Woods Megan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3650. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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—