O'Rourke Denis: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5905. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): We need to look at the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill in the context of the housing crisis—the housing crisis that this Government has constantly said does not exist. But home seekers know the truth. They know that homeownership is now only 65 percent—the lowest since 1951—and they know the reason. It is because home affordability has worsened in Auckland by 25 percent in the last year alone. The Government’s response to that has been utterly pathetic—in fact retrograde as this bill demonstrates—by trying to get the State out of social housing trying to fob it off on to often ill-equipped non-profit organisations. It is now selling State houses at a time when they are needed the most and to make matters worse allowing them to be sold overseas. John Key says that this is OK. However the vast majority of New Zealanders say that it is not OK because they know that this bill and legislation like it is just another step in the wrong direction.The bill empowers Ministers to direct the sale and transfer of Housing New Zealand Corporation homes ostensibly for housing reform objectives but the main objective is to simply get the State out of social housing. So the real objective is to fast track that process by giving Ministers wide and indeed excessive executive powers that are not usually given in any such circumstances. Actually the Government knows that because in its own disclosure statement it correctly says: “The transaction mandate is an unusual … mechanism. It provides Ministers with the ability to effect the transfer of HNZC assets in HNZC’s name without a decision-making role for the HNZC board.” So that raises the whole question about why it would bother to maintain such a board if in fact it is not allowed to make the decisions. The reason of course is that the Government does not in fact trust it to do what the Government thinks should be done. So the Government wants to both pay the piper and play the tune itself. Nothing could be more inappropriate.The bill allows Ministers to take Housing New Zealand assets and sell them without any involvement at all of the board that governs the organisation that owns them—very very inappropriate and very bad law. This represents yet another extension of executive powers by the Government. I have constantly complained in this House that the Government is taking on more and more powers of the executive in several new pieces of legislation over the last few years thus sidelining Parliament or sidelining agencies of Government established with parliamentary authority.But that is not the worst demonstration of the arrogance of this Government demonstrated in this bill. The bill allows land acquired by Housing New Zealand under the Public Works Act to be sold and transferred without complying with the usually required offer-back process. The reason for that is obvious—and I agree with Metiria Turei on this. When Nick Smith was embarrassed over the lack of Government land available in Auckland for new housing as he claimed was available he made reckless claims about how much land the Government would dedicate for the purpose without first checking whether the land was in fact suitable for housing and without first checking whether some of it was actually legally available for housing. This bill is therefore designed as Nick Smith’s face-saving device and nothing much more than that. Belatedly introducing this bill allows the Public Works Act to be bypassed and to hell with people for whom that process was intended to protect. The Government simply does not care about their rights and it wants to fast track its State housing privatisation programme at any cost.Alfred Ngaro said in his speech that the Public Works Act has never applied to State housing. That is only his opinion and it is not actually the law. It is not actually what that Act says and people need only to look at that legislation to know that. There are 2000 houses to be sold by this back-door method so who gets the proceeds and what can they be used for? New section 2A(4) inserted by clause 4 says that they “must be paid to a Crown Bank Account.” So what is the Government’s mandate for that money? How do we know whether the funds will go back into new social housing? There is nothing in the bill to describe that. So there are many unanswered questions about that.What we can be sure of is that this Government will want to reduce the role of the State in the provision of social housing despite the majority of people who are seeking the opposite and despite the fact that without more—not less—Government investment in housing the housing crisis will in fact deepen and will never be solved. The rationale of this bill is ostensibly the pursuit of the objectives in new section 50D which includes some of these—for example: “(c) social housing tenants are helped to independence as appropriate:”. What does that mean? It means pushing people out of State houses—that is what it means. Another one: “(d) there is more diverse ownership or provision of social housing:”. What does that mean? Privatisation of State houses—that is what it means. It goes on and on—“more innovation”—and the last one: “(f) the supply of affordable housing is increased especially in Auckland.” Yeah right! How by what process and by whom? Because it is not going to be by this Government that is for sure.In the end this is just another nail in the coffin of State housing in New Zealand. There is no reason for any confidence at all that any genuine effort will be put into the supply of more social housing in New Zealand as a result of this bill and the other legislation that this Government has passed in the last few years. Nor is there any guarantee that the money will go into the improvement of social housing quality which is so badly needed or even that the proceeds from these sales will go back into social housing in any way whatsoever. I have listened to the speeches from those opposite and none of them have given me any confidence that that would be the case. None of that money it seems to me is actually likely to go back into State housing at all. The only thing that we can be sure of is that this bill is driven in fact by National dogma and not genuinely by any social housing objectives intended to improve the lot of people who rely on State housing in this country. More and more and more people will be relying on it because of the housing affordability crisis and because of the lack of opportunities to buy homes in New Zealand which is also the direct fault of this Government which has spent so many years doing little or nothing about the whole housing crisis.So in order to achieve this bill’s real objectives which are not State housing objectives this Government is willing to create in this bill unusual and excessive executive powers and to use them to trample over the rights of people entitled to offer-back provisions which they should be entitled to use. Those provisions are going to be in fact nullified by this bill and they should not be. There is no need for it. There is no need indeed for the entire programme of the privatisation of State houses. There is no need indeed for the transfer of State houses to anybody. It would not matter what philosophy you are coming from—whether you think they should be managed by the State or by private interests—none of that justifies this bill or the sale of State houses. That is what it is about. It is about a sell-off. It is about privatisation. It is about the extension of executive powers in an unreasonable way.For all those reasons New Zealand First will certainly be voting against this bill now and at every stage.