Lees-Galloway Iain: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9089. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It seems appropriate that Minister Maggie Barry is in the chair for this debate about Part 1 of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill because as we know clause 4 which adds new section 2A to the principal Act the Housing Act is all about the housing Minister being able to exclusively administer the land. If there is one Minister who knows about overstepping the boundaries of administration it would be Maggie Barry who of course hand-picked her own friend to do some of the landscaping on Pukeahu rather than using the original landscaper who had won the original competition which was an open and transparent process for choosing who the landscaper should be. No Maggie Barry chose her mate.That is one of the principal concerns we have with clause 4 of Part 1 of this legislation that what this does is it gives two Ministers the power to hand-pick whom State houses can be sold off to. As we said this Government does not have a good track record when it comes to hand-picking its mates for sweetheart deals. Skycity Rio Tinto the Warner Bros—the list goes on and on and on.The last thing that this House should be doing is passing legislation that takes financial decisions out of the hands of the Crown agency that has been dealing with this stuff for years—the Crown agency called Housing New Zealand. The clue is in the name Minister Barry in terms of what it does and what its expertise is. We are taking that role away from Housing New Zealand—the Government agency that has to be transparent and that has to report back not only to the Government but to this House and to the public at large—and handing that responsibility over to one or two Ministers in a Government that has a poor track record. That scares the bejesus out of the Opposition and out of the people of New Zealand.I would like to look closely at a couple of the subsections under new section 2A in clause 4. First of all I will look at the one that has been struck out by the Social Services Committee. It would very useful for me if one of the members opposite who sat on that select committee could explain why subsection (4) has been struck out because it reads as follows: “All amounts payable to the Crown in respect of land declared to be land that is subject to this section (including all amounts that if this Act had not been passed would have been payable into the Housing Account (if any)) must be paid into a Crown Bank Account.”Why have they struck out the subsection that says the money raised from selling State houses has to go into a Crown account? It just seems so obvious that that is a necessary clause—that that money must be by legislation required to go into a Crown account. It is possible that there is a sensible answer to that but we have not heard from any of the members opposite about what the sensible answer might be. So my question is to the Minister in the chair Maggie Barry and to the members opposite: why was new section 2A(4) in clause 4 struck out by the select committee? It would be very helpful to the Committee if that could be explained to us.Then we have subsection (5): “The Corporation is not responsible or liable for the Minister’s performance or exercise of functions powers or duties under subsection (2).” As I said the corporation is the Government-mandated organisation to be the expert on housing. But never mind that fact that the Government organisation that is the expert on housing is not required to be liable for the Minister’s performance—my question is: who is? Who is the Minister accountable to? Who is the Minister responsible to for the decisions that they make about whom these houses should be sold off to? I want to give the Committee a view that was expressed to me—it is not a Labour Party view—by a constituent of mine who it is fair to say does not naturally align with our view on politics. He is a property owner—