Sepuloni Carmel: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5898. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to pick up on a couple of things that Matt Doocey said. Firstly he was saying that my colleague Mr Twyford does not believe a word of what he was saying. Well I can tell Mr Doocey he does because he was in charge of writing the notes and everything that was written down is what he believes unlike that speaker who was reading from a piece of paper and who knew nothing about what he was talking about.Secondly I just want to say that the other thing that Matt Doocey said was that we on this side of the House are communists for opposing this bill. Well can I just say that he must then be accusing the 75 percent of New Zealanders who disagree with the selling off of State houses. He must be saying they are also communists. I am not sure about how the 75 percent of those New Zealanders feel and actually 60 percent of National voters oppose the Government’s plan to sell off State houses. So 60 percent of National voters according to Matt Doocey are communists as well.I think it is very clear from what I am already saying that we oppose this bill. Our biggest concern here is that this bill gives Ministers English and Bennett extraordinary powers to take direct personal control of selling State houses exempting Ministers from normal legal requirements and leaving the sale process wide open for corruption. New Zealanders have a real interest in what is going on here. So of course we are not going to support the idea that those two Ministers be given extraordinary powers to make decisions without consulting or going through the normal process.I want to just take this back to my own electorate and say that the No. 1 issue coming through my office doors—and I am sure this is the same for every electorate MP in this room—is housing. Firstly for that Government to say that we do not have a housing crisis in this country is absolute rubbish and it knows it. Secondly we cannot pretend that State housing is not part of the solution here. What I have been really disappointed in is the fact that that Government has been so negligent that in order to meet its own ideological philosophical aspirations—which is: do not own these houses because it does not believe that the State should have a role in this—it would allow these houses to continually become more and more run down under its watch to the point where we have public cases in the media where the coroner is stating that the No. 1 reason for the deaths of children is actually the housing that they are living in. That Government is responsible for that.So here we are looking at a piece of legislation that will enable the National Government to sell off our State housing but in the lead-up to this it has been doing everything that it can to make it look like the State cannot manage the housing that it has. It has been deliberately doing a bad job of managing the housing that we have so that it adds weight to its case and so that it can look like it is justified in selling it off. No one can do a better job of providing housing for New Zealanders who need it—the most vulnerable who need it—than New Zealandersactually. So the fact that the Government is even looking at selling off these houses to Australians has everyone in this country rolling their eyes shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders because how can Australians look after our most vulnerable take over our Housing New Zealand stock and do a better job than we can? It is an indictment on that Government that there have been so many cases in the media recently about the state of the Housing New Zealand stock that we do have.I want to talk about a couple of cases in my own electorate that are actually that Government’s responsibility to do something about and it has done nothing. There is a case where we have a young boy who is 10 years old and has a disability. He cannot get inside or outside of his house without being carried by his parents. The house cannot be modified because of the way it is and the land that it is on. They cannot get a transfer despite the fact that we have been supporting them to get one because there is not enough stock—they cannot get a transfer. That child now has to be home schooled because the mother cannot carry that kid inside and outside the house every day. That is what happens when we do not have the Housing New Zealand stock that is required.There are thousands—and I have seen this through my own Official Information Act requests—of New Zealanders every month applying for Housing New Zealand houses but how many of them are making it on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list? Less than one-fifth of them are actually making it on to that list. Are they applying despite the fact that they do not need it? Are they applying even though they do not need it?Sue Moroney: No.CARMEL SEPULONI: No. They need it. It is not a case of people going: “Oh where can I get an easy deal? I’m going to put my name forward for a Housing New Zealand house.” They actually need it but less than one-fifth of them are actually getting on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list. That Government is trying to make out that there is not that much of a demand but we know that the number of people who are applying is not equating to the number of people who are on the list.In recent months we have seen examples of where the Government has actually had the opportunity to pick up more houses but it has chosen not to. One of those examples was in the Waterview area where a number of Housing New Zealand houses were purchased for the Waterview Connection which we support but were then no longer required. So 31 of those houses were no longer required for the project and who then had the first right to purchase those houses? Housing New Zealand could have purchased them back but despite the fact there are thousands of New Zealanders wanting Housing New Zealand houses and trying to get their names on to the list did Housing New Zealand take up that opportunity to purchase those houses back? No it did not—it did not. It allowed them to go out for private sale despite the fact that Government members—Nick Smith and everyone else—are constantly talking in the House about the fact that they are doing whatever they can to be part of ensuring that they are meeting the housing demand. Well actually they are not. They want it to go private. They want to have no hand in this whatsoever.And do you know what? It is history repeating itself. So many New Zealanders have forgotten this and we have to keep reminding them of it: the National Government sold thousands of Housing New Zealand houses back in the 1990s. Then when Labour got into Government in 1999 the first thing it had to do was try to rebuild that stock. In the process there were a whole lot of houses that were run down as well. We had 9 years to try to rebuild the stock and try to fix up those houses and maybe we did not get to the point where we could have or we wanted to get to but we did actually try to rebuild that stock.And now here we are in that same predicament with a National Government that has not learnt from its mistakes and has not changed its ideology in any way. Here we are—history is repeating itself and the Government is selling off Housing New Zealand houses again. Then what is going to happen is that when National’s time is up and New Zealanders decide that actually they have had enough of a National Government and what that means for this country and Labour gets back in with whichever coalition partners we have at that time—what are we going to have to do? We are going to have to rebuild that stock and then try to do some work around the maintenance of our Housing New Zealand houses that have been neglected by the National Government.Selling off our Housing New Zealand houses is not the answer to the housing crisis that we have at the moment. I think that actually the National Government—all of its backbench MPs all of its Ministers—should be embarrassed about what it is doing. We have a major housing crisis in this country and it is not just about those who cannot afford to buy houses. It is about those who cannot afford to even rent a house. It is about those who cannot afford to get out of the garage that they are living in because they do not have enough money to rent a house. They cannot afford to get out of the car that they are living in because they cannot afford to rent a house. Yet that National Government would rather sell off the Housing New Zealand stock that we have and take away one of the few opportunities that New Zealanders have to get into affordable housing. I think the Government should be ashamed of itself and we will not be supporting this bill.