Curran Clare: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3633. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): To follow on from my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s speech to this Committee earlier this year I had a woman in my office who was desperate. She had been living in women’s refuges for 4 months with her two grandchildren in one room—in one room. She could not get on the Housing New Zealand list. Both the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand did not want to know. It took the intervention of an MP to battle with them for weeks to get her on the list. Both of those children were living with her because they had severe behavioural issues. They should not have been in one room and here we had two Government agencies that were impervious to their plight. Now finally she is in a State house but it took the intervention of an MP. Does it take the intervention of a member of Parliament’s office for every single one of those people who cannot get on the list?I challenge those MPs on the Government side of the House to say that they do not have those people coming into their electorate offices that they do not see the plight of people who are at their wits’ end and who are desperate. I challenge those people that Government to take off the cloak of conservative compassion. Take off that cloak of conservative compassion which is a sham and show us your real faces the real face of ideological privatisers who are dismantling our social safety net by privatising State housing and cementing an underclass in this country. Cementing an underclass—that is going to be the legacy of John Key. That is going to be the legacy of the National Government—an underclass a true underclass in this country.And why do we have this bill coming in under urgency? Because the Government knows that it will come under scrutiny. People will come out of the woodwork and say exactly what they think. As for the social service agencies that have operated in this country respectfully for over a century—the Methodist Mission the Salvation Army Presbyterian Support—what do those people have to say about what this Government is planning? They think it will not benefit those who are most vulnerable. Whom will it benefit? It will benefit the privatisers. That is why the Government should take off the cloak of conservative compassion.Paula Bennett and Bill English came to Dunedin in January. They came to spruik their social housing rort. They told us all that it was going to be nirvana that it was going to be innovative and flexible as Simon Bridges has told us. They told us that there are going to be warm dry homes. They told us that the trend was for one and two-bedroom homes that nobody wanted the three or four-bedroom homes. Well in Dunedin that is so not the case. Those people who cannot get on the list are the people who need the three or four-bedroom homes—the people who are desperate who are living in terrible circumstances in the private sector who are living under circumstances with slum landlords who are taking advantage of them. They are living in houses that are cold and damp and sending their children to hospital every year. This is the cementing of an underclass it is the cementing of poverty and it is the cementing of children who are living in circumstances they should not be living in. This is a great tragedy and every MP on the other side of the Chamber will have seen these people in their electorate offices and they should be ashamed.I would like to challenge the Minister sitting in the chair Simon Bridges to get up on his feet and tell us what regional New Zealand will get out of this bill. Get up on your feet and tell us what regional New Zealand will get out of this bill. Will there be a single new piece of social housing? How will those houses be made more warm and dry? What accommodation will those people be living in? What are their options? If they cannot get into social housing what are their options? Get up on your feet and tell us.