Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5894. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Labour opposes this bill. We will not be voting for it. It gives Minister Bennett and Minister English extraordinary powers to sell State houses to personally negotiate contracts “on any terms and conditions” that the Ministers wish and to take any action to facilitate the sales process. It allows the Ministers the power to sell off State houses without any reference to Housing New Zealand’s board its chief executive or its legislation. The bill will exempt the Ministers from all relevant enactments including the objectives and functions of Housing New Zealand for example social responsibility environmental responsibility and good financial oversight—things that clearly the Ministers do not want to be bound by. The Ministers are not constrained by “any rule of law to the contrary relating to capacity or validity of acts.” It also exempts the Ministers from any legal challenge except judicial review.These provisions especially given this Government’s track record should be ringing alarm bells loud and clear. National wants the freedom to do dirty deals flogging off billions of dollars’ worth of publicly owned land and housing. It does not want to be bothered by pesky public servants or the rule of law. We know that the Government is currently having secret meetings with merchant bankers public-private partnership investors and property developers who want to get their hands on these valuable public assets. The Government refuses to release the details about whom it is meeting to discuss the sales with.This bill is the latest move by a Government that is desperate to offload State houses and keep this troubled and deeply unpopular policy afloat. If people needed any reminding of this Government’s propensity to blur the ethical lines in its governance let me remind people about a story that appeared on 6 June in New Zealand Herald about the fact that Housing New Zealand Corporation paid $1.6 million to Andrew Body a public-private partnership investment consultant to help it sell State houses. First what did the Government do? It engaged Mr Body to help it develop the policy to sell State houses through the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group and then later on an advisory panel to help form Government policy on social housing.Part-way through those appointments Housing New Zealand contracted Andrew Body to conduct work in the asset transfer work stream. So having developed the policy it then hired Andrew Body to help it move ahead with selling the houses even though he was already working for an international public-private partnership investor. When Housing New Zealand was asked about this apparent conflict of interest it hid the information and refused to release it publicly under the Official Information Act. It took the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which was caught out telling the truth to respond to an Official Information Act request by releasing the information that made it very clear that there was on the face of it a clear conflict of interest in the engagement of Andrew Bodyin this work.Andrew Body was paid $1.6 million by this Government in a series of contracts to develop the policy and then advise it on selling off State houses. There was a clear conflict of interest and Housing New Zealand hid it from the public. This State house sell-off policy of Bill English is deeply unpopular and the most recent opinion poll showed that 75 percent of New Zealanders—and actually 60 percent of National Party voters—oppose the sale of State houses to the Gold Coast company Horizon Housing which is interested in picking up these State houses. It is a deeply unpopular policy. But no wonder—this Government has allowed itself to be diddled by Rio Tinto in relation to Tīwai Point by Warner Bros by Skycity and by Saudi businessman Hamood Al Ali Khalaf. What a roll-call of shame. This Government has incredible commercial acumen—what fantastic deals it does on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer!Given this record of negotiating bum deals for New Zealand it is a bit of a worry that Minister English and Minister Bennett are basicallyasking with this bill for a free rein to hock off billions of dollars worth of publicly owned land and housing. Not only is this Government an utterly incompetent commercial negotiator but it has brought the ethics of Wall Street into the Government at the highest levels. The Saudi sheep scandal has shown that it is willing to blow millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on dubious schemes and then lie to cover its tracks. Now Paula Bennett and Bill English want the unfettered power to flog off billions of dollars of land and housing to their Cabinet club mates. This is sickening and Labour will be opposing this bill.Bill English may want his political legacy to be the sale of thousands of State houses to property developers merchant bankers and overseas companies but it is time he let this policy go. New Zealanders want State housing to be there to guarantee a decent roof over the heads of the most vulnerable families just like the Prime Minister and his mother enjoyed in the 1960s when Kiwi taxpayers gave them a decent roof over their heads. It gave the Prime Minister a start in life that benefited him but apparently according to the National Party that is no longer good enough for New Zealanders in the 21st century.This policy has been a dog since the word go. First National said it was building up local community housing providers and that is why it wanted to transfer State housing. But now Paula Bennett and Bill English say they want to sell State houses to only large organisations that can spend tens of millions of dollars and buy hundreds of houses in one go effectively eliminating the entire New Zealand community housingsector from the whole process. It makes a mockery of what they said.Bill English said that the Salvation Army was lining up to buy these houses and if it was not the Sallies it would be iwi. Well the Salvation Army made it very clear that it did not believe that this policy would benefit tenants and it ruled itself out of buying these houses. Iwi leaders said that they would buy these houses only if they got them for nothing. Meanwhile the National Party said that these houses would go only to non-profit groups. That is what Paula Bennett said. But as soon as the Salvation Army pulled the plug on this deal Bill English was forced to concede that actually banks and property developers would be in on the game as well.National has said—and I think Paula Bennett just said something similar in her contribution tonight—that community groups would do a better job than Housing New Zealand. National has said that somehow people in the local community and voluntary sector would understand the needs of social housing tenants better than Housing New Zealand. Now apparently the Government is talking to organisations in Australia who are somehow going to understand the needs of State housing tenants in Invercargill Palmerston North Timaru Wanganui—the Australians are going to be able to do a better job than New Zealanders. Well how does that work? How does that work?This Government is yet to provide a scrap of evidence that the people to whom it is intending to flog off State houses will do a better job of looking after State house tenants than Housing New Zealand can. We asked Paula Bennett under the Official Information Act for the data. We asked her for the evidence. What is the evidence base of this policy in the lines that the Minister is trotting out to justify hocking off billions of dollars of State houses? The answer that came back from Paula Bennett’s office was that there is no such evidence. That says it all.This bill puts Minister Bennett and Minister English above the law. There is a very good reason why Ministers are subject to the rule of law and to all the normal legal and constitutional provisions which put checks and balances around them especially when those Ministers are conducting negotiations to sell off huge public assets that have been paid for by generations of New Zealanders. There is a good reason for that. This bill leaves the process wide open to corruption. This Government should take that seriously. There are reasons why those provisions are there. They should not be cleared away.