Carter David: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Carter David: Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:1038] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 As Phil Heatley mentioned in his contribution the National Party will support the referral of the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill to the select committee. I congratulate the Hon Chris Carter on presenting the bill to the House because it is momentous. 
Chris Carter has admitted the bill has two main purposes. The first is to rename the Housing Restructuring Act 1992 which will now become the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992. I congratulate Chris Carter on that huge achievement! He has been a member of the House for a number of years. Many people have asked me whether we are related but I have assured them there is no relationship at all. I keep getting asked what Chris Carter’s portfolio is and what he has achieved in his time here. I have been embarrassed to say that even though he shares the same surname as me to date I cannot say there is a lot that he will be remembered for. But today we are creating Chris Carter’s epitaph. The thing by which Chris Carter will be remembered by the Parliament of New Zealand into the future is that he was the man who courageously put forward a bill to change the name of the Housing Restructuring Act 1992 into the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992. That is a huge achievement and members on the Opposition side of the House are very happy to support this momentous bill. 
The second main purpose of the bill is to allow the sharing of information about tenants and tenancies between Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development—or we could say Work and Income. National of course supports that measure because as Phil Heatley said we wanted to do that in late 1999 but Labour opposed the legislation and claimed that it breached civil liberties. Well I say to Chris Carter and the other members of the Labour Party that the time has come to get tough on people who are frankly rorting the system. We had an excellent example of that provided by Chris Carter today—an admission he will not be remembered for favourably—when with great reluctance he revealed that up to 10 percent of all State house tenants are operating a business. They are operating in many cases quite substantial boarding houses whereby they rent a house from Housing New Zealand Corporation and then they take on boarders. 
In some cases I suspect the inventive tenants are making quite a considerable fortune. Many State houses are being rented out by this Government in suburbs like Mount Albert at a total cost of $35 a week. Under the Government’s income-related rents policy it is able to rent out some of those very good houses some of which are quite sizeable for the princely sum of $35 a week. Members can imagine that if tenants have one or two spare rooms they can attract a boarder who is interested in living in those one or two rooms. They are in a position to probably charge each boarder a minimum of $100 a week. It is not a bad little lurk for those people to pay the Government 35 bucks for their rent and to then collect a couple of hundred of bucks—and I bet that that income is not being declared to the Inland Revenue Department. So it is not a bad deal for those people. 
I thank Chris Carter for bringing the legislation forward at long last. We particularly want to follow the very interesting case of the Mount Albert tenant—which Chris Carter is very quiet about; he does not want to talk about this man—with seven boarders in his house. Chris Carter should find out how much they are all paying—probably the best part of 100 bucks a week each which is $700 a week going into that house. Chris Carter should confirm to us the rent paid by the tenant but it is likely to be the minimum rent of around $35 or $40-odd a week. That is a sham particularly when over 12000 desperate New Zealand families are waiting for State houses as we speak. 
Hon Chris Carter 
: Didn’t you sell off 13000 yourself? 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: Well we have the old chimer-in; I wondered how long it would take him. We sold off 13000 State houses to wonderfully happy proud homeowners. They were people who lived in State houses and the previous National Government said to them that if they wanted the opportunity to become a homeowner we would help them into their house with the Home Buy scheme. 
Labour did not like that; it does not like people to become independent of the State. Labour wants people to be confined to the benefit to live in State houses and to be dependent on the generosity of a Government that stifles their own initiative to progress themselves. There is a total difference in philosophy between the Opposition side of the House and the Government side of the House. Labour thinks that if it can keep people downtrodden force them to live in a State house and make sure they are on a benefit of one form or another then hopefully they will vote for Labour for the rest of their lives. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: It’s scary. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: No it is not scary because New Zealanders are not as dumb as that. They are fast waking up to the fact that they can do better for themselves if they can break the cycle of dependence on people like Chris Carter and try to get out there get their own jobs and manage to buy their own houses. 
When the next election brings a National Government into office I can assure Chris Carter that one of the first bills I want to bring back into the House is one that gives people who are living in State houses the ability to be assisted in buying a State house. I will see that those people become independent and are no longer dependent on the State. I want those people to own their own houses although I know Chris Carter hates that idea. 
One of the things that new members should do is to take the opportunity to look at the ministerial register of interests which goes through the interests that all the Ministers have. New members will find that Ministers are not very good at capitalism. They have not gone out and bettered themselves. They have been quite happy to just muddle along perhaps owning the odd house in Wellington or perhaps renting a house somewhere else. But I say that the philosophy of members on the Opposition side of the House is to encourage people to get out and do it for themselves and if they end up owning their own house then as far as I am concerned that is great.