Hipkins Chris: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9096. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very pleased that the Minister in the chair is in a mood to answer questions because I have got some that are very important. Will there be full transparency around all of these dealings and around how much the land is sold for and how much the houses are sold for? And what does the Crown get in return for those? There has not been transparency thus far to date. I will use an illustrative example.In respect of the whole community of Pōmare which was largely owned by the Housing New Zealand Corporation the Minister could under this clause remove it from the corporation and basically say that he is going to take control of the entire redevelopment in Pōmare and make the decisions around that. Of course that would have been the case if this had been in place when that happened—that development has already happened. Around about 130 to 140 houses I think were either demolished or transferred to the ownership of a private developer there.What we have not got is the transparency around all of that. So we do not know how much they paid we do not know the value of what we are getting back—when I say “we” I am talking about the taxpayer the Crown and the Government. So they transferred all of these assets into the ownership of a private company a private developer. Around about 130 to 140 houses in total—around a hundred of those were demolished and that land was completely redeveloped and new houses were built on that.My understanding is that thus far Housing New Zealand has got back somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen houses—it may be more than that. Just do the basic maths. We are talking about tens of millions of dollars probably if you added all of the rateable value of the land and the housing that were transferred to the developer. And I do not see thus far that the Crown has received—if it is simply a swap—a corresponding value in what it has got back. So the question is: is this an asset sale or is it an asset give-away? The only way the taxpayers will be able to judge that and be able to judge whether the Ministers are responsibly using the powers that they are taking with the clauses afforded to them in Part 1 will be if there is full transparency around those dealings.If they simply decline to release that information on the basis that it is commercially sensitive which has so often been the case when it comes to these sorts of deals then the taxpayer will never be in a position to judge whether in fact the Ministers have used the power that they are giving to themselves—and let us be clear it is no longer the corporation that is going to be doing these deals. The corporation will be covered by a whole host of other responsibilities in terms of its financial reporting and so on. It is going to be the Ministers executing these deals. Will there be full transparency? I hope that the Minister will answer that because under Part 1 the Government is going to be able to designate whole classes of land basically to bring under its own control. So it can designate whole neighbourhoods for example and bring them under the control of the Minister—no longer under the control of Housing New Zealand.I think that that is potentially going to have a significant impact on the overall provision of housing throughout New Zealand. Whole communities which do not see this coming may well find themselves subject to this and I definitely think that the Minister should be very clear about the level of transparency that will be required. The transparency should also extend to the effect on the value of the Housing New Zealand Corporation. So if you look at new section 2A(7) inserted by clause 4 for example when we are talking about the money and where the money is payable to money that previously would have been payable into the housing account will now be payable into the Crown account. There is no getting around that; that is what that clause actually says.Phil Twyford: Clear as day.CHRIS HIPKINS: It is clear as day. Anyone can read it. So therefore what will the overall effect on the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s value be? Is this going to result effectively in a write-down of the value of the Housing Corporation and will the Government be absolutely transparent with the people of New Zealand about what that means?Bearing in mind that this was the Government that went to the last election promising New Zealanders that there would be no more asset sales—that was clear as day. John Key said it and anyone can find the records to check him on that. So is this simply another way of getting around that promise? If they are massively writing down the value of the Housing New Zealand Corporation by transferring stuff out of it that is an asset sale—or an asset give-away—by another name.So I look forward to the Minister’s assurances that there will be full transparency around all of the deals that are done under this clause because if there is not then that simply leaves the Government open to a whole host of other challenges around inappropriateness and a whole lot of other things that I cannot mention in the House without getting into more trouble.