Housing Corporation Amendment Bill

I move, That the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill be referred to the Social Services Committee, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 6 June 2011, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington region despite Standing Orders 187, 189(a), and 190(1)(b) and (c).

In December I announced the Government’s response to the report of the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group. This included a decision to consolidate housing policy advice functions within the Department of Building and Housing by 1 July 2011. Consolidating advice functions within the department will allow for a more coherent integrated overview of housing sector issues and advice to Ministers. It will also provide greater synergy, strengthen capability, and avoid duplication of effort across agencies.

This bill proposes an amendment to the Housing Corporation Act 1974 to support this change. The corporation will no longer be expected to provide the Minister of Housing with housing sector policy advice or with any advice or information on housing or services that does not relate to the provision of State housing. It will no longer be required to undertake research or monitoring activities for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing on housing or services that do not relate to State housing.

To help give effect to these changes, the Housing Corporation Act 1974 will be amended to prevent Housing New Zealand Corporation employees who are offered a commensurate position within the Department of Building and Housing from claiming redundancy. Housing New Zealand Corporation employees who are offered and accept positions within the Department of Building and Housing will be transferred on terms that are commensurate with their current terms and conditions of employment.

The proposed amendments contained in the bill are necessary to facilitate the consolidation of housing policy advice within the Department of Building and Housing as the Government intended. I commend this bill to the House.

Is that it? Really? Wow. I am happy to stand and speak on the first reading of the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. The reality is this bill is just another piece of tinkering around the edges from a Government that has absolutely no plan to deal with the ongoing housing crisis in New Zealand, and particularly, in the instance of the Housing New Zealand Corporation, the crisis in social housing.

I will say from the outset that Labour will support this bill going to the Social Services Committee, but we do so with enormous reservations, and we cannot guarantee we will support it beyond that. We think the legislation is a timely opportunity to have a discussion about the Housing New Zealand Corporation and its current direction and focus, which have changed dramatically since the change in Government. There has been a cultural shift in the Housing New Zealand Corporation, and that shift has been punitive and has made things far more difficult for tenants. In fact, tenants have been completely left out of the loop. The reports that the Minister of Housing has commissioned include the huge Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group report, which was about State housing. One group of people had absolutely no involvement whatsoever in that report: the tenants of the Housing New Zealand Corporation. The tenants, whom the entire piece of research was about, were not consulted, were not involved, and, as far as I know, have still not been talked to about the implications of that report for them as clients of the Housing New Zealand Corporation.

It concerns me to hear the Minister talking about the separation of State housing policy from other housing policy. Of course, housing is a continuum. It goes from the social housing that the Housing New Zealand Corporation provides all the way through to the affordable housing initiatives brought in by the previous Labour Government, some of which have been continued under this Government and some of which have been scrapped. But State housing does not exist in isolation from the rest of the housing market. I am very concerned, and maybe I misheard or misinterpreted the Minister’s comments, but the idea that State housing policy will somehow be completely separate from policy for housing everywhere else is, I believe, a step backwards. In saying that, I also know that there are some concerns, particularly within the community housing sector, that there is a conflict of interest in the Housing New Zealand Corporation providing policy advice when it is also a stakeholder. I think that is an issue we can discuss at the select committee.

I want to talk a little bit about the history of State housing in New Zealand, because sometimes Government members forget where it came from. It goes back to Michael Joseph Savage and the first Labour Government. A very wise decision was made back then that taxpayers’ money would be used, would be invested, to support low-income families unable to access appropriate and affordable housing. Generations of New Zealanders—generations of them—have invested taxpayer money and have done so proudly. As a country we have been proud of our investment in social housing, proud of the way that we have supported those families who, from time to time and for varying lengths of time, have needed the assistance of State housing, which started under the first Labour Government and continues to this day. It has been a very wise investment. It has provided many families with the kind of support they need to raise their families in conditions that are appropriate.

Those families have included that of the Prime Minister of this country. The Prime Minister of this country grew up in a State house. He likes to make a big deal of it. I have to ask why, then, he stopped the building of 500 State houses in his own electorate. He said it would be economic vandalism for poor people to have sea views—economic vandalism. Well, that is not what New Zealanders believe about State housing. It was a very, very disappointing comment from a Prime Minister who has traded on his State house past. He has pulled up the ladder behind him like so many other National Party Ministers and members.

The 1990s was a very turbulent time for State house tenants. Nearly 13,000 State houses were hocked off, mostly to developers, under the guise—and we have heard this again now—of letting State house tenants own their own homes. Well, there is a reason State house tenants are in State houses: because they are on a low income and are unlikely to be able to purchase their own homes. They cannot afford it. I note that the policy the Minister brought in again of allowing State house tenants to purchase their own homes—although this time he did not make the mistake of subsidising them for his mates; he put them out at market values—has been an abysmal failure. It raised the expectations and the hopes of thousands of State house families who thought it would be their pathway into homeownership. They were devastated when they realised that it was nothing more than a slogan—nothing more than a slogan—and that the Government was not going to do anything to help them into homeownership and to improve the affordability of homeownership.

The Government brought in market rents. It got rid of income-related rents and brought in market rents. It drove thousands of families into poverty overnight. The Government carried out no modernisation whatsoever of the State housing stock throughout that time. I will read a comment from the housing Minister at the time, Tony Ryall, who is still on the National front bench. This is what he said in general debate in the mid-1990s: “I think it is much better that the State is not involved in housing, and that we say to New Zealanders that our effort will go into putting people into private enterprise housing.” He then said in 1999: “National MPs inherently do not have a desire to expand the level of State housing in New Zealand. It is not an issue that is dear to our core constituency.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nothing has changed between that National Government, largely, and this National Government. Those core values are still there.

Where have we seen that? We have seen it in the fact that the State house budget was slashed—slashed—by 80 percent last year. Mr Heatley has had to swallow the dead rat of income-related rents, as has his party, because abolishing them in the 1990s was so unpopular. But National has not done it because it agreed with income-related rents; it has done it because it knew that it would have been politically untenable to go forward with a policy of getting rid of income-related rents once again. It took a Labour Government in the 2000s to bring back income-related rents for State house tenants. We rebuilt 8,000 of the 13,000 State houses that were hocked off during the 1990s, and we did that at a time when there was a major housing boom and it was difficult to get builders. We carried out modernisation at a time when it was difficult to find people to do the work, because in the 1990s builders had left the country in droves and the National Government had done nothing about it. It had done nothing to keep those builders in work or keep them in training. So when we came to another housing boom we did not have the skilled labour to be able to do everything we wanted.

Does this sound familiar? Well, it should, because it is happening right now. It is happening again. This National Government has learnt nothing. In the last 2½ years we could have been building housing. Over the last 3 years Australia has put more than $5 billion into housing as part of an economic stimulus package. It has added 20,000 State houses to its State housing stock. And do you know what? It has kept builders in work, it has kept building companies in employment, and it has kept local businesses open because of the purchases that are being made. It has kept income tax and sales tax going through, as well. What did we do? Nothing—absolutely nothing. Our building sector is in the deepest recession it has ever been in since records began. The chief executive of the Registered Master Builders Federation said that once again we will not be able to respond to demand whenever we come out of a recession, because our builders will not be there. Our builders are leaving; they are going overseas. Our apprentices are going overseas, too.

What was the Government’s answer to the housing crisis? It slashed the budget for State housing by more than 80 percent in last year’s Budget. Mr Heatley likes to say to the housing sector that times are tough and there is no money. Well, there was plenty of money for $15 billion worth of tax cuts, which overwhelmingly went to people who did not need them and have not spent them in the economy. There was plenty of money for the plastic waka up in Auckland; it would have been nice to spend it on housing. There was a lot more money for private schools, and $2 billion for the “Holiday Highway” north of Auckland. That is the kind of infrastructure the National Government believes in: infrastructure that gets Ministers to their holiday houses 7 minutes faster. Well, the kind of infrastructure that Labour believes in is housing. Housing is core infrastructure. It should be a higher priority for this Government.

The second thing the Government wants to do is hide the problem by bringing in an options and advice service that has no function other than to keep people off the waiting list. That is what it is doing. Emergency accommodation providers are saying that people are turning up, the Housing New Zealand Corporation having turned them away or put them into boarding houses. They are living in completely unacceptable situations because the Minister will not let them have a needs assessment before they are farmed out to the private sector. The only reason someone would make that decision would be to keep people off the waiting lists, and I say congratulations to the Minister, because it is working. The Government is hiding the figures so that it does not have to deal with them.

The last thing to do, if one is a National Government, is to make it someone else’s problem. National says to the community housing sector that it is now its job to build houses, not the Government’s. Labour believes in supporting the community housing sector to grow, but it must grow as well as Government housing, as well as Housing New Zealand Corporation housing, not instead of it. Instead we have a Minister and a Government that want the community housing sector to do their job for them. Generations and generations of taxpayers in this country have not invested in social housing to provide housing for vulnerable families only for this Government to hock them off in more asset sales, and to treat those tenants as though they should be ashamed to live in a State house.

It is my pleasure to speak in the first reading of the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill today. It is really interesting to listen to the member of the Opposition who has just resumed her seat, Moana Mackey. She has a very short memory. She said that there are not enough State houses and that the houses are not good enough. She must remember that under her Government’s reign, no money was spent on maintaining those State houses. The Labour Government transferred that money into building houses, and turned itself into a slum landlord. What do slum landlords do? They create huge health issues.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: Get your facts right.

Maryan Street can sit there and point her finger at me, but the reality is that at the Social Services Committee, when the Housing New Zealand Corporation came in and spoke to us, the Labour Government was held to account for spending no money on maintaining that stock, and for becoming a slum landlord. Members opposite can try to rewrite history as much as they want, but we on this side of the House know the truth, and we are trying to make a difference.

As much as Labour put more money into the system and into building houses, it let tenants stay in slum conditions. I know that the people of Ōhariu will be proud of this Government, because we are focusing Housing New Zealand Corporation on the houses that people are actually in. We are focusing the corporation on what counts, and that is looking after the houses that people are in, and looking after the tenants. That is where the corporation’s focus should be, and that is what this bill is about: taking the policy arm out of Housing New Zealand Corporation and allowing it to focus on the tenants.

I am taking just a short call in support of this bill. I look forward to it coming to the Social Services Committee, which I chair, and hearing the debate in that select committee. This is good legislation, and I look forward to listening to the debate.

I rise to speak with a great deal of interest on the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. Housing New Zealanders is a complex business. It is a difficult area for any Government to come to terms with, and I will not get into a whole lot of blaming in terms of when the need first arose. I will talk about the inaction of this Government, and I will talk about some history on housing.

We will support this bill at its first reading, but I say to Mr Heatley that we are very, very keen to hear the arguments that explain why policy should be taken out of the Housing New Zealand Corporation, which, after all, deals with the praxis. Why should it be removed from the area where officials are most concerned, and are at the pointy end of the provision of housing for the neediest in our community?

I start with the fact that, as my colleague Moana Mackey has alluded to, in the 1990s, when Tony Ryall was the Minister responsible for Housing New Zealand, over 13,000 State houses were hocked off. They were hocked off to private developers and to this Government’s mates. That is a story that we are seeing repeated now. It does not matter whether it is through overseas development assistance contracts to Mark Blumsky, or the appointment of John Hayes to a panel; it is still doing favours for mates. That is what it is about.

Over the 9 years that Labour was in Government we built or acquired 8,600 more State houses. First of all, we restored income-related rents, which lifted the 68,000 people who live in State houses out of poverty. By restricting the rent that they paid to 25 percent of income, we could allow them to live in dignity again.

We did not fix everything, but we tried to get to grips with the biggest property bubble that this country had ever seen. Between 1997 and 2007 we saw the biggest property inflation bubble that this country had ever seen. What did we do about it? We instituted the Welcome Home Loan to assist people to get ownership of their first homes. We introduced KiwiSaver, and the system that allowed a young family to capitalise on their KiwiSaver savings after 5 years, so that they could have a deposit to put on a first home.

We brought in a shared equity scheme, where the buyer had a part interest and the Government had a part interest. We audited all Government property and we audited local government property to see which parts of it were suitable for residential housing and which were not. But all that Mr Heatley could do in Opposition was to say that the Labour Government wanted to build a house on the Auckland Zoo. He tried to score points in that fatuous, little-boy way he does, and tried to make the need of New Zealanders a joke—he tried to make the need of New Zealanders a joke. But housing is not a joke, and I make no apology for getting a bit wound up about it while Mr Heatley still considers it a laughing matter.

We had Māori housing initiatives that saw State houses being moved out of areas where they were no longer required into rural areas where they were required. I saw that process working well. I saw it working well in the Ureweras. I saw it working well with Tūhoe in charge of a housing project.

We brought in legislation so that local authorities could ensure that 10 percent of any residential building development could be put aside for affordable housing. What has this Government done? It has scrapped it. It did not even look to see whether the legislation is now even more applicable than it was when I introduced it in 2008. We concentrated on urban renewal, and on greater density of State houses on Crown land. We tried and tried to develop policy that would address the housing needs of the most disadvantaged in our society.

Not only that; through all of the schemes I have mentioned we tried to address the issue of houses whose escalating price took them out of the range of first-home buyers. Now we have an average house price in Auckland of $580,000—$580,000. What is this Minister of Housing bringing to the House to answer the fact that there is not a young family alive in Auckland who can afford a $580,000 house as their first home? It is this bill—this tiny, flimsy little piece of legislation—which barely runs to 4 pages, I tell the Minister. It is a pathetic gesture that says that the Government is going to take the policy-making function out of the Housing New Zealand Corporation and put it into the Department of Building and Housing.

Let me give members just one example. Also tabled this afternoon was the regulatory impact statement, which has been put together by the Department of Building and Housing. I feel sorry for its staff; they have a Minister who does not know what to do. They are really trying not to overreach him, so they have given us a regulatory impact statement that has nothing to do with the bill. I tell Mr Heatley that the bill is meant to have a regulatory impact statement attached to it, but I have here the regulatory impact statement and it has nothing to do with the bill.

The statement is talking about the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group report, called Home and Housed: a Vision for Social Housing in New Zealand. It talks about the group’s 19 recommendations. The Department of Building and Housing has done its best to provide a regulatory impact statement for the Minister, but when the Minister coughs up pathetic offerings like this bill we know that this National Government has no interest in housing the needy. It either has no interest or has no wit, or perhaps has neither interest nor wit. Perhaps it is lacking in intelligence, but there are intelligent people amongst the officials who have the brains to put together some policies that could address this issue.

This is a serious issue—this is a serious issue, I tell the Minister, and it deserves serious contemplation. From this Government we now have a Productivity Commission. Can members guess what its first item of business is? It is to find out why houses are so unaffordable, as if it is a new problem! It is not a new problem; work has been done on it and policies have been put in place for it. This Government needs only to pick up the work that has already been done by very able officials, instead of coming to the House with this pathetic piece of nonsense, which may well take the policy-making function away from the praxis—in other words, away from the people who know what they are doing in housing.

Let us talk about whether policy ought to be vested in the Department of Building and Housing. I tell the Minister that that issue should be discussed at the select committee. Let us hope that members opposite engage with it, because we have heard no evidence from the tiny little truncated speeches, of half a dozen sentences at best, offered up by that Government’s members. Those speeches are a poor apology for a statement in support of a pathetic piece of legislation that does nothing to address housing affordability.

Housing affordability is a critical issue in this country. There are people who cannot afford to make ends meet; they cannot afford the rents out there in the private sector. The Minister cares not a jot about any of those people. If he cared about them, he might think up something better than this completely inadequate legislation. Let us have the conversation about where the policy should be vested, whether it should be in the Department of Building and Housing or in the Housing New Zealand Corporation. Let us have the discussion, but let us not pretend that this bill is an answer to housing need in this country. This bill is no more an answer to housing need in this country than Mr Heatley is a competent Minister. It is completely ludicrous that we should be debating this bill in the context of State housing today. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call on the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. The Green Party is disappointed that we are discussing this bill so soon after its introduction, with such a poor regulatory impact statement, with no evidence given by the Minister, with such short calls, and now under urgency. It is disappointing to have legislation going through this Chamber in such a fashion.

The bill amends the Housing Corporation Act 1974 to consolidate housing policy advice to Ministers within the Department of Building and Housing. As the Minister of Housing said, the Housing New Zealand Corporation will retain its operational policy capability in order to support its business activities, but it will no longer be required to ensure that the Minister of Housing receives the appropriate advice, or any other advice, on information with regard to housing or to services related to housing. The Green Party is yet to see any evidence from the Minister or from other speakers that this is desirable—no evidence whatsoever—so we will be opposing this bill in its first reading. We will be entering the select committee process with an open mind, because, ultimately, we want better State house services for Kiwis, but we do not think that this bill goes anywhere near delivering that. The Green Party believes that this bill is a diversion away from the key issue facing New Zealand: the dire shortage of housing and the Government’s dismal failure to build more State houses on its watch. The Government seems intent to divest itself of its responsibility as a housing provider, and this bill, in that context, furthers that by limiting the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s policy advisory role.

Housing is a basic need for all New Zealanders, and it is vital that the Government plays a leading role in ensuring that everybody is guaranteed this basic, essential human right. I did not grow up in a State house, but one of our most prominent parliamentarians did—the Prime Minister. For thousands of Kiwis a State house has meant that they have been able to grow up with opportunities in a decent house. The Housing New Zealand Corporation website, for Ms Mackey’s knowledge, points all the way back to 1905, to Seddon’s Workers’ Dwelling Act, which was potentially the start of the State housing sector in New Zealand. The website goes through the railway department’s workers’ dwellings and the housing factories that were built, through to the lenient State lending programmes of the 1920s, and all the way through to the 1930s. Providing State housing and social housing has a much longer history—in fact, 106 years’ worth of history—but this vital role of Government seems to be lacking from the Minister’s attention. He seems to be focusing on minutiae—on tiny bills like this one, which is only 4 pages long—without looking at the big picture, and without looking at the actual need that is out there in our communities.

Today the Housing New Zealand Corporation manages—I looked it up—69,489 State houses, but, unfortunately, it has more than 8,800 Kiwis on the waiting list. I think it is an indictment on the Government’s role as the State housing provider that so many Kiwis are on that waiting list when there is so much need, and when builders out there are dying for work. They are looking for work, yet we have so many people on the State house waiting list.

I have been touring the country looking at some of our coldest, dampest, worst rental properties in my bid to promote my Energy Efficiency Conservation (Warm Healthy Rentals) Amendment Bill. What I have discovered in talking to the different sector groups is that we have 1 million substandard homes in New Zealand, which every day lead to 50 people being hospitalised at a cost of $3,000 a night, and more than 780 people do not attend school or are not at work as a result of their poor housing standards. The economic benefits of addressing this issue are significant, and I acknowledge our ability to work with the Government through a memorandum of understanding to deliver, as I understand it, more than 90,000 warm, healthy retrofits. For every $1 we are investing as a nation, we are seeing $2 in economic benefits. Research from the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development shows that if we look after those 1 million substandard homes by insulating and retrofitting them, productivity improvements will be in the order of potentially $17 million, there will be $54 million worth of health savings, and there will be smaller energy bills at an amazing saving worth $425 million.

The 69,000 State houses that the State manages make the State the nation’s biggest landlord. The State plays an important role in making sure housing affordability and standards do not slip precariously, as may happen if we leave it up to the market, with no State provision. The fundamental issue facing us in 2011 is widespread housing deprivation, and this Government simply is not investing enough of its money in State housing or the housing sector.

I will look at just a couple of parts of the bill. I guess there is not much to it, so it will be brief. Firstly, we will look to evidence presented to the Social Services Committee that the streamlining of housing policy advice into one ministry will actually achieve better outcomes, but we have not seen that evidence today. This bill has just been chucked on the table. The bill states that the Housing New Zealand Corporation will no longer be expected to undertake research and monitoring activities for the purpose of advising the Minister of Housing on housing and services related to housing. I acknowledge the concern from the community housing sector and the argument that it is good to have policy advice separate from the functions that are delivered bureaucratically. If one agency provides both, the policy advice could be seen to be self-serving to the bureaucracy of the agency, rather than directed to the people to whom the agency is meant to be delivering.

This bill could also be seen as simply an excuse to reduce that capacity for good policy advice on State housing. I am concerned about the Minister because the risk is that he will potentially be worse off and receive less diverse advice from which to make his decisions. The Housing New Zealand Corporation is currently the primary provider of policy advice. Although the bill makes provisions for the transfer of staff to the Department of Building and Housing, I and the Parliamentary Library cannot find the actual number of staff in the policy advice section, which is currently not available. I understand that the policy advice section sits within the governance and assurance business groups. The library contacted them directly on my behalf and was told that the numbers would not be released because the Minister had directed them not to. As a result of the transfer of duties, they are in the process of a consultation with the affected staff and will not release that information until the final number of staff is known. I imagine there is considerable nervousness amongst the staff at the moment, and I want to acknowledge that in the Chamber tonight. I ask the Minister for an assurance that there will not be policy adviser redundancies factored into the transition of the policy advice functions to the Department of Building and Housing.

Secondly, this bill is part of the National Government’s ideological trend to simply merge departments, much like the legislative takeover of the National Library and Archives New Zealand by the Department of Internal Affairs, or the Ministry of Fisheries being taken into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry—for no good reason. It seems to be an ideological slogan of efficiencies and streamlining shouted out by the Government benches. I heard a few more slogans in the Minister’s speech. No doubt Labour will demerge those departments in the ongoing cycle we have seen over the last couple of decades.

Divesting responsibilities seems to be the key aim of this bill and the Government’s whole approach to State housing. The Government needs to retain its key role in State housing. The bill does not exist in isolation, and in a context where the Government is divesting its responsibilities as a State housing provider, I repeat that the Government needs to retain its role in State housing. The Home and Housed: A Vision for Social Housing in New Zealand report released by the Government shows that the current social housing model is struggling to meet demand. It identified that we have between 8,500 to 20,000 Kiwi households living in extreme housing need. The task force found that there was a shortage of 70,000 homes in New Zealand. That was, needless to say, before the earthquake in Canterbury. Clearly we are facing a housing crisis in New Zealand, yet the Government seems intent to be divesting its responsibilities, and the Green Party believes that the Government needs to retain its key role as a State housing provider and considerably increase the State housing stock.

The Government’s housing plans are inadequate in relation to discussing renewable tenancies, potentially selling State houses, and leaving more up to the community sector. Rather than investing in our struggling building sector at the moment and using the housing crisis as an opportunity to boost our employment, the budget for improving and buying State houses was cut by more than 80 percent by the Minister from $120 million to $18 million in the last Budget. Rather than building more State houses, the Government has announced that it will potentially sell off 40,000 houses, or two-thirds of the State housing stock. Rather than building more State houses, the Government is simply passing the buck. It is great that the Government recognises the need to build up the role of the community sector—and the Green Party wholeheartedly supports that—but support for the community sector needs to be alongside investment in State housing, not despite it or instead of it. John Key’s Government needs to invest in State housing, not divest its role as the most important player in the New Zealand housing market. The Government should be focused on building. Everyone in New Zealand deserves a warm, dry, affordable house. Decent housing is a human right.

Earlier this year the Green Party released its Mind the Gap package, which would provide investment in State and community housing. The Mind the Gap package would create 6,000 new State homes over 3 years, creating more than 28,000 jobs and healthy, warm homes for people who need those most. We would also invest $200 million in community housing to build 500 homes and create 3,500 jobs. Housing deprivation drives inequality, and the evidence shows that inequality is bad for everyone in society, not just the most vulnerable people directly affected by poverty. In conclusion, the Green Party will be voting against this bill.

I am pleased to stand as the MP for Te Tai Tonga to speak on the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. Housing, particularly in the South Island, is something that we are really interested in. We are particularly interested in measures to provide warm housing, because we really miss out on that in the South Island.

The policy on housing for Māori, in particular, really needs to be looked at, because so many of us have large families as Māori. I remember, as my young family were growing up, being crammed into tiny little houses with our five kids. It was not a pretty sight, particularly when they became teenagers and we had to find room for everybody to be able study and do all of those things that would enable them to grow up healthy. In Te Tai Tonga we know that housing is one of the greatest concerns for our people. Many Māori are living in substandard housing, and many Māori are tenants of Housing New Zealand Corporation, so we are vitally interested in this bill.

When I was the managing solicitor at Te Ratonga Ture, the Māori Legal Service, I recall that one of the top issues we dealt with was housing. Many people came into us seeking help to deal with Housing New Zealand Corporation. As a constituent MP I can say one of the top issues constituents come to us and seek our help with is housing. I say again that many people come to seek help in dealing with Housing New Zealand Corporation.

In Christchurch, Housing New Zealand Corporation has been doing a relatively good job since the earthquake, but unfortunately for the people who are leaving Christchurch and looking for assistance to find houses in other parts of New Zealand, again Housing New Zealand Corporation is not doing a great job. Those people really need help. Just yesterday I had another constituent come into my Kilbirnie office absolutely frustrated with the lack of service she receives from her housing manager, and with the time it is taking to have her concerns sorted out. She has been complaining for 2½ years and has not received any help.

Will separating out the policy arm from the poor implementation arm improve service? Will it improve policy advice? I do not know whether it will, but I am certainly interested in listening to people, to the public, and to the interest groups to hear what they have to say on that. So I look forward to the select committee process and to what people have to say about this legislation. I certainly hope we have a proper select committee process. We will support the bill at this stage, but I look forward to hearing from the public on it. Kia ora.

I am very pleased to speak in support of the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. Contrary to the concerns we heard from Moana Mackey earlier in this debate, in these difficult times I suggest it is more important than ever that we concentrate our resources in the Public Service on the delivery of quality services at the front line, with a minimum of bureaucracy, duplication, and inefficiency. Ms Mackey seemed to believe that duplication and layers of bureaucracy are essential. In fact, it was only when Maryan Street rose to her feet that I realised that Labour is actually in support of this—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before the dinner adjournment I was making the point that it actually took two Labour speakers to clarify that the Opposition is supporting this bill at its first reading. I mention that point again because listeners to this debate could be forgiven for thinking they are hotly opposed to it. In fact, Maryan Street was positively vitriolic in some of her comments even though she said Labour members would vote for the bill to be referred to a select committee.

The changes in this bill will focus Housing New Zealand Corporation on its primary purpose of providing good-quality State housing to those who are most in need of such support in our society for the duration of that need.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Come on, Tim! Speak from the heart. Stop reading it off a bit of paper.

I am sure that even the Hon Shane Jones will understand and support that objective. I have had the opportunity to see the range and quality of Housing New Zealand Corporation properties and stock in the suburbs of the Hamilton West electorate. I have been very impressed by the new houses and units that have been built in recent times. Ours is a rapidly growing city, and the corporation has a big challenge in keeping up with the demand. Added to that, the challenges associated with maintaining and repairing some of the older Housing New Zealand Corporation houses are considerable and can cause angst for the tenants of those dwellings. I am sure that all electorate MPs in this House will have had quite a lot of experience of dealing with concerns of that nature.

Given the magnitude of those tasks it is appropriate that Housing New Zealand Corporation be directed to this work and not diverted by a secondary obligation to provide policy advice that is currently also provided by another agency, namely the Department of Building and Housing. The building and maintenance challenges I have spoken of are properly the concern of the Department of Building and Housing, and only Labour members could believe that it takes two Government departments to do the same job. That is the mentality that brought about an explosion of bureaucracy without improving core services in the previous decade, and that diverted increasingly scarce resources from important areas of need. This bill will help to rectify matters in one important area of social policy and I welcome its introduction.

Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your elevation.

I feel sorry for this Minister of Housing; being the Minister of Housing in a National Government is like the graveyard shift. It is like being the “Minister of Coalmines” in a Green-led Government, or the Minister for State Owned Enterprises in an ACT-led Government; their heart is just not in it. This National Government is ideologically predisposed against the State intervening in the housing market to help New Zealanders get a secure roof over their heads, to get people out of living in caravan parks and cars, and to get them into safe, healthy, affordable homes. We support this light, slight, incidental Housing Corporation Amendment Bill. It can go off to the select committee where we can debate the pros and cons of whether the policy advice should be split between Housing New Zealand Corporation and the Department of Building and Housing, or whether it should all be consolidated in the Department of Building and Housing. That is an interesting diversion but it is utterly irrelevant to the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who are on the sharp end of the housing crisis in New Zealand today.

I am going to give the House some facts. They are readily available on television and in newspapers; in fact many New Zealanders talk of little else other than the housing crisis, but this Minister of Housing does not seem to know them, because if he did, if he was not so out of touch with the concerns of ordinary New Zealanders, he would surely have come up with something better than this pathetic bill. There are 9,000 people on the waiting list for a Housing New Zealand Corporation home. The waiting list is not really a waiting list, because people can wait and wait and wait for years and nothing ever happens. It is not a list they wait on when they want to get a house; it is a list where they just sit and sit and nothing happens, because the fact is there are simply not enough houses for the people who need them.

In Auckland the average price of a new home is reported this week as hitting $580,000. National’s recession has slowed down the increase in housing prices but still, particularly in Auckland, we have some of the most unaffordable housing in the world. We have a crisis in rental housing. An ordinary three-bedroom house in central Auckland recently advertised for rent attracted 300 applicants. As if this were not bad enough, the Government is doing precious little to help New Zealanders get a roof over their heads. The latest estimates from the Government’s Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group says there is a shortage of 70,000 dwellings—70,000. The Department of Building and Housing has warned of an additional 25,000 shortfall coming down the pipeline over the next decade.

And what is the best this Minister can do? What is the best answer he has for this crisis? If there ever was an example of how bereft this Government is of ideas, of a plan to get New Zealand moving, this bill is it. It is a bill to consolidate policy-making in the Department of Building and Housing. John Key has done a remake of the classic Blam Blam Blam song, “There is No Depression in New Zealand”, and it is “There is No Housing Crisis in New Zealand”. That is what he said. He probably thinks that people who are forced to live in caravan parks and cars are making a lifestyle choice. This is the Prime Minister, the former State house kid, who intervened personally to block the building of Housing New Zealand Corporation houses in the Hobsonville development in his electorate, because he thought giving low-income Kiwis a sea view was economic vandalism. That says it all about this Government.

This bill is tinkering around the edges, because tinkering is what this Minister does best. Under his watch 87 properties have been added to the State housing stock in 2 years. Under the fifth Labour Government we averaged nearly 1,000 new houses a year for 9 years, and the best this Minister can do is 87 in 2 years. He has introduced an options and advisory service. Is that designed to help get more New Zealanders into their own homes? No, it is a mechanism for keeping people off the waiting list. The main strategy of this Government seems to be to get people into leased, private rentals. It seems to be oblivious to the fact that simply moving people from the public side of the ledger to the private does absolutely nothing to increase the stock of social or affordable housing. What is the Minister’s big contribution to solving the housing crisis? It is reviewable tenancies, which will create stress and uncertainty for Kiwi families while doing nothing to increase the stock of affordable housing. That is this Minister’s stock-in-trade.

In my community of Te Atatū, people are on the sharp end of the housing affordability crisis. Things are tough in west Auckland; there are about 1,000 people on the waiting list in west Auckland. That is more than any other area in New Zealand outside of South Auckland. More often than not, they have been kicked out by the landlord who is selling the house; they do not have the money for a bond—it is about a thousand bucks to pay the bond for an average-priced rental in West Auckland—and Housing New Zealand Corporation cannot do a damn thing for them. Those people are often desperate; they have run out of options.

One poor man we saw recently had custody of his four children, two teenagers and two little ones, and they were surviving on his sickness benefit and living in a one-bedroom unit. Is it any wonder that he was depressed? In another case we saw recently, a husband and wife and five kids were living in Te Atatū North. He lost his job, they could not pay the rent, and they were evicted by the landlord. Housing New Zealand could do nothing for them. The only option was to go and live in the emergency shelter in Airedale Street, in the central business district in Auckland, which is run by the Methodist Mission. The family were classed as priority A by Housing New Zealand—the highest priority—but were told that they had no chance of getting a house. Another couple who came in looking for help recently, and who had a 4-month-old baby, were living in their car.

Why is this important? It is important because housing unaffordability drives people into poverty. It blights the life chances of a generation. We remember the impact of market rents in State housing in the 1990s. Under the National Government of the day, market rents were introduced for State housing. That was one of the most powerful forces that increased extreme poverty in this country, and we are suffering the social consequences of that policy today. The housing crisis is a nail in the coffin of the Kiwi dream. A generation of New Zealanders have no realistic prospect of ever owning their own home. The high cost of housing denies them the opportunity that their parents and grandparents had to have a safe, quality house that would give them the opportunity to live good, decent lives, build their capital, and improve their prospects. [Interruption] This Government has no—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Interjections between members who do not have the floor are not permitted.

I have a memo for the Government: “Get a housing policy.” That is what I say. It must get a housing policy, and I have some ideas to start with. It should use the recession as an opportunity to rebuild our housing stock. Provide work and opportunities for tradespeople and apprentices, and do something to stimulate our dying construction industry. Invest resources in emergency housing, so people do not have to live in the back of a car. Simply build more public housing. Work with local government to ensure that social housing and affordable housing are included in every new, major housing development. Find ways to encourage high-quality, medium-density housing developments in our biggest cities. For God’s sake close the tax loopholes that drive the housing bubble that makes housing unaffordable.

We support this bill going to the select committee but we do so feeling disgusted at this Government’s total lack of interest in doing anything serious about the housing affordability crisis. It refuses to even acknowledge that there is a problem. The best of former New Zealand Governments knew how important housing was. They had a vision for this country’s future. They were nation-builders and they built stuff. They knew from the experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War that having a roof over one’s head was one of the most important factors in living a good life. The fact that Mr Heatley would bring this pathetic bill to the House says it all.

I heard plenty of speeches like the one made by the member who has just resumed his seat, Phil Twyford, during the recent Botany by-election. They are all about complaints, but there are never any solutions. They are all about whining but never about ideas. Well, you would struggle to believe that the Opposition is—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member is bringing the Speaker into the debate by using the word “you”.

Listeners would struggle to believe that the Opposition is supporting the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill, but it is supporting this bill, I suspect, because it is common-sense legislation. It is common-sense legislation because it directs resources towards core, front-line services and reduces backroom bureaucracy. There is absolutely no point in having policy advice coming from two housing departments under the Crown. It is good that it is coming from the Department of Building and Housing, but Housing New Zealand Corporation needs to focus on its core task.

Housing New Zealand Corporation is one of largest landowners in this country. It manages $15 billion worth of assets, so it makes sense that this Government wants to ensure that Housing New Zealand Corporation is focused on its core goal. We are looking to remove backroom bureaucracy where it is wasted at the moment.

My electorate of Botany has some large chunks of Housing New Zealand Corporation homes, primarily in the Flat Bush area. The apartment block that I moved into with my wife, when we became a couple, had a large number of the corporation’s properties within it. After chatting to those people I know that they want to see the Government focus on providing core services. Housing New Zealand Corporation needs to make sure that its focus is on providing core services. I also note that the wider Botany population wants to see the Government run its business as efficiently and effectively as possible. This bill seeks to do that.

The National-led Government wants to ensure that Housing New Zealand Corporation focuses its efforts on putting the right people in the right houses in the right location. That is what the Minister of Housing talked about in a speech he made last month when he was addressing a significant sector group. It is a key goal of this Government, and National is delivering on its promise. It is delivering on its promise of better managing the corporation’s stock and delivering better outcomes for New Zealanders who need help with housing.

This bill is all about ensuring that there is no double-up. It is about ensuring that a common-sense practice—one department delivering policy advice and another delivering core front-line services—happens. That is why I think the House should support this bill.

Tēnā koe, e te Kaihautū o te Whare. Taku mihi ki a koe i runga i ngā kupu ātaahua i puta i a Hōnore Simon Power i tēnei rangi mōu. Nā reira, ngā mihi ki a koe me tō hāpai i tō tātou reo Māori.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker of the House. I acknowledge you on the basis of the pleasant words that the Hon Simon Power expressed today about you. So congratulations on that, and on your efforts to raise the profile of our Māori language.]

Greetings, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. I would like to endorse some of what the Hon Simon Power had to say about you, and I too look forward to seeing the speech that was delivered in 1996 during the time when the actual housing estate owned by the Crown was destroyed by the Government of that time. However, I will not hold you responsible for what you may, or may not, have done during that period of time, as a highly effective Opposition MP, no doubt, in 1996.

I want to say that Labour members do support the referral of the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill to a select committee. It is a relatively insubstantial piece of legislation. It endeavours to pick up on the report by the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group. That report pointed out that about $2 billion, at this point in time, is spent by the State in the pursuit of social housing. That figure is expected to rise, within another 6 or 7 years, to close to $4 billion.

We also know, as a consequence of that report, that over 20,000 houses, or units of residence—they may not be houses—are required to deal with the geometric pressures of growth in Tāmaki-makau-rau, Auckland. Unfortunately, many of the people needing that level of assistance come from our tangata whenua Māori community, and they will not all receive the handsome $2 million gift that was given to a narrow caste of favoured individuals from one hapū, who presumably are aspiring candidates for the Māori Party. But there will be more on that at another stage. The broad membership of the Māori community and the Pacific Island community does require quality access to social housing, and it is disappointing that this bill does not deal with the challenges that the housing shareholder body put before Minister Heatley.

Now, we may not necessarily agree that private capital should be involved in the provision of social housing, but let us put the proposal on the table. It is a legitimate and positive public policy point to debate. I tell the Minister not to hide behind stories about the last 4 or 5 years. That man over there is the Minister of Housing now, and I point out to him, in case he has not noticed, that we are no longer in control of the Treasury benches. We will do a far better job after 26 November, but unfortunately for the tenants and people in “Strugglers’ Gully”, who desire better housing outcomes, they are stuck with that crowd there.

If the Government wants to use private capital and come up with a model of a public-private partnership, or whatever model it has in mind, let that idea be put on the table so it can be a point of grand debate. There is no innovative solution being brought forward by the Minister of Housing, and if the Government is going to release Crown land, if it is going to make more of the current housing stock available to third parties, to third-sector providers, then it should crystallise a proposal, put it before the public, bring it to the House, and then we can debate something of merit and substance.

No one is incredibly hot and bothered about where the departmental advisory capacity rests—whether it rests in Housing New Zealand Corporation or in the Department of Building and Housing. What we are really bothered by is that over 20,000 units of residence are needed every year to deal with internal migration and migration from overseas into our largest city, a city that comprises one-third of the country’s GDP, a city that has one-third of the country’s population, and a city whose housing conditions are approaching those of a Third World country.

It is sad that too many members on that side of the House are prepared to hide these issues under ideology. The reality is that we will have ongoing social problems amongst our youth, predominantly brown in character. We will see those young people going in the wrong direction, with eventually too many of them going into incarceration. The Minister of Housing should put the money into housing now, and if he needs to use private money as well, then he should bring the proposal forward. He should not be fearful to pursue what he thinks are his best instincts. If the Minister finds that what he learns in Australia ought to put forward, then he should do so, or have we harassed this Minister so much that he has lost the ability to bring even a rather harmless proposal forward? No.

There is a lack of viable alternatives to State housing at the moment. We think that there is a great deal of worth in enabling those in the third sector to generate solutions. But in order for that to happen, the Crown has to stand behind them. The Crown has to stand beside them so that they can amass the capital and deliver those services. It may come to pass that taking a swath of the houses currently owned by the Crown and entrusting them to entities such as the Salvation Army, Māori housing providers, Women’s Refuge housing providers, or other options are worthy of us debating them, possibly embracing them, or dismissing them.

That is the stuff we want to see in this policy and political debate, not these phantoms and shadows—whether that be the people from the Housing New Zealand Corporation, constantly wandering around the country and telling needy families that they have no options, or the Department of Building and Housing, with Katrina Bach and others, offering, perhaps, a better job.

What can be done to innovate the delivery of housing services? What exactly is the Minister of Housing offering to do? Unfortunately, all that we are being told will happen is that more bureaucrats will sit their butts in chairs in another part of the Government. But where is the evidence that this Minister is prepared to bring forward alternatives to deal with the situation of poor equity and deal with the situation of an absence of innovation? There are houses located in the wrong location. There are people who are unwilling to move out into the provinces—perhaps, for example, Dunedin—where there are surplus houses. We want to see an innovative, Minister-led solution for Auckland.

This Government set up the super-city that it wanted. It has the structure. It has the unified group of representatives. It did not get the mayor that it wanted. It did not get a majority of the councillors who might have ideologically suited it, but it got the structure and it got the institution. It is crying out for assistance and leadership from this Minister. I will not be as unkind as a colleague was earlier and describe the Minister as something of a boy scout. I think that he is genuinely interested in improving the provision of houses—I do believe that about him. [Interruption] No, no, I do.

The only things he has failed on are how he can afford it; where the houses would be; and how he would deliver in it an innovative fashion, with the support of the third sector or with the support of the private sector. As a consequence of that failure he has lost the confidence of the Minister of Finance and he has lost the confidence of the actual force that runs the Government when John Key is riding around in the limousine: Steven Joyce. No, he has lost the confidence of those particular senior members. Poor people have to bumble along while this Minister is hemmed in.

The Minister should use his creative energies. He should not serve us up the trite, narrow, irrelevant little changes we see in this bill, although they are probably a part of providing a smoother basis, a primrose road, for the Housing New Zealand Corporation to be sold. We look forward to a more substantial contribution from this Minister, although we fear that our desires are inversely related to his capacity. Kia ora tātou.

Is it not great to listen to a member from a Labour Party with huge aspirations for its constituency? Those Labour members have told us that, in Government, National is not innovative, is not creative, and has no aspirations. They have told us that all National wants to do is kick people out of their homes. All the Labour Party, on the other side of the House, wants to do is keep them encumbered. To whom? To the Labour Party. Why? Because those members want a constituency. They do not want people living in their own homes. They do not want to elevate people to a level where they can live under their own roof and own a piece of real estate for themselves. No, those members want to keep them sucking on the teat of the State. That is exactly where those members are coming from. That is exactly what Mr Twyford was saying.

We know that that is the way those members are. When the previous National was in Government before the previous Labour Government—before we had to endure 9 long years of that Labour Government—it had an innovative policy to use derelict Housing Corporation homes, 99 of which were in the electorate of Whanganui. What did that National Government do with them? The homes were derelict and it could not get people to live in them. The houses were being set on fire and the windows were constantly being broken. That Government sold those derelict homes.

What did the buyers of those derelict homes do? The Government sold them to people who would never have been able to get into their own homes for themselves. It sold them to people who were on benefits and people who had no equity. It took a 1 percent mortgage on them to start with, and it rented the house back to those people. After 5 years those people were able to gain equity from those homes and, under a pre-arranged agreement with the National Bank, they were able to get a mortgage. What happened to the 99 homes that were sold to people who never would have been able to achieve homeownership under any particular Government? The 99 people who bought those homes either own those homes today or have onsold them and are now living in better homes, which—what do you know—they also own for themselves.

The party on that side of the House has no aspiration for people living in State homes. Those members want to keep those people in State homes, but the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill inspires those people to go on and move to the next level of accommodation and homeownership. It inspires them to own their home and to do what is best for them in their situation and for their families. That is why this Government is enjoying an unprecedented, enduring level of success and confidence. The people out there, including the constituents of the party opposite, believe that we are the best party to be in Government. We have an aspiration for them, for their homes, and for their families into the future. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

I move, That the Social Services Committee consider the Housing Corporation Amendment Bill, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 6 June 2011, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 187, 189(a), and 190(1)(b) and (c).

Motion agreed to.