Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSocial Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3615. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Thursday 21 May 2015(continued on Friday 22 May 2015)Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed.Part 1Amendments to Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992(continued)The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members when the Committee was suspended last night the Committee was debating Part 1. Chris Hipkins had the call and he has 3 minutes 40 seconds remaining should he wish.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I do indeed wish to continue Mr Chairperson; I am just getting warmed up. As I was saying last night before I was so rudely interrupted by the suspension this Government claims that this year’s Budget is sticking with a plan that is working. The real question that New Zealanders will be asking is: working for whom? Whom is that plan working for? Working for the property developers is what this Government is really interested in not working for the first-home buyers who are struggling to get on the property ladder not working for the people who live in State housing who are being ignored shafted and are having their homes sold from under them by this National Government.Why is the Government pushing this measure through under Budget urgency? It is pushing it through because it does not want it to have the scrutiny that it really deserves. It does not want all of the social housing providers who do not want this to be able to come to a select committee and explain how this will not actually work—how this will actually result in a massive transfer of wealth from the Government sector to the private sector and it is the housing tenants who are going to pay the cost in the long term. The Government does not want this all to come unravelled through a proper public inquiry—through a select committee inquiry—so it is pushing it through under urgency.When Government members first mooted the idea that the private sector should have more involvement in State housing they tried to say: “Actually it’ll be the social sector. It’ll be organisations like the Salvation Army and these sorts of unspecified others who will be involved.”They cannot name one organisation that is actively involved in the social sector at the moment that actually wants this to happen. This is an open invitation to all the Government members over there: name one—name one. Not one—they cannot name one social sector agency that actually wants this to happen and that wants to be involved in these provisions. Simon Bridges points to himself. He is now a social sector agency in his own right. “Captain Slick” over there has now decided that he is going to become a social sector agency in his own right.This is simply unnecessary. This bill should not be being pushed through under urgency. It deserves proper scrutiny. At the last election the National Party promised New Zealanders that there would be no more asset sales. I did not see the footnote in small print that said: “Except for all the State houses that we’re going to hock off in a fire sale up and down the country.” Billions of dollars’ worth of State housing assets is now on the auctioneer’s block under a National Government that promised New Zealanders it was going to stop asset sales after the election. That was another broken promise in a long litany of broken promises made by this National Government and that is absolutely abundantly clear in this Budget. Of course we know it is not going to get back into surplus this year and probably not next year either. It is not going to deliver on its promises.It has got no plan to deal with the housing crisis that we have in New Zealand. In a very short space of time $1 million is going to be the average amount needed to purchase a house in Auckland and other New Zealanders are suffering because of that. They have higher interest rates around the rest of the country because the Government is not dealing with the housing crisis in Auckland. Even the plan to free up land in Auckland was of course a plan that the Labour Government was actioning back in 2008 which the then incoming National Government cancelled—so it is 7 years behind the eight ball. Even then the Governmentisnot going to guaranteethat houses built on that land are going to be affordable houses. It was offered the opportunity multiple times yesterday to give New Zealanders an assurance that those houses would be affordable and it did not take it because it knowsit cannot because freeing up all that land is not going to benefit first-home buyers; it is going to benefit property developers.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): When we get down to the hard end of a debate that is when we actually get the opportunity to question the Minister and the Minister can take that chance to answer the questions that we have been posing in the first reading and the second reading. We have one of the up-and-coming Ministers—well he was an up-and-coming Minister—in the chair this morning Simon Bridges and I am sure that he is going to take this debate very seriously. Last night we were told how proud and excited members opposite are about this legislation. They were so proud and excited that they took 1-minute speeches. I think the record was 27 seconds. That is how proud they were. In fact I think the speech from the member Jono Naylor might have been 27 seconds.But anyway we are now in urgency debating a bill that is not going to go to the select committee. It is not going to the select committee—for no reason that we know about. There is nothing urgent about this legislation other than that Mr Doocey from down in the South Island said that if we pass it today we will get 3000 homes tomorrow. Well of course we all know that that is rubbish. So now is the time for the Minister in the chair to answer the questions that the public would ask if they had the opportunity to appear before the select committee. I would like the Minister to tell me whether he has read the regulatory impact statement of this bill. If he has read the regulatory impact statement then why are there no reviews or evaluation reports to inform on this bill and on whether the policy given effect by this bill will work? That is what the regulatory impact statement says—that there are no reviews or evaluation reports on this policy. So the Government does not even know whether this policy is going to work because it did not bother to get an evaluation or a review on the policy.The Government has not allowed the public to review or evaluate the policy because it is passing it under urgency. Why was there no evaluation? Why not do what Sir Peter Gluckman the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor constantly tells the Government to do? What does he say? He says that the Government should base its policies on evidence—good evidence—and that good policy comes from good evidence.Hon Member: Any evidence.Hon ANNETTE KING: Any evidence would have been a help—that is true. So why was there no evaluation or review done on this policy before this bill was brought into the House? Minister we would like an answer on that.Secondly Minister why did Treasury not provide independent opinion on the impact of this bill? Why did Treasury not provide that independent opinion? From my experience as a Minister Treasury usually comments on absolutely everything whether you want it to or not. I can only assume that the Government did not want Treasury to comment on this bill because the regulatory impact statement says that no there was no independent opinion from Treasury. Why not Minister? Why not do the work to find out whether this policy is going to work for the very people who are affected by it?I think that the members opposite were absolutely stunned. The “C Team” that rolled up here last night was absolutely stunned that there was no evaluation done. Do you know what? They had not read the regulatory impact statement. Not one of them had picked it up off the Table—[Interruption] Had you? Not one of you had read it. So like lambs to the slaughter they come in here and vote for something when they do not even know how it works. There has been no evaluation done on this policy. Well that is very very poor policy making indeed.For my last question I want to know Minister why the Minister concerned wants more powers to make delegated legislation under ministerial direction. My understanding is that there is already power for the Minister but she is seeking greater powers for greater flexibility to be able to sell off State houses and all she needs to do is gazette this ministerial direction and present a copy to the House after some sort of consultation. When I look at the consultation that took place on this bill it took place with people in the community sector who did not know what the agenda was and it took place back in March when Bill English was saying “The Salvation Army are really keen on this policy. They’re going to move on this policy.” But the truth is that they were sold a pup and they are not interested in it.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): To pick up where my colleague Annette King left off not only were those providers sold a pup but also the whole of New Zealand was. This policy is about nothing more than finishing off the job of privatising and destroying social housing in New Zealand. That is the job that the National Party decided to kick off in the 1990s. Last night Kevin Hague said that he could picture the clothes and the colours of the 1990s—the pastels and the big hair of the 1990s. Kevin might even have had hair in the 1990s who knows? Actually no he did not—he did not have hair in the 1990s either.It was in the 1990s that the National Party began its ideological crusade against social housing and that is what this bill carries on. Part 1 of this bill is all about finishing the job that National started in the 1990s. There were 13000 State houses sold off in the 1990s. Every member of this House who is an electorate MP will say if they are honest that one of the biggest issues that comes through the door of their electorate office is people who cannot find housing. In my office we used to call it the “Friday 4.30 p.m.” problem where people would come in on a Friday afternoon with nowhere to live and nowhere to sleep on the weekend. They do not go to the National Party offices because they do not get any response. They come to our offices and we work hard with the social housing providers to find them somewhere to live. This bill is a charter for the Government to abrogate its responsibility for social housing.What is more fundamental in our society than the need for shelter—the basic right of people for shelter? In our society if people cannot find shelter themselves—if people cannot afford to house themselves—it falls to the Government to ask how it will make sure that shelter is provided. The National Government’s response to that is this bill. It throws away the Government’s accountability it throws away its responsibility and it pushes that on to the social housing sector. As Annette King said the social housing sector has looked at this policy and has said no. It has said: “We cannot do this. If you want us to be the people who take on the role that the National Government does not want any more then give us some money to do that. Give us some money to be able to provide that housing.” But that is not National’s agenda here. National’s agenda here is to push the problem on to other people to cut the funding as it goes along and then to blame those people for the situation that they find themselves in.The extraordinary thing about this legislation in Part 1 is the power that the Minister gains from it to enter into “flexible purchasing arrangements”. What a form of doublespeak. What a form of doublespeak from the National Party. The flexible purchasing arrangements are to allow the Minister to hock this stuff off to property developers—to the people who funded the National Party’s election campaign last year. [Interruption] That is right. This is about making sure that there is a sweetheart deal possible between the Minister and property developers. Hock it off at a cheap price—make it try to work. But the fundamentals of this policy are deeply deeply flawed.You know we have housing Ministers—and goodness there are tonnes of them in the National Partynow—who cannot actually come up with a decent policy. There are tonnes of them. We have housing Ministers telling us that the problem with the social housing stock is that it is poorly configured and in the wrong place and that the solution to this is to sell the poorly configured housing in the wrong place to somebody else—and somehow that will solve the problem. Somehow the problem is solved by shifting it on to somebody else. How typical it is of the National Government to solve a problem by shifting it on to someone else and blaming them for not sorting it out. That is what Part 1 of this bill is fundamentally about. It is about a National Government with no real plan for how to make the lives of people in social housing better and it would rather flick the problem off.So the questions for the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges are important. Why are these flexible purchasing arrangements being put in place now when there are no social housing providers who want to buy into this scheme?Hon Annette King: It’s only for the developers.GRANT ROBERTSON: So it can only be for the developers. The question that Simon Bridges needs to get up off his chuff and answer right now is: why is National pushing this policy through Parliament today when there are no social housing providers who want to take this up? It is an ideological experiment. This bill—Part 1—should have been scrutinised by a select committee. It should have gone to a select committee so that social housing providers and members of the public could have at least tried to turn this pig’s ear into something useful but that opportunity was not granted to New Zealanders.I want to make another point about what Part 1 does. What Part 1 does is finally kill off Housing New Zealand’s role as a social housing provider. After more than 7 years National has come in and said: “Housing New Zealand you are a landlord. That’s it. Plain and simple.” In fact this bill goes even further. This bill takes it from landlord to letting agency. That is what this bill does. Once upon a time Housing New Zealand played a role in understanding the needs of its tenants. How many electorate MPs in this House and list MPs as well have Housing New Zealand tenants coming into their offices because Housing New Zealand is no longer there to help support them in their lives?I have got a question for the Minister. In this environment where all these problems are being shoved away down the road here on The Terrace in my electorate are the Gordon Wilson Flats. They have been empty for 2½ years. What is happening for social housing in a community like Wellington City? Wellington Central is a wealthy electorate on average but when you look at the lives of the people who got thrown out of the Gordon Wilson Flats their lives are not getting better. They need support from a housing provider that looks at their broader social needs. Housing New Zealand used to make policy about housing—about the fact that we might actually need a plan for housing in New Zealand and that we might actually need to think about the future needs of those who live in our social housing. But Part 1 of this bill says that that is not the Government’s responsibility any more. So not only is it outsourcing the provision of social housing but it is also outsourcing the policy for social housing. It is saying that Housing New Zealand has got no role.Maybe they will not be saying this actually because they appear to be mute today. But perhaps at some point a National Party member might get up and say “No he’s got it all wrong. It is MSD who is doing housing policy now.” Well good luck finding someone in the Ministry of Social Development whom you can talk to about social housing policy. Good luck finding that distributed among the thousands of other tasks that people in the ministry have got. If we are serious about the importance of providing shelter to our most vulnerable citizens then we would have an agency whose job it is to focus on that. Instead what this bill will do is take that away completely from Housing New Zealand and turn it as my colleague Phil Twyford said last night into the public equivalent of Barfoot and Thompson—a real estate agent a letting firm. That is not good enough. That is not what a responsible Government does.What a responsible Government does is take seriously its responsibilities to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Just because the Government and Bill English like some kind of Southland version of Rip Van Winkle have woken up to the problem of inequality and poverty overnight after 7 years does not mean that the National Party has got a plan to lift people out of poverty. It does not mean that the National Party has got a plan to ensure that we reduce inequality—for it to suddenly decide after 7 years of slumber to do something in this area. Actually this bill is much more instructive about where the National Party is at when it comes to the most vulnerable New Zealanders than a small amount of money going into some families’ bank accounts.This bill shows that the ideological agenda of the National Party is not over—it is not over. In fact this finishes off one part of it and says that social housing is somebody else’s problem. Well on this side of the Chamber we think that the shelter of our most vulnerable citizens is a core responsibility of the State. As well as its own provision of social housing it is a core responsibility of the State to work with the other people who are providing social housing not to shove the problem on to them with inadequate funding. This bill thoroughly undermines what we have come to believe is important about social housing. Nothing has stuck in my craw more in 7 years than being lectured by National Party members about State housing and the legacy of Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser. This bill is a slap in the face for the legacy of social housing.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): If you listened to the Labour Party members you would think this bill was some kind of wildebeest Gene Simmons - like monstrosity coming to get you with tongue flapping in the wind. Well actually Andrew Little might like that and we have heard a lot of rhetoric from Grant Robertson on this bill—rather better actually I might say than his leader yesterday but be that as it may. So what is this monstrosity we have heard about? What is it doing? Where is the secret agenda? Where is the ideology? Well it is just this. We see this in the preface: more flexible and innovative social housing—more flexible and innovative social housing. So for all the talk and all the frankly scaremongering we have got from the deputy leader of the Labour Party that is what this is. I for one think that is a great thing. I was with Paula Bennett and Todd Muller in Tauranga just last week looking at the kind of thing this bill will enable more of. It is really really exciting.Hon Ruth Dyson: Yeah? Tell us.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I will tell the member Ruth Dyson. She wants to know. Two old rundown State houses in a suburb in my electorate are going to become five new brick I think warmer drier houses that will be fit for purpose for people and that people will really want to live in. In that area it will not givejust those people living in those houses a lift but it will give the entire area a lift and that has got to be good for the people in those houses and the people in that suburb and actually in the wider community. Another one we went to on the same day was eight flats—just to give a bit of detail—a little bit behind Tauranga Hospital. Eight flats—they are all right. There was nothing particularly wrong with them. They have become with the help of the Tauranga Housing Community Trust 16 brick and tile homes that the people in those homes are really proud to live in. They are warmer they are drier they are newer—they are just better. And there are more of them.Here is what this bill does. It allows for more of that—for the flexibility and for the innovative approaches to that that ensure that we will see more of that in the Taurangas in the Invercargills and throughout New Zealand. And here is the thing: this is winding the Opposition up. This is winding the Opposition up. Why is that? Because it knows that what I am saying is true. It knows that for 9 years under Labour under Ruth Dyson and under Annette King—I cannot blame Phil Twyford; he was not in Parliament—those houses got older. They got more decrepit. They had problems. And actually we are going to see the solutions here. Annette King asked: “Well who else is going to do this?” and “Who actually wants this?”. Well we have seen on TV already that Accessible Properties says it wants to see it and the old IHC—a really big entity in this space—wants to see this.Grant Robertson says: “Oh this is all ideology. That’s all this is; it is all ideology.” Well if it is it is simply that actually we think there is room for more flexible approaches to this. We think there is room for more innovation. We do not think Wellington has all the answers unlike Grant Robertson representing Wellington Central bureaucrats. We think there is room for warmer drier more fit-for-purpose homes—actually more homes in many cases going from three or four-bedroom homes with one person living in them to what oftentimes they actually want: more homes that sometimes are smaller and sometimes are bigger and that meet the needs on the ground.We know on this side of the House that Wellington does not always have the best answers and that actually in the Taurangas and the Invercargills where we are trialling this sort of approach already it can be done better. There are people on the ground who actually know—it is radical; I know that it is radical—what is best for people there who are on the spot and who know and care about those communities rather than as Annette King used to do it just someone in Wellington sitting at a desktop thinking about this and saying: “Hmm maybe this’ll be nice. No that looks fine.” This approach will see more innovative flexible approaches on the ground throughout the provinces of New Zealand. It is a really good set of solutions for New Zealanders.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a brief call in the Committee stage of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. I would just like to acknowledge that it is Pink Shirt Day today and I am hoping that this House will take a break from bullying. It would be a really nice thing to have a day without any personal abuse within this House.I want now to speak specifically to the Minister in the chair the Hon Simon Bridges and to ask him some questions because we have just heard from the Minister about flexibility and innovation. That was pretty much the entire content of his speech—that I heard. It seemed to echo the speeches that we heard in the first and second readings last night in the 20-second speeches from members of the Government. I would say that was probably the average length of the speeches in which they said that this legislation provides flexibility and innovation. Where is the detail people? This is a bill going through under urgency with no public scrutiny and with no Treasury input on the financial consequences of this bill. We are being told that it provides flexibility and innovation. Where? In what situations? Why? What is the problem that this legislation is trying to solve? We are not even being told that amount of detail.The documents that I am looking at in front of me are saying that it will give the agency a new ability to negotiate prices with providers in order to cover diverse situations including but not limited to tenants’ needs resulting in higher or lower tenancy management costs. Tell us what that means in practice because we also heard from the Minister last night in one tiny snippet of detail that this is about say if the tenants have disability needs; that this will enable contracts that are able to help housing providers deal with their wider needs—this wraparound service that we hear so much about. Well that is something I would like to support but my understanding is that there is the ability to do that through other contracting provisions. Why are the needs around disability needs being provided through housing? Please explain it to us. If you have got a good reason for it then we may support it but explain it. At least give the public credit by explaining what this is even about and the reason for it.I would also like to say that the Minister said last night in another tiny snippet of detail that may help us to understand this legislation that it also provides Housing New Zealand with more flexibility in contracting and the ability to fund Housing New Zealand. I do not have the housing portfolio for the Greens but I have got a little bit of an understanding of housing and of some of the ways that the system works—possibly more than your average New Zealander. I still do not understand that. I am not sure why we need Housing New Zealand to be able to get more flexible arrangements for the funding of its services. Could you explain that to us?Minister could you also please explain to us why we are separating out and preventing Housing New Zealand from providing policy advice to the Minister. Why are we stopping the ministry which has the experience and the relationship with the people in the community from feeding any learning it has back to the Minister in order to inform policy making? Why? I would like some reasons. I would like the public to be able to at least make an informed decision about their view of this bill more than just the rhetoric of telling us that it is about flexibility and innovation. They are words and without any substance they have very little meaning.CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call on this new piece of legislation called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill which to me is quite ironic really particularly when we talk about the flexibility that I think this bill is actually trying to address and that is the flexibility of the socially impoverished people of this country being flexibly rammed around corporations in new innovative ways which are the words that I keep hearing from Simon Bridges about flexibility and innovation.That is what we think of this Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill which has been pushed down at such great speed that we do not actually have time to consult with the public to find out what the real serious concerns are. We are not hearing anybody out there screaming from the rooftops saying this is a great idea. New Zealand has had over 100 years—100 years—of standing up for those people in need with social housing. I do not think there is anybody in this room who does not know somebody who has been brought up in a State home. In fact the Prime Minister himself got brought up in a State home. Many of us have had those same privileges—I will call it a privilege—but what is happening here is that this service is being packaged up sold off and given to the friends of the National Party so that they can make some profit out of this situation.National is saying that this is good. For whom? It is good for the corporations and the big companies that are actually putting this deal together but it is not good for the people who seriously genuinely need State homes and support from the Government. This is certainly not something that should be packaged up and given out to people who are designed to make money whichever way they can. This is where the Government has got a legal and moral obligation to stand up for those people and their rights to ensure that they get sufficient housing support.This bill is being pushed through very very quickly. Mr Bridges spoke about warmer drier and more fit for purpose homes. But if the commercial sector is going to be doing this they are going to be creating more expensive homes. If you were truly interested in looking after people to get them into their first homes then you would put something in this legislation to make sure that those homes stayed available and affordable for the people who need them the most.This legislation is not going to be good for New Zealanders. We do not see the benefits at all. Part 1 is all about taking away those rights of New Zealanders to have a comfortable position in their local areas. We definitely do not support it. Thank you.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): If there was ever any doubt about the Hon Simon Bridges the contribution that he has just made in the House puts to rest any doubt that he has well and truly drunk the Kool-Aid. He got up and made actually not a very good defence of the Government’s policy on social housing. He showed a lack of understanding of the detail and really just kind of parroted the most superficial lines that he gets from Paula Bennett about what is really going on with this social housing policy. Here is the big lie. Here is the big lie about National’s social housing policy. National wants the country to believe that it is all about making homes warm and dry that it is about innovation and that it is about giving power to the community. We heard Simon Bridges say that local communities can always do it better than someone in Wellington making all the decisions. So this legislation is dressed up in the language of empowerment of community and of modernising the housing stock. It is none of those things.Let us talk about what is really going on here. In November last year Bill English was basically caught candidly telling the truth to the New Zealand Herald when he said that the purpose of this policy is simply to get rid of State houses off the Government’s books. He thinks it is a lazy use of capital for the Government even to own housing. He wants someone else to own the houses. He does not care who. He said that on the record. He said: “We can sell them to anyone. It could be the Salvation Army it could be property developers.” He does not care whom the Government sells the houses to. He simply wants to get the Government out of the business of owning houses. The model that the National Party wants to move to is one where anybody can own the houses and the State will simply pay a direct subsidy into the pockets of the landlords. It is the accommodation supplement on steroids. It is exactly what happened in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and in countless other countries around the Western World.Bill English likes to get up in this House and say: “We’re old-fashioned in New Zealand. It’s time we caught up with the rest of the world.” Well I will tell you Mr Chairman what has happened in much of the Western World in the last 20 years. The State under right-wing Governments has retreated from the provision of social housing for the most vulnerable citizens in society and has handed that job over to the market. It is rolling back the lessons that were learnt all around the world during the 20th century—that the market alone will never deliver a sufficient quantity of decent housing for society’s most vulnerable citizens. That is what this Government is doing and it has said it. Nick Smith has said it and his officials have said it. The point of this “ideological burp”—as Annette King has described this policy—is to try to create an artificial market in social housing. As Grant Robertson said this is Bill English going back to the 1990s when National introduced market rents and flogged off 13000 State houses which ended up in the hands of property developers and private landlords. This is simply a continuation of that neo-liberal quest of Bill English to get the Government out of the business of providing social housing.Rather than listening to the mealy-mouthed platitudes of Paula Bennett we can actually look at the National Government’s behaviour to judge whether it is in fact seriously interested in providing more decent housing for New Zealand’s most vulnerable people. Let us look at what it has actually done rather than listen to its rhetoric. Since National has been in Government it has stripped Housing New Zealand of its core functions. It is now as we have been saying simply a State-owned version of Barfoot and Thompson. It is no more than a letting agency and this bill takes away one of the last vestigial functions of Housing New Zealand—that is its ability to do research to evaluate its programmes and to advise the Government of the day on social housing.National has sold down housing all over the country. In fact mostly what it is doing is shifting State houses out of regional New Zealand and into the north. It is taking State houses away from Dunedin away from Gisborne and away from Palmerston North and it is stripping out a valuable social and economic asset from regional New Zealand. It is not building any new State houses. More than anything that gives the lie to the rhetoric of Paula Bennett and Bill English. In the middle of a housing crisis—in the middle of a housing shortage—when people are living in cars and garages it is not doing the obvious thing which is increase the supply of housing and build more houses. In the middle of a housing crisis the National Government is using Housing New Zealand as a cash cow. It has taken half a billion dollars in dividends out of our country’s main social housing agency and that money has gone straight back into the consolidated account.When Bill English was asked “What are you going to do with the proceeds from the sale of State houses? Are you going to build more houses with them?” he said: “No why would we do that? We don’t want more State houses. What’s the point?”.Hon David Parker: He used to say that. He said that until 2008.PHIL TWYFORD: Yes. Yes he did and then he changed his tune.The Government has also tightened the eligibility criteria. It is so tight that even the poorest people in this country cannot even get on the priority waiting list for Housing New Zealand. Every MP on this side of the House who represents a community knows that there is massive unmet social need that there is hardship and that there is poverty in our communities. People cannot even get in the door because they have to ring an 0800 number. And worse than that they have no prospect of getting on the Housing New Zealand waiting list because this Government has tightened the eligibility criteria in a cynical cynical move simply to cut the waiting lists. The effect of that policy is that there are 3000 vacant State houses sitting around this country while people are languishing in expensive cold damp substandard rentals.There are thousands of vacant State houses and that completely gives the lie to Paula Bennett’s claim that this Government is about housing more people and looking after the tenants. It is a manufactured crisis where the Government is leaving dozens and dozens of empty State houses sitting boarded up and attractinggraffiti in regional centres all around New Zealand and that is the excuse that it uses for then selling off those houses. We know that Housing New Zealand has been offloading these State houses all around New Zealand—in every regional centre town and city around this country—at significantly below their Government value. It is flicking them off with no regard for the taxpayer’s value and is selling them straight into the hands of property developers and private landlords. That is what this Government is all about.It has subjected hundreds of tenants including families with young children the elderly and the disabled to needless anxiety and stress notwithstanding the fact that Nick Smith stood in this House 4 years ago and promised that he would not do that. The Government broke that promise. It is throwing people out on the street because they have committed the crime of earning enough to pay a market rent while living in State housing. These are the policies on social housing that the National Government is implementing. They are destroying the dream in this country that people should be able to have a decent roof over their heads no matter how much they earn. Paula Bennett and John Key stand in this House and I do not know how they can do it—how they can stand up with a straight face—to dismantle and dismember the very system of social support that gave them a decent start in their lives. It was OK for the taxpayer to give John Key and his mother a decent house in Christchurch in the 1960s which gave him a start in life but now apparently according to the National Party State house tenants are the undeserving poor. Government members demonise them; they parody State house tenants. Nick Smith gets up and says that there are Mercedes Benzes parked out the front of State houses. That is the political cover that the National Party uses to destroy the system of State housing in this country.This bill gives flexible purchasing arrangements. What a euphemism. It gives the Minister wide discretionary powers to do sweetheart deals with property developers so that the Government can flick off billions of dollars of State houses. It does not care whom it sells them to; it wants to get rid of them by hook or by crook. The current arrangements that the Government has where it can pay an income-related rent subsidy—the difference between a market rent and a social rent—that is what gets paid to Housing New Zealand. The Government has not been able to sell off these houses to the Methodist Mission the Salvation Army or anybody else. This bill is its “get out of jail free” card. It enables the Government to flick off those houses and do sweetheart deals with property developers.TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I take a short call on behalf of New Zealand First to strongly oppose the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. I have to congratulate Bill English. It has taken him 20 years to get to a place through incremental changes with dots on a page that the National Party has been trying to get to since the 1990s and that is to completely dismantle Housing New Zealand Corporation.What will be left once the advice issues get handed over to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment? And what does the ministry know about actual social housing? Is this another situation where “Mr Fix-it” is going to take over and stuff it up? Is that what this is about? Is this really a partnership between Paula Bennett and Stephen Joyce that the country should be worried about going on into the future through the next election perhaps?What are we doing through this bill in taking away the advisory capacity from Housing New Zealand Corporation and placing it with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—business innovation and employment? How interesting because suddenly the rhetoric is again around human beings being productive units. In this one with the housing of those human beings that is now all about being a business. This is a continuation to give National its credit of the spin about “New Zealand Inc.” as opposed to thinking about it as “Family New Zealand”. That is where New Zealand First is coming from. This is about “Family New Zealand”.We find it interesting because whenever New Zealand First says that with immigration we should possibly be encouraging people to spread out throughout the country the answer from the Government benches is “You can’t tell people where to live.” but that is exactly what the Government intends to do with regard to social housing. That is exactly what it intends to do. So apparently you cannot ask a new settler to spread out around the country and enjoy some of the benefits of regional New Zealand but if you are a poor New Zealander you can. If you are a poor New Zealander the Government can actually decide where you will live because it is not going to provide you with any housing in an area where it has decided it is not going to do any regeneration around employment. The Government has decided that it is going to suck everybody into the main centres because—business as usual—it is “New Zealand Inc.” as opposed to “Family New Zealand”.So that is one reason why New Zealand First will strongly oppose this bill. The other reason is that it is just an out and out sell-off. You have got to hand it to the people whom that Government pays to market the words inside their press releases—I hope that the taxpayers are not paying all the media bill for the National Party over there but you have got to hand it to whomever it is paying. They know how to spin the English language—that is for sure. They know how to take what is a bitter pill and gloss it up in some sugar coating and then feed it to the New Zealand public with words like “flexible” with other words like “choice” for example. Apparently if you are rich in New Zealand you can have choice in New Zealand but if you are poor in New Zealand the Government will use that word to beat you up. That is the reality of what is happening here today and it is happening with every single piece of legislation that this Government is forcing through at this time under urgency.The other thing that we find very interesting is the situation where what we are really talking about is that social contract that New Zealanders believed in—or the majority of New Zealanders believed in—from the 1960s. Instead of actually saying that we are going to send this off to private business now—and it will be private business; the NGOs do not have the capacity—the Government will create what will appear to look like an NGO but at the end of the day it will be private business that will buy these houses. It will be private business that will on-sell these houses.It is interesting that this is being pushed through under urgency. I wonder whether it will be pushed through this quickly prior to 2017 because there just might be the off chance of a change of Government in 2017 and there just might be the off chance that there will be new legislation not allowing non-resident or non - New Zealand citizens to buy housing properties. But that legislation under current free-trade agreements cannot be put through retrospectively so it cannot affect anybody who has already bought huge numbers of rental properties in New Zealand. So this piece of legislation moving very quickly creates another organisation into which these houses will all be placed and then they can be on-sold to non - New Zealand residents. We find it highly suspicious. We will be opposing the bill.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I rise to take a call on this bill. I want to challenge members opposite who have read their economic textbooks—and I believe there are many. I can see faces across the Chamber that I have heard preaching on the benefits of sound economics. Indeed I guess I am talking particularly to those—Hon David Parker: Thatcherism 101.Dr DAVID CLARK:—yes interested in Thatcherism 101—who sleep with Hayek under their pillow those who have to run a spray mister at night in their room lest they spontaneously combust—the really dry ones; the really really dry ones. Even they will have heard of market failure. Market failure is something they might not want to acknowledge. They might not want to acknowledge it but it is something they in their heart of hearts know exists. They know that we have State housing provided in this country so that even those who struggle every day have a backstop have security and have a safe place to raise their children and that is for the benefit of future generations beyond just today. Those who are walking the tightrope of poverty know that they have underneath them a safety net provided by a sound State housing system.As we have heard from many members contributing today that safety net has been taken away by this Government. It is no longer interested in addressing that market failure. It wants to pretend that it does not exist. Well in my experience it does still exist. I can think of very recent examples a couple of which I would like to outline today. These examples are poignant to this bill because these are people who would like to ensure that they stay in State housing because of their experience of going into the private housing market.The first story I want to tell is of a family that I visited during my home visits. They live in a house that meets their needs roughly. It is a house with the right number of bedrooms. It is within a reasonable proximity of other family members and therefore they can share the care of children and grandchildren. But when I went to visit this family the house was rundown. It was cold. It is a private rental. They want to be on the State housing list. They used to be on the State housing list but they got bumped off. They got told they could have a private rental.I went into that house and I was horrified. It is a house I had visited many times as a student. It was pretty rundown then but now it has holes in the wall it has no insulation and it has young children living in it. They have runny noses. They have tears in their eyes. I do not want to be too emotive about this but these are children who are going to develop preventable diseases through their childhoods and we as taxpayers will end up bearing the cost of that for their whole lives—and they and their wider family will end up bearing the cost of that for their whole lives.I sought to intervene on behalf of this family—in fact they asked me to intervene. They asked me to represent their cause because their landlord would not listen. They want simply some insulation for which there are subsidy schemes. They want the holes in the wall repaired. But what happened when I did seek to intervene when my office sought to go alongside them to meet their landlord was that their landlord said no. He said they may not bring a representative with them to that discussion; if they did they risked being turfed out.That is the kind of bullying that can exist in the private market where the need is so great—is so great—where there is so much unmet need for social housing that private landlords can exploit the system. A good State housing social housing provider ensures that those private landlords are kept honest and that they do have to meet basic needs because they otherwise cannot compete in the market. But that situation currently does not exist at least not in Dunedin where I live.I have heard just yesterday of another case where there is a Dunedin family living in a State house that has just had its fire escape removed. And they have been told it is not coming back. It is the second case I have heard of in the last fortnight where a fire escape has been removed from the second story of a building that children sleep in and is not coming back. That is emblematic to me of what is going on in the social housing sector.The Government is physically—actually physically—dismantling the State houses that provide care and security for the most vulnerable citizens in our society. And here we have in this bill an attempt to flog these State houses off. These examples point in that direction and of course the State housing sales in Dunedin will continue. We have seen many come on to the market. Many are currently vacant in Dunedin despite the need despite the families who come through my door every week and despite the families who come through my colleague Clare Curran’s door every week in Dunedin. Those houses are kept vacant because of the criteria the Government applies. It says the need is not great enough.How great does the need have to be? How great does the need have to be? Surely when there are children in private rental accommodations getting preventable diseases the need is great enough to want to provide State housing. Yet Minister Smith has previously released papers saying that the Government expects that there will no longer be the need for the 1500 State houses in Dunedin. It is expecting the need to go down to 1000 State houses and it is selling them off now.This is a Government determined to get out of the social housing sector determined to wash its hands of the social problems it is creating by not meeting that market failure. This will have very long-term consequences for New Zealand. That is why we on this side of the House will continue to vigorously oppose this bill at every stage. We note that the public have not been invited to make submissions on this bill and I think that that is shameful and very telling of the Government’s agenda here.I doubt that we will hear much from the members on the other side during the debate. I would like to be proven wrong. I would like them to stand up and tell me that in their heart of hearts they do not think this market failure is going to hurt future families. I would love for them to get up and speak to it but actually I suspect they want to see this bill through the House as fast as it will go because they do not care about these people.This is a Government that does not care about these people. It is shameful. They may go to sleep with spray misters in their rooms—they are expensive spray misters that not everyone can afford I am sure—and they may to sleep with Hayek under their pillows but they should not sleep easily at night while knowing that they are doing away with these protections for our most vulnerable. These protections ensure that private providers are kept honest and must meet a certain minimum standard. This dismantling of our State housing sector cannot be allowed to continue. We will vigorously oppose this bill at every stage of its passage through this House.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Perhaps I should not be naive after the length of time I have had in this House but I really hoped on behalf of my constituents and the people in my city that we would have seen a Budget that confronted some of the pressing social problems that we are dealing with at the moment. I really hoped that today under urgency we would be working across the House together on legislation that would make a difference. Well that was naive was it not? It was naive because what we have seen in this debate and from this Minister in his contribution today is nothing more than double-speak and spin. Talk about more flexible and innovative social housing—how does this bill create that Minister? This is not about more innovative approaches. This is code for privatisation and opting out of the social responsibility that any Government has to make sure that people have stable decent homes where they can raise their kids in security and in warm and healthy housing.Eighty years ago this year men and women sat in this House and debated legislation that did just that. We set up State housing because that was the guarantee that the lowest-income people in the country the most vulnerable people in the country could still aspire to provide their kids with a decent home and a decent start in life. The Prime Minister should know that. That is how he got his start. I am proud that it was a Labour Government that gave his family help when they needed it.But what have we got now? We have a Government that is ideologically driven which now just wants to privatise State housing and opt out. I talked about double-speak and Orwellian language. Take this statement that the Minister put out in relation to this legislation: this package was about supporting moves to housing independence. Independence is a wonderful thing is it not? What was she really saying? She was talking about 3000 eviction notices that will be given this year to those people who might have just got their chin above the rising level of the cost of living in housing and now they are out on the street and they are trying to find alternatives for their family.Talking about as the Minister did more flexible and innovative social housing is simply to disguise a Government that has given up that is opting out of its social responsibility and that now wants to give these houses not to an organisation like the Salvation Army as it had promised before but to property investors and developers that do not have the well-being of the poor the vulnerable and the low-income people of this country at heart.I want to ask the Minister this question: what is there in this legislation that requires urgency today? What is it? What aspect requires us to rush through this Committee today without the scrutiny of a select committee the provisions in this bill? I have read it backwards and forwards Minister and there is nothing there that requires urgency. Do you know why we are doing this under urgency? It is because this Government does not want to subject its superficial legislation to the scrutiny of the public through a select committee. That is why we have got it here today.What evaluation has been done? The Government is about to pass over the fundamental responsibility of providing social housing from an organisation that has had decades of experience and the flexibility of providing housing where and when it is needed. It is going to pass it over to the private sector. So I asked the Minister for Social Housing the Hon Paula Bennett this question under an Official Information Act request: what analysis has been done of the benefits or disadvantages of social housing being provided by NGOs—because I thought it was NGOs not the private sector when I wrote the request—rather than through Housing New Zealand? Listen to this reply: “Your request for analysis on the benefits or disadvantages of social housing being provided by NGOs rather than through Housing New Zealand is refused under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act as this information does not exist.” Do you know what this answer says? It says that we have got a bill before the Committee that will privatise State housing and no analysis has been done by the Government of the implications and the consequences of what it is rushing through this Committee without the benefit of scrutiny by a select committee.If you have any doubts about that just have a look at the departmental statement that accompanies this legislation because it confirms that there is no evaluation and that not even Treasury has commented on this proposal. This proposal is not a serious governmental proposal; it is an ideological proposal by a Government that pretends it is at the centre and throws a few coins to the poor when it suits it politically to do so but at the same time it is undermining the ability of our community and our Government to provide people with a fundamental housing need.I want to know from the Minister what this will do to increase the supply of social housing. When I looked at the figures Minister I saw that this Government has not increased Housing New Zealand homes; it has cut them by 1600—1600 homes—in the last 3 years. It slashed it. Now it wants to give away another couple of thousand houses to the private sector without knowing what is going to happen.And what is happening to our people on the ground who could be helped by this legislation? Our people on the ground are paying rents that have risen by $1300 on average in the last year—$25 a week. It is an interesting figure that $25 a week is it not? If you are a beneficiary it is gone already. It is gone on rent increases. But actually it is not $25 a week. Read the fine print—if you are in a State house a quarter of that goes anyway. So $6.25 goes on increased rent for your State house. It is not $25 a week for them; it is about $18 or $19. If you are in the private sector your accommodation supplement is cut. So it is a case of giving on the one hand and taking on the other.But going back to this legislation nothing in this bill helps those people whose rents are going up at six times the rate of overall inflation each year. There is a crisis of affordability for people to be able to get into homes and this bill does nothing at all about that. Actually think about the people at the bottom of the heap. Who are they competing with now? They are competing with 40 percent of the population who today have no chance of homeownership. Do you know what has happened to house prices in Auckland? They have gone up by 15 percent $100000 in the last year alone—$100000. What pressure does that put on rent? What pressure does that put on ordinary hard-working New Zealanders who actually want to buy their own home but cannot and are now forced into the rental market and can out-compete the people at the bottom who previously at least could have looked to Housing New Zealand to provide them with housing security?There is a crisis in housing affordability in this country. Once upon a time we could guarantee that an activist State would do something about that. Is this bill going to increase social housing by one house? The answer is no. The answer is no; it is likely to further reduce it. The Government is opting out of its responsibility at the very time it should be stepping up to its responsibility. If we want kids to get a good education if we want healthy kids that starts in the home and it starts with having a secure stable home and a warm and healthy home. Traditionally a Government would say that Housing New Zealand had that responsibility. Housing New Zealand through one piece of legislation after the other has had its role and its responsibility cut back. With this bill it is not even going to be able to provide housing advice. Why would it waste it’s time for a Government that has never listened to the advice? I know the Housing New Zealand people who provide the homes. I know the people in Work and Income who now allocate them. If the Minister went out from his ivory tower and listened to those people he would understand that there is a crisis and he would equally understand that there is nothing in this legislation that will go one iota towards resolving that crisis.This Budget was a failure and this bill is a failure in terms of actually making a difference for a better New Zealand.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am very happy to take a call in this Committee stage as we talk about Part 1 of the legislation which of course is the enabling legislation for the great State house sell-off that we are seeing here today wrapped up in ideological rhetoric of “flexibility”. What we have had is the Minister—because none of the members opposite are willing to stand up and defend what is a terrible policy and a terrible piece of legislation—trying to justify how this really is doing right by the tenants. But if we look at what Part 1 actually does we heard the Minister wax lyrical but I would ask the Minister to take another call and point us to the provisions in the legislation we are here in this Chamber debating that do what the Minister claims. Point me to the clause that does what the Minister claims this legislation is going to do. He cannot because this legislation does none of that. The Government can purport that this bill is all about flexibility but this is about selling off State houses.We have not heard about how one more piece of social housing is going to be provided. My colleague Phil Goff just finished off his speech by asking that question. I too would like to put that question to members opposite. Tell me how this bill provides for more social housing in New Zealand. Tell me how more houses are going to be provided for the people who are currently struggling to find accommodation in this country. Tell me how one more person is going to get off the Housing New Zealand waiting list but more important tell me how one more person is going to get on to the Housing New Zealand waiting list. In the last quarter 4000 of the 6000 people who applied to go on the waiting list—not to get a house but to go on the waiting list—for a Housing New Zealand house did not make it and this legislation will do nothing to help those people.My colleague said that he imagined that members opposite were having to sleep with their spray-misters and their copy of Hayek. Well they are also cuddling up to their fluffy toy version of the Big Society. This is what they are trying to do in this legislation. But like experiments in other places in the world it is not working. We had the social service agencies lining up and saying that this is not going to work. They said they cannot see how the Government’s plan to sell off State houses will in any way benefit tenants. They are saying that they do not have the capacity and they do not have the infrastructure to manage a sizable housing stock such as the Government is imagining.So what are we left with? Who is the Government going to sell to? Surprise surprise it is going to be developers. It is what it always intended anyway wrapped up in the guise of non-governmental organisations who have told the Government they do not want a bar of it. That is why we are debating this legislation under urgency—so those non-governmental organisations do not get a chance to come to the select committee and tell the Government they do not want its offer. What they do not want is their private property developer mates coming to the select committee and saying that they are lining up to buy these houses. Are they lining up to buy these houses because they want to provide wraparound services that provide well for some of the most vulnerable in our country? No they are lining up to buy these houses because they see a chance to make a profit because that is what the private sector does. The reason why these houses need to stay in public ownership is that we have decided in this country that the Government should intervene and that the Government has a responsibility to ensure that we do have housing as a crucial and critical part of our welfare safety net and that when people need it it is there and we do not have families who simply cannot find a place to live.Many of us have spoken about the challenges that people in our electorates are facing and what we are seeing on the ground at the coalface every day and every week. I can only guess that members opposite do this as well. The job of a constituency MP is increasingly being taken up with housing issues. Increasingly housing is forming a major part of our workload. It is people who simply cannot find somewhere to live who cannot get on to the waiting list and who cannot deal with Housing New Zealand when they are there. I would like to use a couple of examples from my electorate. One is a woman in her 60s who cannot afford to be in the private rental market in Christchurch—CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise to take a second call on this terrible piece of legislation. The more I read it—and let us be honest there is not a lot to read to be fair—it makes me feel a little bit sick. I look across the Chamber and I see every single backbencher in the National Party with their head down listening to their iPod not looking like they are interested.This piece of legislation is seriously going to affect New Zealand for a very very long time. I have to say that we have got a proud history of looking after those people who need support the most. What is going on here is shameful and it is going to bite us. Dare I say there is an old saying—actually it is not that old: “We have changed.” The old New Zealand would not do what we have done and what we are going to do right now. To let democracy be pulled out from underneath us to get this piece of legislation rammed through under urgency does not make any sense to me whatsoever. There are a few bills coming up over the next couple of days and this is one of the bills that we need to be standing up about proud to fight against—absolutely.In 1969 my parents bought their first home when interest rates were 22 percent. How could you imagine that you could actually pay for a house at 22 percent? Now interest rates are only 5 percent and we cannot get there. The difference is that back in 1969 the house that they bought was only $14000 and their annual income with my father working was only $12000. I have to say that this has changed in every way. Back then it was affordable for people to be able to get into a home. If you did not have a job that was paying well enough you could get State assistance and actually have a home where you could be brought up you could work and you could have a lifestyle.This privatisation—the corporatisation of the State housing industry is a fugazi. It does not even exist. What we are trying to do is give wealth and control to corporations. We are not actually looking after our people in this country which this country has an obligation to do. This is a sell-off. It is going going gone. We are getting rid of our State-owned assets and we getting rid of our State-owned housing. Goodness me we are probably going to privatise our army—that is the next thing. I am sure we have got some insight into some of the fictional stories that are coming out that say that one day this is going to be the direction of the world. It is going to be globalised and corporatised.This is a step in the wrong direction. This is knee-jerk legislation which we are very very concerned about. One of those concerns is that when you are getting advice as a Minister you want to take good advice from people who know the situation at the grassroots. The people who know what is going on in this country with regard to State housing are the people who are organising that State housing—the corporations that are there to look after people the most. Now all of sudden this legislation says that the Minister no longer has to listen to what they have got to say.Under this legislation the Minister can now take advice from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. That ministry does not look after State housing. We are concerned that the second dot point of the explanatory note of this piece of legislation the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill is going to undermine the information that is required to make sound decisions for this Government. We oppose this bill strongly. Thank you.CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): This bill gives the Minister the flexibility to flog off billions of dollars’ worth of State housing to the National Party’s friends and developers but what this bill does not do is to take seriously the housing issues that we are faced with in this country. This bill completely ignores and sweeps under the carpet the fact that as a country we are facing a housing crisis.The Government is underplaying the housing crisis and acting like the flogging off of State houses is somehow going to address the issues that we have with housing in this country. It has stated recently that it is managing the Housing New Zealand waiting lists but when I put through an Official Information Act request on the numbers of people who actually applied for Housing New Zealand houses—not the ones who actually got on the waiting list—we saw that of the 1853 applicants who were placed on the social housing list there were 4000 other people who did not even make it on to that waiting list.The Government is ignoring the fact that there is a demand for affordable housing and that there is a need for increased social housing not the flogging off of Housing New Zealand houses to the private sector. There is a need for increased housing. When the Government is asked time and time again whether it is going to expand the amount of social housing that we have it goes silent because it is doing nothing to respond to the issue. What we see from members on that side of the House is that any way they can they will privatise. Any way they can they will find a way to flog off State housing.I want to talk about one example actually in my own electorate. The project that I am going to talk about is the Waterview Connection project where houses were purchased for the purpose of that project. Housing New Zealand houses were purchased for the purpose of that project but when that project was undertaken it was found that a number of the houses were no longer required. You would think that if the Government took seriously the demand for housing that we are facing in New Zealand—in Auckland—it would think: “OK New Zealand Transport Agency let’s put those houses back to Housing New Zealand so we can somehow try to meet the demand for social housing that is out there in Auckland.But what did the Government do? It did not divest it back to the State. Instead it took that opportunity—any way it can it will take the opportunity—to sell those houses that were purchased for the Waterview Connection project to private developers to private owners. The Government could have gone back to the State. It could have met the need that is there for social housing but instead it sold them off privately for a profit of course a monetary profit. But who is not profiting here? The people who are not profiting here are the 4000 people who cannot even get on to the waiting list for social housing. The people who are not profiting here are the people who are on the waiting list but will be on the waiting list for a long time because of the fact that demand is increasing but the stock of social housing is not increasing.I think that members on that side of the Chamber should be ashamed of themselves—ashamed of themselves because they think that if they pretend we do not have a housing crisis if they pretend that people are not in need of housing then the problem no longer exists. But the fact is that New Zealanders know there is a problem. New Zealanders know that housing is unaffordable. New Zealanders know that they cannot access warm healthy homes. The Government is trying to say it is going to do something about it but it has done nothing about it.We are facing the biggest housing crisis as a country that we have ever faced and here we have a Government that ignores it and thinks that the answer the panacea is selling off our Housing New Zealand houses our State houses to their private developer mates. If New Zealanders are not already aware of the fact that that is this Government’s agenda I have no doubt that within the next few weeks or the next few months that agenda will become very very clear to all New Zealanders out there who are looking at this problem.I just want to say that what we have here is a number of New Zealanders out there looking for houses and the Government is doing nothing to respond to the need that is there. We have the National Government determined to sell off billions of dollars of State houses by hook or by crook. Bill English says he does not care whom they get sold to; he just wants them off the Government’s books. The Government initially said they would go to NGOs. NGOs do not even want a bar of this initiative because of the fact that they know it is not going to work.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I have a couple of questions for the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges if he could lift his head out of his magazine for just a second and listen to the debate that is going on in the Chamber that he is supposed to be responsible for. I have a couple of questions for him. My first question is this: how is the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill going to make one iota of difference to the housing crisis that we face in my electorate of Palmerston North? And if the Minister does not think there is a housing crisis in Palmerston North then he should get there and come and talk to the people and talk to some of the agencies that deal with people who are in need of social and emergency accommodation in Palmerston North.If you drive around my city right now—this has been the case for quite some time and it is getting worse—there are huge tracts of empty land where there used to be State houses. On Botanical Road that land has been empty for 7 years with absolutely no plan for what to do with it. On Rugby Street that land has been empty for 3 years. On Selby Place that land has just been emptied now. And finally we hear there is a plan. Can anybody guess what the plan is for that land? Sell if off flog it off. And this land is not even going to the NGOs or the private developers or the foreign banks that the National Party wants to bring in to social housing. Oh no this is not for social housing; this is just outright privatisation—selling it off and that means less social housing for the people who live in my community.How do National members justify that? Well I will tell you how they justify that. They say there are only 20 people on the housing waiting list. Well we have just heard from Megan Woods and Carmel Sepuloni how they do that: 6000 people apply for a State house in New Zealand and 4000 of them are denied even the opportunity to get on the waiting list. And where do those people go when they are denied access to the waiting list? Well they end up at the doorstep of the Salvation Army which has had its funding cut and has had to reduce the amount of emergency accommodation that it can provide. They end up at the doorstep of Women’s Refuge which is now having to screen women with families who come and ask for its assistance. Women regardless of whether they have suffered abuse are being told by the Ministry of Social Development to go to Women’s Refuge to seek housing because Work and Income cannot satisfy their urgent and desperate need for emergency accommodation.So Women’s Refuge—which is already cash-strapped has already had to close down one facility in Palmerston North and is having more of its funding cut in this very Budget—is having to waste time determining whether or not women with families who come to it actually fit the criteria for its service because this Government is abrogating its responsibility to provide emergency accommodation to people who desperately need it.That is what is happening in my electorate and if any National MP honestly believes that the situation is rosy then get yourself down to your local Salvation Army get yourself down to your local Women’s Refuge and go and talk to any of the other agencies. In my electorate it would be Methodist Social Services or Shepherd’s Rest which have also had their funding cut. Go and ask them what the real story is.I say to Government members that your numbers do not tell the truth. Your numbers have been deliberately constructed by you to try to fool the people into thinking there is no housing crisis. The people are not fooled. The people are not fooled. We know full well there is a massive shortage of emergency accommodation. People are living in their cars people are sleeping under bridges people are having to couch surf from one friend to another just to try to find a place to put a roof over their head.Families are accommodating other families with massive overcrowding in those houses because this Government does not want to participate in a fundamental role of the State and that is to make sure that every citizen that it represents actually has somewhere to call home and a roof to put over their head and the safety and security that comes with it.I urge members on that side of the Chamber who cannot be bothered to get out of their seats and participate in this debate to go to the Salvation Army and to go to Women’s Refuge and find out the truth.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): To follow on from my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s speech to this Committee earlier this year I had a woman in my office who was desperate. She had been living in women’s refuges for 4 months with her two grandchildren in one room—in one room. She could not get on the Housing New Zealand list. Both the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand did not want to know. It took the intervention of an MP to battle with them for weeks to get her on the list. Both of those children were living with her because they had severe behavioural issues. They should not have been in one room and here we had two Government agencies that were impervious to their plight. Now finally she is in a State house but it took the intervention of an MP. Does it take the intervention of a member of Parliament’s office for every single one of those people who cannot get on the list?I challenge those MPs on the Government side of the House to say that they do not have those people coming into their electorate offices that they do not see the plight of people who are at their wits’ end and who are desperate. I challenge those people that Government to take off the cloak of conservative compassion. Take off that cloak of conservative compassion which is a sham and show us your real faces the real face of ideological privatisers who are dismantling our social safety net by privatising State housing and cementing an underclass in this country. Cementing an underclass—that is going to be the legacy of John Key. That is going to be the legacy of the National Government—an underclass a true underclass in this country.And why do we have this bill coming in under urgency? Because the Government knows that it will come under scrutiny. People will come out of the woodwork and say exactly what they think. As for the social service agencies that have operated in this country respectfully for over a century—the Methodist Mission the Salvation Army Presbyterian Support—what do those people have to say about what this Government is planning? They think it will not benefit those who are most vulnerable. Whom will it benefit? It will benefit the privatisers. That is why the Government should take off the cloak of conservative compassion.Paula Bennett and Bill English came to Dunedin in January. They came to spruik their social housing rort. They told us all that it was going to be nirvana that it was going to be innovative and flexible as Simon Bridges has told us. They told us that there are going to be warm dry homes. They told us that the trend was for one and two-bedroom homes that nobody wanted the three or four-bedroom homes. Well in Dunedin that is so not the case. Those people who cannot get on the list are the people who need the three or four-bedroom homes—the people who are desperate who are living in terrible circumstances in the private sector who are living under circumstances with slum landlords who are taking advantage of them. They are living in houses that are cold and damp and sending their children to hospital every year. This is the cementing of an underclass it is the cementing of poverty and it is the cementing of children who are living in circumstances they should not be living in. This is a great tragedy and every MP on the other side of the Chamber will have seen these people in their electorate offices and they should be ashamed.I would like to challenge the Minister sitting in the chair Simon Bridges to get up on his feet and tell us what regional New Zealand will get out of this bill. Get up on your feet and tell us what regional New Zealand will get out of this bill. Will there be a single new piece of social housing? How will those houses be made more warm and dry? What accommodation will those people be living in? What are their options? If they cannot get into social housing what are their options? Get up on your feet and tell us.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Actually I want to start by quoting from the Prime Minister’s press release titled “Supporting children in hardship focus of Budget”. What I want to highlight is that currently we have 4808 families on a Housing New Zealand waiting list. These are families who have been through the Ministry of Social Development process. They have been identified as those most in need. In fact priority A is defined as people who are at risk and includes families with a severe and persistent housing need that must be addressed immediately. We are actually talking about 10000 children who currently do not have a home. I think the question everybody should be asking is: how does this piece of legislation contribute to housing those children? The Minister for Social Housing is here. I would love to hear from her about how this piece of legislation will help the 10000 New Zealand children who currently do not have a home and who have been through the Ministry of Social Development process and have been deemed to be in severe and persistent need of housing. How does this piece of legislation prioritised by this Government meet the needs of those children?When I look at where this piece of legislation came from it came from a Government-commissioned report called Home and Housed: A Vision for Social Housing in New Zealand. It was commissioned in 2010. The central proposition of this commissioned research was No. 1 that private sector organisations could provide social housing to those most in needmore creatively than the Government. The second proposition was that there needed to be a plan to move people from renting to owning their own home. Again I ask the question: how does this piece of legislation contribute to those I guess two crucial outcomes from that commissioned report?What we know from the social housing provider - sector is that actually social housing providers do not want the transfer of houses because for them the transfer of Housing New Zealand houses is a transfer of responsibility. I want to quote Major Campbell Roberts who said that he does not believe “the lives of tenants would be sufficiently improved by such a transfer.” And why is that? It is because to take responsibility for a home means to make sure that that home is warm and dry and is going to contribute to the health and well-being of the family that is living in it. The reality of a lot of the houses is that they are not fit for purpose and actually this Government which is supposed to provide for those most in need should ensure that the houses that are being provided for those most in need are fit for purpose. So the private sector organisations that this Government wanted to transfer that responsibility to actually at the end of the day said no thank you.We think it is a core Government responsibility to provide housing for those most in need and to ensure that the 10000 New Zealand children who are waiting with their families on priority A and B housing lists which the Ministry of Social Development has determined for itself get the home that they need. Why is it important for our children to have a home? Well actually it is relevant to their education. If children do not have a home how are they supposed to have continuous education? How are they supposed to go to an early childhood education provider which we all know is the basis for getting a good education in our country? How are they then supposed to go to a primary school and reap the benefits of our public education system? How are they then supposed to belong to a family where mum and dad have security of tenure in the home that they want to build for their children so that they can go and get further education themselves or possibly go to work? How is that supposed to happen when we have a Government at the moment that wants to abdicate responsibility for providing houses and homes for those most in need?I am an MP in South Auckland and actually across the South Auckland area of the 2537 families waiting on the Housing New Zealand and Ministry of Social Development waiting list we have 1070 families and over 2500 South Auckland children who do not have a home. Forty percent of the people on this waiting list are Māori. So how is this piece of legislation ensuring that our Māori children have a home and are able to get quality early childhood education and are able to go to school? Pacific children and families account for 19 percent of the families and children on the Housing New Zealand and Ministry of Social Development waiting list. How is this bill going to contribute to meeting the Better Public Services target? We know we have got big issues with Māori and Pacific children. This Government wants to focus on participation.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on behalf of the Green Party. I have to say that this legislation is quite indicative of the National Party and this Government’s approach. I think we all want better outcomes for everyone in New Zealand but the approach that is often adopted by this National Government is not supported by evidence it is not going to solve the problem and it is actually going to make it worse. Everyone in New Zealand needs a place to live and call home. It is a fundamental human right. The way we build a prosperous and happy society is not with the approach the Government tends to take which is maximising profit for rentiers and vested interested groups and selling off the assets of this State; it is by looking after our people. Surely having a place to live is one of the core components of looking after our people and particularly our children.Social housing could be improved in New Zealand; there is no question about that. There are things we could do better. There may be houses in the wrong place and there may be opportunities for Housing New Zealand to deliver to more people but this legislation is not going to do that. If Housing New Zealand is not able to manage our existing stock well why do we think that social housing providers would be able to do a better job and why do we think the market would be able to do a better job? Certainly all the evidence from overseas shows that in the countries that do get the best outcomes in terms of education childhood development reducing inequality and health outcomes all of that flows through to a strong economy. Of course the purpose of the economy is to look after people not just to have a strong economy for the sake of it. In all of the countries that do that they have a strong role for social support. The State is in the best position to provide social support particularly when it comes to houses for those who are the most vulnerable.The housing crisis in Auckland in particular is about both supply and demand. I just want to refer to the Productivity Commission’s paper on housing affordability from several years ago because if you look at its analysis of the social housing situation it suggests there are areas that need reform. Most importantly it points out that starting reforms at State housing without addressing demand pressures and without building sufficient options for people to move on to is generating a major risk for those who are reviewed out of State housing. I would say that it is pretty clear that the Government has taken pretty much no action to address the demand problems particularly in Auckland. It has not done anything to address the supply issues. It likes to characterise its Resource Management Act reform or “deform” as being all about achieving affordable housing but there is no actual evidence that what it is proposing in the Resource Management Act reforms or the Special Housing Areas legislation is actually going to increase the supply where it needs to increase or reduce house prices.All the Green Party is really asking for is that we take an evidence-based approach and that we look after our people first. There are many steps that could be taken to improve housing affordability in New Zealand. On the demand side there could be a comprehensive capital gains tax excluding the family home and the tax treatment of investment properties could be improved. The Government made a tiny move in that direction. It is too little too late. Of course the Green Party has been calling for the same tax treatment of income from labour for quite a long time and it is nice to see that there has been a slight move in that direction. In addition to tax treatments it makes sense to have restrictions on foreign capital coming in only because we know that foreign capital coming in is having an impact on house prices and land values as it is in many other jurisdictions. There are some pretty obvious ways that we can deal with that like by limiting ownership of land to residents and citizens in New Zealand.On the supply side the State is in the best position to address the supply issue of houses and not just houses but homes and neighbourhoods. The places in Auckland where land values are highest and the places where people want to be is where we need to be providing dwellings for people—where they are close to jobs where they are close to education and not out in the middle of nowhere where they are going to have an incredibly long commute and will have to own multiple cars. There is no point in increasing housing affordability—JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Members the question is that the question be now put.SUE MORONEY (Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This is a substantial piece of legislation. There are several members on this side who have not been able to participate in this debate to date and I request that you reconsider your ruling.RON MARK (NZ First): This debate is quite a serious one for New Zealand First. A number of our members have left their offices and come down here to take the opportunity to take a call on this and they have not been afforded that opportunity.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Thank you. I am ready to rule on this matter. The question will be put. There have been 21 calls taken by the Opposition. This is the third closure motion and I am going to put the question.PITA PARAONE (NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I accept your ruling and the reference to the number of calls. I seek your reassessment of your decision with regard to the fact that this is an important piece of legislation and it has circumvented the normal select committee process. In view of that I just wonder whether or not you may reconsider.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am aware of the process and I am prepared to put the motion as it has been—Ron Mark: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No I am not going to take a further point of order from the member. I have taken several points of order—sit down while I am on my feet please. I have made my ruling and my ruling is that the question will be put.RON MARK (NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This is a new point of order.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I will hear the point of order. I suggest that the member be very careful about how he puts it.RON MARK: Could you advise how many calls New Zealand First has had.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Sorry I did not hear. Could you restate the point of order.RON MARK: I know you stated that the Opposition has had 21 calls. Could you tell me please how many calls New Zealand First has had.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Three.RON MARK: Thank you.ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Can I seek your guidance please. I stood to take a call at every single opportunity. The main reason was that there is a mistake in this bill that I wanted to highlight. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The fact is that it is the Chair’s prerogative as to when he will put the question. I have accepted a closure motion and I am going to put that question. [Interruption] Sit down please. Continual points of order around this particular position are becoming quite frustrating. Members will have to accept that there have been a large number of calls on this particular part and we have only—[Interruption] Do not interrupt me while I am on my feet. I am the Chair of this session and you are not. There is another part to be debated. There will be full calls given in those debates. I have outlined the number of calls that parties have had.CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I will not make a long point of order but I will make three brief points. The first is that this bill is going through all stages under urgency and it has not been to a select committee. The second point is that there are members who have been seeking the call since the beginning of the debate who have not been given a call and other members have been given multiple calls. I think that does create an unfairness in this process. The third point is that there has been a long tradition in the House that where the Government does not engage in the debate that is not used as a reason for closing down the debate prematurely.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): In ruling on the point of order I am going to continue to put the question. The fact is that the Opposition and all parties have the ability to marshal who is going to speak. They all have the ability to make calls. Not every member who seeks a call in every debate does get a call; that is the history of it. Some of us go back quite a long way and remember how these things work and have worked in the past. The most frustrating thing about being the Chair in a debate such as this is that you think of your best lines while you are sitting here and you do not get the opportunity to use them. Having said that I believe that on analysis people will find that there has been a significant numbers of calls. Many members have had the opportunity to make their points. The points being made are now becoming repetitive so I am going to put the question. [Interruption] I am not taking any more points of order. [Interruption] Please be seated. I am not taking any more points of order on this matter. The question is that the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.Ron Mark: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): We are taking a vote. Please be seated.Ron Mark: I understand that but it is about the vote.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I will accept your point of order.RON MARK (NZ First): Mr Chairperson through you I would like to ask that someone please check that Māori Party vote. I cannot believe that that is the vote that they are taking on this piece of legislation.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The vote is being cast. That was not a point of order.A party vote was called for on the question That the Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Part 1 agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The member Ron Mark will leave the Chamber. He has been here a long time. He knows that votes are called in silence. He was reminded of that and he decided to interject on three occasions casting aspersions on people who voted in a particular way. He will leave the Chamber.CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I understand the decision you have just made. I waited until the vote was completed before intervening. I do understand the point you have made and it is out of order for a member to interject when a vote is being taken. That is absolutely correct. I do ask that you consider when determining how long the member will be out of the Chamber the fact that this is a bill going through all stages under urgency and this is in fact the only opportunity to participate in the debate.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I will put my mind to that. The member is still within the Chamber. I must admit I was tempted to quote him from 2 days ago.Ron Markwithdrew from the Chamber.Part 2 Remedial and other mattersSUE MORONEY (Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am seeking your guidance on an issue that I think we will come up again during the course of this debate. The point of order is this: I understand that during your decision on the last part you said that Opposition parties had had 21 calls on that part. That differs from the record that we have been taking of the calls. I wonder what the process is for addressing discrepancies in the record-taking.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The process is outlined in Speakers’ rulings 64/4-6. Speakers’ ruling 64/4 states: “The [chairperson] is the sole judge as to whether or not he ought to sanction the putting of the closure motion”. In respect of the official record of who has spoken when and of how many calls have been taken this is retained by the Clerk and is available for inspection. If the member wishes to she can align them with her own records.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Part 2 of this bill at clause 21 continues with this ridiculous notion that Housing New Zealand should not proffer advice to the Government. Clause 21 continues that. We live in a country that is wealthy. We are told every day by the National Party that we are living in a wealthy country and yet increasingly people cannot get houses to live in. We have got more people living in parks. The number of homeless is increasing. We are seeing that in the newspapers and in magazines like North and South. We have got people living in cars. We have got people living in garages. And we have got members of Parliament like Paula Bennett referring people in housing need to the camping ground to live in caravans and huts.We have got house prices that are the highest they have been for ever in New Zealand and some of the least-affordable housing in the world. We have the lowest rate of homeownership in New Zealand since the 1950s and yet the Government says it does not want decent advice about housing. In the social housing sector things have got so bad because of the ridiculous mismanagement by this Government. It does not let Housing New Zealand answer questions about need. It has stopped that already. It has got so bad in Labour Party constituency offices in part because National Party members sometimes quite frequently will not even address the causes of concern of their constituents which means that those people are coming to Labour Party offices in addition to our own constituency voters. It has got so bad that our staff are pulling their hair out.Not only that people out there are so frustrated that they cannot get a roof over their heads for themselves and their people that they are abusing our staff and threatening them. That is never excusable but the level of frustration in society has become so high that we have had cases in South Auckland where people are pulling knives on our staff. They are so frustrated that they cannot get an answer as to where they can get emergency housing and yet we have got less advice coming from the ministries because they do not want to know.I drove to Invercargill a couple of weeks ago. I went down through Ōwaka and came through the southern parts of Invercargill as I came in. The private rental stock the basic level of which will always be held up by the Government rental stock is in an abysmal state. These are cold parts of New Zealand. There are rotten houses with holes in the walls. I was shocked at the number of houses that I went past in these cold areas that just had a sheet draped over the window of a single-glazed house with rotten frames where the glass drops in the frame and where there are holes in the sides of the walls. People have got no alternative and the Government has not got any minimum standard for housing. All of those houses are legally let in this wealthy country where poor people suffer because of the inadequacy of the Government’s housing policy.Paula Bennett rates herself as the next leader of the National Party. This—Hon Paula Bennett: Rubbish!Hon DAVID PARKER: Look—it is promoted on the websites of the National Party. Judith Collins has already thrown herself under a bus and it is a competition between Steven Joyce and Paula Bennett. New Zealanders Ms Bennett hate hypocrisy. They hate hypocrisy and they do not like to see people who get ahead in New Zealand having had access to a State house now ditching the system. This will be the Minister’s bête noire. This will be carried with her until the end of her political career.Bill English when last in Government tried to get rid of income-related rents. He could not. That National Government sold 13000 houses but it lost the income-related rents and it has not even been brave enough to go directly after that this time because it knows that people think that poor people should not have to pay more than they can afford particularly people with mental illness or disability.SUE MORONEY (Labour): I am shocked as I speak to Part 2 of this bill because what happens in Part 2 is that it actually guts the Housing New Zealand Corporation and it washes the Government’s hands of any responsibility for providing decent housing for New Zealanders. It is an absolute disgrace because in Subpart 2 of Part 2 the Housing Corporation Act changes so that the Housing New Zealand Corporation is not even responsible for giving policy advice to the Minister any longer. How disgraceful is that?The Minister does not want to hear the policy advice from the Housing New Zealand because if the Minister did hear what was actually going on out there the Government would know that it is going to have blood on its hands. It is going to have blood on its hands from this disgraceful attempt to absolve itself from any responsibility for providing decent housing for New Zealanders.I come from the Waikato and in the Waikato region here is what is happening in housing. Housing New Zealand is not going to give advice to the Minister to tell her this any longer so listen up Minister because this is what is happening. Aucklanders are marching down over the Bombay Hills in their droves to buy affordable housing in Hamilton because they cannot do that in their own city where they live and work in Auckland. This is because the Government has failed to fix the housing crisis. It has buried its head in the sand and pretended that it is not happening. Well it has been happening and now that housing crisis is marching south into the Waikato.In Hamilton house prices are going through the roof and rents are going up on literally a daily basis as Aucklanders—and there is no problem with the Aucklanders because it is not their fault; it is the fault of the Government for doing nothing—are having to move down to Hamilton to buy their first affordable homes and they still work in Auckland. They have to travel backwards and forwards between those cities on a daily basis and that is creating a housing crisis in Hamilton. So what is that going to mean? Well what it means—and we will not hear from the Government Waikato MPs on this issue; you will not hear them getting up and speaking on this—is that there are people living in cars there are people living in garages and there are two to three families living in one home just to make ends meet.Just the other day in Hamilton I was at a network meeting where the issue of housing came up. One of the community workers asked the Housing New Zealand person who was in that meeting whether houses are going to be sold in Hamilton. I felt really sorry for this man but what he said was: “Oh no no. No houses will be sold in Hamilton. It’s great news. They are going to be sold in Waharoa and in Ngāruawāhia.”—Waharoa and Ngāruawāhia.If anyone knows the Waikato what two poorer communities could you find in the Waikato than Waharoa and Ngāruawāhia? That is where the Government is going to be flogging off these State houses. It says that there is no need there. There is no waiting list apparently in Waharoa and Ngāruawāhia. Well when I heard that I went straight back to the 1990s because in the 1990s when a National Government flogged off 13000 State houses I was one of the people who stood and formed a human ring round houses in Waharoa to stop those houses from being picked up in the middle of the night by that National Government and being shipped up to Auckland so that it could charge a higher market rent for them up in Auckland and leave the people in Waharoa without the housing that they desperately needed.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Come back to Part 2.SUE MORONEY: Mr Chair why this is about Part 2 is—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You are giving a Part 1 speech. Come back to Part 2.SUE MORONEY: —that the Minister is no longer going to hear from Housing New Zealand about these—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! The member will resume her seat and I am sorry to interrupt her. She should have taken the indication I gave her without me having to stand on my feet. This is a Part 2 debate. She should have another look at it and not just continue with a Part 1 speech.Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Again I will just make a couple of very brief points the first of which is that traditionally—certainly in the time that I have been in the House—when a bill goes through all stages under urgency and particularly when a debate has been curtailed on one part there is some scope given to members speaking on a subsequent part if they have not had the opportunity to make all of their points on the first part to address the wider part of the debate. That has always been the—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Thank you for making that point of order. You may resume your seat. There is also a convention which the member will know very well that if she wants to do a little bit of straying she makes at least some reference to whatever is in Part 2. She has been here a long time for as long as I have. She knows the rules. Let us hear it.SUE MORONEY: In clause 21 where this bill will take away the ability for Housing New Zealand to give policy advice to the Minister the Minister is not going to hear this information from anyone else. Housing New Zealand is not going to tell the Minister because in this part of the bill it has been reduced to being just a badly run State-owned property developer. It is a property developer; that is what it has been reduced to because clause 21 in Part 2 says that it is no longer required to give any research or policy advice to the Minister.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a privilege to take a call on Part 2 of this bill. Ever since this Government took office it has been shaving away the functions of Housing New Zealand and clauses 20 and 21 of this bill continue that trend. Clauses 20 and 21 remove some of the objectives and the functions of the corporation that we colloquially know as Housing New Zealand. This continues as I said the trend that this Government has had for some time with Housing New Zealand. If we go back to the very start of the first shavings of the functions that are featured in clauses 20 and 21 I think that may have been the 0800 number that Housing New Zealand used to operate but then when there were waiting times of 2 to 3 hours or even 4 hours for some of the customers waiting for an answer to some of their basic questions there was a certain level of frustration. So that was the first change and the first shaving away of a function becausethere were fewer front-line staff.Speaking as a local MP in the electorate of Mana I say that the next shaving of function was the removal of a front desk in the city. So we went from a city with a considerable number of State housing tenants a high demand and a high capacity through that office to a situation where there was no front desk for the people of Porirua to go to and do their business. This was just not on in a city the size of Porirua and with the number of State house tenants. Clauses 20 and 21 of this bill just continue that trend of neglect for Housing New Zealand. The fact that this Government is taking away those objectives and those functions from Housing New Zealand in a way says that this Government does not want the story to be told of what is going to be the outcome of this piece of legislation.I said at the beginning of my speech that it is a privilege to speak to Part 2. Sometimes people say that just to fill in a bit of time but it is a privilege because no one else in New Zealand apart from members of this Parliament gets to scrutinise this piece of legislation. It is being rushed through under urgency and some pretty basic questions about the functions and objectives should be asked of this Government by people from outside this House. I am thinking about the people who live on Warspite Avenue on Commerce Crescent on Arahura Crescent on Driver Crescent in my electorate who want to know what is changing in this piece of legislation and what will change in their lives.These functions of Housing New Zealand are changing in clause 20 and 21 so who will be their landlord? It is a pretty basic question from someone sitting out in the community: who will be their landlord now? In the past it has been Housing New Zealand and now it is a mixture of the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand but with the functions changing in Part 2 who is going to be their landlord? What kind of rent are they now going to pay? What kind of tenancy are they going to have now? What happens to their children? What happens to their schooling? Are they safe in their community? These are all the kinds of questions that needed to be asked in a select committee process but this Government will not do that and has not even bothered to answer any of these questions in this Committee stage.These are major changes in clauses 20 and 21 and as I say they continue the trend of this Government having to wash its hands of any responsibility of social housing in New Zealand. I grew up in a State house as well but I do not want to be a political hypocrite—I do not want to be a political hypocrite. I want to come to this House and make sure we care for and build on some of the things that I had that were the very building bricks of the success that I have had today to make sure that the generations that follow can have what we have had. But no this Government wants to take that away. Clauses 20 and 21 are just another chapter in this long history of this Government basically wanting to get rid of Housing New Zealand and to have nothing at all to do with making sure there are affordable homes for the most vulnerable Kiwis in this country. Because if the market will not supply it who should? The answer from that side of the Chamber is “not us”. But on this side of the Chamber we know there is a responsibility and that is why we will build on social housing when we are in Government next.CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise to take a call on Part 2 of this piece of legislation. To try to keep it as relatively narrow as possible is probably not going to be the easiest because let us be honest the devil is normally in the detail but there are a few details lacking here—there are only a few paragraphs. Basically the essence of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill—I have to read that every time because it is so long-winded—in Part 2 is really about two things that I can see and that is taking away the GST in the first part. Whether that GST to be removed from the housing is really to do with making it more affordable—I do not think so. There is nothing in this legislation that suggests in any way that if you take GST off the costs of housing they are going to be transposed and put into the beneficial places for those people who are actually going to be paying those rents. If you really were interested in looking after the people paying those rents then take GST off residential rates and take GST off food. Those are the sorts of things that will go far further than taking GST off the accommodation costs for those people in those houses.This package that this Government is putting together and putting out there for the property developers will be its sum game. I cannot believe that the National Government members sit there silently. Not one person is standing up to speak on this legislation. In particular I invite the Māori Party to say what this legislation is going to do for the Māori people of this country. This is eating at the core of their issues. The biggest issues that we have in social housing deprivation throughout this country are now going to be handed over to those large corporations those property developers and we are not hearing anything that says in any way that the Māori Party is going to oppose this bill. In fact at the last count it is supporting it which absolutely beggars belief. I cannot understand that.Subpart 2 of Part 2 “Remedial and other matters” in the explanatory note to the bill is “Housing Corporation Act 1974”. Let me read it out to you because it is quite short but to be honest those people back home wherever you are watching—I am sure there are a good dozen of you out there—might want to know this: “Clause 20 repeals section 3B(b). The effect of the repeal is that [Housing New Zealand Corporation] no longer has an objective to provide advice and information on housing to the Minister of Housing. Clause 21 amends section 18(2) by making clear that [Housing New Zealand Corporation’s] research and monitoring function described in section 18(2)(j) does not include research and monitoring for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing on those matters.”From now on the Minister for Building and Housing is going to be getting his advice from the people who are trying to get industry and employment for those people. This absolutely contradicts what this whole State housing is about. It is about looking after the people who need to be looked after the most. This is taking away their ability.I would certainly love to hear how the Minister thinks this is going to benefit New Zealanders but also the minority groups of New Zealanders and specifically the Māori people in this country who need a voice and we are not hearing one. We need to get some idea of how this is actually going to be of benefit to them and the rest of the people who are living in poverty in this country. We in New Zealand First like the other comrades on this side absolutely strongly and vehemently oppose the bill and we would just love to hear some words coming back from the National benches on how those members can justify supporting this absolutely abhorrent piece of legislation. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is a telling indictment on the current National Government that the only time its members are willing to get up on their pins and talk in this debate is when they are trying to shut it down. They are not willing to stand up and actually defend the clauses of this bill. I want to turn to some of the clauses that have not yet been mentioned in this debate and they are the clauses around KiwiSaver—clauses 22 and 23—that make changes to the KiwiSaver provisions in the legislation that allow someone to withdraw their contributions to KiwiSaver to purchase a first home. What this bill does is that it means that somebody who has been in another superannuation or retirement savings scheme and transferred to KiwiSaver will still be able to access those provisions where previously they might not have been able to. So potentially it is quite a sensible provision in terms of ensuring that people can use their retirement savings to buy their first home.But let us just think about that for a moment. That is how far we have come—when the main solution for people who cannot afford to buy their first home is that they can pull out all of their retirement savings to buy a house. That is what it has come down to. They have to make a choice between whether they are saving for their retirement or are able to buy a first home. That is the actual reality that many New Zealanders are facing. We are not talking necessarily about young people—well they are young relatively speaking but we are talking about people potentially in their 30s who might be looking at buying a first home. If they do that and they put all of their savings and all of their money into buying their first home and they then spend the next 10 to 15 years getting their head above water in terms of paying that off how long are they going to have to save for their retirement? As Michael Cullen said when he was the Minister of Finance you cannot eat your house. People are going to need to have savings in their retirement if they are going to live comfortably. I support this particular provision in the bill. I do not necessarily support the other provisions and I am going to talk about the other provisions in this part in a moment. I support this provision but I think we do need to take a step back and ask how on earth we have got to this point where it is a choice between owning a home or saving for retirement because we need New Zealanders to be doing both. We need to make sure that New Zealanders are supported to do both so that they can own a home and they can be sure that they are going to have a comfortable and secure retirement. Unfortunately the reality is that many are having to choose between that. There are other factors at play here when they are making those choices. Many of the people in their late 20s and early 30s who will be in this position—maybe even in their mid-30s—will also have student loans that they are repaying.What we are doing more and more and more is loading cost on to a generation of New Zealanders who are not going to be guaranteed the same comfort in retirement that they are seeing for the generations who have gone before them. That is going to create intergenerational pressure. I say to all of those who are nearing the age of 65 that when that pressure really starts to come home when the retirement boom starts to happen and the next generation of New Zealanders are faced with the choice of increasing taxes to pay for that—which they will pay—or making other changes there will be a conflict. The future generations of New Zealanders will remember that they had to make a choice between saving for their own retirement and buying a home. I think that is going to be very unfortunate. I think we should be factoring that in now and we should be planning ahead for that so that that conflict does not happen because that could be immensely damaging to intergenerational attitudes and I do not think that that is going to be healthy. So I think although that provision is one that I support I think we do need to look at that wider issue of housing affordability and those wider issues around that massive burden that is being placed on an emerging generation of New Zealanders and the pressure that that is going to lead to in the future.Clauses 19 20 and 21 which have been more widely debated in this bill make changes to the remit of the Housing New Zealand Corporation established under the Housing Corporation Act 1974. Previously Housing New Zealand was the main adviser to the Government on social housing policy. That is now being transferred to another agency as part of a wider move which has seen the policy function moving to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—or whatever; I cannot remember the exact order of the words in its name—and the needs-assessments being transferred to Work and Income. So the mentality behind this is that Housing New Zealand is simply the owner of the houses. That is all its remit is; that is all it does. I want to say as strongly as I can to the Government that although I understand the distinction that it is trying to make with these changes it is not working on the ground. There are major challenges that that change is creating.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.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Can I welcome the Minister for Social Housing to the chair. She is the Minister in charge of this bill so we expect her to actually address questions that are asked genuinely to her rather than being mute and dumb in the chair. I have some questions that I need to ask about Part 2 of this bill. I am looking particularly at clause 20 which provides that Housing New Zealand does not have the purpose of providing policy advice and clause 21 which says that Housing New Zealand research and monitoring does not include research and monitoring to advise on the policy issues.I would have thought that the Minister would find it really useful to have an independent source of policy research and advice rather than listening solely to right-wing ideologues and property speculators and drawing on their advice and encouragement in order to set policy. For example Minister if you had listened to the advice of Housing New Zealand rather than not listening to it and now taking away its ability to give that advice you would realise that your statement yesterday that you are providing $500000 for emergency housing is practically meaningless. I have got a picture here of a house on the edge of my electorate of Mt Roskill. It is just in Mount Albert. It is a two-bedroom home unit. Do you know what that was selling for last week? It was selling for $797000—a two-bedroom unit. There it is—a very modest little home unit. Apparently the Minister does not understand that house prices for incredibly modest homes are now so high that people cannot aspire to homeownership and people who are renting are being asked to pay higher and higher rents that are unaffordable because the person who invests in that as a property investor wants to get a return on their capital.We know Minister Bennett that 40 percent of all homes purchased in Auckland are purchased by property speculators. I would have thought that you would know that and had you listened to the advice of Housing New Zealand you would have been better informed about it. So you would not then in your press statement say: “Look I am dealing with the big problem of homelessness—I am going to give emergency housing half a million dollars.” You know what that will do Minister? It will purchase half of that two-bedroom home unit. How is that going to address the problems of the shortage of accommodation and homelessness?If you had listened to Housing New Zealand you would also have gotten some information from it so that when you talked about supporting moves to housing independence in your press statement—I do not know who drafted that; great spin—you would have known what those words actually meant. They meant that you were not moving 3000 people to housing independence; you were evicting 3000 people. Housing New Zealand in its research and advice would have told you that a lot of those people are people who are going to find it really hard to cope in the private housing sector. I was talking to a woman; she is on a reasonable income now but she is crippled. The ministry spent I think $27000 on the State house to adjust it for a person who needed wheelchair access and was not able to have mobility. Because of her income she will now be put out in the private housing sector. The question I would like to ask the Minister if she is listening to the advice of Housing New Zealand is: what private landlord is going to spend $27000 modifying a house to deal with the purposes of somebody who has not got mobility?Then the Minister talks about increasing affordable housing supply. I know for a fact that Housing New Zealand would be able to tell the Minister that that simply is not happening; that instead of increasing affordable housing supply its housing stock has been run down by 1600 in the last 3 years. So here we are: we have got the worst housing crisis that Auckland has ever seen and what is the Minister doing about it? She is depleting the stock of Housing New Zealand rental housing. A good policy-advice agency would have told her that but clearly she is not getting that advice and now deliberately she is saying—DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Looking through the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill in particular Part 2 clauses 20 and 21 the theme that stands out—the intent of this—is that it is passing the buck. It is an absolute dereliction of duty by this Government to pass the buck the responsibility of maintaining that safety net that I have mentioned previously in this House and that the Government has a responsibility for maintaining and ensuring that it has integrity and that it catches those who fall. State housing is an integral part of that safety net. But what is happening now is like I said that dereliction of duty—passing it on to NGOs to community organisations that are underfunded under-resourced and understaffed and they have to take the brunt of the effects and consequences of legislation like this.There is a question that I need to ask—and everybody should be asking and the Government and the Minister for Social Housing in particular should answer—how did it get to this stage in the first place? They can stand up and give the situation and the reasons why it needs to happen now but how did it get to that situation in the first place? Like Kris Faafoi has already mentioned this has been happening slice by slice over the past 7 years to get to this stage where there is some feasible reasoning in dreamland—with all of the positive outcomes where the Government believes that it is all candyfloss and lollipops that it can put this responsibility on to someone else and try to make it believable. But the question is: what are the real consequences for the people on the ground and the NGOs that have to take up all of these responsibilities?I have got an example in Palmerston North in my electorate where I am based where we have got a trust the Shepherd’s Rest Trust which houses over 60 of the most needy people. The trust had Ministry of Social Development funding which was taken away. It had to get funding from the Lotteries Commission and it was not renewed this year. And there is a potential now that there will be over 20 people without beds unless a private organisation or NGO steps in and takes over from that trust. But what are the consequences? You have got the real responsibility of the Government which needs to look after those needy people being put on to the NGOs which have not got the funding have not got the resources and are balancing on a knife edge about the funding and keeping those people with beds.The fact is that this legislation will make it even worse in the regions. What the concern is for New Zealand First is that this is going down the pathway a step closer to the voucher system in the social system which Mr English was talking about. That spells doom for the regions because what that means is that if it is not financially viable in the regions for branches to be open to look after the people then they will close. And it is happening already. The Salvation Army has closed seven branches in the regions and is bringing itself back to the main centres—and we are talking about the two-tier system again. In closing I would like the Minister and the Government—any Government member when they want to stand up—to answer a simple question: what is the priority? Is it profit or is it people? Because all the way through this legislation and especially through Part 2 it all looks like it is about the bank balances it is about the surpluses it is about the profit and it is not about the people.ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Part 2 Subpart 1—Goods and Services Tax Act 1985 clause 18 Section 5 amended (Meaning of term supply) new subsection (6F) reads: “For the purposes of this Act the amount payable by the Crown or the agency under the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992 under a reimbursement agreement or a tailored agreement under that Act for the provision of accommodation in social housing is treated as consideration for the supply of accommodation in a dwelling by way of hire.” My issue with this particular amendment isthat first of all it refers to something in Part 1 of the Act. I rose to take a point of order on that. It is actually incorrect. In New Zealand Statutes 1992 Volume 2 No. 76 Part 1—which also is part of this in Part 2 of the bill. I am doing this because it is every member of Parliament’s obligation to make sure that even in legislation that you do not agree with it is correct because I do not want to see this—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Just one moment. Did you want a point of order did you? Did you actually ask for a point of order?ADRIAN RURAWHE: In the first part of the debate I did yes.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Oh OK sorry. This is not a point of order. OK.ADRIAN RURAWHE: In clause 4 of Part 1 of the bill section 2 is amended. It refers to: “reimbursement agreement means an agreement referred to in section 85(1)”. In this statute book there is no section 85(1). It carries on to say “section 98(1)”—there is no subsection (1) of section 98. There is a difference between alphabetic and numeric—there is a section 85(a) but no section 85(1).The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back to Part 2.ADRIAN RURAWHE: I will come back to Part 2. Again new section 5(6F) in clause 18 refers to those very matters—“a reimbursement agreement or a tailored agreement”. Those clauses in Part 1 give effect to this clause and this clause now is redundant. In effect what has been passed in Part 1 is also redundant. We will be seeing this come back maybe as part of a Statutes Amendment Bill to correct it. This is wrong and it is incumbent upon me to tell this Committee so. That is what we get when we rush legislation through this House. This is what we get when the members opposite sit in absolute silence and do not participate in the debate about this part here Part 2. We need to hear from both the Minister and members opposite—the Government—about how they are going to correct this. This legislation is about to be passed in the next maybe 2½ hours. So somehow between now and then we have to make sure that we do not add additional cost to the taxpayer and that we correct this to make it as good as it can be because to do nothing would mean cost to this nation and I do not think that is good enough. I do not think it is good enough.I will refer to another part of Part 2 in particular Subpart 2—Housing Corporation Act 1974 which amends section 3B. That is about the Minister receiving advice from the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I am certain that if this had gone through a robust considered process then we would not be in here talking about—Meka Whaitiri: Errors.ADRIAN RURAWHE:—errors within this bill.PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Tēnā nō tātou. I stand to talk to Part 2 of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Can I say from the outset and we all know this—those of us in this Committee—that the obligation of any Government is to protect the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens. I do not believe that this bill this Part 2 actually holds true in this case. Having said that and I say it with a certain weight on my heart when I consider the former leaders of that once-respected party—and I refer to Holland Holyoake Marshall and Muldoon—I am sure that all of them would be turning in their graves to see this bill come before this Committee promoted by a National-led Government.This part of the bill particularly clause 20 highlights and verifies what most of us on this side of the Committee believe: that this is the dismantling of our Public Service and in this particular case Housing New Zealand Corporation. This bill is not the beginning; it has already started.Chris Bishop: Do some research.PITA PARAONE: The member may say that it refers only to research but what I am saying is that this is the seed for further things to come.Reference was made by an earlier speaker that much of the work being done by constituent MPs is in addressing the accommodation and housing needs of the people in those electorates. Can I say that it is not only constituent MPs who have to deal with that but it is also list members like myself. This should not come as any surprise because the constituent member in the particular electorate that I am responsible for happens to be a member of the National-led Government. So one needs to ask: who is going to undertake that research; who is going to do the monitoring; and what skills and experience will they have in order to ensure that the Minister does in fact receive the quality advice that he or she certainly deserves and certainly will need to ensure that this Government and we in this House fulfil our obligation to meet the housing needs of our fellow citizens?I have heard reference to this bill as being one of flexibility and innovation. I do not think that there is anything new or innovative about removing the responsibilities for research and monitoring to another agency. I think the danger that we will see in all of this is that the long-term experience that the present agency has will be lost. I know that the Māori Party members have been very supportive of this bill. It behoves me to say that by giving their support to this bill they are doing the people whom they represent a disservice particularly in the regions that I come from. I do not believe that regions such as Whangarei will certainly be better serviced by this proposal and in particular by clause 20 of this bill. So I would ask that both the Māori Party and the National-led Government reconsider this. The fact that they are pushing this bill through by way of urgency suggests to me that they have already made up their minds and that they are not going to listen to any considered arguments.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I would like to address in this speech largely clauses 19 through to 21 but I would like to speak briefly to the other clauses in Part 2 of this legislation. I would like to reiterate the need for the Minister for Social Housing to answer the serious questions that my colleague Adrian Rurawhe addressed in his speech before. I think there are some very serious questions around the robustness of this legislation that need to be addressed by the Minister in the chair. We are passing this legislation under urgency. It is the function and indeed the responsibility of all members of this Committee to examine this legislation—to read it and to question it—and even as my colleague Adrian Rurawhe said if we do not agree with it we must all work hard to ensure that it is good and robust legislation. That is our function as legislators and frankly Government members on the benches opposite me are being absolutely negligent in their part in ensuring that this legislation is the best it can be under an urgency stage. They need to get on their pins take a call examine the legislation and do the job that they were elected and paid to do.I have some questions that I would like to hear the Minister answer too. We still throughout all these parts of this legislation do not have any clarity around who is going to be taking over the function of providing monitoring and research around housing in New Zealand. These are of course the amendments to the Housing Corporation Act that are addressed under clauses 20 and 21 in this legislation. So I would like to hear the Minister take a call and give us some kind of indication. It is the kind of question that would have been asked at a select committee. It is the kind of question that we would have sought advice on from officials around what the options were. I would like to hear the Minister put those options to it because I have real concerns that we have all this talk from Government members around the flexibility around housing that is enshrined in this bill. A lot of it does come back to the advice that is offered under clauses 20 and 21 in Part 2 of this legislation.We have heard throughout other stages of this bill Government members talking about the need to make sure that we have housing that is fit for purpose and in the right location. In March this year I asked one of the Ministers with responsibility for housing the Hon Bill English some very specific questions about Housing New Zealand houses in my electorate by suburb. I asked about individual suburbs and I am questioning the advice and where this is going to come from under clauses 20 and 21 in Part 2 of this legislation. When I asked about housing in Riccarton when I asked about housing in Addington and when I asked about housing in Hoon Hay I was told that Housing New Zealand does not collect information by suburb. This Government is saying that it is making decisions about where housing needs to be based on information that it does not collect. I was told by the Hon Bill English that that information was collected by only local authority territorial units. Well this bill covers hundreds of thousands of people.We are being told that this is the big society where communities are taking ownership so I would like to hear from the Minister. I would like her to take a call and tell me who will be taking over this function. Who will be providing this granulated localised and community-driven information that will be required to deliver the outcomes that this bill purports to do? It is not being done at the moment so where will that function lie? Frankly I find it absurd that the Government is making decisions about localisation of housing when it does not even have the data when it has not been collecting it and when it has been collecting it only at a territorial local authority level. It simply does not stack up. So that is a question under this part that I would like the Minister to address.I would also like to know about the kinds of research and monitoring that are going to be undertaken under these clauses in the bill. What are the things that are going to be examined? I want to know not only who is going to do the research and monitoring but what kind of research and monitoring it will be. Is it going to be about the livability of homes? Are we going to be collecting that not only at a local level but at a meta level? Will those questions being asked be the ones that are fit for purpose to actually genuinely—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Phil Goff. [Interruption] I am sorry; Phil Twyford. I got the “Phil” part right. Phil Twyford. [Interruption] My apologies.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is the revenge of the Phils. Thank you Mr Chairman. I was a bit worried actually because one thing I have learnt is that if you give Phil Goff half a sniff he will grab the opportunity with both hands.Speaking to Part 2 of the bill I want to make a point that relates to the argument that many of us have been making this morning about this bill and that is the fact that National has been pushing this bill through the House under the cloak of Budget urgency with no apparent justification for why this bill needs to be passed today. I have not heard anything from any Minister in the chair or any of the Government members in this debate about why this bill has to be pushed through under urgency. But the pitfalls of that approach are actually contained within the clauses in Part 2.Clause 18 which basically ensures that these new flexible purchasing agreements are exempt from GST is a tidy-up. It is a tidy-up of previous legislative mistakes. Clause 23 amends the KiwiSaver Act so that membership in complying superannuation funds counts for the 3-year eligibility period for a first home withdrawal if a person transfers to KiwiSaver. This clause is cleaning up the mess left by the KiwiSaver HomeStart package and by the legislation that enables KiwiSaver withdrawals. So two clauses in Part 2 are evidence of this Government’s previous botch-ups in passing laws in this House but it does not seem to have learnt from its mistakes and it is pushing through this bill under urgency without any chance for scrutiny at the select committee without any expert opinion without the officials being able to take their time and look at the legislation and without the public being able to come along and make submissions. You have to wonder whether clauses within this bill will end up back in the House in some kind of mopping up operation in the future wasting taxpayers’ money to clean up the mistakes that this Government has made.Clauses 20 and 21 are really symptomatic of this Government’s systematic gutting of Housing New Zealand the latest and perhaps the last indignity before the organisation is sliced and diced and handed out to anybody who will take it. With the removal of any kind of policy and research function this bill basically takes away Housing New Zealand’s mandate to do evaluations of its programmes. So it has now basically been reduced to a Government-owned version of Barfoot and Thompson instead of being a full-service social housing organisation devoted to meeting the needs of some of the most vulnerable New Zealanders. It is simply a letting agency. Its ability to manage the waiting lists its ability to handle and assess eligibility has been hived off to the Ministry of Social Development. Its portfolio has been carved up and flogged off to anybody who will take it under other provisions in this bill. But these two clauses—20 and 21—basically take away Housing New Zealand’s ability to do research and most important to give advice on social housing to the Government of the day.But this Government does not want advice on social housing. It does not want to hear from people. We know that there is no evidence base for the Government’s policy of flogging off State houses and devolving the job of providing social housing and State housing to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. There is no evidence for the assertion that the Government cannot do that job properly and that non-governmental organisations charities Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all who might come along and register as a community housing provider private landlords property developers and anyone who meets the perfunctory requirements of being a social housing provider can line up and get these houses at knock-down prices. There is no evidence base for it.JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Normally I would say I was pleased to be taking a call on a bill that talked about more flexibility in social housing but unfortunately the title bears little relevance to anything in the bill particularly in Part 2. Before I speak to the specifics—and I want to speak particularly about clauses 20 and 21 in Part 2 I just want to talk about why members of Parliament come to Parliament and why we seek to spend our Fridays and our Saturdays for that matter debating in this House. It is because every single member of Parliament regardless of their party I think comes to Parliament because they think they can make a positive difference. They think they can make a positive contribution to a better New Zealand. So regardless of what their party is that I think is the driver behind the intentions of all members of Parliament.One of the things that we have been particularly proud of in New Zealand is our commitment to social housing. That is because as egalitarian New Zealanders we think that it is just right—it is fair—that people should have a warm dry affordable home and be able to stay there and be part of their community. That has been an integral part of the fabric of our society for nearly a century since this Parliament first debated the introduction of social housing. It is something I am particularly proud of especially when you go to other countries and see people living in appalling conditions. Of course we have State houses that are very run down in New Zealand. We have whole areas where we would like to see a lot of improvement done but would it not be great if this Parliament could regain the sense of unity that we had 80 years ago when we introduced social housing and asked how we could do it better for the future?But the National Party instead is saying: “We do not think it is the Government’s responsibility to operate State housing any more. We think we should sell it off.”Well I do not agree with that. I do not agree that it is a valid role of housing providers to provide social housing with the Government completely out of the picture. Social housing providers have always worked in partnership with central government and long may that partnership continue whether it is the Salvation Army or Comcare Trust or the Methodist Mission or Presbyterian Support—any number of organisations that have done their bit alongside the Government to provide warm dry affordable houses so that every member of our society can be safe and be part of a contributing community. That is not the aim of this bill at all.Clauses 20 and 21 specifically outline the further withdrawal of Housing New Zealand from a very critical part of providing social housing and that is in policy advice and in research and monitoring. How do we know what works and what does not if Housing New Zealand—the very agency that was responsible for providing social housing—is no longer providing policy advice to the Government about social housing or doing any monitoring or research? How can we say our aim is to do things better in future if we are not getting any policy advice about how things are working at the moment?I want to challenge the backbench of the National Party to explain why they are putting their personal names alongside a bill that privatises social housing—Chris Bishop: Oh it does not.Hon RUTH DYSON: —and that says that Housing New Zealand will no longer be responsible for policy advice or for research and monitoring. Mr Bishop I recommend some reading for you—the bill would be a good starting place. The bill would be a really good starting place because I am fed up with listening to interjections that are not truthful. They are not truthful and your colleagues listen to them and think that when your untruths are repeated they must be true. Well actually repeating something that is not true does not make it true. That is exactly what happens in respect of Part 2 of the bill which we are debating now. I challenge Mr Bishop to stand on his hind legs and say that he has read the bill—that would be a challenge—and then to explain what it does. How can this bill possibly be accused of providing more social housing more flexibility warm and dry homes or be accused of as Simon Bridges the Minister who was previously sitting in the chair said making time stand still? He said that under Labour—IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I am very pleased to be able to speak to Part 2 of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. The title of Part 2 is “Remedial and other matters” which may suggest to people who are reading this bill at home that there are just a few little rats and mice bits and pieces in Part 2. But actually clauses 20 and 21 in particular have some very important changes to the way housing policy is developed in New Zealand and to the way the Government takes advice on housing policy. Clause 20 actually says that Housing New Zealand no longer has the purpose of providing policy advice. You know this is Housing New Zealand—the clue is in the name about who is best positioned to provide housing advice to the Government. It might be at a guess the organisation called Housing New Zealand but apparently that is not good enough for this Government. So I would like to knowwhere the documentation is since we are passing this bill under urgency and since there has been no select committee process. Where is the evidence where is the consultation process that the Government went through that led it to the conclusion that Housing New Zealand is not the best Government agency to provide adviceon housing? Minister please—or maybe Chris Bishop; he has got a lot to say. Maybe he could actually get up and tell us where the idea came from that Housing New Zealand is not the Government agency to provide housing advice. I want to know.If this bill went through the normal processes where the public actually got to come and have their say where this was properly consulted on and considered and we got to see the evidence we might not agree with the position that the Government got to but we would have an idea of how it got there. It is absolutely the most important thing that the Government members get up and explain to us where this idea comes from because at the moment on this side of the House in the absence of that explanation it looks like a pretty hare-brained scheme to us—that Housing New Zealand is not the organisation that will provide housing. Maybe the Government has lost confidence in Housing New Zealand. I do not know—maybe that is the reason why.I have absolute confidence in my local branch of Housing New Zealand. The people who work there are amazing. They would not say this they would never say this but my observation is thatthey suffer under absolutely appalling policy settings from this Government and they have to do things that they just do not believe in. They are committed public servants. They implement Government policy but they do it in a way that is as constructive as possible and they know what the needs of their community are. They know the housing needs of their community and maybe that is the exact reason why this Government does not want to get advice from them—because the advice that they would give this Government is not what it wants to hear. I think that is the reason and in the absence of any better explanation from the Government I think we have to all assume that is the reason.I hope the next call from the National Party is not a closure motion. I hope that it is actually an explanation of clause 20—why it is necessary and what led the Government to that decision. Clause 21 provides that research and monitoring by Housing New Zealand does not include research and monitoring to advise on policy issues. I am actually at a bit of a loss to know what research and monitoring function is actually going to remain required of Housing New Zealand because it is no longer giving policy advice it is no longer managing the waiting lists and it is no longer interacting with the tenants. What research and monitoring does Housing New Zealand actually have to do if it no longer has a policy function either? What will be done with that research and monitoring? Again is this the kind of information that the Government does not want to listen to because it knows its policies are wrong and it knows that if there is any consideration or sunlight applied to its policy at all it will be found out for being full of holes? Is that why this Government wants to remove the monitoring function from Housing New Zealand?JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.Hon Annette King: She has taken a call I’m sorry.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No there are no restrictions.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Thank you very much Mr Chairman—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I just want to clarify something. There is no restriction on the number of closures that a member can take.Hon ANNETTE KING: Thank you Mr Chairman. There used to be did there not? So there must have been a change in the Standing Orders to allow a person to take more than one closure motion. But thank you Mr Chairman for telling us what we ought to know.I want to address this part of the bill—Part 2 “Remedial and other matters”. I too want to go to the area around the functions of the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the role that it is going to play. You see it is under “Remedial and other matters” which I found very interesting because anyone who knows the meaning of “remedial” knows that it means “supplying a remedy”. I cannot see what remedy is being supplied under this part of the bill. It is meant to correct or improve deficient skills so I can only assume that the Minister for Social Housing thinks that there are deficient skills in Housing New Zealand and I want to dispute that.I want to start from the position that one of the features of a National Government—and it goes back many years; some of us experienced it when we came into Government—is this drive to stop policy making by Government departments and others to drive out the policy-making part and contract it out to somebody else. That was the history in the health portfolio. The policy function of the Ministry of Health was driven out and put into other agencies. I am asking the Minister why she would not want to have policy advice from Housing New Zealand—the very agency that has for so long been working with tenants that has been working in the community and that has very very competent staff who are able to provide the sort of advice a good Minister would want. Why would the Minister remove this role from Housing New Zealand? Who will replace it in this role? Where will the advice the on-the-ground advice that a Minister would want come from Minister? Would you be able to answer that shortly? Where will this policy advice come from?One of the problems for a Government is when it thinks it has got all the answers itself—when it does not think it needs good strong policy advice from its own agencies. It seems to me that the Minister has decided that she does not like the advice she has got from the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I know that it has raised a few issues actually with the Minister in relation to some policy and I think that this is a way of getting rid of that sort of advice. The Government does not want anybody that might contradict the direction and the path it is taking in housing. So Minister please tell us who will replace Housing New Zealand in providing advice on policy? When we look at this particular piece of legislation we see in the regulatory impact statement that no evaluation was done on it and that Treasury did not even do an evaluation on this policy that is before the Committee today. So who is going to do the evaluation and provide the advice on future housing policy? I think that is a very serious question that needs to be answered.Then we find out that the intent of this particular part of the bill is that “the Corporation will no longer be expected to undertake research and evaluation activities for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing”. So who is going to undertake the research and evaluation? It is not Treasury. It is not Housing New Zealand. Who is it that is going to undertake this very serious function that must be undertaken when formulating very good policy? This is a huge gap in this Government’s approach to policy making. Get rid of the agency that would help with it get rid of any advice that it is going to give and any evaluation—this seems to me to be a very short-sighted approach Minister when it comes to Housing New Zealand.I agree with my colleague who just resumed his seat Iain Lees-Galloway that Housing New Zealand for decades has provided incredibly good advice. It has some excellent people working in it. You know if you go to your own Housing New Zealand offices when the doors are open and you can get in—because of course the doors are closed now and you have got to ring up to get inside the door—and if you have a close relationship with your local branch of Housing New Zealand you will find people very knowledgable about what is going on in your area. They can provide the quality advice to a Minister on the ground. They are good people. But unfortunately I think this Minister is going down the same track that she went down when she was Minister for Social Development because if you go to Work and Income offices now you will find a very demoralised bunch of people—people who used to care a lot.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Following on from my colleague the Hon Annette King there is the question of who will provide advice if this bill is passed and we remove the ability of Housing New Zealand to do so. The question of why that advice should be provided is also one that I will come back to. In my view the “whos”—that is if we prevent Housing New Zealand providing that advice; that vacuum—will be filled by three parties: firstly the real estate agents because the Government likes them; secondly the banks; or thirdly the investors in the whole housing market. The reality is that the Minister will require advice. Capable as she is I do not think she has the ability to go around and find out what is happening in each and every different market for housing up and down this country. So where will the advice to the Minister come from? Real estate agents—well I guess they could provide advice; they are on the ground. The banks—they provide the money. And the investors obviously have an interest in this area.Well we must ask the question why they will provide the advice because when Housing New Zealand provides advice it is for one purpose—and it has been set up—and that is to help New Zealanders into housing and into homes. It is not just social housing; actually every bit of housing be it in the public or private sector has a social component to it. If we think we can have an economy without people having homes we have got our head in the sand and we live in a false world. We need a strong social structure across our society strength confidence and security to give us a good economy. The Government on the other hand is removing the ability of its own agency set up right back in the 1930s to provide houses and homes for New Zealanders and to provide security for our good people so they can get on and live their lives and contribute to our country and our economy. If you remove that ability for that agency to provide the advice you then leave it open to the real estate agents the banks and the investors. Their reasons for providing advice are not the same reasons as those of Housing New Zealand and are not the same reasons as those of a Labour Government but perhaps the National Government has a totally different objective.In spite of its words around social housing responsibility in my view the Government has got to the reality and honesty of saying “We’ll just leave it to the markets. We don’t need any advice because the markets will provide the advice to the Minister and indicate what he or she should do.” That is the philosophy of the current National Government. The market delivers nirvana! The market delivers to each and every New Zealander—it thinks—and we will get our advice from the real estate agents we will get our advice from the banks and the investors and we will ensure that every New Zealander has a fair go. Listen to the ad played in Singapore Minister. Listen to the ad that says: “Invest in New Zealand because New Zealanders will pay more than 50 percent of their incomes to pay the return on your investment.” That is the advice that the Minister is going to open her mind and ears to because the Minister and the Government are going to remove the ability of the one agency set up in the 1930s to provide homes and securities for New Zealanders and remove the ability of that agency to provide the advice.This is a huge backward step in Part 2. This is an outrage for a country that has depended upon the advice the independent advice and the sound objectives of Housing New Zealand since the 1930s. Subpart 2 of Part 2 of this bill will remove that and replace it with market advice—with the self-serving advice of real estate agents the self-serving advice of banks that want to pour more money in so they can get more money back and the self-serving advice of the investors who think it is better that more and more New Zealanders pay rent into the private sector than have the security of a home be it in the private sector or be it under Housing New Zealand. This is a disgrace.Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): I just thought it was important to tie up a couple of things as we have heard quite a few speakers. They are repeating themselves and so obviously there are a couple of issues here. So let us be clear on something: housing policy changes—Hon Annette King: Your side doesn’t even speak.Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well here it is. Here are the answers that you wanted. Housing policy changes were actually reported back from the Social Services Committee on 12 May 2011. They have been to select committee and they have just been repackaged into this bill. Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment staff to be quite clear have been undertaking policy advice in lieu of Housing New Zealand since June 2011. Since June 2011—[Interruption] It is coming. This is an opportunity for us to tidy up what is in the bill which says that Housing New Zealand does it. So we have changed it—Hon Annette King: So under urgency we need to tidy this up?Hon PAULA BENNETT: No actually it is mainly the first part but I am not going to talk about Part 1; we are talking about Part 2. To be quite clear: the questions that have been asked have been around that. It made sense to tidy up that Housing New Zealand no longer provides the policy advice which it has not been providing now for 4 years. Actually that whole advice part of it—what needs to be done—is more than just Housing New Zealand. This is about providing advice to the community housing sector and about making sure that we are seeing the needs of the whole community and not just of one player. It may be a big player and a significant one—one that I of course meet with incredibly often and take its advice—but that advice goes through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment which means that we are looking at the sector as a whole.The other part of it which I thought I should just quickly clear up is that there were questions earlier about subsections and the existing sections. It is obvious for those who have been around longer which is why I do not think we have had more on it. It is a drafting convention that when subsections are added the existing sections become subsections. So if you have got section 98 when you put in a section 98(2) then section 98 becomes section 98(1). That is why you cannot find section 98(1). It is because as a convention it will become that once we have made the changes. Thank you.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on this second part of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill and respond to the Minister for Social Housing’s comments where she said that Housing New Zealand has not been providing advice to the Government—Hon Annette King: For 4 years.CHRIS HIPKINS: —for 4 years—since 2011. Does it not show? Does it not show? I think that is one of the major issues here. It is that the Government is divorcing the practical realities of the decisions it is making from the advice it is getting on those decisions and it is not working. I will speak about the experience I have encountered in my own electorate.Previously Housing New Zealand had if you like three broad functions: the provision of the housing advice on the housing and identifying the people who were going into the housing. Identifying the people who were going into the housing was transferred to Work and Income and as a result we now have a mismatch between the housing available and the people who qualify to get it because Housing New Zealand no longer has—Brett Hudson: With National it’s about the people in need not about who owns the house.CHRIS HIPKINS: I am looking forward to Brett Hudson’s contribution because like most of the people over there he has had a National Party lobotomy and does not seem to have his own opinion any more and therefore has only the option of being rude to other people because he is not willing to stand up and share with the House his own opinion. As I was saying the Government has divorced from Housing New Zealand decisions regarding who gets the houses so Housing New Zealand no longer has the complete picture of the people who are likely to be in need. That has an impact then on its ability to deliver policy advice to the Government. One of the issues there is that the complete picture of who the people in need are is now actually quite difficult to ascertain. Housing New Zealand has cut off the lower two tranches of the waiting list so that we now no longer have any record of the people who are at that lower level. That is a policy issue that Housing New Zealand could be supplying advice to the Government on and it is now no longer able to do so.Here is the real reality of what these changes have actually meant. I think we can look at the policy and we can look at all of the theory behind it. Let us deal with the practical realities of what it has meant. What it has meant is that on a Friday afternoon I have got people sitting in my office saying: “I am living in a car. There are three-bedroom houses empty in this area but because I qualify for a four-bedroom house Housing New Zealand will not place my family.” That is a practical reality. That is an actual case that I have been dealing with for some months where Housing New Zealand will not give that family a home because they qualify for a four-bedroom home. There are no four-bedroom houses available there are empty three-bedroom houses available but it will not place them in a three-bedroom house. That is the practical reality of the policies we are dealing with. And Housing New Zealand of course can no longer provide the Government practical advice on that because the policy function it previously had is being removed from it.There is good reason why the delivery agencies the agencies responsible for delivering on the policy should be able to provide policy advice to Ministers on the implications of the decisions Ministers make. The implications of the decisions Ministers have made in social housing policy are that they have actually made it more difficult for people to get into Housing New Zealand homes more difficult to target assistance to those who most need it. I have got no problem with our looking at the ways we can better support those who are the most vulnerable and most need it. The practical realities are that that is not happening and that there are very needy families out there who are living in cars. The family I mentioned before have got a number of kids. That is why they qualify for the four-bedroom home. The kids are staying with someone else; the parents are living in the car. That is just not acceptable. Then of course Housing New Zealand will offer them a place that is in another city. It will say: “Oh we’ve found a four-bedroom place for you but you’re going to have to move 100 kilometres away.” They have to uproot their kids from their schools and all those sorts of things. It is just not right. This family would be willing to accept a 3-bedroom house but Housing New Zealand will not give it to them. I think that is wrong. That is the practical reality of the policy we are passing.It is important that when Ministers make decisions about these issues they are connected to the practical realities that those decisions result in and that is not going to happen with this bill. The reforms simply are not working. If they were designed to ensure that the needs assessment process was more efficient and that the advice coming to Ministers was better that is not happening. The needs assessment is not more efficient. What it is resulting in is further delays for the most needy people who really should be getting placed in housing. They get shoved from one agency to another and then back again. The policy advice process that should support the needs assessment process is not there and is not robust enough because the agency now providing the policy advice the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is completely removed from the actual provision of housing and the practical implications of that. It says everything about this Government—that it has handed over the responsibilities for advice on housing to the agency that is responsible for property speculation.ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I move That the question be now put.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): This Budget has been labelled by the Government as the “compassionate conservative Budget”. These clauses clauses 20 and 21 of this bill the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill show that it is a “Cabinet club conservative Budget” because it is taking a Public Service housing provider ripping the guts out of it and in Part 2 of this bill removing from it even the ability to advise the Minister for Social Housing on policy issues. Here is how. Clause 20 says that Housing New Zealand Corporation will give no policy advice. Clause 21 says that when it does research that research will not be on policy issues. In other words no non-commercial function will be performed by Housing New Zealand Corporation. Housing New Zealand Corporation is going from being a provider of houses to vulnerable families who need help to essentially a commercial landlord.Let us look at what would be some of the advantages of an agency like Housing New Zealand continuing to be empowered to give policy advice. First as my colleague Annette King has mentioned is that it has history. It has managed the portfolio for decades. It knows literally where the renovations and the skeletons are buried and it knows what needs doing. There is nobody better placed than the organisation to advise on its portfolio and the needs therein. Secondly up until recent times the corporation had the most contact with its clients. If you had a problem of maintenance or a problem of prioritisation you would go and see the corporation. Because it had the stock and the client contact it was best placed to put the two together come up with a reasonable set of priorities and get the families who most needed the help into the properties that were most suitable for them. The Government has made that more difficult because instead of going to Housing New Zealand Corporation the poor families now have to go to the Ministry of Social Development or Work and Income. They are already overloaded. They are slapping and packing people through those waiting lists every 5 minutes and those are the performance indicators that the poor old Work and Income staff are under. They have to move them through. They do not have the expertise or the time to deal with these critical issues of where a family are going to live.The next thing of course is that Housing New Zealand Corporation has got a local footprint. It has got houses in each area of the country. It knows its stock and it knows the communities the houses are in. Why would you not want the corporation advising on policy issues? Of course if you are not going to have that what happens? Well the first thing is that you do not have contestable policy advice. The Government makes itself more vulnerable to input from the vested commercial interests the banks that are making a crazy killing off house mortgages the property investors and the organisations that represent them. Even the social service providers like the Salvation Army have said: “No thanks we don’t want to play this game because you’re giving us the liability without the assets. We can’t cover it.” The Government cannot get decent advice from them.Let us sum up. By taking away the policy functions from the corporation Minister you have made clients more vulnerable. You are not getting the advice you need to get from the people best placed to give it who have the history in the organisation who are close to the clients who have the deep knowledge of the housing stock that is being managed and who do not have vested interests that are in conflict with the public good. There is no basis in logic for the clauses we are debating in Part 2. Why are they there? And more important why are we here in urgency trying to pass this through all stages without even giving the public the opportunity to make a submission?Hon Annette King: They’ve been waiting for 4 years she said.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It has been 4 years in the waiting. Why is this happening under urgency? The reason is because the Government knows that reasonable New Zealanders do not like this stuff. They do not like this stuff so the sooner this is wrapped packed under the carpet and out of the public gaze the happier the Government spin doctors will be. The Government does not want to hear from New Zealanders. It does not want New Zealanders having a say because it knows that the average decent Kiwi thinks it is a no-brainer that of course Housing New Zealand Corporation should be able to advise on housing issues. Why on earth would it not? Why are these clauses in the bill? Firstly Minister if you are really honest in your heart of hearts it is because you do not want to hear the advice. It is not good advice because the news is all bad. The waiting list is getting longer and longer. The needs are getting greater and greater. Just like Chris Hipkins Annette King Ruth Dyson and Damien O’Connor I have my office overflowing with hard-up Kiwi families who need help.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move That the question be now put.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have not had an opportunity in this stage of the debate to make a contribution and there are some specific clauses that I wish to speak to. What remedy is available to me?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The member may be seated. We had a substantial discussion at the time of the closure motion last time. I am not going to be going through that every time. The member will know that the next clauses we will be debating are very wide ranging and will cover this part and others. I am fully expecting and looking forward to members using the whole gambit of their colourful vocabularies in a seemly matter to have a lively discussion and debate on those clauses. The motion will be put and we will continue with the vote.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.A party vote was called for on the question That Part 2 be agreed to.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Part 2 agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Thank you for your advice earlier Mr Chair. I do appreciate it and I appreciate the opportunity to make a wide-ranging contribution to this debate. I do feel strongly about this but I will certainly be speaking though to one clause in the bill and that is clause 2 the commencement of the Act and of Subpart 3. I wish for the House to consider that we change the commencement date to 1 April 2018. I think that way we could be certain that a Government that cares about State housing and a Government that cares about our most vulnerable will be in Government and we can have that debate again. We can ensure that this bill is never implemented. That will be what I will move and that is for the reasons that I am now about to give.What has happened here with this bill is that we are rushing it through the House without the opportunity for public input. It is a bill deliberately designed to reduce State housing in this country. It is designed to take the Government out of the provisions for social housing. As we have heard from many members in this House the problem with that is that the private market is not delivering the affordable and adequate social housing that is desperately needed in our society.I will give another example that has not been brought up. This is an example of a woman whom I met just last weekend on one of my home visits in the suburb of Wakari. I went to visit this woman and she said she was quite happy for me to tell her story because she feels strongly about this.Kris Faafoi: Where?Hon Ruth Dyson: What suburb?Dr DAVID CLARK: Wakari in Dunedin. She said to me that she is fearful that she will not be allowed to stay in her State house any longer. It is a three-bedroom State house. She is now living on her own but she uses the other two bedrooms frequently to take care of her grandchildren when her son is called to work at short notice. She has grandchildren whom she cares for in that house. She has lived in it for a good chunk of her life because for one reason or another she has never had the opportunity or the prospect of affording to buy her own home. She would love to but she has never been in a position to afford her own home. So the State has said: “Look we will look out for you. You are a good contributor to our society.” She has always worked up until recently. She is now unable to find work as she rapidly approaches retirement. She has been made redundant several times. There is simply just not enough work in Dunedin for this woman who would like to work like she has her whole life in order to keep affording a standard of living that we could call living with dignity.She tells me that now she has to save to buy a cup of coffee. She has got a good friend who rings her up every week and says: “Let’s go out for coffee.” She is embarrassed by the fact that she cannot go out every week with that friend because she cannot afford the cup of coffee. When she has paid her insurance which she does refuse to give up—and she says that that is discretionary—she has only $20 left over every week with which to feed herself. She has an elderly dog that she refuses to give away and that she has cared for for many years. She said: “That dog eats pretty close to $20 worth of dog food a week.” She has got nothing—absolutely nothing—to live off each week. When she goes to get a haircut her kids donate her money to get it. That is not the kind of living in dignity that we would want for our citizens. That is not the New Zealand I signed up to where someone who has worked for their whole working life bar the last few years because they cannot get work is forced to worry about whether they are going to have a stable place to live and whether they can care for their grandchildren adequately. Even now she is living in a house that is fairly cold I would have to say from having visited her. She is a good woman.We need to make sure that in our society there is adequate protection and that people who are in need are looked out for and looked after so that they can continue to make a constructive contribution to our society through the caring for grandchildren through the voluntary community work that that woman does and through other means.The point that I want to come back to is that the case for this particular intervention has not been made because there is a market failure. I mentioned this in my earlier contribution the market failure that sees many families who want to get into affordable houses being unable to get into them and families who want to provide warm dry homes for their kids to live in being forced into the private market because of unmet need in the State sector. Those people are in a position where they cannot—they cannot—get what they need out of the private sector. If we had an adequate State housing sector that would force private sector providers to meet that need at the level that the State housing sector meets it and it would address that market failure and the unintended consequences we see in the existing market.One thing that I have noticed in all of the legislation that has gone through the House is that there has been a lack—KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the chance to speak on the title and commencement clauses of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. This is one of those points in the Committee stage when we get to proffer some alternative titles for the piece of legislation. I have got a pretty simply one—just one: it is that we change the title to “Social Housing Reform (State House Sell-off) Bill” because in all reality that is what this is about. There has been a programme over time since this Government took office to slowly move back from taking any responsibility for social housing in New Zealand. I would challenge any member on the other side of the Chamber to take a 5-minute call—none of these 30-second calls that they have been taking—to try to say why this is not a State house sell-off bill because that is exactly what this is.Part 2 of this bill looks at some of the policy advice that Housing New Zealand will no longer be offering to the Government. It has offered over time lots of advice to the Government. Just some of the advice that Housing New Zealand has offered to the Government is about one cul-de-sac in Porirua. It is not about whether the Government should upgrade those houses or look at making sure that we do more for those communities. It is about Quotable Value. It is about getting those houses ready for sale. There is no plan or advice from Housing New Zealand to replace those houses.If anyone in this House wants to come to Calliope Crescent in Cannons Creek they will see that there is a big swathe of land there that has been empty for about 5 years. When those houses were taken away the Government promised that it would replace them and that that community would flourish again. But nothing has happened. Kids now use the land for games of touch because there is a park there now. This Government should have stuck to its word and should have replaced the homes that it bowled over. It should have put houses there for that community to flourish. But no there is nothing.There is only one side of this equation that the Government is interested in and that is getting rid of State homes. It is not interested in replacing them at all and that is the cold hard reality of this Government.Andrew Bayly: We’ve still got 65000 of them.KRIS FAAFOI: I can hear some interjections. Those interjections are longer—longer—than the speeches that members on that side have given. So I challenge the member who is interjecting to get to his feet. If you are so proud of this piece of legislation get up and take a call—get up and take a call. I will make another invitation. Come to my area and spend just half a day looking around and see how proud you are of the last 7 years of wrecking the Housing New Zealand sector in this country.As I said in my speech on Part 1 I came to this Parliament in order to protect and build on some of the opportunities that I was given as a child to make sure that I got to the privileged position I am in today. But on the other side of the Chamber they want to keep the privileged position that they have got today for them and their privileged friends. They do not care about the most vulnerable people in our country who are struggling to make ends meet. They have the most simple of rights in this country and that is to have a good safe warm home—a roof over their heads. That is too much for this Government to ask. The Government is glossing it up in the language of flexibility and it is taking a fair bit of flexibility with the truth. That is the reality of what this Government is doing. For 7 years it has been slowly winding back its responsibilities for social housing. So I do think that this bill should have its title changed to the “Social Housing Reform (State House Sell-off) Bill” because that is all it enables this Government to do.At the very beginning of this plan this Government said that the likes of the Salvation Army would be interested in purchasing these homes in working in our communities and in making the lives of these people better. Uh-uh it is not interested. The Salvation Army does not want a bar of it. I have spoken to a local iwi that also has experience in this area. Iwi members say it does not make sense for them to do it. So if the market does not work for them and if the market is not working for these vulnerable people then on whom does the responsibility fall to make sure that people get a decent home in New Zealand? It should fall on the Government. This piece of legislation sees this Government washing its hands of this responsibility. Come to Cannons Creek come to Ascot Park and come to Titahi Bay where there are vacant Housing New Zealand homes and people desperate to get into them. Government members will not because they do not care.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the preliminary clauses of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill and a very inappropriately named bill it is. What they should really call it is the “Social Housing Reform (Wholesale Privatisation) Bill” because that is exactly what this bill is really about. It is about the Government abrogating its responsibilities when it comes to the provision of affordable quality rental housing to those New Zealanders who are not in a position to buy their own home. It has been a long-held tradition in New Zealand that the State will ensure that its citizens are adequately housed. From the time of the first Labour Government that built so many of the State houses that the National Government is now content to hock off we have had a tradition in New Zealand that the State will be an active player in the housing area so that families have a warm dry home and a roof over their heads. This Government is walking away from that principle.I think of the areas like Pōmare Trentham and Naenae where under this National Government we have seen houses boarded up and abandoned only to then be demolished and that land handed over to private developers. It is not just in my area that that is happening it is happening up and down the country. I have made it very clear from the beginning of that process that the provision of the ultimate number of social houses—that is affordable rental houses for people on low incomes—is not decreased. I think it is good that there should be some redevelopment—that there should be some rebuilding. Some of those houses are past their use-by date and need to be replaced. I would not accommodate people in some of those houses. I do not think they are fit for families and demolishing them and replacing them is good. But it should not be at the expense of the overall number of affordable houses. Reconfiguring those neighbourhoods is the legitimate thing to do but what is the practical reality we are seeing? In Pōmare there is a good redevelopment happening but most of those houses are privately owned. Where did those families go which the National Government booted out?There were some social issues in Pōmare caused by a very small number of people I have to say. There are a large number of people there who were good law-abiding citizens just trying to make their way in the world who got treated very harshly by Housing New Zealand and by the other Government agencies involved in that. But the problems in Pōmare have not gone away just because the houses have been demolished. They have been relocated elsewhere. We are seeing problems emerging in other parts of the electorate in other parts of the Hutt Valley where some of the people who were causing the problems in the first place have simply relocated to. The problems did not go away. The Government’s busting up of the Pōmare community in the way that it did did not deal with the issue and it did not deal with the problem. Wholesale privatisation of that social housing market is not going to make any of the problems go away; in fact it is going to make some of those problems worse.The bill could easily be called the “Social Housing Reform (Increasing Intergenerational Inequality) Bill” because the Government seems to have given up on the notion that future generations of New Zealanders should have the same access to affordable housing to buy or to rent that previous generations had. The Government is giving up on that notion altogether. First-home buyers are being shut out. The only solution to giving first-home buyers a bit of additional assistance is to allow them to cash up their retirement savings—more of their retirement savings—to buy their first home. It could be called the “Practical Reality Bypassing Bill” because the Government is now going to be ignoring advice from Housing New Zealand. It is interesting—we could call it the “Abrogation of Responsibility Bill” because despite the fact that we have now got three Ministers in the Government responsible for social housing none of them seem to be willing to participate actively in the debate.I do have a technical question regarding clause 2 which covers the superannuation provisions coming into effect on or basically being backdated from 1 April 2015. The question I have got is does that mean that people who transferred from a non - KiwiSaver scheme into a KiwiSaver scheme prior to 1 April 2015 will not be eligible or does it mean that basically providing they had done it by that point they would be covered by this provision in the bill? I think it would somewhat thwart the intention given that most people in KiwiSaver would have joined up before 1 April 2015. It somewhat thwarts the intention of what they are trying to achieve—and I am sure the Minister in the chair will be able to answer. It is a pretty simple straightforward question I would hope. It seems to me that the idea behind the backdating is that providing someone had done it by that point they should be eligible. I certainly look forward to having that clarification.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): This bill I think instead of being called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill should actually be called the “Flog Off State Housing to the National Party’s Property Developer Mates Bill”. That would be a far more accurate representation of what this bill is about. It is on the surface some little sort of vanilla kind of enabling legislation allowing more flexible purchasing contracts. But actually what this bill is designed to do is to give the Minister extraordinary discretionary powers to do sweetheart deals with property developers. Instead of simply as the current law allows being allowed to extend income-related rent subsidies to the people who buy these State houses from the Government this bill gives the Minister wide-ranging powers to do any kind of deal—to crank up the subsidies crank them down or to do away with the subsidies and just agree on direct payments. It gives amazing freedom and discretion to the Minister to do those sweetheart deals.The reason that the National Government is giving itself these powers is that it cannot give these houses away at the moment. It spent months saying that the Salvation Army was going to take them and that ended in tears when the Salvation Army said: “Sorry not us.” Paula Bennett Nick Smith and Bill English have been travelling up and down the country basically trying to hock off these houses to anyone who will take them and they are not getting any takers. This bill is about giving the Minister the freedom to do sweetheart deals or anything it takes to basically offload billions of dollars’ worth of publicly owned State houses.It could be called the “Cabinet Club Housing Policy Bill” because what is really going on here at the heart of this policy—when you strip away Paula Bennett’s mealy-mouthed platitudes about social housing—is a massive transfer of wealth from the public to private landlords and property developers. The Government is looking at divesting and flicking off billions of dollars’ worth of State houses that have been paid for by generations of taxpayers and State house tenants—flicking them off at knock-down prices to anybody who will take them. Those houses will then go on to the open market and people will make a killing on those houses. I guarantee that they will end up eventually just simply being rented back to the same people who need a decent roof over their heads but this time they will be paying higher rents and the taxpayers will make up the difference with a hefty subsidy directly into the pockets of landlords. That is the model that Bill English is pursuing. It is a huge transfer of wealth from the public to private landlords and property developers—that is fundamentally what is going on here.We saw recently in the New Zealand Herald reports of how the National Party funded its election campaign last year. The big cheques were made out by property developers. This policy is the big payback—it is the big pay-off. That is what the Cabinet club is all about. It is about giving big business—in this case property developers and big landlords—the opportunity to put their hands in the public pocket and benefit from billions of dollars’ worth of State housing that generations of New Zealanders have paid for. State housing is not intended to line the pockets of private landlords as this National Government wants to do but to put a decent roof over the heads of the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Nothing rankles more with New Zealanders than that basic idea that the reason we have a Government is to make sure that things work for everybody—that every kid in this country gets a decent start in life.Chris Bishop: Well we’re raising benefit levels.PHIL TWYFORD: That is why Chris Bishop we invented State housing in the first place. And I know that your party has never had any truck with State housing. You do not like it you do not believe in it and you do not want to have anything to do with the people who live in State housing because it makes you profoundly uncomfortable. The social and economic system that you stand for does not care what happens to the bottom 20 percent. You do not give a damn about it and you are quite happy—Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): There is a point of order. [Interruption] Sit down when I am on my feet.Tim Macindoe: This member is repeatedly bring you into the debate—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): There is a point of order. There is a point of order and it will be heard in silence. And you can sit there and point and say that he knows he should be sitting down and so did you but you did not and he did not and you know—what do you think this does for the reputation of this House? For goodness’ sake! Now I have a point of order from the Government chief whip.Tim Macindoe: This member is repeatedly bringing you into this debate in manners that are completely inappropriate.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Carry on.PHIL TWYFORD: As I was saying there is one thing that rankles more than anything else with New Zealanders and that is when the Government dismantles the very systems of social support that are designed to guarantee that every child growing up in this country gets a decent start in life.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): We are at this stage of the debate looking at the title of this bill. We have had a number of suggestions as to how we could better title this bill. I thought that I would remind the House that it is not that long ago that I think it was the Law Commission or it might have been the Legislation Advisory Committee that told this House that bills must have titles that reflect the intention of that bill. It is very important that we have proper titles on bills so that when the public picks a bill up and they read it or they see the heading they know what that bill reflects. I have thought for a long time that that was very good advice to give to any Government when it is bringing in a piece of legislation. It must be a title that reflects the intention of the bill.I have to say that the title of this bill does not by any measure reflect the intention of the bill because it is called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. You have got to go to the first word—that is “Reform”. “Reform”—what does “Reform” mean? It implies improvement—it implies improvement. We are being told that these reforms are improvements but no evidence has been given in this debate for improvement. No research no evaluation and no reports have been given by anybody that this is an improvement to social housing in New Zealand. I would have liked just one bit of evidence that this measure has been looked at properly but instead we are going to push it through under urgency—even though part of it has been done for 4 years—and no evaluation and no input from the public has been held.So how do we know that this reform is going to be an improvement? The word “Reform” should be removed from the title of the bill because that is what it implies—improvement. Then the next words are “Flexible Purchasing”. Well everybody knows what that means so why not just say what it is? It is the sell-off of State houses to other organisations but not to community groups. That was the intention when the Government had its regulatory impact statement done with a little bit of consultation with the community sector and had it published back in March. That was the intention but what happened in the meantime? Campbell Roberts who I think is one of the most respected people in the Salvation Army came out and said: “No we can’t participate in this great social housing reform involving a flexible purchasing arrangement. We can’t participate because we cannot afford to buy the houses because we would be in debt for 10 years and we would have to change what our philosophy and our approach is in terms of the provision of services by the Salvation Army.” Those services are there to help to protect and lift up the most vulnerable in our community.The Salvation Army told us that if its money and its attention had to go into buying houses under this community housing project it could not stick to its core values philosophy and principles in terms of providing those services. So the Salvation Army pulled out but the problem was that you had the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister going around New Zealand telling New Zealanders: “This is a great policy because the Salvation Army will take the houses. It will be part of the flexible purchasing arrangement.” That fell flat on its face.We do not now know who the flexible purchasers in the community sector are going to be because we do not know of any and neither does the Government. But what we do know is that there are flexible purchasers out there who are very very interested in buying up State houses cheaply. I have to say that my colleague Phil Twyford is correct—they are property developers. I understand that many National members are new constituency members so maybe they have not had so much contact with their constituents at this stage or maybe they do not have many State houses in their electorates but if they go out and look they will see that State houses are already being sold off to property developers at knock-down prices. There are plenty of examples. Go out and look. State houses sold to property developers at knock-down prices—how does that improve—Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is a great opportunity in this stage of the debate to draw together the themes of what is in and what is not in this bill. We have got the date of commencement and we have got the title which is an opportunity for us to pull these themes together. My colleague Chris Hipkins mentioned the proposal for a commencement date that postdates the next election. If the Government had a shred of honour given that it is removing from the New Zealand people the opportunity to make submissions on this bill and have it go through a select committee and given that it is simply ramming it through under Budget urgency and if it had the courage of its convictions then it would commence the bill after the next election so that New Zealanders can vote on it and cast their votes on whether they think Housing New Zealand should be a provider of social housing to New Zealanders who need it or whether it should be just another commercial landlord.This is a bill that could have so many names. It is part of the panic button for this the Government’s seventh fiscal deficit Budget. So perhaps it could be the “Housing (Broken Promises) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (Give With One Hand and Take Away With The Other) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (No Surplus Again This Year) Bill”. Those themes are all common parlance common knowledge amongst New Zealanders who are sighing with sighs of resignation because they have given up on this Government. They have given up on the Government having a new idea or a vision or a strategy for growing jobs and growing incomes for making life fairer or easier for those New Zealanders who just do not have enough to get by.My colleagues God bless them do the hard work that members opposite seem to find it too hard to find time to do. My colleagues are working with families week in week out who are living in cars who are living overcrowded with three or four families in one modest three-bedroom Housing New Zealand home who are living in garages and with children not able to go to school properly or being shunted from school to school. If you do not have a decent roof over your head the cost of that is measured in broken lives and underachievement and our country being the poorer for it.So the Government is essentially stealing from the future to do a cheap and nasty job of today. Sadly this bill is part of that cheap and nasty New Zealand. It is cheapening it. It is cheapening it by taking what was part of the envy of the world our comprehensive welfare State and carving it up and throwing it over to private property developers. Members opposite might smirk. Who knows—maybe some of them might be getting a cut or maybe the party is getting a cut from some of those wealthy wealthy property interests that lobby the Government up-hill and down-dale. Maybe that is the source of the smirking that is going on by members opposite. But I tell you what: there is no smirking going on in west Auckland where people are crowded into unacceptable damp overcrowded houses and the waiting list is getting longer and longer.What New Zealanders are saying to us now is that it is just too hard. The only people getting a Housing New Zealand home are people who are mental health consumers long-term invalids or some very few who have been in extreme poverty for years and years and years. You know how often is it now that you are in a major city and you walk down the street and there is someone sleeping rough on the sidewalk? I remember that when I came into this House around 20 years ago you would not see that. You would not see much of it under a Labour-led Government either. We used to look at places like America where people sleep rough often and we used to look down our noses and say that it would never happen in New Zealand. Well it is happening now.Gutting Housing New Zealand from being a social housing provider to becoming a commercial landlord—members opposite can smirk all they like but the New Zealand public will have their say at the next election because they damn well know what it means. It means more for the people who have already got a lot and more hardship for the people who are already doing it tough. And they have had a gutsful of it—a bloody gutsful. So members opposite can smirk all they like. Carve up Housing New Zealand throw away the welfare State give up on the ideal that Jack is as good as his master and the New Zealand public—[Interruption] Yes I know and throw John Campbell off prime time while you are at it. Make sure that every major news outlet is staffed by Government-friendly journalists. All that will prolong your miserable life in Government by not much because New Zealanders do not like to be told what to do. They will have their revenge at the ballot box.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): This bill cannot possibly go through under the title that is set out in clause 1 of the bill. The title that it is given is the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. We have all gone to school. We know what the word “reform” means. It means to make better to improve to make more effective to make more capable of delivering the results that ordinary working families need. There is not a member in this Committee not even a member on that side of the Chamber who believes for a moment that this bill carries out that purpose. It is a total misrepresentation. God knows that this House does need a social housing reform bill.I just want to take 1 minute of your time to read out this commentary which I picked from one of my local papers. It is actually from the electorate of the member for Hunua. This commentator talks about “desperate families two sometimes three families sharing a small house usually in South Auckland with the kids suffering from inadequate food poor clothing and often-poor health a direct result of over-crowding and rents consuming half of an average wage.” Do you know who that commentator was? Do you know who it was? It was Don Brash. That is what Don Brash the one-time leader of the National Party and the one-time leader of the ACT Party is saying in a publication in Andrew Bayly’s electorate. That is from just 2 weeks ago. I happen to agree with Don Brash in his description of the housing crisis that faces New Zealanders at the moment—a housing crisis that for the first time does not affect just the people at the bottom of the heap. This is a housing crisis that affects a lot of ordinary working New Zealanders who desperately hoped in this Budget and in legislation under this sort of title that they might have been given a break to get a decent roof over their heads and to bring their kids up with a chance in life.What we have seen is rents going up six times the rate of inflation in the last year in the city of Auckland—six times the rate of inflation. Rents have gone up on average by $1300 a year in Auckland in the last year—by $25 a week. It would take up the whole of the extra benefit given to vulnerable families who are on a benefit and it is affecting other New Zealanders as well. The price of a house in Auckland went up by $103000 last year—in 1 year by $103000. That is a 15 percent rise and that is putting pressure on those who are renting. People cannot afford to buy their own home and those who would normally have been able to afford to buy their own home are now competing with the most vulnerable for the rental housing that is available. A social housing reform bill would have addressed the problems of a housing shortage and housing affordability in Auckland which is now reaching crisis proportions. The National Party may have its head down but even its former leader Don Brash spoke the truth about the nature of that crisis.So what have we got from this bill that will help? Is this bill and this title about the Government stepping up to meet its responsibility? No it is about the Government opting out of its responsibility by facilitating the selling off of social housing to the private sector. It has cut social housing—1600 fewer State houses in its last term in Government—and now it is selling off a couple of thousand not to the Salvation Army which Bill English used to talk about the lovely Salvation Army that would look after people but to private developers and to private landlords. That does not solve the housing crisis. This is not a social housing reform bill; it is a bill to privatise social housing to gut Housing New Zealand and its ability to do the job that our forebears 80 years ago this year in this House set up which was to provide State housing so that every child in New Zealand had the chance for a decent life because they had a stable secure affordable home—warm and healthy—to enable them to have good health good education and a better life. That is what reform is about. This bill does the opposite.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No. The time has come to suspend the Committee for the lunch break. The Committee will resume at 2 p.m.Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I would like to speak to the title of this bill which is named the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Before I come to why I think it is misnamed I want to just recap the main features of the existing housing crisis in New Zealand. First of all we have got the lowest rate of homeownership in the private ownership marketin over 50 years. Secondly we have got the highest prices for houses ever in New Zealand. Thirdly those prices are amongst the highest in relation to income as they are in any part of the world. Fourthly the Government has already sold off thousands of rental houses. Fifthly we have got poor-quality rental stock around the country—in Auckland but also in the provinces—because we have got no minimum standard of housing and yet this bill does away with the advice function of the ministry.I want to address where this leads. In particular in one little subsection of housing when you have such high housing need and no place for people to stay you not only get an increase in homeless people you get people staying in substandard accommodation. We are now actually seeing middle-class people—who used to be insulated from this sort of thing; I know of people in this situation now and I did not of know people in this situation a few years ago—who if they suffer a family breakup for example have to move with their child into another house and share a bedroom. These are middle-class people. These are not the lowest-income people. The person I am referring to whom I will not name is in full-time work but he is in that situation with one of his children.Even further down the tree the people who are less well-off get forced into even less desirable situations—namely caravan parks. I want to just reflect on where this is heading in New Zealand because we now have more people than ever living in caravans and caravan parks. I came across this article in respect of where it has got to in the United States because this is the path that we are on currently with all of those factors I have talked about. It is in the Guardian Weekly of 15 May—just this month. It says that “America’s poverty trap is offering up sharp profit margins for private landlords”. I hope people in here are shocked by this. This article refers to the number of people who are living in caravan parks in the United States—and its problems have been growing for longer than ours in this regard. How many people do you think are living in caravan parks in America? Have a guess.Dr Megan Woods: A million.Hon DAVID PARKER: A million?Dr Megan Woods: A million.Hon DAVID PARKER: A million is an enormous number of people. You would think that is right would you not? Did you know that the answer is 20 million people—6 percent of the American population now live in caravan parks. And it has become a big industry for the big end of town because they do not even own their caravan in their caravan park—6 percent of all Americans now live in caravan parks.I would hope that the housing officials who are sitting there looking at this would be ashamed of their bosses who are forcing through the House legislation to say that the officials cannot give advice about that being where this trend ends in New Zealand. That is why this bill should be named something different from it being about remedying social housing problems. It actually makes them worse and it should be about the trend towards caravans because that is what is happening in New Zealand.Paula Bennett who should hang her head in shame in this Chamber refers people to the local caravan park in west Auckland. In west Auckland and South Auckland the camping grounds are bulging at the seams because New Zealanders—some of them in work—have to live in camping grounds. Under this Government we are going down the same path that America has where it has now got 20 million people living in caravan parks in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world too and we have got increasing numbers of people living in cars sharing houses living in camping grounds or being completely homeless.This bill will make it worse because it allows the Government to abrogate its responsibility—to escape income-based tenancies and State houses because it can sell them all off and move them to some other function that is not properly funded. And who will make more money? Again it is the big end of town. Who makes money out of all these trailer parks and the misery in America? The owners of the trailer parks. How many people are affected in America? Six percent of its population. This legislation should be called the “Housing (Promotion of Caravan Parks as a Band-aid) Bill”.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): This bill needs a very serious title I think because it is a pretty serious issue that it covers. I think we should take it seriously and I believe that the title needs to be actually a lot longer even though it is quite a long title already. In particular it must be descriptive of the content of what is in the bill.So I would like to propose a more accurate title. It will be a bit longer but I think it will be worth the extra words. It would be the “Measures to Make the National-led Government’s Appalling Record on Housing Reform Since 2008 Even Worse Bill” because I think that is actually fundamentally what this bill does.The title could be longer of course because there are other things in it that show how bad this legislation is. For example it could refer to measures to reduce housing stock in New Zealand because that is one of the most obvious effects of this particular piece of legislation and the principal Act that it amends. Secondly it could refer to encouraging higher rents and house prices because that is also what it does and that is of course for the benefit of selected private housing providers and nobody else in the community. Rentals are far far too high already and the rate of increase is far too great. Thirdly it could refer to a failure by this Government to improve rental house quality over the 7 years it has so far been in power. The quality of rental homes has not improved. Little or nothing is being done about that and this bill fails to address it. So the title could also be as another alternative for example the “Measures to Reduce Rental Housing Stock Increase Rents and Ensure No Improvement in Private Rental Home Quality Bill” because that would also be a very descriptive title for this legislation.Another alternative might be the “Housing (Weasel Words) Bill” because I do not think I have ever heard so many weasel words in a piece of legislation itself and in the descriptions around it. I want to refer to just three of them.First of all is the term “housing independence”. What does that really mean? “Housing independence” really means being abandoned to the rigours of a dysfunctional rental market. That is actually what we are talking about when the Government refers to housing independence.Another word that is often used in relation to this bill is “flexibility”. I think that really means that Ministers through the excessive powers given to them in this bill to give directions will be empowered to do dodgy deals behind closed doors with a variety of housing providers.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am sorry—[Interruption] It is my responsibility to look at the member.Jacinda Ardern: I was blocking the view.DENIS O’ROURKE: OK. The third term is “tailored contract”. I think that what that means is that some will get privileges and provisions that others will not get. There will be no transparency and there will not be a level playing field so I do not think that is a particularly good term to use either and yet it is one that is bandied about the Chamber without any real attempt to define what it is.Finally another possible title for this bill could be the “Suppression of Housing Demand Bill” because that is the whole thrust of both the principal Act and this amendment to it. The suppression of housing demand really means pushing people out of State houses who should not be pushed or bullied out of State housing. In fact many such people should actually be encouraged into State housing as a good secure housing solution for them. It will make it too hard in the future for people to get a State house. That has been a problem for a long time. This legislation will make it worse.I have suggested at least three ways in which the title to this bill could be improved and I would be happy to support a change to any one of them.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I first of all commend you Mr Chairman for your choice of giving the call to me against my colleague who has been competing for it longer than I have actually and may not be too popular with you later on. It is good to be able to have an opportunity to speak to the title and commencement of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill.I listened with interest to Denis O’Rourke from New Zealand First who just made a very substantive contribution. It is in keeping with the style of the debate on the title and the commencement of bills that we talk about alternative names that they could be called. He quite correctly pointed out that the purpose of this legislation is to continue what the National Government has been doing by stealth which is the selling-off—hocking-off—of State houses to the private sector. It is not so that we can have better provision of affordable houses not so that we can have more affordable houses but just solely so that the Government can get out of that provision of social housing and you know presumably spend less on supporting vulnerable families.I commend Denis O’Rourke’s recommendations in terms of the way that the name of this bill could be changed. But actually if you look at the name of the bill Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill—who on earth would know what that means anyway? Flexible purchasing to the National backbenchers who are going to put their names on the public record alongside this bill selling off State housing—I am sure they have not read it. It is quite obvious that the National Government got to its caucus before the Budget and they were briefed and were told that this was all about flexible purchasing and remedial matters. They would not have asked. None of them would have had the courage to ask the Minister what it actually meant and what they were going to be voting on and putting their names beside.So even though I agree with Mr O’Rourke and other colleagues who have spoken about changing the name the title is actually so meaningless that I do not know whether it would even matter. But if we want to say what this bill actually does then we should be much more honest.The spin around the media that has been associated with this legislation is quite extraordinary. The term “moving to housing independence” which presumably in this conservative model that John Key is now promoting—this conservative-compassionate model that he is now promoting—presumably that means something.Phil Twyford: Being thrown out on the street is what it means.Hon RUTH DYSON: Actually Mr Twyford is right. What it does mean for many people in State houses is quite literally that they lose their home. It is not just a house that they happen to go to after work after school every day. It is their home. It might not be as flash as the Parnell mansion but actually people have a very strong attachment to their home and people in State houses have every right to maintain that attachment unless we are offering them a better opportunity. Moving to housing independence by telling people that they no longer have the tenancy rights of a State house and they have to go into the private market is not offering them a better choice but that is all that Paula Bennett and Bill English are offering them.Prior to the lunch adjournment I listened to some of my colleagues speaking and I was actually pretty dismayed at the sniggers and sneers that came from members of the National Party backbench. When David Clark was talking about a friend of his who was no longer able to afford to have her hair cut on a regular basis and her children were paying for that—the rent had gone up to such a point that she did not have any spare money at all—they were sniggering about that. David Clark also said: “That is not the New Zealand that I signed up to” and I want to totally endorse those comments.When we are talking about what values we have as a society what is important to us what makes us proud to be New Zealanders then it has always been for me that we do have an egalitarian society. We do have people who are respected regardless of their level of wealth or income people who are considered as part of the community and people who have a stable home to call their own—whether they rent it or own it. They are still contributing members of our community. This bill is another step away from that vision away from that respect of individuals away from the ability of New Zealanders to be able to afford to live in a home because the Government thinks that subsidising their rent is a priority.JONO NAYLOR (National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No this bill has not been to a select committee and it is a very serious bill. Therefore I think all latitude will be taken at this stage of it.ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Speaking to the title of this bill—in the title of the bill it has the words “flexible purchasing”. I just want to say that when you have a purchaser you also have a seller and the seller in this instance is the Government—the State. So I think that instead of having the word “purchasing” in it the name of this bill ought to be “Social Housing Reform (Transfer of State Assets) Bill” or the “Sale of State Assets Bill”. By the Government not using the word “sale” and using the word “purchasing” instead it gives a different slant to that of the public’s perception I believe.Over the last few years we have had a number of debates about the sale of State assets. Changing the terminology now in this instance to have a bill that talks about flexible purchasing does not address the issue that this is a mechanism a provision for the Government to be able to sell State assets. The general public ought to have the opportunity to have their input and they have not had the input in this instance. So I stand here to suggest that the name of this bill should be changed and that the Act of Parliament if this bill is passed should actually be the “Social Housing Reform (The Transfer of State Assets) Act”.I could equally say that it is the transfer of social housing responsibility as well because the transfer of these houses to non-Government organisations to property developers also hands over the responsibility of social housing to those agencies. That is not right. It is not right because the intent of what social housing is meant to be all about is helping those families who are most in need.One of the things that I am really concerned about is the length of time. Once these transactions are made how long does the responsibility of social housing afforded to the non-Government organisations last for? Is it 1 year 2 years? After 2 years can they stop their responsibility of providing those houses as social housing and then sell them on the open market at prices that no doubt those people who occupy those homes will not be able to afford? That is a big concern for me because then at that point those houses stop being social housing. In this bill we do not know when that will be because it is entirely at the Minister’s discretion as to how and when that would happen if at all. We just do not know.These are the kinds of things that could be fleshed out in an open process like the select committee process where people have the opportunity to come and have their say on this particular issue. The title bears little resemblance in my opinion to what the final outcome and effect of this bill would be on social housing. So my suggestion is that the Minister should reassess this particular issue and I agree with the sentiments of other contributors to the Committee on this particular matter that the title of the bill does not give a fair reflection of the content of the bill itself.There is one other issue and it is around Māori housing. I have read this bill very carefully and there is nothing in here that suggests to me that there is any way that the Government is upholding its Treaty obligations in providing and addressing the—CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No I made it clear last time. I am not ready yet to accept the closure motion.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is good to be able to take a final Committee stage call one of many on this bit on the title and commencement clauses. As you yourself alluded to Mr Chairman this is a piece of legislation that is going through under urgency. It is the job of this Committee to ask questions and it is the job of the Government and the Minister in the chair to answer those questions when those questions are put in this Chamber. That is what we are elected to do and it is what we are paid to do. I would actually like to hear from some Government members and have them get on their legs and actually examine the legislation that is under question.In regard to the title clause of this piece of legislation I have some questions for the Minister in the chair the Hon Jo Goodhew. The legislation is entitled the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Well I would like the Minister to direct me to the parts of this legislation that are going to act in a remedial way for the current housing situation that we face. I have read this legislation. My colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson suggested some reading for members opposite. She suggested they start with the bill because it clearly was not on their reading list of things that they had examined before they came to the Committee for this debate. But I have read this legislation and I cannot see anything that is going to be remediated in terms of the housing situation. My other colleague the Hon Annette King in her earlier contribution on the title clause drew the Committee’s attention to the advice of the Law Commission and that we actually should title bills in plain English ways in that the titles reflect what it is that a bill is doing.I cannot find anything in here that is going to address the very real concern that the Hon David Parker talked about in terms of the trend we are seeing towards camping grounds in New Zealand with the ultimate outcome being like the United States where 6 percent of people are living in camping grounds. In terms of this I would like to know what is in here for Christchurch a city that is facing a very particular set of housing circumstances. What are the remedial measures in this piece of legislation? We actually have a situation in Christchurch where some of the homelessness is caused by the fact that a number of our camping grounds where people were previously being directed have now been converted to workers’ accommodation. Rather than being places where people who are under housing pressures can go they are where our housing rebuild workers are going and that is putting further pressure on housing.I would like to know what clauses in this bill are going to be remedial for the constituents whom I am seeing in my office. I want to know what clauses in this bill are going to be remedial matters in terms of social housing for my constituent who was threatened with eviction from her Housing New Zealand house in Hoon Hay because in the 2 years following the February 2011 earthquakes she had her daughter and her 3-month-old granddaughter living in a caravan on the property of her Housing New Zealand house. Housing New Zealand tried to evict her because it said it was not right for her to have a caravan on that property. It was prepared to see this whole extended family who were under extreme housing pressure be in a situation where housing was something that was simply beyond their reach.I want to know what clauses in this bill the title of which purports to propose remedial matters are going to do for that family. I want to know what remedial matters are in this piece of legislation for a constituent of mine who is currently in emergency temporary accommodation. Because she is classed as being in emergency temporary accommodation the district health board will not proceed with her hip replacement surgery because it does not consider that she has a safe place to go back to once that surgery is completed. I have not seen anything in this legislation that will do anything to remediate those situations.We have had other Ministers who have sat in that chair through earlier stages of this bill who have waxed lyrical about how this is going to be the panacea for housing. But we are still struggling. I would like the Minister to get up on her legs to address these questions and tell the Committee. This is the Committee stage of this bill where it is the job of Parliament to ask questions of the legislation. We would like some answers to those questions. How is it that this Government thinks it can bring a piece of legislation called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill to the House when there are no remedial matters in the bill? Many of my colleagues have suggested alternative titles for the legislation. Another one of my colleagues the Hon Ruth Dyson has herself also drawn the attention—SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I move That the question be now put.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to speak directly to the title of the bill rather than the commencement clause. For those who are listeningin the gallery when we come to this stage of a debate it is always the point at which we have the ability to rename the bill if we feel that its title is not befitting of its content or of what it intends ultimately to achieve.An area that I think probably warrants a bit more discussion—and the title that I think is more appropriate for this bill is because of this—is that of Housing New Zealand being guttedfurther which is a consequence of this bill. So I would propose that the bill be retitled “The Death Nail to Housing New Zealand” because as Phil Twyford has pointed out although Housing New Zealand lost the substantive parts of its rolesome time ago this bill actually removes any role that involves Housing New Zealand giving policy advice direction research or information to the Minister. In fact in Subpart 2 clause 20 it repeals section 3B(b). The effect of the repeal is that Housing New Zealand no longer has an objective of providing to the Minister of Social Housing advice and information on housing. Housing New Zealand no longer has any role in saying to the Government that we have a housing shortfall—a social housing shortfall a homelessness issue a gap in the market. That is no longer its job. I would have to say that any officials within Housing New Zealand who are worth their salt would probably not want to claim that they have got that job right now given the response from the Government—because it has been particularly inadequate.In areas like Auckland we have seen house prices go up by $100000in the past year. There have been 40000 people who have moved into Auckland in the past year alone. We are simply not keeping up with demand and that is having a flow-down effect on our social housing market. People are unable to access homes. When you have groups like the Salvation Army coming to tell you that they have had new mothers leave hospital with a newborn child and sleep in the car because they cannot access housing you know that you have an absolutely critical situation. We have a Government department that no longer has the job of telling the Government that there is a problem or that there are solutions to fix it. This bill is not just about the sell-down of Housing New Zealand; it is also about the fact that Housing New Zealand itself has been gutted. It is essentially the Government version of Quinovic. That is what Housing New Zealand is. It is now simply a property manager and we on this side of the Committee feel extreme frustration about that.As I have also said I do see this as a bill that will exacerbate the problem in the social housing area. In my mind I think that to capture this it would probably be more appropriate to call it something like the “Continuation of Homelessness Bill”. Any bill about social housing should include some kind of provision to grow social housing stock. Labour has always said that it has no problem with the NGO sector being involved in social housing but it is incumbent on the State that it does not abdicate its responsibility for the provision of housing—Chris Bishop: We are growing it.JACINDA ARDERN: —and that is what this Government has done. The member on that side of the Chamber is trying to claim that they are growing State housing. Let me just tell you in the 1990s National sold 13000 State houses so it had quite a bit of ground to make up there.But equally Mr Bishop in my area of central Auckland with regard to the Auckland Unitary Plan in the submission from Housing New Zealand it engaged Beca Group to do an enormous amount of work where it was submitted to the council that every single Housing New Zealand house in the Auckland area should have any covenants that lay on themremoved. Where the house was a historic home it asked for it to be removed as a character home. Where there were any blocks on whether or not it could build upwards Beca Group asked for those to be removed. Why? Why would it have done that? Because it makes it much more profitable to sell the blocks to a housing developer when there are no restriction on the way it is able to develop the land. The intent is to sell—absolutely—and that is not just my speculating Mr Bishop; that is what is happening. In that area Housing New Zealand is selling stock as fast as it can. The one that we have at least been able to stop is Spring Street. To prove the lunacy of what is going on in the social housing area: Spring Street is one of the few areas where we still have pensioner housing. Housing New Zealand proposed selling the housing to a private developer so that it could lease back the units. That is absolutely farcical and yet that is what this bill is going to deliver us—more sales to private developers for no gain.JONO NAYLOR (National): I move That the question be now put.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I too am concerned that the bill here the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill is inappropriately named. It really should be called the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill” because that is effectively what it is. It does not in any way reflect what this Government intends to do with the social housing sector which is to gut it. This has been on the agenda of National Governments for generations and it does not stop here. We know what is going to happen. We saw what happened when the Salvation Army just the other day pulled out of the Government’s plan to push social housing towards it. The Salvation Army did the sums and it recognised that it was unable to run a social housing sector. This Government wants to push it on the Salvation Army in the way it has been done in Australia except that what the Government has not calculated is that the Australian model in comparison is much much bigger. The social housing providers in Australia are looking after tens or even hundreds of thousands of people whereas here it is much more embryonic. It cannot scale up to that sort of impact.We are sitting here under urgency pushing through a bill on social housing that will radically reform and change social housing in New Zealand. We are doing it under urgency because the Government does not want those social agencies to come before a select committee and actually talk about what the real issues are and what is actually going to happen should this bill go through. So this is the best way of making sure that the public are kept in the dark and that everybody else out there is kept in the dark about what the Government’s real agenda is which is to make sure that social housing is radically transformed from what we see today. What we are going to be seeing instead is that those social providers will not be able to cope with what the Government is wanting them to do. We will see a siloing effect within those community providers as well where we will not have the overview that we have today. But more important we will see many of these houses begin to drift into the private sector to benefit private landlords. If there is one amazing trend of the last few years under this Government both with the housing crisis in Auckland and what is going to happen here it is the enrichment of private landlords. The few landlords are getting richer and the rest cannot afford to get into a house. That is what is happening and will happen with this process here in this bill.This bill is wrongly named. It cannot be called the “Remedial Housing”—or whatever the hell it is supposed to be. It is the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill” because that is effectively what it is. It is putting private landlords and private homeowners before the rest of New Zealand. We have seen that all around. I have certainly seen it in my electorate. I have seen it all around the electorates where there are high proportions of social housing. We are seeing families and communities being disrupted because people are moving around after being turfed out of their house. Kids going to school are changing schools over and over. Many many schools have 25 percent or 30 percent churn. Kids cannot learn. It is disrupting communities. It is hindering kids and their education and most important it is ripping New Zealanders off. It is making sure that instead of helping New Zealanders who need it it is actually private landlords who are going to be enriched. Certainly the latest round of changes that have occurred to try to curb the housing crisis in Auckland are benefiting the private landlords.First home owners are not getting a look in. People who need social housing are not getting a look in. This bill is dismembering the social housing sector and ensuring that those people who really need help are pushed to one side and the few the rich few who put the money into the coffers of that party over there are the people who are being enriched and being favoured above the others. That is totally unfair and that is why the Labour Party is absolutely in opposition to this bill.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): The reason why I want to take a call in this debate—and we are on the title—is that this is the only chance this House has to examine this bill to scrutinise this bill. It is the only chance New Zealand has to have this bill scrutinised by eyes other than the Government’s which is why we are taking this debate so seriously. We are looking at each part of the bill and doing our job on behalf of the taxpayers of New Zealand because this Government would not let this bill which has nothing urgent in it at all go to a select committee. So I think we need to go step by step taking whatever time it takes to make sure that at the end of this process the people of New Zealand know that we did a good day’s work—maybe 2 days’ work or it could be 3 days’ work—examining this legislation because the lazy Government opposite would not send it to a select committee. The best speech those members have made all day is: “I move that the question be now put.” That is the speech from Government on this very important bill that we have before us.Well I have some got information to bring to this Chamber. We are talking about social housing which is what the title of this bill is and it is about the flexibility that is going to come from this social housing reform. We have been told that we need this bill—and the title of this bill—because it is going to make changes in the way that community housing is provided. So I thought: “What do the community housing people themselves think about this bill?”. Well they have just put out a press statement about this bill.Chris Bishop: Oh yes.Hon ANNETTE KING: They have said this. The community housing organisations say: “the government’s budget initiatives on housing are too timid—and won’t deliver the results needed.” These are the very groups that the Government—it says—wants to hand over community housing to. They said: “We hear loud and clear that the government intends to transfer some Housing New Zealand properties for use as ongoing social housing run by community housing providers.” They then said: “What the sector is trying to communicate equally clearly is that the better future is one where those properties can be regenerated made fit for purpose and deliver a whole range of better community outcomes not just put a new landlord in place.” Say yes now Mr Bishop. They said we should “not just put a new landlord in place”.They asked what about the regions? “What are you doing for the regions?” they said. They said that there was an urgent need to look at the accommodation supplement “which currently costs the Government $1.1 billion [and] is in dire need of review and adjustment.” and they go on. So I suggest members that you turn on your iPads and have a look to see what the latest reports are from the very groups that are supposed to be the beneficiaries of this social housing reform.As I said before the word “reform” indicates that it is supposed to be something that is an improvement but what we are hearing from the community housing sector is that it does not see it as an improvement. So this bill is not properly named and I am sure that those who have been in this House for a while will know how important it is to correctly name a bill. We have been warned many times that we ought to name bills correctly.Let us listen to the only submission that we have received on this bill and that has come in right now from the umbrella group Community Housing Aotearoa. That is the only submission we have got because it was not allowed to make one so it has put out a press statement. I have read out to the members opposite what that group thinks about this bill. Well if that group counts for anything the National Government would be pulling this bill and saying: “Let’s send it to a select committee and hear submissions from New Zealanders.”—maybe even a tenant or two. Heaven help us that they should be allowed a voice when it comes to community housing! You see the Minister for Social Housing blew it yesterday when she told us what tenants are thought of and called by the National Government. Do you know what they are called? They are not called tenants or people; they are called cohorts. She said: “We are talking about cohorts.” and she was not calling them tenants or people. That really is an indication of how out of touch the Government opposite is when it comes to social housing.CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think we are in the position now where the Committee can make a decision as to whether it wants to move to a vote.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 57New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I understand that a member was ejected from the Chamber earlier for commenting during a vote. I did not identify the member who just commented through this vote and who was not meant to be commenting but if I had he would have been joining the other member.A party vote was called for on the question That clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 57New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.Clause 1 agreed to.A party vote was called for on the question That clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 57New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.Clause 2 agreed to.Hon JO GOODHEW (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) on behalf of theMinister for Social Housing:I move That the Committee divide the bill into theHousing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Social Housing Reform) BilltheTaxation (Social Housing Reform) Bill the Housing Corporation (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill and the KiwiSaver (HomeStart) Amendment Billpursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 78.A party vote was called for on the question That the motion be agreed to.Ayes 76New Zealand National 59; Green Party 13; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 44New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.House resumed.Bill reported without amendment.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I move That the report be adopted.A party vote was called for on the question That the report be adopted.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 57New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.Report adopted.