Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill

Mr Chairman, it is a privilege to speak, with you in the Chair. It is also a privilege to welcome back the Minister of Housing, Chris Carter, from his overseas jaunt. He has been away for some time. There has been a lot of movement within Housing New Zealand Corporation in that time with regard to the recent allegations of financial mismanagement and the gagging clause, which have put this country into shock. Essentially, we saw a public servant be gagged by a contract that came from his department. Housing New Zealand Corporation stopped its staff from talking to the media, but what was worse was that it also stopped them from talking to their duly elected member of Parliament, who could have been any one of us, or a Minister of the Crown—indeed, it could have been that very Minister. However, that is water under the bridge, to a degree, though we should explore the details around that issue, perhaps later this week.

This afternoon, though, we are discussing the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Information Matching) Amendment Bill. The aim of this bill is to amend the Housing Restructuring Act 1992. First of all, I say we support the Government’s moves to rename the Act as the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992, and to insert information-matching provisions in the Act to allow Housing New Zealand Corporation to disclose information about tenants and tenancies to the Ministry of Social Development, as the ministry responsible for the administration of the Social Security Act 1964. The ministry is very interested and quite intrigued to know about the goings-on in Housing New Zealand Corporation. It needs to check that the benefits it parts with on behalf of the taxpayer go to the right people—to those in need, and not to those who are rorting the system.

In fact, it is interesting to note—and Minister may like to pay attention to this particular point, because it is quite a poignant one—that National tried to introduce legislation on this matter in 1999. At that time, Labour did not see fit to support the legislation. However, after 6½ years in Government, I think that the problem has crystallised in the minds of the Labour members, and Minister Carter has decided that perhaps it would have been a good thing to support National 6 years ago. Now he has actually grabbed hold of the baton and carried the torch, so to speak, from that National Government, and has introduced this legislation. So how could the National members not support their very good idea of 6 or 7 years ago?

We are a party of transparency, a party of openness, and a party where privacy rights are protected, but only to the degree that lawful citizens are able to go about their own business in their own private lives. We become concerned where we see rorting of the system—and, certainly under this Minister’s watch, we have seen a fair bit of that within Housing New Zealand Corporation and the State house sector, particularly while the Minister has been overseas, focusing on other things in the fine restaurants of Britain. We have seen a lot of those rorts go on under the Minister’s watch, and I know that he is a bit concerned about that issue and he is chasing his tail. This year I will continue to present him with the facts on the rorts that waste taxpayers’ money. Week by week and month by month I will put them before the Minister, and perhaps he will address them in time. He has addressed this issue—7 years late, yes. But grandma would say—and that Minister’s grandma would say this too, if she were alive today—“Better late than never”. “Better late than never, Christopher—”

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

“—Minister Carter”, she would say. The Minister’s grandmother would call him Minister Carter, and she would say that it is better late than never. Seven years after the National Party introduced this idea, he is promoting it in legislation, and I say: “Good for him!”

There is rorting within the State house system, and we see that this legislation seeks to address that problem. For example, many State house tenants profit from having boarders. We understand that at the moment 7,000 State houses have boarders living under the roof—and those are just the ones we know about. What about all those that we do not know about? We see that in Part 1 those particular issues are addressed.

I will talk about the new Part 6, “Information matching”, which is proposed to be inserted in the principal Act by clause 5. It talks about what matching will be going on and why we are doing that. For example, the purpose of the information matching is to “verify the entitlement or eligibility of any person to or for any benefit”. Housing New Zealand Corporation will share its information with the Ministry of Social Development in order that the ministry can verify whether a particular person is, in fact, eligible for a benefit. It would be a State house tenant. The corporation would provide the ministry with information about the tenancy—for instance, the name of the tenant, other names the tenant may use, the physical address where the tenant lives, the start and end date and weekly rent of the tenancy, the tenant’s income, and any address or other details that it may be appropriate to share—in order that the ministry can verify whether the person is eligible for another social welfare benefit of some sort.

The ministry will, first of all, verify the tenant’s entitlement. Second, once the tenant has an entitlement, the ministry will verify the value of the entitlement. It may be $10 a week, it may be $50 a week, or it may be a State house—or the tenant may be on the take wherever and whenever he or she can be. So it is a matter not just of verifying the entitlement as a matter of fact but also of verifying the amount of any benefit to which the person is or was entitled, or to which any person is or was eligible. The third reason that National supports this information-matching bill is not only to verify the entitlement and verify the amount of the entitlement but also to recover debts due to the Crown. We must appreciate that within the State house sector, sometimes debts are drummed up. They are owed to the Crown. The Minister’s collection agency has not been on the ball, and debts build up—for example, back rent where a portion of rent is to be paid to the corporation, or any other debts that have accrued.

Other debts could accrue where there has been damage to the home that the tenant cannot demonstrate is everyday wear and tear, expected maintenance, or some other understandable accident that has occurred either internally in the property or externally on the grounds. So debts can be drummed up. If a door or a wall is kicked in or if glass is broken from the inside because of rough play, debts can build up. Essentially, in some cases, it comes down to vandalism. The thought that New Zealand taxpayers could give the privilege of a home to a State house tenant, who then vandalises it, is a hard one for New Zealanders to deal with. It does not happen very often, but it does happen on occasion. The ratbags that perpetrate that sort of activity and damage homes, and who claim high-value entitlements they are not entitled to, ought to be caught up with, and that is what this bill will do.

So this bill, which is similar to the bill National proposed and Labour opposed in 1999, is a very good bill, indeed. The National team will, of course, be addressing part by part the details of this legislation. Again, I welcome the Minister back into the Chamber—into this debating chamber. We look forward to him answering the specific questions on the bill that National will have for him. He needs to remember that because National did all the research on this matter in 1998 and 1999, and because we did all the hard slog and groundwork, putting blood, sweat, and tears into it, we have a very, very acute understanding of the implications of each of its clauses. So I hope the Minister has been well briefed during the aeroplane flight back from overseas. I hope that he took time out from his first-class travel to talk to his officials back in the baggage compartment, and to receive a good briefing on this legislation.

I would also like to talk about the new section 69, “Information and details to be disclosed”, which is in the new Part 6 being inserted into the principal Act by clause 5. The examples in that section are very, very detailed, and I would like to take the opportunity to speak about them later.

This bill is quite a good idea, but it needs more teeth. I think the information should be going both ways, between the Ministry of Social Development and the Housing New Zealand Corporation. The corporation should get the information from social services, as this would help to catch a lot of multi-benefits that are being paid out when they should not have to be paid out. I know of many cases where one household is receiving two or three benefits, and the recipients are all using the same address—just so members know—and that could be picked up quite easily.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: It’s unacceptable.

That is right.

I do worry about whether the Labour Government can be trusted with more information, if it were given, after David Benson-Pope—the honourable, if he is—sent a letter to 60,000 State house tenants telling them that if National got into Government, all tenants would be kicked out of their State houses. How did he get that information? I did not think we could get this information. [Interruption] The member should just keep quiet. I am trying hard here. I have a lot to say about nothing.

I suggest we change the name of this bill to “Custer’s Last Stand”—I mean, “Carter’s Last Stand”; I had better get that right. The whole State housing sector is a mess, and badly needs sorting out. There must be a better way, and the National Government will find it, with my help of course. We will help the disadvantaged and still make it affordable. We will not tell Mr Anderton in the House about where I will sell State houses.

💬 Hon Pete Hodgson: You’re in favour of everything that’s good and against everything that’s bad. Is that right?

Just keep talking; it fills up my 5 minutes. We have 7,000 houses with boarders living in them who are not paying one dollar to the Housing New Zealand Corporation to help lessen its major drain on taxpayers. We have high-income earners in State houses. What is going on? I thought those houses were a hand up, not a handout.

The Government should wake up. Labour Government members have been in the House for 6½ years, I have been here for only 8 months, and all I hear is damn excuses—I would have said “bloody excuses”, but that would be rude—and the Government still has not got it right. Even the name of the bill needs changing, as I said. If this bill made everything transparent, which we hoped it would do, Labour would be in deep trouble. The rip-offs and waste are shocking. The public would be shocked. To finish, I say that we support the bill, but it should go a lot further.

I rise to speak in support of the bill and to ask a few questions. First of all, I will deal with the Green minority view in the commentary on the bill. The Greens say that they oppose the bill because they are: “concerned by the proliferation of information-matching programmes operating between Government agencies and the intrusion this represents into the personal lives of New Zealanders …” who are on welfare. My answer to that would be, quite simply, for people not to be on welfare, then their lives will not be intruded upon, they can get on and live their lives their way, and they can look after themselves.

I certainly support information sharing because I think it has the opportunity to—

💬 Phil Heatley: It’s our bill.

Well, it is our bill; that is right. We brought the bill in in 1999 but it did not have the support of the Labour Party, so it is good to see it come back and to progress it this time.

This bill gives us the opportunity to look at the information that is coming from individuals to the Housing New Zealand Corporation and through to the Ministry of Social Development. But it is a one-way information-matching system. The Social Services Committee, which I sit on, was given four reasons for the necessity of that matching: first, to assist the ministry in minimising and recovering beneficiary and student debt from benefit and allowance overpayments; second, to provide early intervention in cases that could result in the creation of substantial debt; and, third, to assist in the detection of fraud and to help people track those who are in debt to the ministry. We think these are all extremely admirable reasons, because we all know the trap that some welfare beneficiaries can get themselves into when they find themselves unable to survive on the money they receive. They get further and further into debt, and it creates a vacuum that they cannot get out of. We hope this information sharing is done not to beat up the welfare beneficiary who is trying to do the best he or she can but instead is done to stop the problem before it starts, so that someone is not in that perpetual cycle of dependency and debt, which is the situation of so many people.

I have to say, though, that National does have a concern with the rorts in the system. We can hide our heads in the sand for so long, but the reality is that rorts are there. Someone who lives in the area that I look after for the National Party wrote to me the other day, stating that she was on a list to get a Housing New Zealand Corporation house and that she wanted some support to be bumped up the list. She wanted her information to be carried over. I asked the person what was so unique about her that she needed to have support from the Government. She looked at me, completely stonewalled, and, with a shocked look on her face, said it was because she wanted a State house. I asked her what was so unique about her that she should be bumped up, above other people, in order to get what is in all cases a benefit for those who are the most needy. She could not answer me. She then marched back to my office a few days later with a letter in her hand, which she flashed in my face, and said she now had a letter from another MP who said she should be bumped up the list. I have to say that that is of some concern, certainly to us in the National Party. Is a State house allocated on the basis of need or is it allocated to the person who shouts the loudest? We need State housing, and no one denies that it is an important part of New Zealand’s social services, but let us make sure that people are getting a State house because of genuine need. That is what really starts raising some questions for me.

The fact that there are people earning over $50,000 a year who are in a State house just seems incredulous to me. We all know—and I am sure the Minister would agree—that there are people who are not on that sort of money who would benefit from being in a State house, but instead we have families that are rorting the system and taking houses away from those who most need them. We need to start shaking some cages and watching people. We need that shaking-tree effect. I think we need to start going at it a bit harder in order to see what can be done.

Information sharing has been raised by the Greens and a couple of other individuals as being about people’s rights—they say it will scare people, it is not fair, and everything else. Unless we start asking some of the hard questions then we will not be supporting those who genuinely need support the most. I challenge the Minister as to whether he is asking those sorts of hard questions. National supports this bill purely because it increases transparency and openness. Those are things the National Party hugely advocates.

I thank the previous speaker, Paula Bennett, the National list member. I thought her speech was a thoughtful presentation that raised some important questions, and I will focus on a few of them and on the points she raised.

Miss Bennett asked whether State housing is allocated on a needs-based assessment. I can assure her it is. Since 1999 the allocation of houses for Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants has been entirely on a needs base. There is quite a rigorous test. I represent a constituency that adjoins where her office is, and both of us know well that we live in an area that has the largest Housing New Zealand Corporation waiting list in the country. I regularly have people coming into my office—as does Miss Bennett, as she indicated in her speech—who are very unhappy that they have not yet been able to access a Housing New Zealand Corporation house in west Auckland, because we do follow a very strict needs assessment. Sadly, because of the 13,000 houses that were sold by the previous Government, we are behind in the number of properties we have available to rent out, but we are rapidly catching up.

The issue of wealthy tenants was also raised by the member. It is true that some people pay market rents—about 10 percent of Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants. But they are tenants we inherited, by and large, from a previous time when people were paying large rents and the selection for State houses was made not on a needs basis but on the ability to pay. I can say that 98 percent of new tenants are not paying market rents but income-related rents—they have been placed in a Housing New Zealand Corporation house on a needs basis only. In some areas, particularly rural areas, we do not have a waiting list, so properties are available there that sometimes do go to market renters. But, as I said, 98 percent of new tenants are paying income-related rents, showing that the system of helping those who need help the most is working. But we are still working on the stock.

Anyway, getting back to the bill itself—although I think that background information is important—I will say that there was a lot of focus by the first two speakers on what are essentially rorts to the system. This bill will actually be very helpful for beneficiaries who are Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants. It will ensure that beneficiaries are receiving the full entitlement to social assistance, and the Ministry of Social Development will be able to check that Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants are receiving their correct entitlements. Should Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants move into private rental accommodation, they will then, through the system, be able to be checked as to whether an accommodation supplement is appropriate to their needs.

So this bill is about streamlining the system. It is about identifying where the greatest need is. One of the issues many members of the Committee will have had to deal with in their time as constituency MPs is that of people who run up debts through social welfare overpayments. That does happen sometimes. This debt can be neglected very easily, and suddenly people who are on a very low income or a benefit can discover that they have, through an overpayment process, quite a considerable debt on their hands. This system of matching databases will go a long way to preventing that situation from happening, and, of course, will ultimately be very beneficial to those who have received overpayments so as to nip the thing in the bud as early as possible. So I think it is a very sensible process. I thank the main Opposition party for supporting the bill, and I am looking forward to us working through this process fairly quickly.

This is a good bill. It had its genesis back in 1999, when National tried at that time to introduce a bill in order to bring about the transparency and accountability that my colleague Paula Bennett spoke about earlier. It is good that the Minister has acknowledged National’s support for this bill. Other speakers from National will also articulate our position on it.

If we go back in time 6½ or 7 years, when Labour did not support the previous bill, we have to ask why it is introducing this measure now. Why did Labour not support the previous bill in 1999? Was it just because National was in Government and Labour was in Opposition that Labour thought that bill was a bad idea? The same sort of thing could be said now that National is in Opposition, so maybe we should just vote against the bill. But no, this bill has merit because, as my colleagues have said, it will bring about transparency and accountability. It will make sure that there is a matching of information between Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development. It is certainly our view that that is advantageous.

There have been rorts, and we want to make sure that any assistance that goes with housing is based on need. If rorts are happening, then they need to be sorted out. The matching of information must be very much part of the process. We do not want to have abuse of the system—there has been too much of that. We actually want the rorts to be sorted out, and we want to see exactly how the process will work.

Section 67, “Purpose of section 68”, inserted by clause 5, spells out the situation very well. Section 67(a) states: “verify the entitlement …”. That is very important. What are tenants entitled to? Are they getting the right entitlement? Time and time again constituents come to see me who do not really know what they are entitled to. It is not until we act on their behalf that we find out what they are entitled to and eligible for. That is fine. If we can help them in that respect, that is well and good. So section 67(a) refers to the verification of the entitlement or eligibility. The second point, in section 67(b), is about verifying the amount of benefit people are entitled to. With all the different benefits that are available, the provision in its totality deals with the benefits a person is entitled to. Thirdly, section 67(c) refers to the recovery of debts due to the Crown. Many people think it is their right, rather than a privilege, to have a State house. They think that is their right. They can do damage. They have no respect for what they have been given by the State and by us as taxpayers, and then debts are incurred. We say we need to have accountability.

I want to give an example that I think demonstrates that. In my earlier days, when I left university, I flatted with a widow. She had a young child. Her mother, who had a three-bedroom State house, did not live in her State house. She did not live there at all; she actually came and lived with the daughter. There was a three-bedroom State house that had nobody in it, yet there were families at that time who would have been overjoyed had they been able to have access to it. In the meantime, because the house was vacant, it was vandalised. I went around there on occasions to try to tidy the place up—to mow the lawns, and do things like that—yet the house became vandalised because there was no tenant. But would that person give that house up? No, she would not. She did not live in it during the 1-year period that I was flatting with that couple, but she did not give the house up, because it was her home. Yet there were very worthy families that could have moved into that three-bedroom home located in a nice part of Hamilton.

So National is fully supportive of this bill. Information sharing between the ministry and the corporation is the way to go. We believe that the bill will break down secrecy, and facilitate transparency and accountability. It will bring together the sharing of information so that everybody benefits and, where there are rorts, those rorts can be determined and ironed out. The matching of data is something National has supported. We also say that the identification of need is the criterion we should use to maximise and crystallise the argument—that the people who are worthy of support should receive it, and we should not have people who want to rip the system off. As my colleague Bob Clarkson said, there are numerous examples of people living in State houses and collecting more than one benefit—in fact, a number of benefits. Even my colleague Phil Heatley has identified that in this Chamber previously.

So National is very pleased to be able to support this bill. It is long overdue. As I said, it had its genesis back in 1999, and we are happy that it is proceeding through the Committee stage tonight.

It is interesting to listen to this debate as we go through the Committee stage this evening. I guess I have to raise the question about the relationship we want to forge with the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development. When we look at the triangle, we need to look at the relationship with the Labour Party during the last election campaign, when eviction notices went out to all those State housing tenants. We have to ask ourselves how that information got out. Was it through the Housing New Zealand Corporation?

💬 Paula Bennett: We’ve asked the question.

We have asked the question. It would be great for the Minister to take a call this evening to let us and the listeners know so we can clear that up, once and for all, because the information has come to a bit of a dead end. It is very hard to find out the answer to that question that everyone has asked. All those thousands of eviction notices went out to tenants during the campaign, and we do not know who did it. So here we are forging ahead with this bill this evening and trying to open up the transparency between the Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development, and I think that is a fundamentally correct action. This was a National initiative back in 1999. So it is great that the Government has decided to bring it to everyone’s attention now. I think it is wonderful. It has taken a fair while to get here, though.

I need to acknowledge the hard work my colleague Phil Heatley is doing in this portfolio; it is outstanding. He is exposing the rorts that many speakers this evening have alluded to. I need to touch on a few of them. We have had illegal immigrants living in State houses. I believe we have had tenants growing dope in their backyards. We have had families earning over $70,000 who have been able to live in a State house. I believe that the information-matching measures in this bill will tidy up some of that.

It is interesting also to look at the minority view of the Green Party, which is opposed to this bill because it has concerns mainly around intrusion into people’s personal lives. But I believe we have to work through that, because so many rorts are happening with Housing New Zealand that need to be sorted out. So I think it is important to acknowledge the Green Party’s view, but this bill will actually go on to address further the people who are ripping the system off.

That, fundamentally, is what this bill will do. It will protect people’s privacy rights but also allow the Housing Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development to work closely together to work out who is entitled to what, who is getting what, and who is ripping off the system. The good member for Whangarei has worked very, very hard in exposing all of the rorts that are happening in State houses throughout New Zealand, and that is the biggest issue.

Also, we need to look at the debts the Crown is not currently recovering—thousands and thousands of dollars in debts. I think the collection agency needs to have a ruddy bullet fired in its direction to make sure it is actually collecting the debts. We have a whole lot of issues around back-rent and around damage done to homes.

So I would like the Minister to take another call and iron out this question that I and many New Zealanders have about how the Labour Party was able to get information out in the election campaign—to send out a false eviction notice to all the tenants in Housing Corporation houses throughout New Zealand. Now the Government is working on a little triangle, fostering a better relationship between the Housing New Zealand Corporation, the Ministry of Social Development, and Labour. Let us hear the Minister take a call and iron out that issue once and for all—the issue of who supplied the information, where the Government got it from, and whether it will happen again.

As a member of the Social Services Committee that looked at this bill, I would like to help the Committee on a couple of matters. One in particular is the Housing New Zealand Corporation database and how that information got into the hands of the Labour Party so it could distribute that material as a scaremongering tactic—which very much describes Labour’s tactics during the election campaign. Interestingly enough, the corporation’s officials made no response when we asked how its database came to be used by Labour. This raised quite some concern for the National Party, as the corporation deals with information, and the bill is about information sharing and information matching. We asked the corporation—given that something is already so wrong with its database that information could get into the wrong hands and be used maliciously, as it was during the campaign—what this means as far as information matching and this bill are concerned. Well, everyone looked at each other rather sideways and gulped three times, but no one could actually come up with any answers.

I ask for a bit of caution. I certainly follow on from the previous speaker, Nathan Guy, in asking the Minister to take a call on this matter, because it is a vitally important question that I think New Zealanders need to have answered. We are talking about information matching, about a database, and about sharing information between departments. We need to be careful that people’s information is being treated with the respect it deserves. Obviously, we have seen an actual case of that information having been used in a way—

💬 Phil Heatley: For political purposes.

It has been used purely for political purposes, as my colleague Phil Heatley says. As a consequence, one does need to think about how respect for people’s information is observed.

I am a real advocate for those who need help at times in their lives when they are perhaps struggling and find themselves in a situation they did not expect—being widowed, raising children on their own due to circumstances that are outside their control, or losing their job through changes within an industry. They have the opportunity to receive a handout from the State so that they can get through that part and get on with the rest of their lives. I know personally the sense of self-satisfaction one can have from being in the workforce and looking after oneself and one’s own. I caution that when we are matching information and making sure that people receive what they perhaps need to get them through such times, we do not turn this country into a welfare-dependent State.

National is certainly looking at second and third generation Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants. We say that, by all means, we should help those who cannot help themselves in times of need. But let us be very careful that we are not turning this country into a place that has intergenerational dependency, where people lose the aspiration to get ahead and do something for themselves, because there is nothing like the sense of self-belief that people have when they can look after themselves and provide a role model for others. I passionately believe that the only way to avoid that dependency is through paid work, and I recognise the work the Government is doing in many areas as it pushes towards payment towards paid work.

However, I would like the Minister to answer the question of how the database information that was used for malicious purposes at election time came to be released. The matter is certainly of some concern to the National Party. We have asked questions officially and through the select committee. We have not had responses to those questions, at all. In fact, when we met with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about this matter and asked its officials questions around the issue, they could not answer the question as to how that information had got out, either. Moving forward, I would like to address other parts of this bill later in the Committee stage, but now I ask the Minister to give us some verification on the matters I have raised.

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have not heard from Mr Locke and the Green Party.

I take Paula Bennett’s point that we want to help people get on in life and help those who are in poorer circumstances, as many in Housing New Zealand Corporation properties are. But I do not think we will do that by putting any negative attitude on people who happen to be in State-provided accommodation as against private accommodation. We need the attitude that a good State house is as good as any other house, any other rental property, and, hopefully, any private owner-occupied property.

We have a tradition, going back to the first State houses in 1938, of New Zealanders living in State houses often for long periods of time and really treating them as their own—treating them well and doing the gardens. The State house suburbs that developed in New Zealand have nurtured many of the people in this room, I understand. John Key lived in a State house himself, although he has more recently taken a somewhat negative attitude to State houses in opposing the building of State houses in the Hobsonville development in his electorate. That was a bit of a put-down of State houses. Unfortunately, in some other instances when areas are being planned, people try to impose conditions that no State housing can be developed in those areas or that no State housing tenants can live there.

So there is a certain negative attitude afoot. I think this bill in some ways—even if only minor ways—contributes to that negative attitude, because the data-matching will occur between Work and Income and the Housing New Zealand Corporation, so it will apply only to people who are on benefits and happen to be in State-provided accommodation. There is no parallel matching—and of course that would be difficult—between Work and Income and those people in private rental accommodation.

So there is an inequality there. The Greens are concerned, and issues of privacy have been raised. There are so many matching programmes now; they are expanding year by year. The Privacy Commissioner has indicated a certain concern that the more programmes there are, the more abuse there can be in the system, too. The people who operate these data-matching agencies—the State employees—are human beings and can misuse the agencies, as other human beings do in society. This data-matching system is not necessary, and as the minority report from the Green Party states, the Ministry of Social Development can obtain the information required for benefits through informed consent rather than by imposing this highly computerised data-matching system. There is no demonstrated need for this legislation at this time. It is leading us down the wrong track and placing a negative attitude on those who happen to be State house tenants.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 38 in the name of the Hon Chris Carter to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.