Mackey Moana: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12651] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand and speak on Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill. Although Labour will be supporting the Infrastructure Bill we will not be supporting Part 4. In fact I would like to point out the anomaly of even having Part 4 in this legislation. 
Part 4 repeals the legislation relating to affordable housing. The question that needs to be answered is why this repeal was hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill. A number of people out there probably would have submitted on this particular part of the bill if they had known to look in the Infrastructure Bill for the repeal of the legislation on affordable housing. It has become very clear that the Government did not want to make it obvious that once again it was backing down on an affordable housing issue so it hid it away in Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill. 
There are a couple of amendments in my name on this part which I will speak to soon. I will first address the issue of restrictive covenants. When the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was passed under the previous Labour Government one part of that legislation removed restrictive covenants where they were being used in order to stop social or affordable housing. When we went through that process the issue was raised with us that if we say one cannot have a restrictive covenant that stops social or affordable housing as its primary purpose then all someone would have to do is to say that the restrictive covenant is for another reason and the secondary purpose is that it stops social or affordable housing. The Local Government and Environment Committee back then decided to close this ginormous loophole. We did so by saying it was unlawful to have a restrictive covenant that had any purpose of prohibiting social or affordable housing. 
For reasons that I completely do not understand the Minister for Infrastructure has decided that he will go back to saying that only if it is the principal purpose will it be prohibited. We asked for and received some advice from the officials at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on the repeal of this legislation and why the decisions were made. They said: “Independent legal advice … indicates that there is a risk that the phrase ‘one of its purposes’ is too wide and likely to catch covenants that are entered into for legitimate purposes. For example covenants to preserve rural character open space … sunlight or views”. Opponents could argue that “an undeclared purpose of a covenant is to exclude social housing even though the wording of the covenant was quite different and”—apparently—“reasonable.” 
The point was that people who believed that a restrictive covenant was being used to stop social or affordable housing would still have to prove it. It was still a very very high hurdle to clear. But the Government changing it back to say that a covenant over land is void only if its principal purpose is to stop the provision of social housing on the land opens that loophole right up again. When we heard the original submissions on the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act we heard one from the Human Rights Commission. It told us of a case in Nelson where a developer had said that the purpose of the restrictive covenant was related to amenity values—the houses had to look a certain way—when the reality was that the developer did not want to provide disabled access to those houses. That stopped people from the disability sector putting in community housing in that area. The developer said that the principal purpose was related to amenity values; the reality was that it was to stop housing with disabled access going in. Now this Government says that that is OK and it can happen. That is completely unreasonable and completely ridiculous particularly given that we went through a full select committee process on this legislation under the previous Government. 
In this current Parliament we went through a very quick select committee process on the Infrastructure Bill. Naturally most of the submissions were on infrastructure and not on the repeal of affordable housing or the issue of restrictive covenants. That brings me to my next point which is that the Government has also decided to take out affordable housing from the legislation. It is saying that although it thinks there should still be some kind of limit on restrictive covenants against social housing it thinks it is OK that there are restrictive covenants against affordable housing. I am interested to hear from the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy as to why he thinks that restrictive covenants against affordable housing are OK. I certainly hope that he will take a call on that matter. 
I have an amendment in my name that restores section 277A to the way that it was under the previous Government. The legislation went through a full select committee process where the issue of restrictive covenants was first and foremost in the submitters’ minds. We asked for extra advice on that. It was not buried in legislation so that people did not know it was there. It seems to me that this amendment is an ad hoc decision made by the Government. I wonder who has got in the Government’s ear and said that now it is really hard for them to block out social housing and affordable housing so it would be nice if the Government got rid of those restrictions. 
It was pointed out to us by submitters who came to the select committee—submitters we contacted who had submitted last time—that they were very very concerned about the opening up of this particular section in the law. The Minister of Housing has made a big deal about this. He got up and said that he was great because he was keeping the provisions on restrictive covenants. Actually I say to the Minister he is not. He is opening them wide up to abuse as was reiterated by a number of submitters at the select committee. 
I now move on to my second amendment which is to remove Part 4 entirely. The reason for this is that I am happy to admit that Labour probably could have done better with the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. If the Government were serious we would be happy to support its referral back to the select committee to go through a process where we could address any of the issues that the Government had with it. We have not heard about why the Government wants to get rid of it. 
This is kind of like the shared-equity affordable housing scheme which the Government told the Housing New Zealand Corporation to stop promoting after the election. There was a 2-year pilot on an affordable housing programme and for 20 out of the 24 months that pilot was running under the National Government which did not tell anyone it existed. What an absolute waste of money! If the Government was not going to continue with it it should have got rid of it. Why did it go through the pretence and the expense of running a programme that no one knew about? I suspect that affordable housing programmes are much more effective when people know they exist. That might be a stretch but I am pretty sure that if people know a scheme exists it will get a lot more uptake than if no one knows it exists. 
We have the same kind of situation with this legislation. National decided it did not like it from the start because it is not committed to affordable housing. It is not committed to addressing issues around affordable housing. National decided from the start that it did not like it. It has no interest in trying to improve it; it would like to get rid of it altogether. This is not a Government that takes affordable housing seriously. The Government thinks that the invisible hand of the free market will deliver homes to everyone and if we give tax cuts to the richest people eventually they will trickle down to those at the bottom and with their $3 a week tax cut they will be able to purchase a house. Of course the National Party’s No. 1 policy on affordable housing at the last election was tax cuts. Well I do not know how someone on the minimum wage will get into affordable housing on a $3 a week tax cut. 
I want to read something on Part 4 from the same paper that the select committee received from the Housing New Zealand Corporation. It concerns Government policy to address housing affordability. A number of submitters who came along were very critical again of the fact that the repeal of this legislation was buried in the Infrastructure Bill. The fact was that since the legislation had been passed affordable housing pressures had become worse not better. Probably more submitters would have liked to come along to have their say on affordable housing at that time but of course they did not know about it. When people look for an affordable housing bill they would not think to look at the Infrastructure Bill which deals with a code for utility operators and access to transport corridors. 
The paper that the select committee received said that the Government was getting rid of this legislation because the Government was doing so much on affordable housing. It had the Gateway Housing initiative and details of the initiative were expected to be announced in October 2009. It is now July 2010 and the mythical Gateway Housing programme has yet to appear. It received no funding in this year’s Budget so it gets a cross. Then—this is fantastic—one of the Government’s affordable housing initiatives is the sale of State houses. How is a programme that sells houses at market prices to people who cannot afford to buy them an affordable housing initiative? 
The other initiative is the Welcome Home Loan scheme which was a Labour Government scheme. So the only tick National gets for the affordable housing initiatives of this Government is the Labour Government’s Welcome Home Loan scheme. We have the Gateway Housing initiative which does not exist and the sale of State houses to tenants which is not an affordable housing initiative as we have seen because the uptake has been about 20 people. Despite the Minister of Housing saying that he thought it would be hundreds rather than thousands it has turned out to be tens rather than hundreds or thousands. The hopes and the dreams of a large number of people were raised even though the Minister knew that they would never be able to get into those homes because that programme is not an affordable housing initiative.