Twyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9075. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): This is a very important bill and Labour will be doing its best to give it comprehensive treatment this afternoon in the Committee stage as we scrutinise it part by part and clause by clause. This bill is an enabling bill for the State house sell-off which was announced with great fanfare by finance Minister Bill English after the last election. It was then showcased in the Prime Minister’s state of the nation address last year. It has been an issue of great controversy around New Zealand for the last couple of years.For the benefit of folks who are just tuning in to this debate and have missed the earlier stages let me just say that Labour is staunchly opposed to this bill. It is our belief that every child in this country deserves a warm dry and secure roof over their head no matter how struggling mum and dad might be. The State housing system imperfect as it is has been the expression of that New Zealand value for decades—in fact for most of the 20th century. What this bill does is enable the Ministers—in this case it would be Minister English and Minister Bennett. It gives them unfettered and extraordinary powers to sell off billions of dollars of publicly owned land and housing that has been built up and paid off by generations of New Zealanders both taxpayers and State house tenants with the express purpose of putting a roof over the heads of our most vulnerable citizens. We will put the view time and again in the course of this debate that we are utterly opposed to the dismantling and privatisation of that system of housing and social support.There are two particular reasons that we are against this bill. The first as we have set out in our minority view and which I have just been summarising is the view that this is an enabling bill for a policy that we on this side of the Chamber find abhorrent. The second which we will come back to repeatedly during this debate is that the unfettered powers that this bill gives—which were described by the Government’s own officials as “unprecedented”—we believe pose a serious risk to this country’s reputation for probity and integrity. That is of special concern given that under this National Government New Zealand is sliding down the ranks of Transparency International’s international corruption index.The Government set out on this path to persuade New Zealanders that somehow the policies that this bill enables are basically about modernising and fixing up a broken-down tired old system of State housing. The Government has said a number of things which you will hear in the course of this debate. It has said: “Oh the houses are all in the wrong place and they’re the wrong size.” Well it still has not explained to us how flogging off billions of dollars’ worth of State housing under this bill to private interests will ensure that those houses are in the right place or of the right size. How is that going to work?The Government spent months telling New Zealanders that the powers that this bill gives to do whatever deal the Ministers see fit—to sell houses for whatever consideration Bill English and Paula Bennett see fit—will lead to the provision of State housing and social housing in a more efficient kind and compassionate way. The Government said that giving these houses to local community housing organisations would mean those people would be more in touch with the needs of State house tenants than would some Housing New Zealand bureaucrat in a far-flung office. Well now we find the Government is talking to financiers public-private partnership investors from the UK property speculators merchant bankers and Australian companies. And now we find that Bill English’s great vision for the transformation of State housing in this country is that he wants the development of retirement village companies to take over the provision of State housing.So finally after 2 years of changing their story about every month about who would get these houses—first it was going to be the Salvation Army then it said: “No we don’t like this policy. We don’t think it’s going to improve the lives of tenants.” Presbyterian Support followed and said the same thing. The Government said: “Oh the iwi will buy these houses.” Well the iwi said: “We don’t want them unless we can have them for nothing. We don’t want the Government to basically hand down houses that it hasn’t properly maintained.” So it has been one spin line one justification and one rationale after another and the latest is Bill English saying that retirement village companies are the people whom he thinks should pick up the State houses and run them at a profit.And that goes to the nub of this bill and this policy because this bill is about giving Ministers English and Bennett extraordinary powers to do whatever deal they like to sell billions of dollars of land and housing to private interests. But State housing was set up because the market will never on its own deliver a decent quantity of affordable and decent quality housing to our poorest citizens. That is why it was invented. But this Government—and it is its own words—wants to create some kind of artificial market in State housing with a whole lot of private landlords competing for subsidies.So when Bill English said he wants retirement village - type companies to take over the provision of State housing he is anticipating opening the public purse and dishing out vast quantities of public subsidies from the taxpayer directly into the pockets of these retirement village companies. It is absurd to think that a business model that allows the Rymans and the Summersets to make a killing off the wealthiest decile of New Zealand society for people to live in retirement villages would work for the 5 percent of New Zealand’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens without vast ongoing quantities of public subsidies. That is the business model that Bill English has in mind.He has just made a decision that the Government should no longer be in the business of owning and operating State houses to house our most vulnerable citizens. It is totally ideological and it is consistent with National’s congenital discomfort with and contempt for the poorest New Zealanders. The National Government just does not want to be in the business of doing that. It wants private interests to do it. It is quite happy to flog off billions of dollars of publicly owned assets to the private sector and then to basically feed them hefty public subsidies on an ongoing basis.How will that be a more cost-effective way of providing State housing because exactly the same service presumably will be provided or one would hope one that would be at least as good? Retirement village companies in this country make a 25 percent return on their assets. They are highly successful property development companies. How is the Government going to fund that 25 percent return on their assets if they take over the social housing estate under this bill? I will tell you how. The only way those companies will make the return on their investment that they expect is by the National Government dishing out hefty public subsidies.So we are going to talk in Part 1 about a number of points but I want to direct you in particular to clause 4 which inserts a whole new section 2A into the Housing Act 1955—the Housing Act that is there partly as a guide and as a legislative framework as a set of accountabilities for the provision of decent public housing for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Right into the heart of that law is being thrust by this National Government the tools for the very demise of State housing.