Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Speaker. This bill really epitomises what this Government is all about. It's about controlling people's personal property rights. It's all about the Government knowing best. But the Government doesn't know best because none of these people on the other side have ever actually had to make a dollar in their life and none of them understand what it is actually about. Hon Ron Mark: Ha ha! Hon DAVID BENNETT: Mr Mark is laughing because he knows his leader has sat in this building for 40-odd years and is now some economic guru but the reality is they don't understand what a market operates like. If Government or any organisation goes into a market and then disrupts the ability of that market to operate there are perverse effects and we have seen that in the last two years under this Government. Rents have gone up because of the rules that this Government has put in place. Now they may say Oh we've made these houses a house for life. We've taken away a tenant's potential loss of the house." but they've increased the rent 60 bucks a week—$60 a week. They're not getting that from the Government on the other side; they're paying that money out and that means that people have to give up their rentals because they can't afford them. Then they go on to the State housing waiting list which has gone up by 10000 under this Government reflecting 10000 people that have been thrown out of their houses because these people have increased the rents on them. What is that going to do for New Zealanders? If you're a landlord what does a landlord do in this situation? Well the landlord's got it so that once a year they can increase their rents so it won't be a $20 increase in rent; it'll be a $120 increase in rent. They will put the rents up 120 bucks. If they don't get someone that can pay that they'll wait till the next person comes along because they know that someone will come along and pay that at some point and that will be the problem that will happen in this country. Those landlords will still sit on their assets and they will still look for their capital gains which we were told was going to stop under this Government because they would do a capital gains tax to stop capital gains. Where did that go Mr Mark? What happened to your party around that issue with the great Labour leader and the vision of stopping the housing market in that regard? But it is worse because I've got an example of something that's been happening in Hamilton that I think is just absolutely disgusting. What is happening in Hamilton is that Housing New Zealand is going out there and buying houses that are rentals to meet their targets of how many houses they need to have purchased in addition to the housing stock. Now these are rental houses that have got tenants in that are law-abiding paying tenants. Brett Hudson: Paying market rentals—yeah. Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes and guess what happens? Housing New Zealand evicts them. Housing New Zealand sends these people out of their house—Hon Nathan Guy: And they come to your doorstep. Hon DAVID BENNETT: —yes—and then they put in tenants from their waiting list. Brett Hudson: And are they paying market rent? Hon DAVID BENNETT: No they're not. They're paying $80 a week or $100 a week instead of $400 a week. So what is actually happening now—Brett Hudson: Economic geniuses! Hon DAVID BENNETT: —is we've had to have the geniuses on the other side go into the market and buy up rentals to cover up the mistakes they're making around the market. So this is another perverse entry into the market by the Labour Party which understands how a market works. They're very quiet. Now the reason they're quiet is because they know it's the truth—they do not want to go out there and deliver anything. I had one group come to me. Fourteen houses were purchased by Housing New Zealand off this one group. All the tenants were told to leave and they were all requested to leave so that they could put Housing New Zealand tenants in. So that's 14 renters that then had to go—Hon Nathan Guy: 14 families. Hon DAVID BENNETT: Families that have to now go into the rental market just to meet their targets. No recognition of how hard it is for those families. No recognition that those families now have to move. They have to move schools they have to go into a rental market and they probably have to pay more for a new house now—no recognition of that. But no Housing New Zealand can say it's got another 14 houses in Hamilton. That's all they're after—that statistic. That's all the Labour Party cared about. They didn't care about the people that they threw out of those houses in Hamilton they don't care about the people that they've put the rents up 60 bucks a week on and what is actually even worse than that is that New Zealand is a country that needs entrepreneurship. We need people to take a risk and we need people to go out there and work hard. That is one of the fundamental things that build a country and in New Zealand a lot of people do that by owning a second rental house. That is their chance to have something other than just their wage or salary. That's their way of building a future for their family and doing what they want to do in the future. That now has been taken away from them because they don't have control over that asset. They have to put somebody in there and keep them in there. You know they are talking about the European model where you can't have an empty house. You have to put somebody in it. That's the choice of the landlord not the choice of Government. Then they're saying that there cannot be any rental change for a year. That is the choice of the landlord not the choice of Government. Then they're saying that the person cannot leave. That is the choice of the landlord and the tenant not the choice of the Government. So we've got hard-working people out there that go and invest in property as their major investment and then these guys come and tell them what they can do with that investment. Well that's going to last a long time isn't it because those people aren't silly. They have worked too hard to build the money up for that. They're not going to go out there and let a pack of people that have never made a dollar in their life and who have sat in cosy seats in here for 40 years and think they're economic gurus tell them what to do—no way. They're going to smarten up and there's not going to be any houses. Then the Government's got to step in and find those houses and we get a massive big increase in the problem that we're seeing in New Zealand around housing. This is an economic policy that is doomed to failure. It is typical of what you get from a left-wing Government. It is something that fails on all accounts whether it is economic whether it is personal or whether it is the attributes of what we want New Zealanders to aspire to be. It is a failure on all accounts and they will dress it up and they will say that we are looking after a certain group of people. They're actually hurting that group of people more than anyone else. That group of people pays the higher rents. They missed out on the opportunities to get in a house and—and—when they do get into a good rental the State can take it off them. The State is doing that now and we're seeing that day in day out with examples of the State using its market power to take away individuals' ability to get a house. They may laugh but they should come to Hamilton and tell those 14 families that were thrown out by the housing Minister that they care that they want the best for them and that they put people into those houses that haven't earned that ability as those other people had because they had paid that rent. They had paid to be there and they didn't deserve to be thrown out by a Government that just intends to build dependency on the Government as its way to get people to vote for them at the next election."