Cunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3666. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is a great opportunity in this stage of the debate to draw together the themes of what is in and what is not in this bill. We have got the date of commencement and we have got the title which is an opportunity for us to pull these themes together. My colleague Chris Hipkins mentioned the proposal for a commencement date that postdates the next election. If the Government had a shred of honour given that it is removing from the New Zealand people the opportunity to make submissions on this bill and have it go through a select committee and given that it is simply ramming it through under Budget urgency and if it had the courage of its convictions then it would commence the bill after the next election so that New Zealanders can vote on it and cast their votes on whether they think Housing New Zealand should be a provider of social housing to New Zealanders who need it or whether it should be just another commercial landlord.This is a bill that could have so many names. It is part of the panic button for this the Government’s seventh fiscal deficit Budget. So perhaps it could be the “Housing (Broken Promises) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (Give With One Hand and Take Away With The Other) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (No Surplus Again This Year) Bill”. Those themes are all common parlance common knowledge amongst New Zealanders who are sighing with sighs of resignation because they have given up on this Government. They have given up on the Government having a new idea or a vision or a strategy for growing jobs and growing incomes for making life fairer or easier for those New Zealanders who just do not have enough to get by.My colleagues God bless them do the hard work that members opposite seem to find it too hard to find time to do. My colleagues are working with families week in week out who are living in cars who are living overcrowded with three or four families in one modest three-bedroom Housing New Zealand home who are living in garages and with children not able to go to school properly or being shunted from school to school. If you do not have a decent roof over your head the cost of that is measured in broken lives and underachievement and our country being the poorer for it.So the Government is essentially stealing from the future to do a cheap and nasty job of today. Sadly this bill is part of that cheap and nasty New Zealand. It is cheapening it. It is cheapening it by taking what was part of the envy of the world our comprehensive welfare State and carving it up and throwing it over to private property developers. Members opposite might smirk. Who knows—maybe some of them might be getting a cut or maybe the party is getting a cut from some of those wealthy wealthy property interests that lobby the Government up-hill and down-dale. Maybe that is the source of the smirking that is going on by members opposite. But I tell you what: there is no smirking going on in west Auckland where people are crowded into unacceptable damp overcrowded houses and the waiting list is getting longer and longer.What New Zealanders are saying to us now is that it is just too hard. The only people getting a Housing New Zealand home are people who are mental health consumers long-term invalids or some very few who have been in extreme poverty for years and years and years. You know how often is it now that you are in a major city and you walk down the street and there is someone sleeping rough on the sidewalk? I remember that when I came into this House around 20 years ago you would not see that. You would not see much of it under a Labour-led Government either. We used to look at places like America where people sleep rough often and we used to look down our noses and say that it would never happen in New Zealand. Well it is happening now.Gutting Housing New Zealand from being a social housing provider to becoming a commercial landlord—members opposite can smirk all they like but the New Zealand public will have their say at the next election because they damn well know what it means. It means more for the people who have already got a lot and more hardship for the people who are already doing it tough. And they have had a gutsful of it—a bloody gutsful. So members opposite can smirk all they like. Carve up Housing New Zealand throw away the welfare State give up on the ideal that Jack is as good as his master and the New Zealand public—[Interruption] Yes I know and throw John Campbell off prime time while you are at it. Make sure that every major news outlet is staffed by Government-friendly journalists. All that will prolong your miserable life in Government by not much because New Zealanders do not like to be told what to do. They will have their revenge at the ballot box.