunity of being in warm accommodation where they can house their children. What I foresee as a result of this legislation are more people in homeless situations more people forced to live in caravans more people forced to live in boarding houses more people forced to live in cars and more people forced to live in garages. That is the kind of legacy that this Government is leaving behind because under this legislation there is no long-term vision that will ensure that every New Zealander is able to aspire to own their own home and can achieve that. There is no legacy here to allow for every hard-working New Zealander on a minimum wage to be able to secure for themselves warm comfortable affordable rental accommodation—not under this legislation and none whatsoever under this National Government.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): It is a great pleasure to speak on this bill and given that its merits are so blindingly obvious there is nothing more that I need to say other than that I commend it to the House. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the question That the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a first time.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I move That the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a second time. I think there are a few things that we need to clear up for the member who spoke at the end of the first reading Su’a William Sio. If he is sending people to Housing New Zealand to go on the waiting list and wondering why they are standing in queues for so long it is because he is sending them to the wrong place. That is now done by Work and Income. There are 147 Work and Income offices throughout New Zealand. They are front line so you can turn up there and that is where your assessment is actually done. I think it is really important that you understand—[Interruption] Go on—shout it out; get it out. I understand you are a bit angry about today because it has not gone quite as badly actually as you hoped it would. So first of all—Carmel Sepuloni: I can’t wait for the next few days—it’s all downhill from here. When we’re talking she stops. Keep going.Hon Member: Hey grow up.Hon PAULA BENNETT: Bring it on—bring it on. [Interruption]Carmel Sepuloni: When we’re talking she stops. Keep going.Hon PAULA BENNETT: All good? Finished the abuse yet? Get it out—get it out. Get the abuse out of your system.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look I would actually like to hear the debate.Hon PAULA BENNETT: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. What we want to make clear is that what this bill can do is actually quite exciting. It is not necessarily about buying the houses but it might be. What it could be about is an organisation that wants to lease a house—yes? So currently it has land or it has got a house and thinks it wants to get more so it can provide for the very same people who we all agree need more housing.So let us go for a bottom line—we all agree that there are vulnerable New Zealanders who need access to higher-subsidised housing from the Government. So your argument is that you think the Government should own all of them land; we think there is actually room in the market for community housing providers as well as the Government. So we do not abdicate our responsibility in any way shape or form. In fact I am making a commitment that there is another $152 million that will be going in to help subsidise the accommodation of those who really need it. We actually subsidise accommodation in this country to the tune of nearly $2 billion and we are adding another $150 million.We all agree that there are vulnerable New Zealanders who are not getting access to that heavily subsidised housing and they should be. The disagreement we have is whether it should all be State-owned or whether there is room for community housing providers to also be doing that. We stand on this side and say that there is most definitely room for community housing providers to provide housing and wraparound services and how you do that is by passing this bill. What this bill actually means is that we can contract with those providers over a longer period of time and for some that provide specialist services for certain cohorts we can actually give them more money so that they have a guaranteed income that they can either borrow or lease against or provide more services. Community housing providers are saying that to us every day. We would like to be providing more housing. Whether or not we get that from the Government—right—so whether it is about them building more houses themselves going into partnerships or leasing properties what they want from the Government is a guarantee of income so that they can actually then use it against those things. That is what this bill does.This bill supports community housing providers as they are building the sector. It does not abdicate the Government’s responsibility to pay. In fact on the record we make an obligation that we will pay with certainty more than what they needed and asked for and this bill delivers it to them.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): At least the Minister for Social Housing got to her feet and stayed on her feet for what all of 3 or 4 minutes? That is more than we can say for all of those 1-minute johnnies on the Government benches—all those Government backbenchers—who are so proud of this policy of selling off State houses that they could not summon up more than half a minute’s speech to explain and promote their Government’s policies which raises I have to say the question of why this bill is being rammed through under urgency. What is it about this bill that means it has to be passed by tomorrow? Are the members opposite in such a hurry to flog off billions of dollars’ worth of State houses to their property-developer mates that the bill cannot go to select committee and the public cannot be given the opportunity to have a say and come along and make submissions? Is the bill so urgent that it has to be rammed through under Budget urgency? I would like to hear an explanation from the Minister or from other members on the Government side for why this bill has to be rammed through under urgency because I cannot see for the life of me what is so worthwhile or so urgent that it has to be pushed through under urgency.This bill is about flexible purchasing. It puts extraordinary discretionary powers into the hands of the Minister to do sweetheart deals with the people he wants to sell these State houses to. He can ramp up the subsidies if he wants to—if it is a particular deal with a private landlord or a property developer whom the Minister is desperate to do a deal with—or he can turn down the subsidies. That kind of flexibility is exactly what National members want in order to be able to do the sweetheart deals they need to flick off these State houses because they are desperate to offload them to anybody who will take them. The Salvation Army walked away the Methodist Mission walked away and the other community housing providers are basically saying “The only way we could make this work is if you not only gave them to us at rock-bottom prices but you also heavily subsidised us into the bargain.”This Government has been a bystander while the housing crisis has got worse and worse and worse. House prices in Auckland have gone up $100000 in the past year—$100000 in the past year. They have gone up by 87 percent in Auckland in the past 6 years but Government members are deep in denial because they believe that there is no housing crisis that there is no problem and that speculators are not a problem. Oh actually I think they just admitted on the weekend that speculators are a problem because they were so embarrassed by the Governor of the Reserve Bank saying publicly that they had not done enough to tackle the housing crisis and that they should do something about the rampant property speculation that is driving house prices higher and higher in Auckland. People desperately wanted this Budget to do something about the housing crisis but there are so many gaps in this Budget. It does nothing for the regions it does nothing to diversify our economy and it does nothing to plan for future economic growth for New Zealand. But probably the biggest disappointment is that it contains nothing of any substance to fix the housing crisis.Today the Government announced that it is going to make Government land in Auckland available for housing developments and I think everybody agrees that that is a good idea. The shame is that this Government did not do it 7 years ago when it came to office. Instead what did it do? Government members derided and ridiculed the Helen Clark Government’s work on providing an inventory of Government land available. They knocked that work on the head as soon as they took office and they have sat on their hands for nearly 7 years. They have done nothing with it and it was only as they were scrambling around in a panic to find something to present to the public that would show they were doing something about the housing crisis that they dusted off the work that was done 7 years ago by the former Labour Government.What is really telling if you watch Nick Smith the Minister for Building and Housing on the TV news tonight or if you go to the Stuff website and see the story about him is that he was asked by a journalist how many of the houses they are going to build in Auckland on vacant Government land will be affordable. Nick Smith gave a sly little smile and said: “I think they’ll be affordable to somebody because somebody will buy them.” That says it all.Hon Annette King: Cynical.PHIL TWYFORD: It is absolutely cynical. They do not care about the thousands and thousands of frustrated New Zealand families—Kiwi first-home buyers—who are desperate simply to get a roof over their heads and a home that they can call their own. This Government acted cynically with this announcement today—as has been the case with the special housing areas where fewer than 10 percent of the houses built are actually affordable and the Government’s definition of affordable is anything under $550000. That shows the cynicism of this Government. They were not prepared to take up Andrew Little’s challenge. They were not prepared to promise to the public of New Zealand that all the houses built will be affordable. All we got was Nick Smith with his sly little smile saying that they will be affordable to somebody.All this Government has done is tinker around the edges with half-baked policies that have not made the slightest bit of difference to a housing crisis that has been getting worse and worse under National’s watch. The special housing areas which are the centrepiece of the Government’s attempt to deliver to the lack of supply of houses in Auckland have been an abysmal failure. In 1½ years 170 houses have been built in Nick Smith’s special housing areas—170. Auckland needs 13000 houses every year just to keep up with population growth. Under National a deficit of 20000 houses has built up over the past 6 years. That is the Reserve Bank’s number. Twenty thousand houses short we need 13000 a year just to keep up with population growth and how many are being consented under National? Fewer than 8000 a year. That is why the shortage is getting worse and worse every year. Every day the shortage is getting worse and that is why Auckland house prices are going up by $1000 a day. Is it any wonder that it now takes 50 years on average to pay off the average home in Auckland? Is it any wonder that homeownership rates under this National Government are the lowest in 60 years—60 years? And John Key says there is not a housing crisis.Other than the spectacularly unsuccessful special housing areas what else has National done about the housing crisis? Well 12 months ago it unveiled another great policy of the National Party and that was to remove tariffs and anti-dumping duties from varnish nails and various building materials. Nick Smith stood in this House and promised that it would knock $3500 off the cost of a new home. His own officials advised that it would save a little over $1000 and that that money would be pocketed by developers. That is the kind of policy that this National Party specialises in. Since 2006 National members have been blaming the Resource Management Act for expensive houses; since they were in Opposition they have been saying that the Resource Management Act is the problem. And what have they done? Paul Goldsmith what have they done about the Resource Management Act reform in 6 years in Government? Absolutely zilch. National has done nothing to reform the Resource Management Act in 6 years in Government and Bill English has got the cheek to stand up in this House and blame the Resource Management Act. What audacity.National’s other bright idea was to throw subsidies at first-home buyers through the Welcome Home Loan scheme and yet the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment Treasury and the Reserve Bank all told it that it would make no difference—that it would drive up house prices and make the unaffordability crisis even worse than it isalready. And now the National Government thinks that selling off State houses to property developers is some kind of answer to the fact that people are living in cars and garages all around New Zealand and that people are rotting in cold damp substandard private rentals because there are simply not enough houses. But National thinks that the solution to that problem rather than building more houses is to change the ownership of the few houses that we have that are there as a dedicated pool of housing for the most vulnerable and the poorest New Zealanders—that somehow selling them off to private developers is an answer to that problem. I just do not understand it. I do not understand what makes this National Government tick and I do not know where its members lost their moral compass.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour to rise and speak to the second reading of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Mr Twyford and some of the Opposition have questioned the urgency for speeding through this legislation. The urgency is to do with the 3000 people who will get extra housing support because of this bill. This will allow support for up to 65000 people in total 3000 more people by 2017-18. What does Mr Twyford say to those 25 percent of people on a waiting list waiting for Housing New Zealand with a 9 percent supply?Really the urgency means that no one should talk longer than the useful information they have to say. That is a lesson your leader learnt today. Something that will last with me through this whole term is this Budget but equally what will stay with me through the whole term is the look on your faces while your leader spoke.What I say to the community sector a creative community sector is that we believe in you. Mr Hague said that we believe in a small State—we do not believe in a small State; we believe in a big community. That is what we are supporting Mr Hague—a big community. That is what we are supporting. What I can say to those New Zealanders whether they be Gene Simmons Axl Rose or Jon Bon Jovi is that we believe in you. If you want to be supported to independence in your housing this bill will support you. We believe in you. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Mr Speaker—Jono Naylor: One of you do it.Hon ANNETTE KING: Well at least I have got something to say. That member—all he did was pick up the research notes and make a speech that everybody else has made. I have to say when I listened to the speeches—1 minute 27 seconds 2 minutes 3 minutes—that is what the contributions have been tonight.I have to say that this is a very disappointing debate from the National Party. You see we have before us tonight a piece of legislation that is not going to go to a select committee that the public of New Zealand will have no input into at all. This House costing thousands of dollars a minute is required to scrutinise legislation on behalf of the public when urgency is taken. We would expect that a Government that is so proud of the legislation that really loves the legislation would stand and make a 10-minute speech on what it means what it is going to do and why it is so proud.Tim Macindoe: We’ve talked about that.Hon ANNETTE KING: But what we are getting—apart from the interjections from the senior whip who seldom gets to his feet but makes his speeches from his backside—I have to say from the C-team National has rolled in tonight are 1-minute and 2-minute speeches 1-minute and 2-minute speeches. That is an outrage to democracy. It is an outrage that those members cannot get on their hind legs and make a speech about a bill that they are so proud of. I have to say Minister Bennett that you have not told us why there needs to be urgency. We got an explanation from “Mr Doozy” up the back. “Mr Doozy” up the back told us—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I know that the member probably does not take offence to that but his name is Doocey.Hon ANNETTE KING: The missing “s”—the missing “s”. Let us put the missing “s” back in Mr Doocey and say that he told us why this bill needed to be passed under urgency. And why does it need to be passed under urgency Minister? Because tomorrow—believe this—3000 people will be housed. If we pass this tonight we are going to have 3000 people housed tomorrow. Let us go back to our electorates and see how many people get a house tomorrow because we took urgency on a bill that does not need urgency Mr Doocey with an “s”. It does not need urgency. It does not.Why not let the people of New Zealand have a wee say on the bill. I know why. Because maybe the thinking public of New Zealand will say: “What are you doing this for? What is the reason for this bill? Why do you need this bill apart from the fact that you want a creative way to sell off State houses?”. National does not want the people coming in who may well be State house tenants telling it what they think about this bill so it is ramming it through under urgency tonight with this pathetic excuse that it has to do it because 3000 people tomorrow could get a house.Well I have to say tell me how that is going to happen with this bill. How exactly is this bill going to provide 3000 extra houses? In fact how does selling off State houses actually create more houses? How does that work? How does selling off State houses create more houses for social housing? You see National members cannot answer the question because it is nonsensical. What it is doing is absolutely nonsensical.I think the Minister really put it into perspective for all of us tonight when she was speaking and she let the cat out of the bag when she was talking about State house tenants. She called them cohorts. That is what they are; they are cohorts those State house tenants—just a figure just a number just a statistic. They are not people who need to be housed because they are the most vulnerable we have. We do not believe—Chris Bishop: Outrageous!Hon ANNETTE KING: No it is not Mr Bishop. You totally agree with me. I can tell by the look on your face. You know it. If there is one person over there who is not in the C-team it is Mr Bishop. In fact I predict that he is going to be in the A-team pretty fast indeed.I have to say that I think National members are the Neros of New Zealand because they have been fiddling away with house prices and house policy for 7 years. They have been fiddling fiddling around the edges actually having to increase their fiddling every year as we put pressure on them by saying: “You are not housing New Zealanders. You are not treating New Zealanders fairly.”So as they have been fiddling house prices in Auckland have been going up and are going up at $1000 a day. Do you know that the increase in a month is more than a pensioner gets in a year in their pension? That is how fast the house prices in Auckland have been going up. Unfortunately if they are one of those pensioners whose house value is going up they will not be able to afford the rates if they are on a pension.Then we have the Government’s new approach to housing. It is going to free up Government land. Well we said that 7 years ago. In fact we said it at Hobsonville. And let me remind members opposite what their Prime Minister who was then Leader of the Opposition and member for the area where Hobsonville is said about the use of Government land to provide affordable housing. Can anyone remember? Go back and have a look. Just put it into Google. You will find it. He said it was economic sabotage—economic sabotage—Chris Bishop: Doing it now.Hon ANNETTE KING: —well done Mr Bishop; he had it—to build State houses on land like Hobsonville.Now it has got this idea which is 7 years old that it will open up some Government land and build houses on it. But what we know is that there will not be many that will be affordable because there is something like 17 in Hobsonville out of the thousands that have been built. Even the 17—if the people in them were to sell them today—would no longer be affordable houses. They were already over $400000 and climbing.In this new policy which was made up in the last few weeks—and we know that for a fact—rushed through put together in urgency and in a panic we are not told how many will be affordable or what affordable means. You know it was only a few weeks ago that I said to Steven Joyce on our much listened to weekly radio show on Newstalk ZB: “Why don’t you use Government land to increase the supply of land in Auckland?”. I said: “The Government owns more land than anybody else.” And do you know what the Minister did? He pooh-poohed the whole idea. He pooh-poohed it.Chris Bishop: Oh!Hon ANNETTE KING: You see it was before the Government made the decision to do it Mr Bishop. That is why he pooh-poohed it. I will ask him next week on my much listened to radio show what he now thinks of the idea of releasing Government land. He will no longer pooh-pooh it; he will say it was his idea no doubt. In fact he thinks he has most of the ideas in the National Party.You have to say that the whole housing area and these special housing zones that we have got as my colleague and friend Phil Twyford said are just a sham. They are just some sort of paper transaction that the Government is having saying: “Look we’ve got these special areas and there are 170 houses that have been built.” And then it says: “But what about all the consents that we’ve got going through?”. Well I do not know whether it has worked it out but people cannot live in consents. They actually are not houses; they are bits of paper that are shuffled around and maybe one day something will happen.So what has it done in this space? Well I like one of the things it has done. It brought in the knock-down nails policy. It got the cheap nails coming in which were going to reduce the cost of houses by $3000 a building. Big deal—big deal—because within 3 days the benefits of the knock-down nails were all gone.When you look at it it has done nothing with the Resource Management Act. We offered to assist the Government in passing the Resource Management Act around housing. Oh no it did not want to do that because it wanted the whole big enchilada. It wanted the whole lot. It was not prepared to accept a deal where we could have helped it with changes to the Resource Management Act in housing.I have to say that the Government still has not learnt that if you do not provide warm dry affordable housing you are going to end up with diseases like rheumatic fever. Let me just end on this note: it has not increased the number of houses. It has not made those houses warm and dry for many people. Today to top it all off it is stopping the funding for the rheumatic fever programme.TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I just want to speak for a few minutes on the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. The previous speaker Annette King said one thing that I agree with one thing only and that is that Chris Bishop will become a member of the A-team sooner rather than later.I do want to make a comment in respect of Phil Twyford who for every single question time for the last 6 months has been vein-bulging at the Government saying: “Housing crisis! You need to act with urgency. It needs to happen now.” So here we are tonight standing here with a bill that enables our Minister to negotiate with community housing providers who are ready and waiting to be able to enter commercial deals that are innovative and flexible and will deliver outcomes for their community and all we get is dissent pooh pooh pooh and negativity. That is why that party is where it is in the polls.This is a party that actually has a framework to enable us to be able to resolve issues. You can see it in Tauranga. I was there last week. The Tauranga Community Housing Trust was announcing there the opening of its new brand new housing with one and two bedrooms. The tenants were absolutely loving the move from the cold damp old historic State houses. You know life is not all about the State having to provide everything. There are people in the community who have skills who have people whom they care about who can partner with the State and get a better outcome. That is what this bill is about and I cannot wait for it to pass. Thank you.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): It is a second reading debate and ordinarily in a second reading I would be looking for the departmental report summarising the submissions. I would be looking for the select committee’s report on what the New Zealand public had had to say about the bill we were considering and looking for the revision-tracked version of the bill because there always is a revision-tracked version is there not? Invariably the bill that is introduced to this House is considered for its first reading goes away to a select committee and comes back changed. It comes back changed because actually scrutinising the bill for a little bit longer results in improvements to it. That is why unnecessary urgency is a bad practice for democracy and a bad practice for lawmaking. There is no conceivable reason for urgency for this bill. The bill itself would have been the better for going to a select committee.I am going to start instead of quoting from the select committee report by just quoting from the problem definition in the regulatory impact statement. What that says at paragraph 25 is: “In December 2014 Cabinet agreed a direction for reform of the social housing sector which creates a fair effective and efficient social housing market.”—market. Yet the reason that the Government needs to be involved in providing social housing at all is that experience in the real world has shown that social housing is a service that is not well matched to need by markets at all. A market is the very last thing that we need in social housing. Instead this bill is not about providing for need; it is about providing for the Government’s ideological beliefs—in particular this ideology of the smaller State. I thank Mr Doocey for his very witty joke in his contribution in this debate.On 1 November last year the Minister Paula Bennett admitted that in fact this was a State asset sale. She said so on national television continuing that ideological programme of State asset sales and winnowing down the size of the State that was commenced by the Government in the last couple of terms. She also went on to say and Bill English later on in this House confirmed that there was no guarantee whatsoever that any of the proceeds from selling off those State assets would be used to build any new houses. In other words it was just about shuffling around the ownership arrangements of the houses not about housing anyone extra at all. Simply shifting responsibility for the housing of vulnerable New Zealanders on to charities or to the private sector and then banking the cash from a fire sale of those assets will not solve anything at all.Almost 5000 families were on the waiting list for a State home in December. The census showed over 200000 people in Auckland including around 63000 children were now living in a crowded household because of the shortage of housing. Those children as Annette King has said are at growing risk of diseases of overcrowding diseases of poverty: skin infections respiratory conditions and rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever prevention as Annette King has said was the programme that the Government introduced with all the fanfare in the last term of Parliament. It has lowered the axe on it in the Budget today with no fanfare whatsoever. Those kids do not need to be made the responsibility of a charity. They need a real tangible place to call home. New Zealand’s housing crisis is caused fundamentally by a lack of affordable homes. Selling off State houses so that developers can make money by sitting on the land or building more expensive homes which is precisely what is going on under this Government cannot possibly be the answer.This bill also serves the ideological belief of this Government that its role is only to be a provider of a small amount of help as a last resort rather than as the guarantor of those basic rights that New Zealanders hold. Bill English again in a meeting that he held with the editorial staff of the New Zealand Heraldsaid that Housing New Zealand has “become a pool of long-term dependency. You get in and you stay in so you don’t move out. So it’s creating large future liabilities having them in here.” If you go back to the original report—he refers to a report from the Department of Building and Housing. Its big thing was about mobility—how you meet serious housing needs but enable people to keep moving back up the ladder to independence which is a somewhat cynical way of saying that actually the Government’s agenda here is about minimising the cost of providing services for people. That ladder towards independence is the very ladder that the Government proposes whisking out from more and more State house tenants under the reviewable tenancies scheme.This bill is also about the ideology of separating out policy advice from the basic grounding that the policy advice could benefit from by being co-located with the planning funding and provision functions that exist in Housing New Zealand.I can almost conjure up that early 1990s environment. I can imagine the hairstyles. I can think of the shoulder pads the chrome the pink and grey stripes and probably I imagine that that is the environment in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment the Government department that this Cabinet this Government can trust to give it the ideologically pure advice on policy around housing that it so desperately craves. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Annette King said that this was a Government of Neros because of its fiddling policies as far as social housing is concerned but I think that it is actually a Government of zeros because that is the number of additional rental houses that its policies and this bill will generate—zero. That is the effect of this Government’s policies. That is the legacy of 7 years of this National Government—zero. That is what it really is. This bill is a monument to this Government’s appalling record on housing.When I first entered this House in 2011 there was already a very significant housing shortage especially in Auckland. Of course in that very same year we had the Christchurch earthquakes and that created another housing crisis there. Even then the Government was saying: “There is no housing crisis.” However it got worse and it got worse and it got worse until we got to the point when nobody with half a brain could deny that we have the most serious housing crisis in this country’s history. And yet this Government still fiddles and still produces zeros as far as increased houses for people who need to rent them from the State are concerned.New Zealand First would support sensible policies that provide more efficient services and better services at less cost but never—never—at the expense of people who are being forced out of their homes. That is effectively what this legislation and the principal Act that it amends do. What this Government seeks to do is to minimise the role of the State; abdicate responsibility to others; provide as little money as possible for housing; contract others to take responsibility instead; push as many people out of State houses as possible; favour non-government organisations many of whom are simply not capable of fulfilling this function; pretend that public services are being provided at less cost; avoid full accountability for social housing; and lastly fail to protect people against exploding rents. That is the record of this Government and that is why I say that this bill is a monument to its appalling record on housing.If you look at some of the best housing providers in the community one of the best is the Salvation Army. It is an NGO that could be relied upon to be a good provider. However it looked at the Government’s policies it looked at what the Government was trying to do and it stepped back and said: “We’re not going to be a part of that.”—to its credit; to its credit. That actually is a sound commentary from an independent source on what this Government’s housing record really is and on its legislation on social housing in particular. The main thrust of what the Government is trying to do is actually to reduce the size of the State and in particular in this case to reduce the role of Housing New Zealand. It could not be more clearly spelled out than we see in this amendment bill. It is a further step in the wrong direction.By preventing Housing New Zealand from giving advice to Ministers it is sidelining an important role for Housing New Zealand—a role that it has performed very well over a very long time. It is a mistake to do that. Instead the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment will be given that responsibility but actually it is going to be only a contract supervisor with a limited role and no real responsibility. The result will be that far too much institutional knowledge will be lost and Ministers will be empowered to give directions. There is a deliberate move towards what is called “flexibility” but none of the speakers opposite—even though they have used the word a lot—have told us what that really means. What I think it means is that Ministers will be able to exercise their own agenda and that is why they have been given the power to give directions. This is not a good way to conduct and administer housing policy in this country.Tim Macindoe: Does that member understand what he’s trying to say?DENIS O’ROURKE: If that member opposite cannot understand what I am trying to say then that is an indictment on him not on what I have said. He does not understand this bill. I doubt that he has even read it and he certainly does not want to take responsibility for some of the worst Government policy that this Government has brought forward in this term or the last one. I recommend that that member actually reads the bill and when he speaks next perhaps he will try to say something sensible.The results of this Government’s policy will be that social housing will be delivered at very great arm’s length from the Government’s agencies. More power will be given to Ministers which is another example of an increase in executive power. That is likely to mean a very political approach and it is likely to mean a very dogmatic approach not one aimed at looking at the best interests of the most vulnerable people in this country despite what those opposite have been saying. It will in fact have the opposite effect. It will mean those people will be worse off and have fewer housing choices and it will certainly not meet the housing need for people who need to rent homes in this country. It ultimately means more housing deprivation. State houses will be even harder to get non-government providers will impose their own policies and practices—and goodness knows what they will be—and most of all it will mean a very uncertain outcome for low-income people many of whom will be pushed out of State houses with nowhere really to go. That is a very poor legacy and a very poor outcome.The price of supressing demand which is what this Government is really trying to do is very high in social terms. It will cause reduced health and well-being increased poverty more families at risk compromised social cohesion and an exacerbation of the already badly disaffected enough underclass of people in New Zealand. Despite the Government’s claims people will inevitably be bullied out of their State houses. The Government will continue to sell State houses. Goodness knows how that will improve the situation for people who need to rent homes in New Zealand. The Government will build far too few State houses and that is the fundamentally bad part of the Government’s programme. There is no money really set aside in this Budget to improve that situation. This Government is simply unwilling to invest and to ensure that there are enough houses for people to rent in New Zealand. It is another step in the wrong direction.The Government will pay huge sums of money to community housing organisations through contracts that are supposed to be tailored contracts. What does this term “tailored” mean? Again nobody opposite has really described what that means. What I think it means is that some organisations will be treated differently from others. And what is the effect of that and what is the reason for that? We have not been told. We do not really know what this amendment will do as far as these so-called tailored contracts are concerned. Let us hear an explanation from the Minister because so far she has not given one. These are still just subsidies to registered providers. Call it what you like; that is actually what they are. These organisations will own the housing funded by the taxpayer they will profit from it they will compete for it and they will try to get the highest rents they can for them.This bill is a retrograde step. It emasculates Housing New Zealand. It seeks to reduce Government accountability. It increases executive power. It does nothing to reduce rents. It does nothing to increase the rental housing stock. New Zealand First will certainly vote against it.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Well I think at the heart of this debate about this bill is actually a Government that is putting people at the centre of social housing rather than putting a housing provider at the centre of the bill. It is about people. That is what this whole Budget is about. I would like with great pleasure to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.JAN LOGIE (Green): After what may have been the shortest speech of the night—I am not even sure whether that last speech made 20 seconds—I rise to take a call—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry but I will ask the member to start again. I could not hear the beginning of her speech.JAN LOGIE: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just commenting on the brevity of the last speech possibly under 20 seconds and possibly even the shortest speech of the evening. Well done National Party! Your enthusiasm and commitment to the detail is absolutely impressive! I am sure we are all feeling far more enlightened on this side of the House about the details of this bill that has just been presented to us so recently.As my colleague has also mentioned normally we come to the second reading after having been through the select committee process where we would have heard submissions from the public who have raised concerns around the detail or the concept of the bill. We have been able to ask questions and we have had their responses back. We have had ministerial advice from the departments to be able to consider what the implications are and what this wording is conveying. In my experience even legislation that has been one page in length incredibly short has resulted in change. That is the usual process that we go through. We are here in this situation with a bill relating to housing which is an absolute core issue for this country at the moment. We know we have a housing crisis even if some members of that Government seem a bit shy about using that word. I have heard someone on that side use it occasionally slipping up and I am sure they got told off afterwards. But here we are on a major issue for this country having legislation passed under urgency.It is legislation—as we have heard several members on this side say—the detail of which is a little opaque. We are looking at the documents that have been given to us; I am looking at the departmental disclosure statement. What this bill is doing from what I can make out is that it is not going to affect a tenant’s experience directly. The actual bill itself though the context that it is sitting in is in relation to the passing over of State assets to other private property developers or community organisations.The actual bill itself will enable the Minister to have flexibility to tailor the contracts. We have been hearing a lot about flexibility. What they are saying specifically is that with tenants’ needs resulting in higher or lower tenancy management costs they can vary the terms of the contract make payments for vacant properties to guarantee a provider’s income stream and make offers for long-term fixed-price tenancies at prices that diverge from the market rent but benefit the Crown the provider and the tenant.We see mention of the tenant in there a couple of times but not that often despite the fact that we have been told this is all about the tenants; it is not about anybody else—it is not about the Government and it is not about the providers; it is about the tenants. Actually there is not much mention of the tenants from what I can see in this. There has been no consultation with any State housing tenants in the documents here. From what I am hearing from State house tenants in the community this is very unsettling. Communities are being destroyed at the moment and that is what people are telling us. Communities that have existed in Maraenui in Porirua in Glen Innes and around the country—longstanding communities are being destroyed. Yet we hear from the National Government that apparently it is the Government for big community. [Interruption] Well communities of constant transition and movement—that is actually not community Mr Doocey might I say.We are being told that this is about lower payments for providers in places where there is little ongoing demand. I really think that there is enough detail and complexity in there that deserves consideration and I do have some questions for the Minister We are being told that this bill will allow community organisations to get more money to meet the needs of clients. It is not necessarily even about the sale of houses but about leasing arrangements. I know Women’s Refuge gets houses through Housing New Zealand at the moment and the needs of women and children going into refuge are dealt with through separate contracts not through the housing-related contracts. So I am struggling to see where this fits and why those specific needs of tenants cannot be dealt with through existing contracting systems. I am also struggling to understand why Housing New Zealand would need more flexibility. There are questions to be answered and I really hope that at least at some stage in this debate we get some answers.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon David Cunliffe—5 minutes.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is déjà vu. Here we are in the dead part of the evening passing a Budget bill under urgency through all stages when it is not urgent. It is not urgent. The only thing that is urgent is to relieve the Government of embarrassment because New Zealanders do not want the Government to do what this bill does. I remember a picture of Bob Semple taking the first table into the first State house. New Zealanders loved Mickey Savage’s Government which built State houses so that New Zealanders who could not afford to rent a house got a roof over their heads. Then the Clark-Cullen Labour Government brought in the income-related rent subsidy to take some pressure off families who could not put food on the table.Well this bill undoes all of that. This bill empowers the Minister to flog off those State houses to for-profit developers in a grand payback to National’s business lobby mates. This bill gives the Minister the ability to change by fiat the 25 percent fixed income-related rent subsidy thereby costing hard-working New Zealand families the food off their table because they cannot afford the crazy prices of Auckland rents. This is a sad day and the Government’s pollsters know it. That is why we are here in the middle of the night passing this bill this shameful bill through all stages without a select committee hearing without the opportunity for New Zealanders to have their say because the Government wants it. [Interruption] There they are—sitting and chirping smug in the arrogance of a third-term Government. They are smug in the arrogance of a third-term Government. They just want it off the TV screens because they know New Zealanders fundamentally deplore what is being done in this bill.You know the housing crisis is about real people like the people in my electorate. We have three families with young kids who are living in garages. They have come to my office. We have a family of 12 in a two-bedroom property and the adolescent kids do not have rooms and they do not have privacy. We have got a family that is under abuse which could not get a safe house because there are not enough houses. And you know that the solutions to those terrible problems of overcrowding and abuse are not hard to think of. You build more houses and you get foreign investors out of the market because they are simply speculating and driving up the rents.Carmel Sepuloni: That makes sense.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: That makes sense. It is not that hard to understand but what is the Government doing? It is flogging the State houses off for profit and it is going to drive up rents by fiddling with the income cap. It is taking it in exactly the wrong direction because this is a Government that has hit the panic button—hit the panic button. It is well into its third term it has finally woken up to the crisis and the word came from the pollsters: “You’d better do something.”And there is no plan except profit with these guys—no plan except for profit which comes off the tables of hard-working New Zealanders. Hard-working New Zealand families like the family in my electorate—12 of them in a two-bedroom house—are waiting for the State house that will never come. So you know the Government said: “Well we will give it to the community sector like the Salvation Army or the Methodist Mission.” Well they are decent people who said: “We don’t want an unfunded mandate. What are we going to do with all of the liabilities when you are not giving us any money to buy them with?”. It is a travesty and the longer that New Zealanders have to hear about it the less they are going to like the Government that is flogging off their houses for profit and pushing up their rents. That is why we are in this House in the dead of night passing this bill without a select committee hearing. It is wrong. The bill is wrong. The process is wrong. The result is wrong and it will be part of the undoing of this selfish greedy Government which is acting against the interests of New Zealand families.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): In very simple terms this bill aims to help families in need to get into social housing that meets their needs. How can this be wrong—meeting families’ needs? It cannot be wrong. As we heard this bill is to introduce flexibility for the Ministry for Social Development to contract and negotiate with social housing providers. That is to support a growing role for community providers to deliver social housing. It is also to improve the supply of social houses to meet demand. It also clarifies and confirms a number of processes that already happen in practice. This bill will also help tenants get back into housing independence. We want to make sure that those people who are in real need are provided with social housing. We are making social houses fit for people to live in. They are not just properties to us; they are houses where we want to house people in need—families in need.This National Government has insulated all State-owned social houses. They are warmer drier and healthier under this National Government. This flexibility about ownership is a great thing. Social houses sold will remain as social houses and the tenants will remain housed in them for the duration of their need. This is a win-win situation for tenants for local communities and for taxpayers. It is not the duration of the speech; it is the message that counts and the message is that it is a win-win situation for tenants for local communities and for taxpayers. Thank you. I support the bill.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Never before has so much pride been displayed by so few in such a short space of time. It has been quite cooling. That was one of the longest contributions that we have had at a second reading on a bill going through under urgency where it is not having the scrutiny that we would expect in Parliament under normal circumstances in terms of its select committee stage. It is frankly an arrogant Government that thinks that it can rush through legislation at this pace even under urgency without giving that legislation a full debate and a full airing. We have heard some fantastical explanations why. There was Mr Doocey who thinks that magically houses are going to grow overnight if only this bill is passed. We will wake up in the morning and throughout the land there will have sprouted houses into which the good people can move.There is a naivety in this Government which is showing through in this legislation. We are hearing over and over and over again with this piece of legislation the panic that has set in in this Government. There has been some polling and those members have seen there is a problem—their inaction on housing over their 7 years in Government—yet here we are pushing through a half measure that is only enabling something that is not going to help the situation. It is the only solution that they have come up with. Other suggestions that they have had around housing seem to have disappeared such as the much-touted during the election campaign and the much-touted at the beginning of this year Resource Management Act reforms. That was going to be the silver bullet for housing in New Zealand. We are still waiting for Dr Smith to show us those reforms. We have actually said: “Show us them. Put them on the table and do you know what? If there is some stuff that will help with housing we’ll look at it. Let’s use the mechanism of a national policy statement and then we could actually perhaps join with you and work on that.” but has National fronted up and shown them to us? No because this is a Government that does not have answers around housing. This is a Government that has got empty ideological rhetoric which is not going to make a blind bit of difference to the lives of ordinary New Zealanders.What we have had touted tonight—starting with the Prime Minister and echoed through all the research note speeches—is a clear commitment to compassionate conservatism coming from the Government benches.Hon Member: Big community.Dr MEGAN WOODS: The compassionate conservatism that those members believe they are displaying seems to have evolved so that actually it translates into the big society. One of them let it slip but I think he got it wrong and called it “big community”. The term that your overseas overlords use is “big society” when talking about this. But National Party members need to actually have a look at what compassionate conservativism is. We actually have had National Parties in the past in this country that have practised compassionate conservatism. What is happening in this House tonight and in this legislation is not the conservatism of Sid Holland and it is not the conservatism of Keith Holyoake. When those leaders of the National Party sought to remove the State from housing they looked to sell houses to the individuals who lived in those houses. They did not look to flog them off to their mates in the corporate sector in order to put people under corporate overlords. This is the Cabinet club conservatism as my colleague Phil Twyford called it that underwrote the 1990 market rentals that Ruth Richardson put in place.Do not kid yourself that this is any form of compassionate conservativism. When compassionate conservativism started to be touted by right-wing parties—it was Bush who first started using it; he abandoned it pretty much after 9/11 and just went into plain old “kick ’em in the guts” right-wingism actually. But compassionate conservativism does not look back to your roots. You are a party that has been better than that—Mr Assistant Speaker I am sure you are as well. The National Party does have a history that is rooted in some belief in that but what we are seeing displayed tonight is not that. This is a return to the 1990s and a belief that you can sell State houses off to anyone.We started with the fiction that this was legislation to enable State housing to be sold to the community sector in some hope of achieving their big society. Well the problem that we are seeing here as we have in many places is that the key providers in that sector said “Yeah thanks but no thanks.”; they did not believe that State house tenants would be better served under this model than they could be with the Government providing so they did not want a part of that. And what have we had now? We have had Bill English saying that yes we could be seeing some of these being sold to private property developers. The Government has tried to dress this up as something that this is not. This is pure and simple a flogging off of our State houses.What else are we seeing? Not only is the Government divesting itself of the ownership of the housing it is divesting Housing New Zealand of some of the core policy functions and thinking that need to go into this so that we will no longer see Housing New Zealand having a policy function. We will not have a dedicated part of our Government that tries to put the bits of housing policy together. Instead we are going to see a continuation of the approach that we have seen with the functions spread and splintered across the Government and we will see that it does not have a coherence that has tenants at the centre and the well-being of the tenants at the centre. My colleague Phil Twyford put it very well when he talked about a State-owned version of Barfoot and Thompson and said that we will have a State-owned letting agency not a Government department that is dedicated to doing what we expect Housing New Zealand to do and to doing what its functions should be.That is a very sad day for New Zealand because what we used to have in this country is a belief that a core part of the safety net that we provided for our citizens was housing—housing that would mean that people would not have to go homeless. I think what we are going to hear through the course of this debate is examples from all around the country that we can speak of where we have constituents who are not being well served. What is most upsetting for us is that these very same constituents are going to be even worse-served under the changes that we are making here under urgency tonight. There is nothing in this legislation that is going to give back to our tenants. Instead what we have is an ideological commitment to selling houses off to whoever the right bidder is that the Government can find.The shortage of housing is getting worse and other speakers from this side of the House have alluded to the fact that selling houses does not create more houses. I think my colleague Annette King chose to point out that selling them off is not going to magically create more houses any more than passing legislation under urgency Mr Doocey will allow for houses to magically appear on the landscape of New Zealand. What we have to have and what we are not having from this Government is a proper commitment from the Government to ensuring that New Zealanders are housed—something that we think is a pretty basic role of Government and something that we are committed to doing. Just simply passing the buck on to the community sector which does not want a bar of it is not responsible government in this area. Passing the buck and abrogating itself of its responsibility as a Government is not good enough.But what is more galling is where I started: this is a group of people who are trying to kid themselves that this is some kind of compassionate conservatism. This is a return to their 1990 roots not their roots in the past in the 1960s and the 1950s when actually there was a grain of truth in the fact that the National Party in New Zealand did exercise a kind of compassionate conservatism. There was a belief in the role of the State. There was a belief that it needed to do right by New Zealanders. We are not seeing that in this legislation. What we are seeing is a Government that is walking away from one of its core responsibilities which is providing adequate housing. It is a Government that is out of ideas. It is a Government that is poll driven. What we are seeing here tonight is not going to solve anything.JONO NAYLOR (National): Given that the members opposite are so keen to talk about the details of this bill I will simply commend this bill to the House so that we can move to the Committee stage.A party vote was called for on the question That the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a second time.In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very pleased to take a call on this particular bill. I want to say from the very beginning how disappointing it is to see the National Government’s wholesale privatisation agenda when it comes to State housing in New Zealand. I want to talk from experience about this. What does this actually mean in practice? In my electorate of Rimutaka the National Government decided that it was going to deal with a housing area in Pōmare that had significant problems—Farmer Crescent. What did the Government do? First of all it booted everybody out. It completely evicted all of the tenants in that area. It left the houses empty and they got vandalised. Then what did it do? Next it came along and demolished all of the houses. It demolished all of the houses. Then what did it do after that? Well of course the Government hocked off the land to private developers—to private developers—which is exactly the approach of this National Government. It is about making opportunities for private developers.Did the problems disappear? Did the families who lived in those houses who were the subjects of many of the social problems simply disappear? No they just relocated elsewhere. The problems went with them to the other locations. The Government did not actually deal with the underlying problems and the underlying issues. So what have we seen in Pōmare? Yes they have got some nice new houses in the area where there was previously a whole lot of State housing. Only a fraction of them are social houses. Only a fraction of them are social houses and the rest are privately owned.Hon Bill English: Isn’t that terrible! Shocking!CHRIS HIPKINS: And what is the problem with that Bill English asks. The problem with that is that the overall number of social houses is decreasing.Carmel Sepuloni: He’s saying: “Isn’t that terrible!”.CHRIS HIPKINS: And he is saying: “Isn’t that terrible!”. The overall number of State houses is decreasing. I say to Bill English that I actually like the idea of mixed neighbourhoods. I grew up in one. I grew up in an ex - State house with a State house next door a private house on the other side and a bunch of State houses on our street. It is a great way to grow up as a Kiwi kid. I am fully supportive of that. But I tell you what: we have got to make sure that there is an adequate number of social houses if we are going to change the make-up of neighbourhoods. And that is not what this bill is going to achieve. What it is going to result in is a wholesale sell-off of existing State houses and there is absolutely—Tim Macindoe: Saying it a thousand times won’t make it true.CHRIS HIPKINS: OK look I will open it up to Tim Macindoe. I will put the same challenge to him that Andrew Little put to John Key and Bill English and the others this afternoon which they did not take up. Will they guarantee that every one of their new houses that is going to be built will be affordable? It is an open invitation. It is an open invitation right now: will they all be affordable houses that the National Government is going to be building? No one—no one—on the Government benches is willing to make that promise to New Zealanders because they know that is simply not going to be the case.Here is another example. Will those members guarantee that the number of publicly owned social houses will not decrease? No—no: absolute silence from the Government. So when it comes to the provisions of this bill it is not willing to guarantee that the number of publicly owned social houses will not decrease. These are families whom we are talking about. These are their homes that we are talking about and this Government thinks that they should be hocked off—they should be hocked off—and it is not willing to guarantee that the overall number will not be decreased. I think that says an awful lot about the priorities of this current National Government.Tim Macindoe: That’s what this bill is all about. We are working to increase the provision—CHRIS HIPKINS: No—here we go. So Tim Macindoe is saying that this bill is all about increasing the provision of social housing. Who is going to deliver those houses? Who is going to deliver those houses? Because all of the organisations that Bill English and Paula Bennett and Nick Smith said were going to front up and deliver those houses have said that they are not interested in it; they have said that they do not have the capability to deliver it. So now the Government is bringing a bill before the House that is going to increase the scope for private developers to be involved in this.And of course what do private developers want out of this? They want to make money. They want to make money out of it and fair enough. That is their job. That is what private developers do. That is one of the reasons why over the history of New Zealand Governments have been actively involved in the building and delivery of social housing in New Zealand because the Government can do it cheaper and it can provide a higher quality of housing than private developers have done in the past. That is also one of the reasons why many ex - State houses contributed to the provision of affordable housing for first-home buyers. This Government is not interested in that. It is happy to sell them off but it is not going to replace them. Previously when Governments have sold off State houses to allow first-home buyers into their first home they have made sure they have been replaced. Not this National Government.We saw under the mother of all Budgets and under the tenure of the Government that took over from that a massive reduction in the number of State houses in New Zealand. And what was the impact of that? The impact of that was that more and more New Zealanders ended up on waiting lists. And how did this Government deal with that increase in the number of New Zealanders on waiting lists? Well first of all it just dropped the bottom two categories off the waiting list altogether. So if they were a priority C or D person on a waiting list it just cut them off altogether—pretended they no longer existed. Those people are still out there looking for houses but this Government does not want to know anything about it. This Government is not interested in making sure that there is sufficient provision of social housing for people who cannot afford to buy and sufficient provision of affordable housing for those who want to get into their first homes. It is looking the other way.It is going to cost someone a million dollars—within a few months it is going to cost a million dollars for someone to buy a home in Auckland on average. That is an absolute disgrace and that has happened under the tenure of this National Government. It is simply out of ideas when it comes to dealing with the real issues around housing in New Zealand. It has got no real plan for more affordable housing for first-home buyers and it is turning its back on those who cannot afford to buy a home and who do need that extra support when it comes to housing. Who pays the cost? It is the children and it is the families who will pay the cost for that. Of the 6000 people who applied for social housing in the last quarter 4000 did not even make it on to the waiting list. They did not even get on the waiting list. Two-thirds of people—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! The Committee is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow. Nō reira ka kite anō.Debate interrupted.