Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10094. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I will give this Government credit. It is true that it lacks an economic plan. It is true that it has left New Zealanders feeling disgusted by the sale of our gambling legislation to an Australian casino. It is true that it is on the long steady decline to electoral oblivion in 2014. But at least—at least—it has woken up to the fact that there is a house affordability crisis and I will give it credit for that. It has actually worked it out. Steven Joyce has looked at the polls. He knows there is a housing affordability crisis. He knows that Aucklanders particularly are deeply concerned about it. He knows that unless the Government is seen to be doing something unless it is perceived to be actually taking some action then it is in deep trouble. I will give Nick Smith this: he has at least since he took over from Phil Heatley as the Minister of Housing conveyed the impression of activity. But the problem is that the very direction the very nature of the policy that he is pursuing for social housing and for housing affordability more generally is undermining the values that New Zealanders have held dear for many many years about the role of the State in guaranteeing a social safety net for New Zealanders who need the assistance of the Government for a certain time in the provision of decent housing.Chris Hipkins: Nick Smith was part of the Government that did away with income-related rentals.PHIL TWYFORD: He was—he was in the Cabinet of the Government that was responsible for selling off 13000 State houses in the 1990s and left it for subsequent Governments particularly the fifth Labour Government to clean up that mess. I say to the House that Labour will be in Government before long and we will be cleaning up the mess that this Minister is leaving.The effect of the reforms in this bill will be to weaken the role of the State. This bill offloads the responsibility of central government in providing income-related social housing for people who need it. The crowning glory of National’s housing policy is to evict 3000 State tenants. That is going to be Nick Smith’s political epitaph. That is his greatest achievement as the Minister of Housing—to see 3000 Housing New Zealand tenants booted out of State housing. I ask Mr Smith—I ask him—is this an aspirational target to boot out 3000 State house tenants? Is that aspirational or are you Minister absolutely confident that you can kick out 3000 State house tenants? Is it simply an aspirational target like the 39000 houses that Mr Smith says that he is going to build inAuckland? He says he is going to build 39000 houses simply by opening the gate to new greenfield land on the fringes of the city and streamlining a bit of Resource Management Act consenting. By doing those things Mr Smith tells us—tells the nation—that he is going to build 39000 affordable houses. Well we will see Mr Smith. We will see if you do that. Only National would come to this House with an aspirational target in the area of social housing to boot out 3000 State tenants while we are in the middle of the worst affordable housing crisis in living memory. This is this Minister’s idea of some kind of progressive reform: to kick out 3000 State house tenants in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. That says it all.Let us talk about some of the detail of what the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill does. One of the first things that it does is that it allows the community housing providers to get access to the income-related rent subsidy. What is that? That is the difference between local market rents and what State house tenants are paying under the current policy. The context for this—it is very important to understand the context for this—is that Nick Smith wants to offload 12000 State houses to the charity sector. That is his idea of strengthening social housing provision in New Zealand. He wants to flick off the worst the most run down and the least fit for purpose State houses to a charity sector that is fragile undercapitalised under-resourced and ill-equipped to manage that kind of asset. It is exactly what the National Government did to rural and country hospitals in the 1990s. It did not want the State to have responsibility for providing health services for rural and provincial communities and isolated communities so what did it do? It offloaded them to the community and said: “Here. We don’t want to provide this essential service anymore. You go away and run it.” Did it hand over the revenue the funding streams and the capital to allow those community trusts to properly manage maintain and upgrade that vital infrastructure? No. It was a recipe for decline. It was a sordid act of back-door privatisation and simply National’s habitual response which is to offload and devolve the very functions that New Zealanders expect the State to take responsibility for. It is cynically disposing of a big chunk of the Housing New Zealand estate the least fit for purpose houses to NGOs. It is not handing over the capital that would be needed to properly maintain and ultimately upgrade those assets. It is a recipe for decline.Labour supports the social housing sector. We want to see a Government social housing programme that works in partnership with community housing providers but that is not what this is about. This is not an act of genuine partnership between the Government and social housing providers. It is shuffling pieces on the chessboard by moving a big chunk of the social housing estate out of Government control and into the community sector. Not a single extra Kiwi family in need will be housed by this move. It will not make a blind bit of difference to the number of people who are currently languishing on waiting lists desperate to get a decent roof over their heads.The second thing that this bill does is that it passes over to the Ministry of Social Development the responsibility for assessing the need and assessing the eligibility of State house tenants. The justification for this is that the purpose—the agenda of this set of reforms—is to try to establish a kind of quasi-market for social housing in New Zealand in which Housing New Zealand will be set up to compete with community housing providers. If you are going to have that kind of set-up then what you have got to do is have a neutral party that assesses the need and eligibility and that is why Nick Smith wants the Ministry of Social Development to take it over. My concern is that this is just the latest move by the National Government to de-power—to strip away—the functions of Housing New Zealand.It is already a weakened organisation. It is already dysfunctional. Phil Heatley’s “Smarter Faster Fairer” fiasco restructuring of Housing New Zealand has seen tenancy officers taken off the front line. Housing New Zealand tenants have been forced to engage with the organisation through an 0800 number. It has weakened the organisation. It has driven up tenant churn and turnover. It has driven up fraud it has driven up non-payment of rent and it has been an absolute disaster. The organisation is in no state to do the kinds of things that Nick Smith is asking it to do and he wants to weaken it even more by taking away what is a central function of a social housing provider and that is the assessment of eligibility. Housing New Zealand is going to be left simply as a tenancy manager for the rump of the old social housing estate. Minister you may as well just get Barfoot and Thompson to basically manage the tenancies. Why not? Just go the whole hog. You clearly do not believe that the State has a role in providing social housing for vulnerable people. No you do not Minister and your party does not. Everything that you have done as a party in the last 20 years says that you do not believe in the importance of the role of the State in delivering income-related social housing. Given the logic of these reforms you may as well just hand the whole lot over to Barfoot and Thompson. This National Party has an ideological belief that the State cannot do good in this area. Every opportunity it gets it wants to devolve contract out fragment and fritter away Housing New Zealand’s role as a social housing provider of income-related rental housing. Labour would like to see Housing New Zealand revitalised and rebuilt working in partnership with the social housing sector.The final point I want to make is applying reviewable tenancies to 3000 people who will be booted out under Mr Smith’s aspirational target—