O'Rourke Denis: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9108. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to speak on clause 8 in Part 2 and especially new sections 50E and 50D. New section 50E is what I would call the operative clause. It is the one that actually confers the power on the Minister. It says—and I quote with abridgement—that “(1) The Minister may enter into a contract … if the Minister considers that the entry into the contract is for the purposes of any 1 or more of the social housing reform objectives:”. In subclause (2) it says: “A transfer contract may be on any terms and conditions (including as to consideration) that the Minister may agree with the transferee.” so those are very wide powers.The Minister can sell to anybody on any terms and all the Minister has to do is to relate it to the social housing reform objectives. Those objectives are set out in new section 50D(1) so let us have a look at them. In paragraph (a) the first one it says that “people who need housing support can access it …” and so on. Well that does not require the sell-off of existing State houses or land. That can be done and should be done without that.Secondly in paragraph (b) “social housing is of the right size and configuration …” the same thing applies. New State houses and developed State housing land can achieve that without having to sell any land to anyone for any reason. And in paragraph (c) “social housing tenants are helped to independence …” the same thing applies. In paragraph (d) “there is more diverse ownership or provision of social housing:” again the same thing applies. Why do those objectives justify—and how could those objectives justify—the sell-off of State houses or State housing land for development?In paragraph (e) we see “there is more innovation and more responsiveness to housing tenants and communities:”. Innovation and responsiveness—what on earth does that mean? Does it mean selling it off to private buyers so that they can do what they wish? This is not necessarily a social housing objective at all. When I look at new section 50D(1)(f) “the supply of affordable housing is increased …” it does not even say “social housing”; just “affordable housing”. So that is clearly not a social housing objective whatsoever. In fact it is not even clear what “supply of affordable housing” means. How does that improve the social housing stock in quality or in number in New Zealand? It just does not. It should not even be there. It is not a social housing objective whatsoever.So what does this mean? It means actually that the objectives are only generally defined and yet this is the crux of the bill. This is the reason why the Minister can sell to anybody for any reason and on any terms and yet the objectives themselves are only generally defined and not well defined. Some of them are irrelevant to social housing yet the contracts would have to be specific as to what is to be achieved in terms of those objectives. So what will they look like? What will the effect be? All of that is very very unclear indeed. It includes bare land sold for housing development as well as existing houses.When you follow this on as a sequence you can see what could happen. You could have for example the Redcliffs School which the Government says it wants to sell being sold and then designated by the Gazette as State housing development land and then under this bill being sold off by a further Gazette notice for “affordable housing”. Affordable to whom and on what basis? So it could just be sold off to anyone under any terms and conditions and I think that is what will happen to the Redcliffs School. I think it will just be sold off to anybody who comes along and it has got nothing to do with social housing objectives. That is the error in this bill and it is the reason why what we have heard from the Minister sitting there Nick Smith actually simply is not true.This bill means a lot more in terms of its width and scope than this Minister has claimed. It can actually mean just the sell-off of land or even schools to anybody on any terms and conditions if they were called “affordable” sections for example. That may be fine for those people. The point is that this bill is supposed to be about social housing improving the quality—and if the Minister keeps shaking his head his brain will fall out of his ear because he knows that what I am saying is actually true and it will be true. This bill is actually stated to be about social housing and the Minister has talked about social housing and yet it can be that that is not what happens under this bill.The bill itself is badly drafted and it is misconceived as a piece of legislation in the first place. What is really intended despite everything that the Minister and other members opposite have said is simply to find a way to privatise land that is currently State housing or land held for State housing purposes. It is a sell-off. It is a privatisation process. It is not genuinely an attempt to improve the social housing stock in terms of numbers of State houses or intensification of existing State housing stock nor to improve the quality of housing for people who rely on State housing. These days that is something like half of all people because about half of the total population is now dependent on renting homes and a big chunk of that is social housing.So despite what the Government has said about this and implied about it it is not a bill about improving social housing at all. It is just a sell-off and it is not clear what the effect of this bill is going to be in the end. It will be patchy. Some land and some State houses will just be sold off and there will be no increase and no benefit to social housing at all. Some may be. Some may be—I will concede that—but the point about this particular legislation is that it is badly drafted and badly conceived and if it were to do what the Minister said it was going to do it would be a different bill altogether. New Zealand First will certainly continue to oppose it.