Faafoi Kris: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9088. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is an honour to speak in this debate around the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. I am a State house boy. I grew up in the electorate of Wigram Haslam Crescent and I spent most of my childhood growing up in a State house. But unlike one other MP in this Committee who also grew up in a State house I am going to stand up in this Committee and say that we should defend and protect State housing here in New Zealand.Because I got to live the Kiwi Dream. I got to live the Kiwi Dream of having the State help my parents who could not afford to buy their own house when I was young and of having the support of Housing New Zealand to make sure that our family—my brothers and sisters—could live in a good house that was warm and dry when I was growing up. I got to be able to go to university and get qualifications so that at one stage of life I ended up in this place so that I can stand up and protect the things that were important to me and my family. So I am going to stand up in this Committee and say that the Government is absolutely and utterly wrong for the vulnerable families and those families who want to try to live the Kiwi Dream by selling off State housing in this bill. Not only do I protest the selling of the State houses but I protest the way in which this Government is selling these houses.In clause 4 as other colleagues have mentioned the housing Ministers themselves are giving themselves extreme powers to be able to exclude the public servants who would usually be part of a sale process from the process. It is going to be left in the hands of those Ministers. I think that puts extreme power within their hands to do any deal that they like. And the Government has got form on this whether it be Skycity whether it be Rio Tinto or whether it be other organisations that it has done dodgy deals with. This also allows those two Ministers to do whatever they like to get any price they like.And also within clause 4 I understand in subsections (6) and (7) of new section 2A we do not know where this money is going to go. Is it going to go into an account that is for Housing New Zealand? Well no. According to subsection (7) of new section 2A it is going into a Crown bank account. So it is not guaranteed that the money that is going to come from these sales is going to be ploughed into more social housing for those families who need it who cannot afford market rent.Over the Christmas break—and social media is a great thing—I got a message via Facebook from a single father who was living with one of his children in his car. That is pretty extreme. So we did what MPs do: we moved and we helped him get into a house. If this Government is saying that there are enough market rentals out there or enough social housing out there that it can sell off State houses because there is not a demand then I think that is nuts because there is demand—and I think it is extreme demand. Instead of selling off our State homes we should be building more.This morning those National MPs who were at the Salvation Army breakfast—not their National Party flag crisis breakfast held across the road—would have heard that.Phil Twyford: Who was at the flag breakfast?KRIS FAAFOI: There are a couple over there who did not go to the flag meeting who were at the Salvation Army meeting and got the message from the Salvation Army that we need more social housing not to be selling it off. I think that this bill and this clause 4 in its current form—I protest it because I do not like the way the Government is selling State housing and I do not like the fact that it is selling it.This is a picture of Iris Grove in Porirua about 5 years ago just before these houses got bowled by Housing New Zealand. I would love to show you a picture of new houses and a community flourishing around Iris Grove but unfortunately Housing New Zealand has sat on its hands for the last 5 or 6 years and done nothing for the people of that community. There are no new homes. It is a big bare piece of grass. So that kind of outlines the priority that this Government has around social housing. Instead of moving to replace some houses that it bowled over and promised that it would replace back in mid-2011 we get in this piece of legislation it moving with great speed—at almost breakneck speed as Annette King said is pointed out in the regulatory impact statement—to give itself power not to build more homes but to sell more homes.