Ardern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9090. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I want to start my reflections on Part 1 by referring back to the regulatory impact statement that applies to this bill because it sets out the objectives that the Government hopes to achieve through this bill generally and presumably through Part 1—in particular the transfer of powers that Part 1 executes.It states in the regulatory impact statement that before drafting Part 1 of this bill Cabinet decided that it had an agreed set of objectives around the Social Housing Reform Programme which presumably this bill is intended to capture.I really want to just compare whether in Part 1 of the bill those objectives have indeed been captured.It states in the regulatory impact statement that one of the first objectives is to “a. ensure that people who need housing support can access it and receive social services that meet their needs”. That sounds probably like a description of Housing New Zealand’s objectives as it stands. This is I would assume the mandate as set out in the Housing Act 1955. That was one of the relative stated objectives of that Act so again it is not different and not new.Moving right along: “b. ensure that social housing is of the right size and configuration and in the right areas for those households which need it”. Again one of the objectives of the Housing Act 1995 which Part 1 of this bill amends was about the acquisition of land in of course areas where there was need for the establishment of Housing New Zealand properties. So again there is not a need to reform the Act there; just a reason to stick to the objectives of the 1955 Act.Paragraph (e) states: “help increase the supply of affordable housing especially in Auckland”. That is not really something that this part particularly achieves at all or that the Government has indeed achieved with its agenda thus far. I guess my point is that we are amending a principal Act significantly in order to supply a set of principles that actually the original Act if followed would have been able to provide. So what is the real agenda behind the amendments we see in Part 1?I want to reflect then on the amendments we are making and on the original powers of the Ministers which we are in fact changing. If you go back to the Housing Act 1955 and you look at the powers that the Minister has in the Act you see that it states: “The Minister may from time to time determine either generally or in any particular case what land or classes of land may be acquired for State housing purposes.” The entire focus of the powers of the Minister in that original Act was about the acquisition the development and the growth of Housing New Zealand properties. It was about building State housing stock. It was about ensuring that people’s needs were met through acquisition. What we are changing with this amendment in Part 1 of this bill is we are fundamentally depleting the idea that a primary role of that Minister is to build up that stock—the idea of provision for the people who need it. Instead we are turning it on its head and giving them the power to hock it off. That is essentially what we are doing. We are giving them the power carte blanche without any of the checks and balances we would usually require. We are giving two Ministers the absolute discretionary power to hock it off. Claiming that it is going to social housing providers just seems to be a cover of sorts.Our point on this side of the Chamber is that shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic does nothing to resolve the overall problem. If you are simply passing around what stock you have you are not fixing the dire situation. I want to reflect very quickly on the impact of something like Part 1 because the groundwork was obviously laid quite early for this.In central Auckland where there are high housing needs—high housing needs—we have examples of rough sleepers due to the lack of emergency housing in central Auckland. You would think it would be a particular focus of the Government to grow the housing stock as the Minister had the discretion to do under the 1955 Act. You would think that that is what we would see.What do we see instead? When Auckland Council started developing its unitary plan Housing New Zealand contracted—from memory it was Beca Group—to go through and make a submission to Auckland Council to remove protections on every single Housing New Zealand property. There were screeds and screeds of pages where Housing New Zealand had contracted someone to independently go through and do things as small as remove the protections around the cone viewshafts for Housing New Zealand houses. They even did it in blocks of property where Housing New Zealand for instance owned one flat in a block of say 15 flats. They applied for those protections to be removed even though they affected private landholders. And why would they do that? Why would Housing New Zealand have gone to that great expense to remove those protections? One reason: preparation for sale—the preparation to remove anything that may bring down the potential sale price for Housing New Zealand to sell off the housing that they owned in those areas.I have heard the argument time and time again—and this is what this bill is trying to imply—that we are just transferring that responsibility on to other providers. That is not what is happening. They are going into private ownership we are not growing the stock that we need and this bill allows that to happen at a much greater rate.I have another quick example that I just want to reflect on which this bill will make even more acute. This is not to discount the role of community housing but to demonstrate some of the silly decisions that are being made. A street called Spring Street in the area that I work across is currently housing—from my recollection—up to 40 pensioners in that area.Anyone who knows Auckland knows that we have a significant problem with a lack of pensioner housing particularly since John Banks went a little bit crazy and sold a whole lot of it off. Spring Street has a number of units owned by Housing New Zealand. It is of course very valuable land so Housing New Zealand decided that it wanted to sell that land to a private developer. It just wanted to sell it. Of course that got the local community up in arms. What a silly thing to do. Where are we going to put the pensioners who currently access services in the central city and who have lived for a long period of time in these purpose-built pensioner flats?The response from Housing New Zealand was: “We will make sure that when we tender out to those private developers they have to retain the same number of units to be available for Housing New Zealand purposes.” The end outcome that Housing New Zealand was proposing was to sell the land lease back the same number of units at considerable cost and then have a private developer bank the amount that made from further developing the land and selling off additional units as part of the transfer of that land. How does the New Zealand taxpayer end up benefiting out of such a short-term decision? If you wanted to develop Spring Street—sure. If you wanted to put in a few more units I can understand that. But to sell it in its entirety to a private developer and then in the longer term have Housing New Zealand paying out to that private developer for the same number of units—what a short-sighted short-term decision.That is exactly the thinking that is captured in this bill. We are not thinking about the long-term costs for New Zealanders of selling these assets. We are not thinking about the long-term ability of Housing New Zealand to provide for the needs that our community has. We are not thinking about how we can properly support the community sector to provide the houses it ultimately wants to provide. That is not what this bill is factoring in. Of course we acknowledge the role the community sector has to play. We want to support it to do that but that is not what this bill is ideologically about.I challenge Nick Smith to demonstrate—just use one example to tell us how many additional Housing New Zealand properties in central Auckland over and above the ones that have been sold have been purchased since that Minister has been in Government. How many? I know how many you lease at great expense. I know how many you have sold at a great loss to taxpayers and at a great loss to the community. All that that Minister’s agenda has done has led to people who are currently in social housing being pushed out to the edges of Auckland losing their community and losing their connections and we no longer have mixed-community housing. We are losing that at great rates and I would not be surprised if there is an ongoing agenda for that to continue. So overall I am extraordinarily disappointed in the concentration of power in Part 1.