Hipkins Chris: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10079. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Well that is very fortunate Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. That is what my parents call me as well. If there is one message that comes out of this particular motion it is that born-to-rule Tory arrogance is back in vogue on the other side of the House. Those members do not really give a stuff about the democratic process or about ensuring that New Zealanders get a chance to have a say on the legislation that goes through this House. The National Party knows best. The National Party knows best. It is going to push through the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill and not give a stuff about what New Zealanders have to say whether they want to have a say on this process or whether they even want to make a submission. It does not actually care about whether members of Parliament have an opportunity to engage with this and actually do the job of parliamentarians properly.Let us consider what the referral motion actually does. The referral motion more than halves the time for this bill to be reported back to the Parliament.Hon Dr Nick Smith: They don’t like hard work.CHRIS HIPKINS: No we do not like it. That is absolutely true. We do not like it over here. This side of the House actually believes that we have a select committee process and time frames around the select committee process for a good reason: so that New Zealanders get a chance to have a say on the legislation that affects them and particularly when we have got legislation here that gives the Government the power to vary it because by Order in Council the Government can vary the provisions in this legislation. That is something that New Zealanders should be interested in because it hands over more and more power to the born-to-rule Tories over there who seem to think that they know best and that they do not have to have a democratic mandate for the things that they are pushing through this House and for the changes that they are making.What are they going to do? They are halving the report-back time frame in this House and they are allowing the select committee to meet even when Parliament is sitting so members of Parliament who might be participating in other debates cannot do their jobs properly. They are getting very lively over there on the other side of the House because they do not like it. They do not like being hauled up for the fact they are so arrogant. [Interruption] I am sorry. I am not a waiter so please do not shout at me. I am not a waiter so just hold your horses. You will get your chance to have a say in a moment.They do not like it. They do not like being hauled up on the fact that they are riding roughshod over the democratic process. But people up and down the country know thatthat is all they can expect from this Government. This is a Government that cancels elections when it is not comfortable with what the outcome of those elections is going to be. It just decides: “Oh sorry. People might elect a council that we don’t like and isn’t going to do things that we agree with so we will just cancel the election altogether.” That is the approach of members on that side of the House. They do not really mind about that. They will just cancel the elections altogether and when they think that the public might have something to say about a bill that they do not want to hear they will just truncate the process they will shorten it down and they will prevent people from having a say on the legislation. This legislation may well be good legislation but it is bad bad process. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order! Mr Hipkins is making a hard-hitting speech.Hon Members: Ha ha!The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am on my feet. Some interjection can be expected but not so much that it drowns out the speaker. The Speaker will not allow that.CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just getting warmed up. Nick Smith in his speech earlier on mentioned the fact that 104 MPs in the House had voted in favour of this legislation and he used that as the justification for preventing New Zealanders from having a say in it. We are supporting the legislation because we do believe that there is a housing affordability crisis in New Zealand and—Hon Member: Oh! Oh!CHRIS HIPKINS: “Oh! Oh!” they say over there. Well they are just waking up to it now. They are just waking up to it now. They have been in Government for 5 years and finally after 5 long years they have suddenly realised that there is a housing affordability crisis in New Zealand and maybe it would be a good idea to do something about it.Louise Upston: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to Standing Order 286(3) which is very clear about the scope of this debate.CHRIS HIPKINS: Speaking to the point of order this is a fairly robust debate being held under urgency and I am responding directly to comments that the Minister who moved the motion made.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Well can I just say this to members. This is a debate on an instruction to a committee that it report by an early date and giving certain powers for the committee to meet. The debate is not an opportunity to debate the substance or merits of the bill.CHRIS HIPKINS: I will refrain from doing what the Minister in charge of the bill did when he commented extensively on the substance of the bill in debating this referral motion. I will confine my comments to what an outrageous abuse of the parliamentary process this referral motion is in preventing New Zealanders from having a say on this particular piece of legislation.Reporting this bill back to the House within 2 months of its going to a select committee does not allow the select committee sufficient time to advertise widely to travel if it needs to to hear submissions and to give people the chance to have their say on it. This does not apply just to Auckland. I refer to the very beginning of the explanatory note which states that by Order in Council this can be extended to further regions and districts by the Government with no referral back to the people to have a say on it and there are many provisions in here that allow the Government to extend the powers of it by Order in Council. Therefore many New Zealanders will have an interest in it and will want to have a say on it. But the Government does not want to hear from them. The Government does not want to hear from them. It is quite happy to rideroughshod over the democratic process after 5 years of doing nothing about housing affordability. This referral motion is about the National Government being seen to do something and being seen to do it with urgency without there actually being any legitimate urgency behind it. Actually it is impossible—Maggie Barry: People need housing “Chippy”.CHRIS HIPKINS: “People need housing.” Maggie Barry says. Oh my goodness! Maggie Barry has pronounced. “Let them eat cake!” Maggie Barry pronounces to the House—let them eat cake. “People need housing.”—one of the most profound statements that we have heard in the House today. Maggie Barry says: “People need housing.” My goodness me! My goodness me! She has woken up over there and decided that the people are allowed to live in houses. Goodness me! What an admission from the born-to-rule Tory Government over there.People also have a right to have a say in the laws that affect them and the laws that govern this country. But on this referral motion despite the fact that we support the bill at the current point and we want people to have a chance to have a say in it we absolutely object to shortening the process down so that people do not have a chance to adequately consider the bill. Six weeks roughly is what the committee will get. Actually it is slightly longer than 6 weeks. It will be a bit longer than that. It has flip-flopped around from what we were told earlier on when I wrote “6 weeks” down on my piece of paper here. But that time frame does not allow people a chance to have an adequate say.I do want to respond to something else that Nick Smith said during his speech when he talked about the Labour Party’s track record on affordable housing. Well I say to Nick Smith that Labour managed something that this Government has not managed in 5 years: a booming economy and 9 years of surpluses—something that this Government has not managed to achieve. So to hear Nick Smith lecturing Parliament on housing affordability in that context is a little bit rich.I want to come back to whether or not the parliamentary process will be sufficient if the committee has only until 26 July to consider this piece of legislation. How many parliamentary adjournment weeks are there in that time? Adjournment weeks are when select committees do a lot of their work on a bill like this. How many adjournment weeks are there? Select committees should be meeting during adjournment weeks. They are not time off; they are a time for the select committees to actually do their work. How many adjournment weeks are there doing that period of time?Hon Member: You don’t want no adjournment week.CHRIS HIPKINS: What was that? Nothing. He has gone very silent. Suddenly he has been caught out making inane interjections. That is not unusual for that member over there. Suddenly when he is challenged on them he has not got anything to say. So there will be a question of whether the select committee actually has adequate time to consider the legislation.Of course the Government in the referral motion here has allowed the select committee the power to meet while the House is sitting. This is only about the second or the third time in the term of this current Parliament since the last election that a referral motion of that nature has been put before the House. The Government has not needed to do that before because actually with cooperation particularly with legislation that both sides of the House support there is normally an opportunity for relevant time frames to be met. But this born-to-rule Tory Government does not seem to think providing it can get a wafer-thin majority that it should actually bother to extend the courtesy of allowing members from all sides of the House to participate adequately in the process.Those members know what is best. They are just going to push through everything. They are going to do it under urgency. They are going to abuse the parliamentary process under urgency for bills that do not actually have legitimate urgency. There is nothing in this legislation that suggests it should not be done over a 4-month time frame rather than the 2-month time frame that the Government has promoted.Maggie Barry: People need homes. Let’s get on with it.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh Maggie Barry says: “Let’s just get on with it.” “Let’s just get on with it.” Maggie Barry says. Let us forget about what anybody says forget about New Zealanders who actually in a democracy might have a view and might want to have a say. “Let’s just get on with it.” Maggie Barry has pronounced that this is the right thing to do therefore we should just forget about letting anybody else have a say. I am looking forward to her contribution in this debate on why she thinks that only 2 months is a sufficient period of time to consider this legislation and to allow the public to have a say.It is an abuse of the parliamentary process. There is no justification for ramming this bill through under urgency and pushing it through the select committee process under the select committee equivalent of urgency. It is a bad referral motion and even though we support the bill we will not support the Government preventing New Zealanders from having a say on legislation that affects them.