Robertson Grant: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3617. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): To pick up where my colleague Annette King left off not only were those providers sold a pup but also the whole of New Zealand was. This policy is about nothing more than finishing off the job of privatising and destroying social housing in New Zealand. That is the job that the National Party decided to kick off in the 1990s. Last night Kevin Hague said that he could picture the clothes and the colours of the 1990s—the pastels and the big hair of the 1990s. Kevin might even have had hair in the 1990s who knows? Actually no he did not—he did not have hair in the 1990s either.It was in the 1990s that the National Party began its ideological crusade against social housing and that is what this bill carries on. Part 1 of this bill is all about finishing the job that National started in the 1990s. There were 13000 State houses sold off in the 1990s. Every member of this House who is an electorate MP will say if they are honest that one of the biggest issues that comes through the door of their electorate office is people who cannot find housing. In my office we used to call it the “Friday 4.30 p.m.” problem where people would come in on a Friday afternoon with nowhere to live and nowhere to sleep on the weekend. They do not go to the National Party offices because they do not get any response. They come to our offices and we work hard with the social housing providers to find them somewhere to live. This bill is a charter for the Government to abrogate its responsibility for social housing.What is more fundamental in our society than the need for shelter—the basic right of people for shelter? In our society if people cannot find shelter themselves—if people cannot afford to house themselves—it falls to the Government to ask how it will make sure that shelter is provided. The National Government’s response to that is this bill. It throws away the Government’s accountability it throws away its responsibility and it pushes that on to the social housing sector. As Annette King said the social housing sector has looked at this policy and has said no. It has said: “We cannot do this. If you want us to be the people who take on the role that the National Government does not want any more then give us some money to do that. Give us some money to be able to provide that housing.” But that is not National’s agenda here. National’s agenda here is to push the problem on to other people to cut the funding as it goes along and then to blame those people for the situation that they find themselves in.The extraordinary thing about this legislation in Part 1 is the power that the Minister gains from it to enter into “flexible purchasing arrangements”. What a form of doublespeak. What a form of doublespeak from the National Party. The flexible purchasing arrangements are to allow the Minister to hock this stuff off to property developers—to the people who funded the National Party’s election campaign last year. [Interruption] That is right. This is about making sure that there is a sweetheart deal possible between the Minister and property developers. Hock it off at a cheap price—make it try to work. But the fundamentals of this policy are deeply deeply flawed.You know we have housing Ministers—and goodness there are tonnes of them in the National Partynow—who cannot actually come up with a decent policy. There are tonnes of them. We have housing Ministers telling us that the problem with the social housing stock is that it is poorly configured and in the wrong place and that the solution to this is to sell the poorly configured housing in the wrong place to somebody else—and somehow that will solve the problem. Somehow the problem is solved by shifting it on to somebody else. How typical it is of the National Government to solve a problem by shifting it on to someone else and blaming them for not sorting it out. That is what Part 1 of this bill is fundamentally about. It is about a National Government with no real plan for how to make the lives of people in social housing better and it would rather flick the problem off.So the questions for the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges are important. Why are these flexible purchasing arrangements being put in place now when there are no social housing providers who want to buy into this scheme?Hon Annette King: It’s only for the developers.GRANT ROBERTSON: So it can only be for the developers. The question that Simon Bridges needs to get up off his chuff and answer right now is: why is National pushing this policy through Parliament today when there are no social housing providers who want to take this up? It is an ideological experiment. This bill—Part 1—should have been scrutinised by a select committee. It should have gone to a select committee so that social housing providers and members of the public could have at least tried to turn this pig’s ear into something useful but that opportunity was not granted to New Zealanders.I want to make another point about what Part 1 does. What Part 1 does is finally kill off Housing New Zealand’s role as a social housing provider. After more than 7 years National has come in and said: “Housing New Zealand you are a landlord. That’s it. Plain and simple.” In fact this bill goes even further. This bill takes it from landlord to letting agency. That is what this bill does. Once upon a time Housing New Zealand played a role in understanding the needs of its tenants. How many electorate MPs in this House and list MPs as well have Housing New Zealand tenants coming into their offices because Housing New Zealand is no longer there to help support them in their lives?I have got a question for the Minister. In this environment where all these problems are being shoved away down the road here on The Terrace in my electorate are the Gordon Wilson Flats. They have been empty for 2½ years. What is happening for social housing in a community like Wellington City? Wellington Central is a wealthy electorate on average but when you look at the lives of the people who got thrown out of the Gordon Wilson Flats their lives are not getting better. They need support from a housing provider that looks at their broader social needs. Housing New Zealand used to make policy about housing—about the fact that we might actually need a plan for housing in New Zealand and that we might actually need to think about the future needs of those who live in our social housing. But Part 1 of this bill says that that is not the Government’s responsibility any more. So not only is it outsourcing the provision of social housing but it is also outsourcing the policy for social housing. It is saying that Housing New Zealand has got no role.Maybe they will not be saying this actually because they appear to be mute today. But perhaps at some point a National Party member might get up and say “No he’s got it all wrong. It is MSD who is doing housing policy now.” Well good luck finding someone in the Ministry of Social Development whom you can talk to about social housing policy. Good luck finding that distributed among the thousands of other tasks that people in the ministry have got. If we are serious about the importance of providing shelter to our most vulnerable citizens then we would have an agency whose job it is to focus on that. Instead what this bill will do is take that away completely from Housing New Zealand and turn it as my colleague Phil Twyford said last night into the public equivalent of Barfoot and Thompson—a real estate agent a letting firm. That is not good enough. That is not what a responsible Government does.What a responsible Government does is take seriously its responsibilities to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Just because the Government and Bill English like some kind of Southland version of Rip Van Winkle have woken up to the problem of inequality and poverty overnight after 7 years does not mean that the National Party has got a plan to lift people out of poverty. It does not mean that the National Party has got a plan to ensure that we reduce inequality—for it to suddenly decide after 7 years of slumber to do something in this area. Actually this bill is much more instructive about where the National Party is at when it comes to the most vulnerable New Zealanders than a small amount of money going into some families’ bank accounts.This bill shows that the ideological agenda of the National Party is not over—it is not over. In fact this finishes off one part of it and says that social housing is somebody else’s problem. Well on this side of the Chamber we think that the shelter of our most vulnerable citizens is a core responsibility of the State. As well as its own provision of social housing it is a core responsibility of the State to work with the other people who are providing social housing not to shove the problem on to them with inadequate funding. This bill thoroughly undermines what we have come to believe is important about social housing. Nothing has stuck in my craw more in 7 years than being lectured by National Party members about State housing and the legacy of Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser. This bill is a slap in the face for the legacy of social housing.