King Annette: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3654. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Thank you very much Mr Chairman—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I just want to clarify something. There is no restriction on the number of closures that a member can take.Hon ANNETTE KING: Thank you Mr Chairman. There used to be did there not? So there must have been a change in the Standing Orders to allow a person to take more than one closure motion. But thank you Mr Chairman for telling us what we ought to know.I want to address this part of the bill—Part 2 “Remedial and other matters”. I too want to go to the area around the functions of the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the role that it is going to play. You see it is under “Remedial and other matters” which I found very interesting because anyone who knows the meaning of “remedial” knows that it means “supplying a remedy”. I cannot see what remedy is being supplied under this part of the bill. It is meant to correct or improve deficient skills so I can only assume that the Minister for Social Housing thinks that there are deficient skills in Housing New Zealand and I want to dispute that.I want to start from the position that one of the features of a National Government—and it goes back many years; some of us experienced it when we came into Government—is this drive to stop policy making by Government departments and others to drive out the policy-making part and contract it out to somebody else. That was the history in the health portfolio. The policy function of the Ministry of Health was driven out and put into other agencies. I am asking the Minister why she would not want to have policy advice from Housing New Zealand—the very agency that has for so long been working with tenants that has been working in the community and that has very very competent staff who are able to provide the sort of advice a good Minister would want. Why would the Minister remove this role from Housing New Zealand? Who will replace it in this role? Where will the advice the on-the-ground advice that a Minister would want come from Minister? Would you be able to answer that shortly? Where will this policy advice come from?One of the problems for a Government is when it thinks it has got all the answers itself—when it does not think it needs good strong policy advice from its own agencies. It seems to me that the Minister has decided that she does not like the advice she has got from the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I know that it has raised a few issues actually with the Minister in relation to some policy and I think that this is a way of getting rid of that sort of advice. The Government does not want anybody that might contradict the direction and the path it is taking in housing. So Minister please tell us who will replace Housing New Zealand in providing advice on policy? When we look at this particular piece of legislation we see in the regulatory impact statement that no evaluation was done on it and that Treasury did not even do an evaluation on this policy that is before the Committee today. So who is going to do the evaluation and provide the advice on future housing policy? I think that is a very serious question that needs to be answered.Then we find out that the intent of this particular part of the bill is that “the Corporation will no longer be expected to undertake research and evaluation activities for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing”. So who is going to undertake the research and evaluation? It is not Treasury. It is not Housing New Zealand. Who is it that is going to undertake this very serious function that must be undertaken when formulating very good policy? This is a huge gap in this Government’s approach to policy making. Get rid of the agency that would help with it get rid of any advice that it is going to give and any evaluation—this seems to me to be a very short-sighted approach Minister when it comes to Housing New Zealand.I agree with my colleague who just resumed his seat Iain Lees-Galloway that Housing New Zealand for decades has provided incredibly good advice. It has some excellent people working in it. You know if you go to your own Housing New Zealand offices when the doors are open and you can get in—because of course the doors are closed now and you have got to ring up to get inside the door—and if you have a close relationship with your local branch of Housing New Zealand you will find people very knowledgable about what is going on in your area. They can provide the quality advice to a Minister on the ground. They are good people. But unfortunately I think this Minister is going down the same track that she went down when she was Minister for Social Development because if you go to Work and Income offices now you will find a very demoralised bunch of people—people who used to care a lot.