Martin Tracey: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3645. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chairperson. Thank you very much. I seek just a short call in Part 2 of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. I am pleased to see the Minister in the chair there the Hon Paula Bennett—hopefully the Minister can expand on and give some explanation around what is happening there particularly in Subpart 2 and the changes to the Housing Corporation Act 1974. I refer specifically to clause 21(1): “In section 18(2)(j) after ‘related to housing’ insert ‘(but not for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing on those matters)’.”From a New Zealand First perspective we are not 100 percent convinced by the reasoning given for the shifting of this advice to another organisation. My first question would be what Housing New Zealand did to the Minister that she no longer wants to put into legislation that it should be the one advising her or this Government about housing. The Housing New Zealand Corporation has an extensive institutional knowledge around the history of social housing in this country about the needs of social housing in this country. Why would the Minister and this Government put into the legislation that this organisation is not to advise the Minister of Housing? It does not mean that she cannot seek advice from other people. There is nothing needed there. You do not need to put into legislation that the Minister must seek advice only from Housing New Zealand. It bemuses us as to why an organisation that is entrenched in New Zealand history and that has seen and has institutional knowledge about what used to be what is currently there and about the pressures out there—even though we would have to say that the measuring of the pressures out there is completely abysmal.What is happening in our area is that there are institutions organisations and NGOs saying do not bother telling the Housing New Zealand Corporation that you need a house because actually there is no way on this planet that you are going to get one under this Government. So the need is not being clearly reflected. Perhaps that may be a reason why the Minister has decided that that advice needs to come from somewhere else. But it is a little bit like other pieces of legislation we have seen in this House—it is the removal of the requirement to seek advice from; it is the removal of the role of somebody who actually has institutional knowledge to advise. We see Subpart 2 as being a really interesting place to go to. I certainly would welcome the opportunity for the Minister to rise and actually address that.With regard to Subpart 3 and the amendments to the KiwiSaver Act 2006 we are seeing some other changes around the KiwiSaver Act and none of them are actually to the benefit of the purpose that KiwiSaver was set up to start with. The purpose of KiwiSaver was to incentivise and encourage New Zealanders to save towards their own retirement. I was the generation—I am slightly older than the Minister—Hon Phil Goff: No!TRACEY MARTIN: I am slightly older—slightly older than the Minister. She may look younger—a lot younger than me—but I am slightly older. We are of the generation that was told in the 1990s that there would be no retirement for us—that there would be none and we were on our own. Have at it. But KiwiSaver came along as one of those backstops to start to encourage generations such as my own and then future generations to make sure we were able to somehow support ourselves.This clause gives the capacity to completely remove from KiwiSaver for a period of time any of your savings to put into housing which is robbing Peter to pay Paul. From our perspective Subpart 3 is not an answer to the housing crisis or the inability of young New Zealanders to actually afford to purchase housing. It is not a true answer. So we would again seek some clarity from the Minister as to why this Government believes that actually allowing people to dip into a “Peter bucket” to pay into a “Paul bucket” is logical at this time when we know as Mr Hipkins said we are going to have to make some adjustments—and New Zealand First has its own theories about the adjustments that need to be made—as our population ages and goes forward and more and more stress is placed upon that part of our taxation system.Finally in Subpart 1 “Goods and Services Tax Act 1985” I think that personally I cannot find anything controversial in that particular area there. I guess what we are saying is that when the Government actually seeks a service from somebody else it does not have to pay the tax. At the end of the day it is taxpayers’ money. I can appreciate that taxpayers do not want to be paying again. I guess it is taking it from one bucket and sticking it into another and that creates an administrative cycle.So on behalf of New Zealand First just in closing we would certainly seek some clarity around Subpart 2 from the Minister if she is able to talk to us about why you would remove it.