Moroney Sue: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9132. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I want to refer to the contribution from Jono Naylor prior to the one that we have just heard because that was the sound of the National Party of the Government abandoning its responsibility towards the citizens of New Zealand—all they want to do is have decent life. That was the sound of what we had from there because the truth is that this bill is about flogging off State assets and more important doing it in a way that actually affects the most vulnerable in our society. I think the National Party should be ashamed of this bill. It should be ashamed of its track record when it comes to housing both the housing crisis that it has presided over in Auckland which is now moving around the country and of going back to its bad old ways of selling off State housing because let us face it we have been here before.Phil Twyford: Back to the 90s.SUE MORONEY: We have absolutely been here before. I remember in the 1990s standing around State houses in Waharoa one of the poorest communities in the Waikato forming a human chain to stop those houses from being picked up in the middle of the night and transported by that Government up to Auckland so that they could flog them off for more money than they were worth in the poor community of Waharoa while the residents of Waharoa lived in garages lived in cars and lived three families or four families to a three-bedroom house. We are seeing that being repeated all over again.I particularly want to talk about the commencement date clause 2 of this bill because it says that “the Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent”. Assuming that this passes through the House in a timely fashion that means that is going to happen sometime this year. The timing could not be worse.For communities like Hamilton the timing could not be worse. What is occurring as we speak is that that Government’s failure to address the housing crisis in Auckland is now spreading to the rest of the country. One of the first communities to be hit by that has been the city of Hamilton. What is happening currently is that Aucklanders cannot afford housing in their own city so they are moving to cities like Hamilton where the housing is not cheap but is more affordable than what it is in Auckland. What that is doing is it means the housing prices are shooting up steeply in Hamilton making those houses more unaffordable for people who already live in the city.But worse than that the rental prices are following suit. So the rental prices—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am just going to remind the member that we are debating the title and the commencement date. There is some latitude but members do have to address the bill.SUE MORONEY: Thank you for that guidance Mr Chair. I am attempting to describe why the timing of what the Government is doing affects this community so badly because right now in Hamilton rents are going up at such a high rate that the people at the lowest end of the rental market cannot afford those increases. They cannot afford those increases.They need more State housing because that is the contract that we have had with New Zealanders that the Crown has had with New Zealanders for decades—that there will be that safety net that there will be a safety net for people to be able to live in decent housing. That is what this bill is abandoning. It is abandoning the Government responsibility towards that.Chris Bishop: Oh it does not.SUE MORONEY: Well it does Mr Bishop it absolutely does because—and I will refer to the title now—it is the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. We do not talk about State housing any more. This Government refuses to call it State housing because it does not want the State to be involved in it at all. So it is now called social housing reform because the Government is washing its hands of it and it is in the title Mr Bishop. It is absolutely in the title that you refuse to call it State housing anymore because you simply do not care about the Government having any responsibility in this. The title gives it away. It gives it away Mr Bishop—the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill.