O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I rise obviously to take a call on Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill at this first reading. The National Party will be opposing the bill. In a strange way I would suggest we may have been better to actually support it because this bill is an admission of the Government's failure. It's a glaring bold statement of the Government's failure particularly around KiwiBuild—Hon Scott Simpson: An abject failure.SIMON O'CONNOR: An abject failure as my good friend and colleague Scott Simpson says. And in a sense because it is such a failure—the Government's housing policies—perhaps this side of the House should have supported it just to really highlight that fact.But this is poor legislation. It's poorly thought-out and I'll elaborate a bit on that later as to why. But to make it absolutely clear to the House the National Party opposes this bill.Look fundamentally the idea to merge Housing New Zealand to merge HLC the Hobsonville Land Company and importantly—and the Minister who's just resumed her seat Hon Nanaia Mahuta barely mentioned it—to merge the KiwiBuild Unit is as I say a huge admission of failure. This is an attempt to push under the rug the failure that is KiwiBuild and then—well not quite with any slickness—an attempt to grab if you will the success which is the Hobsonville Land Company and to rebrand it as KiwiBuild; to try and take where there is success and to try and play that into this whole new entity with a nice-sounding name Kāinga Ora to make it sound like it's new and novel but really what it's doing is bringing two tired entities and one entity doing well to try and play off that success. One of the key aspects—SPEAKER: Oh I apologise. I apologise. The member's on overtime; we had 10 seconds of lunchtime. I suspend the House and I'll resume the Chair at two o'clock.Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.SPEAKER: The House has resumed. When we adjourned for the lunch break we were debating the first reading of the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. Simon O'Connor was speaking and he has eight minutes and six seconds remaining.SIMON O'CONNOR: It's the six seconds which can be most important. Look I have to acknowledge actually Ruth Dyson who very kindly was offering to take this call but seeing as we are opposing the bill I didn't want to put her in an awkward position of being up against the Minister. Look a couple of messages which I think are quite important if not three: as I said we don't support this bill because we really see this as just simply rearranging the deck chairs effectively on a Titanic or a KiwiBuild Titanic that is sinking. To blend Housing New Zealand (HNZ) which has always had its own struggles both in asset management and tenancy management and KiwiBuild which is dead in the water—not only has an iceberg hit it; it's hit it several times—but then to try and link it to HLC to the Hobsonville Land Company which to be fair has been doing a very very good job—to link it in there is effectively a way to take the success of HLC and try to transmit that across those areas which are failing.Importantly there are about 27000 houses that HLC are working on in the pipeline—27000. That's a great number and I'm happy to say it's a great number because they were all consented and started under National. I've got a sneaking suspicion—yes I better repeat that: all of those 27000 houses were started under National—that this Kāinga Ora bill is an attempt by blending that work together along with HNZ and KiwiBuild—actually I just realised I've spoken about KiwiBuild more than anyone else has done in the Budget in the last few days but it's an attempt—SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! We'll get back to the bill now not the Budget.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yeah well it's in it.SIMON O'CONNOR: Absolutely it's in it. They are trying to take those 27000 houses and make that sound like something that this Government's achieved and I expect that by bringing it in they're going to claim that as KiwiBuild.I think fundamentally as well one of the real issues is we've had a Government that keeps talking about not selling off State houses but under this proposed legislation they're going to be bulldozing houses in the likes of my electorate in Tāmaki putting three or four of these Kāinga Ora houses on them and strangely enough selling them—selling them. I think that's shameful. I think this is a bad bill—a very bad bill. It's an admission of failure.Look from a process point of view I'm very concerned that this bill is the first of two. I'm becoming a little tired of the Government in effect introducing in set stages legislation in that we are not able to see the entirety of their project at one time.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well they don't know.SIMON O'CONNOR: In fact a suggestion has come to me that they themselves don't know. This is perhaps an indication that they're rushing this through but I want to indicate from this side of the House a concern that there is a second bill coming and we don't know exactly what's in that.There was also going to be I understand an attempt to have a shortened report back. I want to acknowledge now that that does not appear to be the case and to be generous seeing we're on a Saturday afternoon to the Minister and the Government we're actually going to get a full process in select committee where people are able to have rightly their say.The last thing I'd like to say if I might is I think as I said right at the start this particular piece of legislation is an admission of failure and I'm going to suggest particularly to the Minister who's here that this bill this attempt to as I say rearrange the deck chairs and in a sense try to pull the wool over people's eyes to make a success—Hon Gerry Brownlee: A flash cover-up.SIMON O'CONNOR: —yeah a flash cover-up—is still not going to work. The Minister himself knows that because as I've gone through the Budget documents when it comes to social housing which this bill is set to address the Government is admitting that emergency housing grants are not only going up but are going to go up even higher—even higher. What that is saying to us is that regardless of what this bill is trying to do which is creating an extra supply of social houses of State houses the Government is still expecting there to be an enormous waitlist. In other words everything that this bill is trying to do will fail. It was budgeted about $25 million on emergency housing grants. That's to help people into—well for the Government still into motels and caravans $25 million. The current budget said they've spent $70 million—$70 million—and over the next year they're expecting $120 million to address State housing.SPEAKER: Keep relating back.SIMON O'CONNOR: I think what's really important is this is aimed at those people. It is very difficult to reconcile how this bill put to us to solve the housing crisis can sit in parallel to almost half a billion dollars of emergency housing grants in the next four years. That is an admission of failure. It's an admission that there will still be enormous numbers of Kiwis in need no matter what this bill does—no matter what this bill does. It's probably not really a surprise to me because as I said right at the start and repeatedly this bill is an admission of failure. Blending three entities together two that are failing taking the good of one—and I'll end on this—the one that's doing well the Hobsonville Land Company those 27000 homes which was started under National—started under National; it's as simple as that.I give a quick shout out to my stepson and wife in the gallery—good that there's two members of the public here. Thank you very much Mr Speaker.