Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9126. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am speaking to the title and commencement clauses of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill as we draw this debate towards its inevitable conclusion. It is traditional at this time in a debate to make proposals about alternative titles for the bill.Tim Macindoe: Blah blah blah.PHIL TWYFORD: I do not think the suggestion from the Government whip that it be called the “Blah Blah Blah Bill” is a very sensible suggestion. But from this side you will soon hear that we have some constructive proposals for the renaming of this bill. I for one would like to start off by proposing that this bill be called the “State House Sell-off (Charter for Corruption) Bill”. That title conveys I think two of the critical themes that have been discussed in this debate—that for all the blather and the spin that we hear from the Government benches and from the Ministers this bill is about social housing reform. Actually—let us be brutally honest about it—this is an old-fashioned privatisation programme of billions of dollars of publicly owned land and housing. That is all it is.Chris Bishop: You told the community houses that you were in favour of it.PHIL TWYFORD: Bill English has decided that the Government has no business owning land and housing for the purpose of State housing. He simply wants to get it off his hands. He will sell it to anybody who wants it Mr Bishop. First it was the Salvation Army. Then it said it did not want it. Then he thought that iwi would buy it. They said they wanted it only if they could have it for free. And now the Government is hawking these billions of dollars of assets to anybody who will take them. The Government is meeting with merchants bankers public-private partnership outfits banks consultants property speculators and financiers. The latest on Bill English’s wish list is that big private equity funds will see this as an opportunity to establish a business model like the retirement village companies in New Zealand. Nothing could be more crazy than to think that the retirement village business model—by which companies like Summerset Group Holdings Ltd and Ryman Healthcare make huge dollars by working over the wealthiest quartile of the New Zealand community the wealthiest 25 percent of New Zealanders who end up pouring their life’s assets into these retirement villages. Nothing could be more different to the job of actually delivering decent and affordable social housing and State housing to the 5 to 10 percent of the poorest and most struggling New Zealanders.It is obvious that that business model would not work in terms of State housing unless and here is the kicker the Government is prepared to pour unlimited volumes of taxpayer subsidies directly into the pockets of those companies. But do you know what? That is probably exactly what Bill English is thinking of doing. How else would those companies make the kinds of returns that they currently make on their assets in the retirement village sector? They typically make something like a 25 percent return on their assets. They are highly successful property development companies. How would they make that kind of return on the provision of social housing in New Zealand? Only with massive and ongoing public subsidies. So the other possible title for this bill is the “Snouts in the Trough for the National Party’s Mates (Social Housing Sell-off) Bill”. It is sad that we have got to this point. But the way that the Government has handled this whole process over the last 2 years has made the public very cynical. It has stripped away any pretence that this is about building up a more diverse and innovative community housing sector. The community housing sectors are alive to that. They feel like they have been manipulated lied to and used by this Government as a way of dressing up a highly unpalatable policy: the privatisation and the flogging-off of billions of dollars of land and housing that have been paid for over generations.