Bennett Paula: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in support of the bill and to ask a few questions. First of all I will deal with the Green minority view in the commentary on the bill. The Greens say that they oppose the bill because they are: “concerned by the proliferation of information-matching programmes operating between Government agencies and the intrusion this represents into the personal lives of New Zealanders …” who are on welfare. My answer to that would be quite simply for people not to be on welfare then their lives will not be intruded upon they can get on and live their lives their way and they can look after themselves. 
I certainly support information sharing because I think it has the opportunity to— 
Phil Heatley 
: It’s our bill. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Well it is our bill; that is right. We brought the bill in in 1999 but it did not have the support of the Labour Party so it is good to see it come back and to progress it this time. 
This bill gives us the opportunity to look at the information that is coming from individuals to the Housing New Zealand Corporation and through to the Ministry of Social Development. But it is a one-way information-matching system. The Social Services Committee which I sit on was given four reasons for the necessity of that matching: first to assist the ministry in minimising and recovering beneficiary and student debt from benefit and allowance overpayments; second to provide early intervention in cases that could result in the creation of substantial debt; and third to assist in the detection of fraud and to help people track those who are in debt to the ministry. We think these are all extremely admirable reasons because we all know the trap that some welfare beneficiaries can get themselves into when they find themselves unable to survive on the money they receive. They get further and further into debt and it creates a vacuum that they cannot get out of. We hope this information sharing is done not to beat up the welfare beneficiary who is trying to do the best he or she can but instead is done to stop the problem before it starts so that someone is not in that perpetual cycle of dependency and debt which is the situation of so many people. 
I have to say though that National does have a concern with the rorts in the system. We can hide our heads in the sand for so long but the reality is that rorts are there. Someone who lives in the area that I look after for the National Party wrote to me the other day stating that she was on a list to get a Housing New Zealand Corporation house and that she wanted some support to be bumped up the list. She wanted her information to be carried over. I asked the person what was so unique about her that she needed to have support from the Government. She looked at me completely stonewalled and with a shocked look on her face said it was because she wanted a State house. I asked her what was so unique about her that she should be bumped up above other people in order to get what is in all cases a benefit for those who are the most needy. She could not answer me. She then marched back to my office a few days later with a letter in her hand which she flashed in my face and said she now had a letter from another MP who said she should be bumped up the list. I have to say that that is of some concern certainly to us in the National Party. Is a State house allocated on the basis of need or is it allocated to the person who shouts the loudest? We need State housing and no one denies that it is an important part of New Zealand’s social services but let us make sure that people are getting a State house because of genuine need. That is what really starts raising some questions for me. 
The fact that there are people earning over $50000 a year who are in a State house just seems incredulous to me. We all know—and I am sure the Minister would agree—that there are people who are not on that sort of money who would benefit from being in a State house but instead we have families that are rorting the system and taking houses away from those who most need them. We need to start shaking some cages and watching people. We need that shaking-tree effect. I think we need to start going at it a bit harder in order to see what can be done. 
Information sharing has been raised by the Greens and a couple of other individuals as being about people’s rights—they say it will scare people it is not fair and everything else. Unless we start asking some of the hard questions then we will not be supporting those who genuinely need support the most. I challenge the Minister as to whether he is asking those sorts of hard questions. National supports this bill purely because it increases transparency and openness. Those are things the National Party hugely advocates.