Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted in the earlier debate on this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, I want to focus my comments on new section 57AA, inserted by clause 12, which confers on Housing New Zealand the power to impose what the Minister of Housing describes as “reviewable tenancies”. I prefer to think of it as extending insecurity of tenure to all Housing New Zealand tenants. That provision, although it is also included in Part 2 of the bill, is dealt with in Part 1 and gives Housing New Zealand the power to extend insecurity of tenure to all of its tenants from the day after the bill receives the Royal assent.

This provision is at the heart of Labour’s opposition to this bill. I want to refer to a number of what we believe will be harmful consequences of this policy, which is one of the main provisions in this bill—to extend reviewable tenancies to all Housing New Zealand tenants. I want to point the Committee to the Social Housing Outcomes Worth Study, which looked at the relationship between housing conditions and hospitalisation rates in a very large cohort of Housing New Zealand tenants. What the study found was that secure housing was extremely important to the people who live in State houses, and that, in fact, as a result of the security of tenure they had as a result of being Housing New Zealand tenants, they had markedly lower hospitalisation rates for most health conditions, including mental health, than people who were on the State housing list. This was the basis of the submission that He Kainga Oranga, the University of Otago’s Housing and Heath Research Programme, made to the Social Services Committee—that by extending insecurity of tenure to all State house tenants, you would in fact be severely undermining the health status of those people.

I also want to refer to the study by Regional Public Health about the movement of people out of the Pōmare Housing New Zealand community, a development project that was grossly mishandled under this Government by Housing New Zealand. I noticed that the Minister of Housing turned up with the cameras the other day—as he does about every 2 days at the moment—to film him turning the first sod of the new mixed development at Pōmare. Well, Regional Public Health found that the involuntary eviction of Housing New Zealand tenants out of that community had many negative health and social impacts on those people. It found that social ties are, in many cases, geographic, and that forcing people out of their homes threatens the emotional support provided by neighbours. It also affects access to health care. The study found that supportive, stable communities help mitigate socio-economic disadvantage by providing all kinds of resources that people get from being part of a stable community; and that forced housing relocation often involves moving kids out of schools, and that has a negative effect on children’s educational achievement. That is housing insecurity of the very kind that National is proposing to impose on all 69,000 State house tenants.

I firstly want to say that the comments of the member Phil Twyford about Pōmare really do highlight the contrast between the Government’s view of social housing and the Labour Opposition’s, because if Pōmare is the flagship for State housing in Labour’s mode, Labour is very much in the past. That is a community renowned for gang violence, renowned for murders, and renowned for bad social and educational achievement, and what Labour wants to do is to lock in that failed State housing model. I say shame on those members. If Pōmare is what Labour stands for, thank goodness Labour is not the Government.

The key issue at stake in this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, and where there is a difference between the Government and Labour members, is the issue of reviewable tenancies. At heart is a position by the Government that says that social housing is for the period of need, as compared with an Opposition that says that social housing is for life. The challenge I have got for Labour members is the fact that after 9 years of the best economic times in a century, there were 4,000 people sitting on Housing New Zealand waiting lists. The idea that you can build your way out of the demands for social housing is flawed, because although Labour will champion the cause of the existing tenants of State houses, we need to balance that with the needs, the high needs, of those 4,000-odd people sitting on waiting lists.

So the real question for this Committee and this bill is this: do those 4,000 people on waiting lists have a greater right to the Government’s investment in social housing than those existing tenants, 5,000 of whom are on a market rent—5,000 of whom are on a market rent? What Labour members are saying is that those who are earning sufficient to not be eligible for an income-related rent have got a greater right to a house than those families who are overcrowded, those families in high need. The idealists on Labour’s benches say: “Don’t worry. You can just build a whole lot more houses.” I say to them that they had 9 years to make that work and they did not, and that is why the Government needs to focus its social housing on those families with the greatest need. I stress to the House that 5,000 State house tenants on market rents and the Government saying in its Budget that we are going to have 1,000 in the first year and 2,000 in the second year really show how moderate and sensible this policy is.

I challenge the next Labour speaker to get to their feet and say that the Labour Party stands for a State house for life and for that house being occupied by people on high incomes. I have got a guy in my constituency who is the captain of a fishing vessel. He earns over $100,000 a year. He occupies a State house. Members opposite say he has got a right to stay in that State house as long as he wants to while we have got other families on the waiting list who are in far higher need. I say those members are wrong. I am proud of the changes that are made in this bill. If we are serious about addressing the social issues in New Zealand and the health issues associated with poor housing, then we need to make sure that our investment of $16 billion in State housing is used by those with the highest need.

If it is not enough that the respected public health academics at Otago University condemn this policy in the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill and say that there is a public health risk by Nick Smith’s announcing with fanfare that he wants to see 3,000 State house tenants kicked out of their homes as a matter of Government policy, and if it is not enough to consider the public health risk, then let the Minister of Housing consider the words of the Productivity Commission, which is his intellectual mentor. Its report on housing affordability is his intellectual bible, and he quotes it at every turn. Well, let me quote the Productivity Commission, because it seems to be the only legitimate source of advice for the Minister. The Productivity Commission, in its report on affordable housing, I say to Dr Smith, advises against reviewable tenancies. It does not believe that it is good policy, and it believes that the approach of reviewable tenancies is not in harmony with the desire of communities for stability and continuity. It does not think that it is a good idea.

I also point the Minister to the report that he claims to be the sort of genesis, the inspiration, of his social housing policy. I am talking about the—

💬 Hon Annette King: Advisory?

—yes, the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group and its report Home and Housed: A Vision for Social Housing in New Zealand. That report explicitly recommends against reviewable tenancies. It says: “No existing tenant should have his or her lease simply terminated … While it would, in theory, be possible for [the Housing New Zealand Corporation] to reassess all sitting tenants at the time of their annual rent review and give tenants adequate notice, we do not support this option.” So the two most credible intellectual sources of policy makers, which the Minister says have inspired his policy on Housing New Zealand, explicitly counsel against reviewable tenancies. No? The Minister is shaking his head. He is right; apparently, everybody else is wrong. Only the National Government would announce in its Budget that its housing policy had a target of evicting 3,000 people from State houses. That says it all. This is the party that in the 1990s sold off 13,000 State houses. It brought in market rentals, which caused thousands and thousands of New Zealanders to crash into extreme poverty—

💬 Moana Mackey: No maintenance.

—and it did no maintenance on State house properties. This Minister has a different approach. He has dressed it up as if he is benevolently giving out resources to the community housing sector, that he has some kind of progressive vision, but in fact what we see from this Government is that he is running down Housing New Zealand. We saw it in the Salvation Army report that came out last Thursday that when this Government came to office, it hiked the dividends that it demands from Housing New Zealand and it drastically cut the annual capital contributions that the Crown makes. During the duration of the last Labour Government’s stewardship of Housing New Zealand it gave a net financial contribution to Housing New Zealand of close to half a billion dollars. Well, in the first 3 years of this National Government being in office it withdrew a net amount of $142 million. That Minister and his predecessor used Housing New Zealand as a cash cow to fund National’s tax cuts for the rich. That is exactly what happened. The Government squeezed it, just like it did to every other State-owned enterprise, and that is a disgrace.

In the middle of the worst housing crisis in a generation, with 4,000 people languishing on waiting lists, and Government agencies routinely referring people to live in campgrounds, this Minister uses Housing New Zealand, a social housing agency mandated with putting a decent roof over the heads of the poorest and most vulnerable New Zealanders, as a cash cow to fund National’s tax cuts. Well, that is an absolute disgrace. He cannot dress up this bill and this policy as if they were some great benevolent thing to the community housing sector. The Government is running down Housing New Zealand. This bill takes away the core powers of Housing New Zealand and it sets out to distribute the housing stock to the charity and NGO sector. This is the end of Housing New Zealand as we know it. This Minister will be responsible for stripping Housing New Zealand of its powers and its housing stock. It is just the latest reincarnation of National’s hostility to State housing.

I was in my office as this debate on the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill began and I heard Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing, speaking about the community of Pōmare. I noticed that Nick Smith was quite happy to come to turn the sod at Pōmare earlier this week, when there are new houses to be built, but he was nowhere to be seen, nor was his predecessor Phil Heatley, when all of the tenants who used to live there were being evicted and their homes were being demolished. They were completely invisible. I say to Nick Smith that, yes, that was a community that had a few problems. Those problems have not gone away by driving all of those people out and demolishing the homes that they live in. They have simply been relocated somewhere else. Actually, if this Government was genuinely concerned about addressing the problems that communities like Pōmare faced, then it would be concerned about the issues around equality and the massively growing level of inequality that we are seeing in New Zealand.

The approach in Pōmare is absolutely disgraceful. What the Government did was that it said: “This is a community with problems.” It evicted all the tenants and it demolished all the houses. Over 100 houses are already demolished and more are on the chopping block, more still to go. And what is the solution now? It is going to build new houses there and about 80 percent of those will be privately owned homes—privately owned homes. So, basically, if we are lucky, out of the 100 or more houses to be demolished, there might be 20 new Housing New Zealand houses. Overall, there was one comment that Nick Smith made at the sod turning on Monday that I did agree with, where he said that if we are building new housing developments, it is desirable to have a mixture of private housing and State housing. But in this case, as with every other case, we are losing more State houses than we are gaining. So, overall, the total number of State houses is being reduced.

If Nick Smith was saying: “We are going to build 20 new houses a year and then we are going to have 80 private new developments or other forms of development, but then we are going to build 80 more elsewhere to replace the other 80 that we demolished.”, I would actually be OK with that. But that is not what the Government is saying. The Government is busily demolishing State houses—and I notice that the Minister of Housing snuck into Trentham the other day unannounced, because, no doubt, that is the next area where we are going to see dozens of State houses demolished and replaced with private homes. Well, again, that community was driven out—driven out under the pretence in this case of earthquake damage or potential earthquake damage to the buildings. I am going to be very interested to see what happens when they tie a whole lot of trucks around them and try to pull them to pieces, because those buildings still seem to be standing. Having said all of that, of course we want those buildings to be earthquake-proofed, and so on. But driving people out of their homes and leaving those homes empty and boarded up for over a year, as they have been now, is not dealing with the issue. So why is this relevant to this debate? Because the Government is introducing reviewable tenancies in line with its overall goal to reduce the number of New Zealanders who are living in State houses. That is its goal. It is going into this saying that at least 3,000 New Zealanders will basically be thrown out of their homes.

We have to go back and look at the history of State housing in New Zealand to understand how we have got to where we are today. Once upon a time everyone lived in a State house—or a whole chunk of the country lived in a State house.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, that’s not true.

Well, middle-class families previously lived in State housing, and in the postwar period there were significant numbers of people who ended up moving into public or State housing. Our societal expectations around who can live in State houses have certainly changed. Some of those people have lived in those State houses for all of their adult lives, and Nick Smith and this Government are basically saying they do not care about that. They are happy just to throw those people out and force them to go and find new places to live. I do not think that is right. I do not think that is fair.

I also think that the Government has failed to consider the significant impact on tenants when they are required to move. Consider a family with children. Those children might be attending the local school and might find that the next place that they get is not in the same neighbourhood. That is a massive upheaval for that family. Those kids are going to have to leave their local school and with all of the upheaval that that involves—

💬 Moana Mackey: And the costs.

And there are the costs, of course. There may be new school uniforms—all of those things. And Nick Smith says: “Don’t worry about it. Not the Government’s problem.” I think that that is the Government’s problem, because I think that is wrong.

Consider the fate of Pōmare School. Pōmare School 4 or 5 years ago, before National came into Government, had several hundred pupils. Nick Smith, Phil Heatley, and the National Government came in and demolished all of those houses, and Pōmare School now has fewer than 100 kids enrolled for next year. Of course, there are over 100 new houses being built there, so that school will eventually have a roll that will go up again. What does the school do in the meantime? It went to the Government and said: “We’ve got this transitional problem.” and the Government did nothing. The Government said: “We don’t care. We’re not interested. We don’t want to know.”

I am surprised at getting the call—thank you, Mr Chair. I am pleased to take a call on this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. We are debating, I believe, Parts 1 through 6. But in debating these parts of the bill, I think it is really important that we keep the context of the number of houses that we are presently talking about. Currently, in terms of our housing stock, social housing—State housing—makes up 5 percent of the available stock out there in New Zealand. We are not talking about a large number of houses. It is very clear that the need and the demand are much higher. But this bill certainly gives the sense that we are shuffling around the deckchairs of the Titanic, and there are not enough to go around for everyone. Instead of saying “Someone get more chairs.”, we are simply setting a whole lot of additional strict criteria to determine who gets to sit down.

I am going to end that analogy there and go on to Part 1 of the bill, which sets out in quite a bit of detail the ability of Housing New Zealand to review tenancy at any point. It also puts in a large range of circumstances under which Housing New Zealand can simply review at any point someone’s eligibility to remain in their home. I start with new section 56, inserted by clause 11, which sets out a tenant’s duty to advise changes of circumstances. New section 56(1) states: “Every person to whom any HNZ housing is let at an income-related rent must promptly advise HNZ of—(a) any change in the person’s circumstances likely to result in the payment of a higher income-related rent;”. I really want to just question via the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Housing—if you are anticipating whether or not something is likely to impact on your income, then that is a really precarious test to apply.

I think here of what has happened for the welfare State, in particular. That is probably the most comparable area where, for instance, those who are in receipt of State benefits are required to phone in their hours worked as they anticipate them to be to Work and Income on a weekly basis. Sometimes that is out of alignment with what an employer assesses via their payslip and via what they respond to the Inland Revenue Department as having been their hours worked. A lot of people living in State houses will be in precarious work. They will be working hours that fluctuate. They might be working shifts or be in seasonal work, so anticipating whether or not they are likely to be dropping in and out of Housing New Zealand’s requirement around their income test is quite a difficult test.

I would also like to hear from the Minister whether there is data matching going on with Housing New Zealand, as is the case now with Work and Income. Suddenly Work and Income, once it starts trying to bring these two pieces of information together, says “Ah ha! Masses of people are trying to defraud the system.” Not the case. In fact, what we have is simply a range of overpayment and underpayment based on people reporting the hours they believed they have worked, before they have actually received their payslip. Are we going to have a similar situation with people falling inside and outside what is likely to be eligibility, given this frequent testing, and now given these tests that tell a tenant that they must anticipate whether or not they are eligible? Potentially, we may see the same issues as we have seen with Work and Income. I would like to specifically know from the Minister whether the same data-matching exercise with the Inland Revenue Department is going on with Housing New Zealand, as there is with Work and Income.

I want to come then to Part 1, down to clause 12. It sets out the circumstances under which Housing New Zealand may review housing eligibility. The thing that the Minister does not seem to acknowledge here, and he talks generally about the idea that the waiting lists are so high that it is unfair to have anyone—it seems to be anyone paying market rents for State housing that seems to be a problem from the Minister’s perspective. What he fails to acknowledge is that some people who are paying market rents for State houses are simply people who cannot find housing anywhere else. Come to central Auckland, Minister, and I will introduce you to a range of sole parents who cannot rent a house in the private rental market. Demand is extraordinary in some parts of Auckland. They have become desperate enough that they will go to Housing New Zealand even though they do not want to be in front of Housing New Zealand. They know that there is high need, and they do not see themselves as being amongst the category of individuals who would need to call on Housing New Zealand. But what do you do, Minister, if you have a child under the age of 5 and you cannot find a home after 6 months? What do you do? In desperation, many people go to Housing New Zealand. So—

The first thing that was extraordinary about that contribution from Jacinda Ardern was that she said that New Zealand needs more housing. Well, I simply ask that member why she opposed at every single step the special housing area in the housing accords legislation, which was supported unanimously by the Auckland Council, for 39,000 more houses in Auckland. She cannot stand up and give speeches saying that we need to increase housing supply when she and her colleagues have done everything possible to oppose increasing housing supply.

In speaking to this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, I need to expose the contribution of half-truths from Phil Twyford. He said that the report Home and Housed: A Vision For Social Housing in New Zealand opposed reviewable tenancies. That is absolutely untrue. It is true that it said that you should not review everybody’s tenancy every single year. Well, we on this side of the Chamber support that. We say that we should review those tenancies when it is clear that people’s circumstances have changed and when they no longer have the needs that entitled them to social housing. He is being grossly misleading in that respect.

But I have got to tell you that the real big daddy of misrepresentation and trying to retell history was when Mr Twyford said that Labour made major investments in the quality of its State housing. I nearly choked on my water when I heard those views. Let me give the member the numbers. When National came into Government in 2008, how many of the 69,000 State houses had been insulated? I know that my colleague Phil Heatley would know. He came in as the Minister of Housing. Those members say that this Government has under-invested in State housing, so let me give the Committee the numbers. Every single State house that can be insulated—40,000 of them—will be insulated by the end of next month. What an extraordinary achievement.

Let me give you the numbers in another way. This Government, each year, has insulated 10 times as many houses per year as these socialists opposite, who shed crocodile tears about State housing tenants but ignored their needs for more than a decade. Let me give the hard numbers: $2.9 billion is being invested in this year’s Budget in Housing New Zealand—$2.9 billion. Let us look over the 9 years of massive surpluses—the best economic times in half a century. Labour spent less than half that amount—less than half that amount.

Let us take the other half-truth. The member Phil Twyford says: “Oh, look at the size of the dividends that the Government has taken from Housing New Zealand.”, but he forgets to mention that, yes, there are two transactions that occur between the Government and Housing New Zealand. There is the amount the Government pays each year to Housing New Zealand for providing housing services, and the amount, the dividend, that comes back. The Government has increased the amount it pays Housing New Zealand by $160 million per year, a record. Let me give you the numbers. In Labour’s last year in Government it was under $500 million per year; this financial year it is $670 million. That is a massive increase in difficult financial times, and it shows the level of commitment that this Government has to social housing.

The last point I want to make is in terms of the contribution from Chris Hipkins. He objects to the grotty State houses in Pōmare being demolished so that we can reinvest in new, far better, quality housing.

💬 Hon Annette King: No, he didn’t.

Well, actually, let me say to Madam King that if you are going to build new houses, you actually have to demolish the old ones. That is actually a physical reality. I would love the next Labour member to explain how Labour is not going to demolish any houses but is going to do redevelopments in suburbs. Look, the Opposition’s approach to this bill is flaky, it is as shallow as a bird bath, and it actually shows that those members have done no new thinking on how we can better deliver social housing for New Zealanders.

I have to say to the Minister of Housing that he is getting rather overexcited. I suggest that maybe he calms done if he is going to take another call, because one thing that Chris Hipkins, the very good member for Rimutaka, did not say was that he wanted to keep crappy houses in Pōmare. He is very aware that there were substandard houses there that need to be replaced, but maybe the Minister does not know that for 5 long years those houses at Pōmare were left neglected, run down, and empty—emptied out by this Government—with nothing happening to them. So maybe the Minister needs to get more up to date on what is actually happening. For example, he said that Labour wanted to keep gang members in Pōmare. Does the Minister know where they have gone now? Has he any idea what has happened to them? Come on, Minister. Where have the gang members gone now? They have been rehoused somewhere else. They do not just disappear in a puff of smoke and no longer exist, Minister. They are rehoused somewhere else. So what a pathetic argument that was.

The other thing the Minister said was that you cannot build your way out of a social housing crisis. I know that if the Minister was in his own electorate, he would be visiting the Salvation Army and telling those people what a wonderful job they do, how much he values them, and how much he likes them. Well, if that is the case, Minister—and he is nodding—why does he not agree with the Salvation Army, which said exactly that last week? It said that what you have to do is build your way out of the social housing problem in New Zealand. You are not going to solve the social housing problem in New Zealand by shifting the houses around as to who owns and runs them. You actually need to have more houses in New Zealand.

Even the Government’s own mates, The New Zealand Initiative—that right-wing thinktank—said that we are 80,000 houses short in New Zealand. And then he mentioned—I am just replying to the Minister himself—the captain of a ship who is in a State house in Nelson. How long has he been there, Minister? How long have you been in Government? Has he been there 5 years? Has this Government moved him on? Is he paying market rent? What responsibility does the Minister take for a captain living in a State house for 5 years? That is the very thing he would have criticised a Labour Government for.

I have to tell you that I have now known Nick Smith in a number of portfolios and, unfortunately, like most of his portfolios, he is out of touch. I say bring back Phil Heatley because at least Phil Heatley understood the housing portfolio. You see, Nick Smith was out of touch with the local government portfolio, he was out of touch when he had the ACC portfolio, and now he is out of touch and ignorant when it comes to the housing portfolio. He claims many things that are not true. For example, he claimed that the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group was in favour of reviewable tenancies. That is totally untrue. This is what the report explicitly recommends. The group recommends against reviewable tenancy for existing tenants. Did you know that, Minister? You said the absolute opposite a minute ago. This is what the report says: “No existing tenant should have his or her lease simply terminated. Here, we have been guided by the principle of ‘offer, not push’. While it would, in theory, be possible for [Housing New Zealand] to reassess all sitting tenants at the time of their annual rent review and give tenants adequate notice,”—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s right.

—“we do not support this option.” The Minister said “That’s right.”, but he did not wait for me to finish its full statement.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Half-truths.

What did the group say, Minister? Half a truth you gave then. It said: “we do not support—”

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Full quote. Read the full quote.

Yes, full quote. Let me read the full quote: “we do not support this option”. Do not tell me to read the full quote, Minister; read it yourself. Read it yourself.

And then we have some of the most informed people in New Zealand talking about reviewable tenancies. They made submissions on the bill. Philippa Howden-Chapman—no one could doubt her credibility. She put in a submission, with others, to the bill. She said: “We do not support the introduction of reviewable tenancies for all state tenants because of: the lack of evidence provided for its efficacy; its cost; the health effects of the lack of security of tenure; the health effects of displacement; and the health effects of moving people from state to private rental housing; and the effect on children’s education.”

This Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill is the most objectionable and Draconian bill that this Government has produced in this term, in my view. In Part 1 not only are there very extensive powers of investigation of existing tenants or any prospective tenant to see whether they remain eligible for income-related housing but there are several new clauses that effectively set up Housing New Zealand as New Zealand’s housing police and authorise Housing New Zealand to set aside the Privacy Act. This bill shows, yet again, how the National Government has little regard for privacy, as it did in the much-reviled Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act recently pushed through this House.

New section 59, in clause 14, says: “For the purposes of a review … HNZ may request any person to—(a) answer questions; or (b) allow HNZ to inspect any document or other written information; or (c) give HNZ—(i) a copy of any document or other written information; or (ii) a printout of any information stored digitally. (2) The person does not have to comply with the request, but (for the purposes of section 7(1) of the Privacy Act 1993) this subsection authorises the person to make personal information available in response to the request.”

So much, then, for personal privacy in New Zealand, with legislation like that. The provision effectively nullifies the Privacy Act, and it is unnecessary, when Housing New Zealand can satisfy itself in other ways about the eligibility of a person for housing, without compromising the Privacy Act in that way.

Under new section 59AA, Housing New Zealand may require information for certain purposes. Housing New Zealand “may by written notice require information from any person” concerning housing assessment or reviews. Under new section 59AA(1) this may be for “(f) the purpose of determining and detecting whether a person has committed or is committing an offence … (g) the purpose of determining and detecting the cost of fraud … (h) the purpose of ascertaining whether a person has failed or refused to answer fully, or has deliberately given a false or misleading answer to, any question … ”. In requiring such information, Housing New Zealand must do so only in accordance with a code of conduct, but any person “from whom information is required … must comply with the requirement—(a) no later than 5 working days after the notice … [and] without charge …”.

The only exceptions are that the section does not “(a) require any person to provide any information or produce any document that would be privileged in a court of law: [or] (b) require any person to provide any information or produce any document that is legally professionally privileged.”, and it does not apply to financial information such as receipts or financial transactions. But that still leaves a lot of information that any person must provide when required to do so. That information is then used for reviewing the eligibility of tenants, terminating a tenancy, and reallocating or reassigning Housing New Zealand housing to a tenant.

The offences are in new section 61AB, under which it is an offence for any person not to provide information required by Housing New Zealand, and there is a fine of up to $2,000 for that. And it is an offence to mislead Housing New Zealand. It is even an offence under new section 61AC for any person to deliberately omit to do or say anything if the purpose is for another person to be eligible or continue to be eligible to be allocated Housing New Zealand housing. For this heinous crime, any person who does so commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine not exceeding $5,000, or both.

The only redeeming provisions in this Draconian part of the bill are those relating to the code of conduct and the role of the Privacy Commissioner. But, overall, the impression is given that State house tenants under National’s amended legislation will be treated much more like the inmates of the Gulag Archipelago than as tenants needing respect, security, and long-term housing solutions, instead of being constantly subject to reviews and investigations.

I too would like to speak to some of the overarching issues that relate to reviewable tenancies and the approach that this Government is taking in relation to State housing. I think the Government has made a major shift away from our common understanding of the purpose of State housing and the role of our Government in providing housing. I would like to remind the Committee that it was a National Government that initially established some of our State housing policy and also opposed the extension of urban limits as an approach to providing more housing. It recognised that as a country we desperately need to have secure, healthy housing for our population, and that when we have that, we all benefit. It recognised that if we put the most vulnerable people out on the fringes, they become more vulnerable because they are reliant on extra transport and that is often not there, and that undermines their ability to participate more widely in the community.

But this Government really has lost its way, and this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, is a very significant demonstration of that. What it does is set up a review of tenure for State housing. The Minister of Housing has talked about examples of very wealthy people in State houses and what a travesty that is—how shocking when we have a limited resource—and how we need to make sure that those people are not taking up that resource. But I would like to remind the Minister that, actually, this bill does a lot more than that. It will review the tenancies of families with children. It will put their tenancies at risk. Though the Government has told us that there is some leniency available in this bill, it is not spelt out that it will protect older New Zealanders in their houses so that they will not be kicked out. They are not protected in this bill. The Government has also told us that it will protect people with disabilities and/or mental health issues, but that is not written in this bill.

What this bill does is set up a process where people will feel insecure, some people will be kicked out of their houses, and families with children will lose security of tenure. The Minister is shaking his head, but that is what is in this bill. That has really significant costs for those families and for all of us.

I have been a renter for most of my life, and the way the private rental market operates in this country is that there is a lot of churn. While I was renting, I often moved twice a year for reasons such as that the landlord’s situation changed or my situation changed or the rent went up. The cost of that is huge—to get the movers and to put on the power—and that is the cycle we are potentially putting people into. The private rental market is overinflated, and the condition of the housing is worse. So we are putting some of our most vulnerable families into exceptionally vulnerable situations, and we are increasing their costs, which is taking money away from those families in this country who have the least. I do not think that that is consistent with the vision that we all share as New Zealanders of this idea of a society where we are all looked after. This bill does not look after our most vulnerable people, and it does not look after our vision of an inclusive society.

The Dunedin School of Medicine of the University of Otago was very clear in its message in response to this policy point, saying that the longer a family is able to stay in a State house, the better the health outcomes for children. This bill is going to cost the health of our most vulnerable children. The Government is putting in these token efforts around rheumatic fever, when we know that one of the main drivers of rheumatic fever is overcrowding and poor-quality housing. Here we are, putting through a bill that actually threatens initiatives that might help the health of those children. It is dishonest to put forward some money in here and say: “We really care about this issue”—

I want to talk about the reviewable tenancies in Part 1 of the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill as well. I have been looking through the proposed legislation—proposed new section 57AC, “HNZ may investigate circumstances of prospective tenant”, and proposed new section 57AD “HNZ may investigate circumstances relevant to continued eligibility”, and it goes on and on and on and on. It strikes me that this is what you have to have when you get rid of tenancy managers; when you basically have words in legislation replacing what tenancy managers at Housing New Zealand used to do every single day. I think I would rather have human beings in control of the well-being of some of our most vulnerable families than words on a bit of paper, guided by an overarching policy framework that is to evict 3,000 families from their homes.

That is essentially what proposed new sections 57AA to 59AA actually do. If you had actually talked to one of those people we used to call “tenancy managers”, what they would tell you consistently is that, yes, they do try to move tenants on when their circumstances change; yes, they do take into account factors like the health of the individuals and whether they have children in local schools; and, yes—because, remember, tenants go through an income-related rent process every single year—they do find out when tenants’ circumstances change. But they say that the biggest single reason why tenants do not move on is not, as the Minister of Housing has been saying, that they are selfish, nasty, and do not want to give up their house to someone else; it is that they have nowhere to move to—they have nowhere to move to. That is why people stay in State houses when their circumstances change.

The second reason why they may be reluctant to move is because they cannot afford it. It is because the cost of moving is significant. If you consider what this Government has done in its residential tenancy legislation—which requires any letting fee to be charged to the tenant, rather than to the landlord—paying letting fees, bonds, and rent in advance and the cost of actually moving are expenses these families cannot afford. That is the reason they are not moving, Minister—that is the reason. They have nowhere to move to, and Nick Smith says they are selfish for not wanting to be homeless. Well, I have to say that kind of sums up this Government’s approach to housing.

The reality is we did not have an issue with this when we let tenancy managers do their job and develop relationships with their tenants. There is, actually, incredibly high turnover in Housing New Zealand houses. These are not, as the Minister is suggesting, a whole block of people just staying there and refusing to move. There is a lot of turnover in these houses, but if people have nowhere to move to, then all we are doing is evicting families into homelessness. It is a shame that this National Government is saying that that is an appropriate policy to be putting forward in this bill.

The Minister, when he made his comments earlier, gave a challenge to the Labour Party asking how you redevelop communities without demolishing houses. I have an answer for him. The answer is that you do what Labour was doing in the Tāmaki Transformation Programme, where you guarantee that the number of State houses will stay the same but the proportion will go down. So there will be more houses in general, mixed tenancies, but the number of State houses will stay the same. That was a guarantee that we gave to those tenants, and this National Government broke that when it decided that the number of State houses would go down. So there is a response to the Minister’s question.

Part 1 of this bill is deeply, deeply disturbing for the many families whom it affects. Yes, there are a number of families on market rents in State houses. In the provinces Housing New Zealand plays a very different role, as the Minister should know, from what it does in the cities. Sometimes people will be on a market rent not because their income is high but because the rents in the local region are low on average but there is no alternative rental housing. In the provinces we are very, very short of adequate rental housing, and Housing New Zealand is a significant contributor to that. These are not rich families. These are not families who are rolling around in money, filling up State houses because of some selfish desire to keep people out. These are families who are on low incomes, but because the average rental across that area is also relatively low, they are on a market rent. But they are not rich, and they have no alternative.

We have about 60 State houses sitting empty in Gisborne while we have families in garages and families living in cars because this Government says they are too rich to be able to access a State house. Well, I can tell you that they are not rich. I can tell you that those State houses are a very valuable asset for our community. We would be able to house people in them tomorrow if they were not being readied for sale—because that is what is happening up and down the country. That is what Part 1 of this bill is all about, actually. That is what reviewable tenancies are all about—getting people off the waiting list. Let us remember that the Government scrapped the category C and D portions of the waiting list; it said that those people were rich. Well, they were not—not at all. That move culled 5,000 people—

I rise to take a call on the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, which we will not be supporting in this Committee. It is a bill that takes us backwards rather than forward. It is a bill put forward by a Government that is clearly out of touch. In a time of widening inequalities we have here the removal of facilities for those who are most in need. Instead, it seems to be a Government that is distracted by doing deals with cronies.

I recently attended the Salvation Army report launch for the report Give Me Shelter, an assessment of New Zealand’s housing assistance policies. That report, just out, shows that the Government has been dropping down its capital contributions to Housing New Zealand and upping its dividends. If I can quote, it found between 2002 and 2012 that “Over the seven years of its oversight the Labour-led government provided Housing New Zealand with $758 million in capital contributions and received $272 million in dividends leaving a net $486 million in funds in the Corporation. Over the three years of its oversight the National-led government has provided the Corporation with $129 million in capital contributions, received $271 million in dividends resulting in a net $142 million withdrawal of funds from the organisation.” I think those following the debate at home on the wireless or on the television will see the pattern here. We had a Labour Government that was investing in supporting those most in need, and we have a National Government that is pulling the rug out, quite literally, from under families who are struggling in this difficult time, who are enduring the National Government.

One of the other points that was made in that report was that the real value of benefits as they drop relative to the cost of living has made housing so much more unaffordable for the most vulnerable members of our society. There is an extensive array of charts and tables in the back of that very detailed assessment, and I recommend that anyone who is interested and who is following this debate should get a copy of the Salvation Army report Give Me Shelter. It is damning. It does ask for a really major rethink of housing policy, particularly social housing policy, in this country, and that is a fair thing to call for.

This bill clearly is designed to fulfil National’s vision of a contestable market—of that there can be little doubt—for social housing. Labour does not share the view that the Government should just be one player amongst many. We have a view that the expansion of community-sector social housing is a core function of the State. The Government should not duck its responsibilities in this area. In fact, in part this tinkering, this cutting and chopping here, there, and everywhere is symbolic of a Government that has failed to manage the economy effectively, and is looking at ways to chop the pie up differently and attribute even smaller parts to those who need it most.

The bill itself, of course, was a rushed mess. Supplementary Order Paper 390 is a fairly thick document. I think anyone watching on their television at home will be able to see that. I note that even on the Table in the middle here the original bill has not been supplied, because in the rushed rewrite most of the content is different. It is no longer worth reading the original bill. This has been a messy process, and that speaks to the ad hoc nature of the bill, and the lack of an overarching vision for social housing. Five years of a lack of vision has seen State housing decline.

I note also in the regulatory impact statement on the social housing reform programme that some key lines have been removed. But just above those removed lines, under the heading “Limitations on the Analysis Undertaken”, it says: “Without decisions on the specific components of the final framework, the analysis that can be undertaken by officials is constrained.” Right up front in the regulatory impact statement that we have been supplied with is an admission that the analysis of it is constrained. Then we learn that that was followed by a complete rewrite of the bill. This is a shambles. This not how good policy is made. This is not how visionary policy is made.

💬 Phil Twyford: “Calamity” Smith.

This is the work, my colleague says, of Nick “Calamity” Smith. The parts that have been removed immediately after the admission of constraint are protected under the Official Information Act 1982, section 9(2)(f)(iv). Anyone who has redacted documents as an official will know that that is the section protecting Minister’s confidentiality. So, basically, it is the section that says that you cannot know, because we are not going to tell you. It is that wonderful thing in the Official Information Act that says that Ministers might still be making decisions on things, but, anyway, they are not going to tell you the details of what they are considering. So, not only do we have a constrained analysis of a bill that was then completely rewritten but we have the detail of what is still going on withheld from the public and withheld from the members of Parliament who must debate the bill.

This all points to a shambles of a process. It says that the Government really does not have an idea of what it is going to do with social housing. But the one thing that is clear is that it is going to try to pull back expenditure so that it can afford more generous deals in other areas that it is interested in. We think immediately of the corporate welfare for Skycity, the Rio Tinto corporate welfare where there was not even a jobs guarantee asked for, and what looks like an imminent handout to Chorus. The Government is very keen and quick to support corporate players that are struggling but it is somewhat more reticent when it comes to the individuals at the bottom of the heap, who are struggling the most.

In this regulatory impact statement we also find, on page 3, some interesting analysis. The problem definition says that “A range of problems exist with the current market for social housing in New Zealand including: state housing is not well matched to need; there is a lack of alternatives to state housing that offer security of tenure and affordability; government financial assistance for housing is inequitable; increasing demand is likely to create fiscal pressures in the future that may be difficult to manage under the current state provider model.” There are four issues raised here. The Government seems focused on dealing only with the fourth one. It seems to want to get there as quickly as it can, to cut costs where it is delivering services to the most vulnerable, obviously, as I have said, so that it can put more money the way of those who are already at the top of the heap. But it is not addressing the other three problems that are clearly identified in points one, two, and three: “state housing is not well matched to need; … a lack of alternatives to state housing that offer security of tenure and affordability; [and] government financial assistance for housing [being] inequitable.” Those are all problems identified by the Government’s own officials that are not adequately addressed in this legislation.

This is a Government that is tinkering and that is not making the real change that is needed to provide secure housing for our most vulnerable citizens. It is a Government that has as vacant, underutilised, or overcrowded over 9,000 properties, or 14 percent of the State housing portfolio. That is just a shambles, and the Minister of Housing must stand up and explain why he is doing this higgledy-piggledy approach. Is he being stymied by a Cabinet that has other priorities? Is it the case that he is getting around to dealing with things, or is it just that he is incompetent?

This bill takes New Zealand nowhere except backwards. It removes security for those who are most vulnerable, and it does not outline a vision of a better New Zealand that we would all hope for, the kind of vision that Labour is presenting with its KiwiBuild programme, with affordable power prices, and the like. We want a future that works for all New Zealanders, a fair and just society where all live in dignity, an environment that we can protect, and a nation that we can all be proud of. Instead, this bill takes us backwards. It is a sign of a Government that is out of touch, that is not in touch with the widening inequalities, and that is arrogant and not listening to New Zealanders.

This bill needs to be voted down. I urge the Government to reconsider its options and present a decent policy that we could own across the House—one that looks out for those most in need, one that addresses the policy problems identified by the Government’s own officials, and one that is actually a step forward for New Zealanders.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for allowing me the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. Here we are again. We are in urgency. I think that just about says it all really, pushing this through in urgency. I think nothing actually more describes how chaotic this Government’s approach is to social housing than the fact that my colleague who just took his seat, Dr David Clark, is absolutely right. The Government is in complete chaos when it comes to actually, first, understanding the housing needs of New Zealanders, and, second, identifying the right solution to fix the problem.

Here in Part 1 the Government demonstrably gets it wrong. It absolutely gets it wrong. Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing, made a big deal before about being concerned about the 4,000 New Zealanders who are lucky enough—and I would have to say “lucky”, under this Government—to have made it on to the waiting list for Housing New Zealand properties. Well, if the Minister was genuinely concerned about those 4,000 people and their families on that waiting list, then he would be doing something about the number of houses available in the housing stock.

That is the fundamental issue, Dr Smith. I think my colleague Jacinda Ardern put it very well when she used the analogy of that party game—I think we in New Zealand have all grown up and participated in it—musical chairs, where you have a number of chairs, and when the music stops, everyone has got try to find a chair. The secret to that is that you keep taking away a chair every time. That is what this Government is doing. That is exactly what this Government is doing. It is reducing the housing stock available for Housing New Zealand tenants, and that is the basis of this problem.

It is not going to be fixed by just putting more and more pressure on and giving less and less security for the housing of those who are currently Housing New Zealand tenants. That is not going to resolve the issue for the lucky 4,000. I call them the “lucky 4,000” not because actually their circumstances are that lucky but because there are many, many people who cannot even get on the waiting list for Housing New Zealand properties because they are not deemed to be needy enough. We used to call them priority C and D, actually. Under a Labour Government, they used to actually get on to a waiting list, and were recognised as having a housing need. Under this Government, they are no longer even recognised as having a housing need.

So what is this Government’s response to that? Well, I also attended the launch of the report from the Salvation Army—its very important report, Give Me Shelter: An Assessment of New Zealand’s Housing Assistance Policies—and I was shocked. Even though I know the track record of this Government, I was shocked to learn that it has been bleeding Housing New Zealand dry of capital investment.

What do we mean when we say “capital investment”? I just want to make sure people at home understand this. We are talking about the funding to build more houses. That is why capital investment is so important. Here is what has happened—here is what the Salvation Army found. It found that over the 7 years of oversight by a Labour-led Government, we provided Housing New Zealand with $758 million in capital contributions—that is, funds to build more State houses. And at that time the Government received $272 million in dividends, leaving a net $486 million in funds in the corporation. However, over the 3 years of its oversight, the National-led Government has provided the corporation with just $129 million in capital contributions. That compares with the $758 million in capital contributions coming from the Labour-led Government.

So it is absolutely easy to see what is going on here. The Government is requiring more dividends, but giving less money for capital investment. That means fewer houses are being built. It is as simple as that. The chair has been taken away. And then another chair is taken away, and another chair is taken away. So if Dr Smith really does care about those 4,000 tenants, then he would be taking an approach of ensuring that there were more capital contributions going into the Housing New Zealand Corporation, rather than using that money, as he has, to fund tax cuts for the rich. That is what has happened. That is what has happened with that big amount of money under this Government. It has gone into tax cuts for people who did not need it, quite frankly, and out of the pockets of people who desperately need housing.

I want to put the record straight in respect of a point that has been made by two members, Dr Clark and Sue Moroney, about the Government’s funding for Housing New Zealand, because they are telling half-truths and grossly misrepresenting the situation. Let me tell members the numbers, because I have them in front of me. The average dividend per year that was taken from Housing New Zealand by the previous Labour Government was $44 million per year—that is true. It is also true that the dividend that the Government is taking this year from Housing New Zealand is $70 million. Members of the Opposition are then concluding that the Government is not giving Housing New Zealand as much money. But what they are overlooking is how much the Government pays Housing New Zealand each year for services, for the provision of housing. In Labour’s last year in Government that amount of money was $500 million per year. This year that figure is $700 million per year.

💬 Sue Moroney: But that’s not building more houses.

💬 Phil Twyford: Talking about capital.

Well, no, the members are simply saying “Oh”, but that is not what they said. Neither Phil Twyford, nor Sue Moroney, nor Dr Clark—

💬 Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I do not know what sort of disability the Minister has, but he repeatedly mispronounces my name.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Please sit down. If the member has a point of order, he should not cast overall aspersions on the member Nick Smith.

💬 Phil Twyford: He should pronounce my name correctly.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Well, I will just finish that point. I do not actually understand what the member was trying to say, because he began by attacking the member, and that is not what a point of order is about. If you have a point of order, you should get up and raise it tersely.

💬 Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, I have finished. You have lost your opportunity.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Is this continuing the point of order that I have dealt with?

💬 Denis O’Rourke: I do not know what the previous point of order was.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I will hear the member.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: I believe that the Minister used, in pronouncing another member’s name, the word or name “Tryford” instead of “Twyford”. He should correct that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Well, if that is what the member said, I will just ask him to be more careful in the future.

It is often that Ministers do not attempt to respond. I am just making a very clear point. Labour members are claiming that this Government—all sorts of colourful rhetoric—

💬 Sue Moroney: Capital contributions.

No, that is not what Sue Moroney said.

💬 Sue Moroney: Yes, it was—quite specifically, it was.

No, she claimed that the Government was robbing Housing New Zealand of cash to pay money off to its rich mates, and all this sort of rhetoric, and she is wrong. The reality—the true numbers, when you consider all of the transactions that occur between Housing New Zealand and the Government—is that this Government is spending record amounts on social housing. Members opposite cannot claim differently.

You know, this National Government is essentially showing in this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, the continuity of policy from the Ruth Richardson Government of the 1990s, with one exception: the Ruth Richardson Government in the 1990s was more honest. It simply slashed housing by 13,000 in total housing stock, creating the housing crisis that Labour Governments always inherit, and it introduced market rent—market rent that people could not afford.

This Government is trying to do it in a slightly more cunning way in this bill. What it is doing is that it is first of all undermining the stock of State housing and the capital investment, and Nick Smith knows that. He knows that he has reduced, not increased, the number of State houses. Have you not reduced the number of State Houses by 700, Mr Smith? Those are the figures that I have. Mr Smith knows that he has reduced the capital input into State housing, unless he is calling the Salvation Army a liar in its latest report. Is the Minister of Housing doing that? Or is the Minister ready to confirm that the Salvation Army, which actually and genuinely is concerned about the supply of housing for our most vulnerable and lowest-income people, says that whereas the previous Labour Government increased capital by a net $486 million, he has produced a net withdrawal of funds of $142 million.

You see, it is the same old National Government. It does not give a damn about the most vulnerable and the neediest people in this community. Well, I want to say this, Mr Smith: I do care about the people in my electorate who cannot afford housing of their own. They are people who need the stability of housing for their kids’ sake, and they are people who before they got a State house had their kids go to a dozen different schools in as many months. That is what undermines the future chances of our kids today. And what is Nick Smith doing in this bill? He is taking away the fundamental thing that Housing New Zealand was able to provide, and that was stability and security of tenure.

Thirty years ago when I was Minister of Housing, Mr Smith, I introduced something called income-related rents. That scheme said that we subsidised people so that their housing was affordable, up to the point where they started to earn more money, and then they lost their subsidy. The Minister has got 61,000 tenants who are on income-related rent, and 4,800 who are on market rent. What that shows is that, overwhelmingly, the majority of State house tenants are the people who have very low incomes and who could not afford decent and secure housing in the private sector. Amongst those 4,800, when I talk to the people in my Housing New Zealand areas, are people whose incomes have gone up temporarily, but it is late in their lives. They will never be able to afford their own home and their income will, at a certain point, again go down. What Mr Smith is going to do is throw those people out at a late point in their lives, when they cannot afford a home of their own, and take away their ability to have decent, affordable, and secure housing.

The whole reason why we have State housing is so that kids can grow up in housing that is warm and healthy. Mr Smith was quite right to say: “Hey, we will have all of our State houses properly insulated.” But Mr Smith also needs to acknowledge that the one sector of our community that has done almost nothing to make those houses warm and dry is the private rental sector. If you talk to any doctor in this country, and if you talk to the general practitioners in my local community who service my low-income areas, they will say that one of their biggest problems is that in the private sector there is no warm and dry affordable housing.

What Mr Smith is doing, in continuing what National Governments have always done in the past, is ripping the guts out of Housing New Zealand, but what he is pretending to do this time is that he will take 20 percent of the houses off Housing New Zealand and he will give them to the community housing sector. I am all in favour of the community housing sector, but I know what Mr Smith’s next step is. When he has transferred the responsibility, he will start withdrawing the resources that he gives to the community housing sector. That is the plan of the National Government. What worries me is that once again our most needy and our most vulnerable citizens in this country will be left in a worse position.

It always amazes me that we have money to subsidise Rio Tinto—$30 million to a multinational that is going to pull out of New Zealand anyway—and we will give the film moguls at Warner Bros tens of millions of dollars and change the legislation for them, and we will give Skycity the ability to increase its gaming machines and give $400 million in subsidies there, but when it comes to meeting the basic needs of human beings to have decent housing, particularly for our kids, because it is the kids who benefit most, this Government does not care. It does not matter how you dress it up, Mr Smith. That is what you are doing. You are taking the housing stock away from Housing New Zealand, where there was some guarantee that people would have ongoing access to that sort of housing, and you are removing the security of tenure, which is a basic need for our communities.

We have got schools in my electorate, like the May Road Primary School, Hay Park Primary School, or Wesley Primary School, where I talk to the principals and they say: “Thank God, in this area on the isthmus of Auckland we have State housing. Otherwise, low-income people couldn’t afford to live on the isthmus of Auckland.” In my area I have low-income people for one reason and one reason alone: there is a decent stock of State housing, which gives people on low incomes the ability to live in that area close to where they work. Dr Smith, you are intending to take that away. You are intending to sell off those places and to congregate the people in the south and the west, which is the only place where you will have people in State housing. Well may you walk away from that question, because that is the truth of what this Minister is trying to do.

We can be proud in this country that since the 1930s people of all incomes who have been in urgent need of housing have had a place to go. That is what State housing was about and that is what Housing New Zealand is about, and once again we are seeing a Government that simply wants to undermine a fundamental social institution in this country. It is an institution that I call fundamental because, as Norman Kirk said, one of the critical things that people need in life is an affordable home. Housing New Zealand can guarantee that, but we have seen the erosion of how the corporation can provide that housing.

You know, with housing problems go social problems. Once upon a time in my electorate the people who worked for Housing New Zealand would take responsibility to help out with some of the social problems of the tenants there. Dr Smith’s goal is to have Housing New Zealand being nothing other than a glorified private sector provider that takes no responsibility for those social problems. Once upon a time we had people who were equipped and able to go around the State houses and make sure that things were OK. The Government has stripped that back. Now what it is doing is stripping back the number of State houses and it is stripping back that fundamental principle that has existed for the best part of 80 years—when you go into a State house, provided you pay your rent and provided you look after that home, you have security of tenure. That house is not just bricks and mortar or timber and corrugated iron; it is your home. It is the place that is secure for you. It is the place where you can maintain tenure so that your kids do not have to change school every year. It is the place where you can afford a home that is of a decent quality. What this National Government is doing, albeit in a slightly more cunning way than the Richardson National Government did, is stripping the most poor and the most vulnerable of the right to have that sort of housing assistance.

The Labour Party will oppose this bill. It will oppose it with the support of every person in the housing sector who has looked at the needs of those who are vulnerable and who believes that the steps that this bill takes are steps in the wrong direction. We need more houses, not fewer houses. There is a housing crisis—we are short of 80,000 houses, according to the New Zealand Institute—and that means that more people are competing for fewer houses, which means higher rents. You have things like the introduction of loan-to-value ratios—

I rise to oppose this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, with every fibre of my being. This is an absolute abrogation of responsibility by this Government for the poor and the needy in our communities. This bill is an effort by this Government to get rid of the housing affordability problem. How does it choose to do that? It chooses to do it by loading the problem on to an under-resourced third sector to provide more housing, and in so doing the Government completely ignores the scale of the problem out there and the scale of the capacity of the Government to fix it. In fact, only the Government has the capacity to improve housing affordability on the scale that is required.

This bill tries to do three things. First of all, it says that the Government will hand over the income-related rent subsidy to the third sector. Here comes the first stage of the dismembering of Housing New Zealand. So the Minister of Housing, Dr Smith, goes to his home electorate and he announces—in the particular pork-barrelling way he has—that the Nelson Tasman Housing Trust is just going to get another injection of money so it can build another six houses in Kawai Street. The Nelson Tasman Housing Trust is a wonderful example of a third sector housing organisation, but another six houses in Kawai Street is not going to fix the problem.

The Minister has no wish for a National Government to address the issue of housing affordability using all the levers at its disposal. No, it is quite the contrary. What the Government is wanting to do, and what Dr Smith is a past master at, is to skirt around the problem and say: “These people over here will be resourced to the tune of $27 million.”, or some paltry sum that is not going to allow them to scale up either their own capability or the number of houses they can build to address the problem of housing affordability. The $27 million over 4 years is not going to touch the sides of the housing affordability problem.

If this were a Labour Government, it would be looking to use every piece of apparatus available to the State, as we did in our 9 years, to make affordable housing a reality. However, this Government, a National-led Government, has sat on its hands for 5 years, until finally the focus groups and the polling have shown it that housing affordability is a problem that is being experienced even by people who voted for it. So that then galvanises the Government into action. So what do we see? Here is the easiest solution. We can flick off some of the responsibility by giving money out, but not much—just $27 million over 4 years. We can give out money to the third sector, which can build four houses here and six houses there and maybe 10 in Auckland, if you are really lucky.

And then here comes the second part of this bill. It then seeks to move the needs assessment for housing from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development. So the Ministry of Social Development will take the responsibility for determining who should get a State house. Here we have the whittling away of Housing New Zealand, so the Government can say: “We’ve put all this into the great morass of the Ministry of Social Development, and it is no longer our responsibility to run housing through a specialised agency.”

But the third thing that the Government seeks to do in this bill is the most pernicious, and it is this business about making all State house tenants have reviewable contracts. Dr Smith, in his opening remarks, said that there was a man in his electorate who worked on a fishing boat who was earning $100,000 a year and lived in a State house. I can probably name that man. If I am right about the one I am thinking of, he has three children. He has three children and he wants them all to go to the same school. He wants them to go to Hampden Street School and to all grow up in the same area, and not be shifted around from pillar to post. He is making sure that there is a continuity and a security about their upbringing that a stable house provides. He will be paying a market rent. If he is earning that much money—and I have to tell you, he will be earning that much money only if there is a good catch, because part of their recompense, part of their remuneration, is based on how many fish they catch; what the size of the catch is—if it is a good day and he is earning one hundred thousand bucks, I can be absolutely certain that that man is on a market rental. So there are 4,000 people on market rentals.

The reason social housing was provided in the first place was to provide families with stability, to grow communities that were stable, and to avoid ghettoizing people who were in need and who were able to integrate into a community by virtue of their stability and by virtue of the fact that this was their house. There always comes a time when people’s circumstances change. Perhaps the children have all grown up and left and it is time for the elderly couple to move into a smaller property. That is quite a different proposition from simply saying that every State house tenant will have a reviewable contract. Dr Smith says there will probably be only 1,000 of them in the next year who are going to be affected. Well, I say that the fear of that will go to all the other 61,000 who are State house tenants. The fear of having a reviewable contract will undermine the stability of those families, when clearly the vast majority of people in State rental housing are people who need it to be provided by the State, because by his own admission there are only 4,000 people on market rentals.

This is a travesty. The Salvation Army submission on the bill to the Social Services Committee said, of this issue of security of tenure: “The most obvious drawback with reviewable social housing tenancies is the poverty trap it creates. If by getting a job or by finding a new partner who may help you financially you end up losing your home there is a real incentive either to do very little to improve yourself or to cheat the system. While the Bill has paid extensive attention to the provisions around monitoring tenants and penalising cheats to some extent it creates these problems by the way in which it makes tenancies conditional.”

I hope the Minister has read this submission, because this is creating social disunity, social instability, family dislocation, and insecurity, and those are not things on which healthy communities are built. The whole purpose of State responsibility for the most vulnerable in the provision of housing is to create stable societies and to create a sense of security. That is something the Government should be responsible for. Why would it not want to promote a secure and stable society? Why would it not want that to be part of its brief? Why does it think that this is something that has to be handed over to the private sector, because the private sector knows how to do it better?

There is nothing wrong with Housing New Zealand’s ability—until recently, and its downsizing and its closing up shops—to achieve just the social ends that it was intended to achieve in the first place, if only this Government would support it to do that. If only the Government saw that it was its responsibility to provide 3,000 houses in Hobsonville of mixed affordability, including market ones. But, no, this Government said and this Prime Minister said: “No State houses in my backyard. No State houses.” And so what have we got there? There are 17 houses, and there could have been 3,000. This Government is abrogating its responsibility to people.

I would like to take just a brief call on the issue arising out of this bill, the Social Security Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, because it is an important issue for all people in this country. We used to come from a proud tradition, and that tradition was called full employment and it was called housing for all. We have lost that. We lost it so long ago that there is a whole generation of people who have no idea that it ever existed. That is not something to be proud of. Part 1 of this bill is not something to be proud of, either. The Green Party has a policy called Home for Life, which addresses Part 1, and there are three excellent ideas in it. There is the idea of shared equity and progressive ownership, the idea of a warrant of fitness for rental properties, and the idea of secure tenancies. However, Part 1 attacks secure tenancies in particular, and certainly does not promote the positive ideas that we have come up with around the fact that we have a massive crisis—actually, an epidemic—in shortages of homes. The figures are bandied about, but this morning I saw on Twitter The New Zealand Initiative saying we have a shortage of 95,000 homes in this country.

So now is not the time to introduce more punitive measures towards State housing tenants—those who still have homes. In fact, it is the worst thing we could do. We should be promoting genuine third sector housing relationships with iwi and community groups, and working on ideas like shared equity and progressive ownership for the many, many families who are in crisis now. We all pay. If we look at this purely from an economic perspective—nothing is pure economics; pure economics is one factor in life—we see that it is false economy to displace people and create more transience in our communities. It is false economy for people to be reviewed in their homes, made more insecure in their homes, or to be homeless. Rather than just creating the idea that it is something that the private sector, as the previous speaker said, magically will provide, why do we not get real? It is time to get real and it is time to listen to groups like the Salvation Army, which has done an excellent job.

So, for example, what is wrong with reviewable tenancies? Well, I learnt something from the previous speaker about this bill, which was that Work and Income or the Ministry of Social Development are going to make some decisions about who gets a State house. What scares me about this, having worked with both Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development, and what scares the Green Party is that we are moving more and more into a punitive model in welfare, and it appears now that the Government has decided, through this bill, to move housing into a punitive model. The idea that reviewable tenancies somehow will make for a fair or logical use of housing will not stack up. To be honest, the Ministry of Social Development is not capable of running this kind of model. It does not have the expertise, it does not have the commitment, and it is not being driven by the Government to regard this as a human right to housing. It is being driven by the idea that there is a fraud going on. It is similar to the welfare bashing: “There’s a fraud going on, there are the wrong people doing the wrong things in the wrong place and they need to be monitored. They need to be audited. They need to be checked on. They need to be scapegoated. Then we will get, somehow, greater efficiency.”

Well, for children living in houses when they do not know where they are going to be the next week, efficiency is not really the issue. Even 10 years ago, when I was working in housing in Tai Rāwhiti, there was a grandmother with seven children living in a two-bedroom flat trying to get into a State house. There was a list, but it was a struggle then. How much worse would it be if a person got there—similar people to this woman—and then found they were going to be reviewed and then found that they were not secure, after the long battle to get out of the low priority C classification up to the A classification, even though you are looking after eight children whose parents are in prison and you are a grandmother? The person finally gets there only to find now that it is back to Work and Income. It is a sad thing to say about the welfare system that it is now punitive and sanctioning, but it is even more of a sad thing to see a punitive model being applied to the Housing New Zealand situation. It is actually going to create even more harm.

Someone else referred to this as being like musical chairs. I believe Sue Moroney said it is like a game of musical chairs with a shortage of chairs. I actually think this is more like a bad Monopoly game where the State houses are no longer on the board. There is Park Lane for some people, but some other people do not even get to the board. On that board, in the glorious capitalist paradise that we supposedly live in, the very least we could do is have some State houses. The very least we could do is own the fact that the State has a strong role in building third sector housing with partners such as iwi and community groups, but not through reducing people’s access to secure tenancy. That is what is so offensive about Part 1 of this bill.

Norman Kirk once famously said that New Zealanders do not ask for much. They ask for someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work, and something to hope for. Well, this Government is stripping away these things, one by one, person by person, community by community, and town by town. It has been described as heartless and it has been described as a shambles, and it is. It has been described as incompetence, and it is. But the unfortunate and tragic thing about this bill, the Social Security Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, is that it is deliberate. It is a deliberate shambles and it is deliberate incompetence. It is deliberate, cold, calculated, and ugly, and it is an attempt to turn social housing into a contestable market, taking the Government out of being a provider or making it just one of many providers—devolving it.

It is taking away that core function of the State that ensures a stable house for life. Numerous colleagues have talked about the importance of this, which goes back to the 1930s—that one of the essences of what it means to be a New Zealander is to have these sorts of values, to have a Government and to have a State that sees these things as being valued, sees a house for life, sees stable housing for people on low incomes, and sees itself as having an extremely important role in ensuring that these things exist. Unfortunately, this Government does not, and we are seeing it time and time again, as these things are being stripped away and taken away.

A number of us have talked about the effects of these measures already in parts of our own communities, our own parts of the country, and in our own electorates. I want to talk about some of the issues that are happening in Dunedin, where social housing and State housing have been an extremely important part of the community, where there is a very high proportion of cold, damp housing in our country, and where the Government should be looking at and thinking about ways that it can improve this situation, rather than creating more and more measures that are putting people in more precarious situations and bringing more insecurity into their lives.

The guarantee of stable housing, of a home for life, is being taken away. I want to give a couple of examples, because I think it is always important to try to bring these things to life. I want to talk about the mother with a young child, who came into my electorate office to report that her home was damp and that she was constantly taking her child to the doctor with respiratory problems. She believed that there was a spring welling up from beneath the house. Well, Housing New Zealand performed a cursory inspection, but what it really believed and what it told her and my office was that it wondered whether the preschooler was pouring water on to the carpet and that was creating the issue that was taking that child to hospital. Housing New Zealand did not want to look beneath the surface—literally look beneath the surface—and look for the causes to see what could seriously be done about it.

I also want to talk about the woman who is living in a house in the heart of my electorate, in South Dunedin, in a private rental with two small children. Her house opens straight on to a busy road and her 3-year-old can open a locked front door. Housing New Zealand has refused her application because she was not falling behind with her rent in her private rental, because she was borrowing from her parents to pay the private rental. She was borrowing—trying to do the right thing—to pay the rent, and that for Housing New Zealand meant that she did not qualify. She did not qualify and she tried to get a cheaper private rental, but her credit history was not good because of all the money she was borrowing, so she was being turned down.

She was in a spiral and she was a classic case of somebody who needed that help. She came to my office and because it was an individual case with a member of Parliament standing behind her who went to Housing New Zealand to explain fully this situation and to set out the amount of debt she arranged, Housing New Zealand came to the party eventually and arranged for her to move to a fully fenced property near extended family, which was a bonus. Yes, that was a solution, but it took the intervention of a member of Parliament to get that solution.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing time and time again is that only when somebody goes in to bat and advocates for these people can we get solutions. Even then, the solutions are not always there. These people are not always articulate. They are not always able to set out their cases in a way that Housing New Zealand is going to respond to. What you find, if you can get past the call centre, is that there is often an immovable response. This is only going to get worse.

I want to give just one more example of the woman who also came into my office who has a student loan and significant other debt. To save money, she was staying on her friend’s couch. Housing New Zealand said that because she was single and working 20 hours a week, she did not meet the criteria for application, even though there were vacant Housing New Zealand homes in Dunedin. Again, the intervention of an advocate can help her in her situation. How many other hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are there out there who cannot go, who do not go, and who have not been into their MPs’ offices and are therefore living in worse circumstances and getting into a further spiral of debt?

We know that there are housing shortages. We know that there is an extreme unaffordability of housing in the main urban centres. We know that increasingly low-income New Zealanders are under greater housing stress, with many being forced into substandard and overcrowded conditions. This is the time for intervention, to empower and to increase the availability of housing, not the time to be taking away the power and making the situation worse for people in these communities throughout New Zealand.

In a submission on this bill, the Dunedin Community Law Centre said that this shift is a one-size-fits-all model that does not take into account regional variations and local needs for social housing, and that it takes us away from the core State housing philosophy of stable housing for life. We know that this bill is not good. We know that it must be opposed. We know that we are moving away from that core fundamental New Zealand value of what is important and what helps make our community the way it is, where we believe that social housing is a core function of the State.

We cannot support this bill. We have to have action on our housing crisis, on housing shortages, and on unaffordability. Instead, what we are getting is an approach that is punitive and cold-hearted, and the cold hand of the State is only going to make life worse for so many New Zealanders.

It is my pleasure to resume the call that was so rudely interrupted by the Minister of Housing some time ago. I was debating Part 1 of the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. I was up to clause 12. We were discussing the ability of Housing New Zealand to review eligibility for a Housing New Zealand home. I did ask a number of questions of the Minister, which remain unanswered, around the kind of data sharing that would be going on between Government departments as part of these provisions. I would really welcome the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Building and Construction, taking up the mantle and responding to those questions, which still lie on the table.

In particular, I want to go back to this issue of housing insecurity, because, of course, the Minister has said that his rationale for all of these parts—predominantly for Part 1, which allows an ongoing reviewable tenancy, essentially—is his claim that there are, of course, these long waiting lists and extreme demand on our social housing and our State houses. That is not in question on this side, but our response is simply that we must build more housing. The Minister’s response, however, is to actually apply an additional layer of housing insecurity, which is already a significant issue. If you look at, in particular, our poorer areas of Auckland, for instance, there is an incredible turnover of students in our low decile schools as a consequence of insecure tenancy. If we are now doing that to our State housing, that creates a whole additional layer of social issues as a consequence. That was a point I wanted to specifically raise.

There are other forms of housing insecurity that have been perpetuated by this Minister at present. I am based in central Auckland. I am a list MP there. Recently, a number of residents in Spring Street flats in central Auckland, where there is a really limited amount of social and State housing available, have been given letters to tell them that Housing New Zealand is currently assessing those properties. There is a chance that they may be moved on, but there is no real final view as to what is going to happen. I wrote to the Minister asking for assurances around that process, and his first response back was to slate me as not being the local elected member, and therefore questioning my right to ask such questions. I thought that was disappointing. Secondly, he did not really give any assurances. I point to that example because those tenants are now in a state of complete insecurity, and, actually, that is what we are about to do to all State house tenants through these reforms—that is, put them on constant notice that at any time they may go through a review.

That review process is set out in Part 1. In new sections 57AB, 57AC, and 57AD, inserted by clause 12, it starts talking about, for instance, how Housing New Zealand may investigate circumstances relevant to continued eligibility. As I have said—and there are quite a number of provisions in that regard—it includes the power of Housing New Zealand, set out in new section 58, to “ask any person whose circumstances it may investigate any relevant questions it thinks fit; and (b) may ask any person whose circumstances it may investigate to verify by statutory declaration”—basically anything that is applicable as a determinant to their circumstances and their eligibility.

I ask the Minister in the chair whether he could explain to the Committee whether or not there will be any guidelines set out around Housing New Zealand and the way it enforces this particular section. The reason I ask that question is that I have seen how Work and Income operates in this regard, and it is the organisation that will be carrying out assessments in the future. The kinds of questions it asks clients go well beyond the scope of what it should be questioning clients over. Of course—of course—everyone in this Committee would agree that it is important that we make sure that people comply with the rules that are set out for those who are in need versus those who are trying to defraud the system, but we have always come from the approach that in doing so that can be balanced by also having a system that is weighted in the notion of dignity. And my concern is that, more and more, entities like Work and Income, under the leadership of Paula Bennett, have moved away from that as a starting point.

I would like to ask the Minister whether he can set out whether or not there will be guidelines—

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to speak to the Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1 of this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill. Of course, the first Supplementary Order Paper is Supplementary Order Paper 390, in the name of Nick Smith. You will see that this here is the bill we are debating, and this here is the Supplementary Order Paper to the bill we are debating, and the Supplementary Order Paper is actually larger than the bill. The Minister of Housing is a little bit of a control freak. He had to rewrite the entire bill. I think it is quite extraordinary that the day before we debate the bill we get landed with this Supplementary Order Paper that is actually bigger than the actual bill. That is why we are so interested in having this debate. It is because we have not had a lot of time to actually scrutinise adequately this very, very large Supplementary Order Paper to the legislation.

I want to speak in support of Supplementary Order Paper 398, which is a Supplementary Order Paper in the name of my colleague Phil Twyford. What that Supplementary Order Paper would do is it would repeal new section 118—that is in Part 2—but it would also remove the related sections in Part 1. This would get rid of this concept of reviewable tenancies. It is extremely important that we do that because reviewable tenancies are simply a way of keeping people away from State housing, making it as difficult as possible for them, if they have been fortunate enough to actually access State housing, to remain there, and providing enormous uncertainty for the period of time that they are in that State house.

What these sections in Part 1 of the bill will do is provide enormous disincentives for people to improve their status. If you do not know where that imaginary line is, where if you suddenly step over it in terms of income you find yourself being evicted from a State house, then you are not going to take on extra hours at work. You are not going to do anything to improve your situation. You will stay where you are and think: “As long as I am earning only the amount of money I am earning right now and no more, I will not be kicked out of my home, I will not become homeless, I will not have to move to a far more expensive property.” They actually might not even be able to find another property to live in and so end up living in circumstances that none of us in this House would deem appropriate. The Supplementary Order Paper in the name of my colleague Phil Twyford very much addresses this by doing the one thing that will actually stop that from happening, and that is getting rid of the sections in Part 1 that are related to reviewable tenancies.

Why this is so important is that not only are we seeing people being evicted from State houses—5,000 people who were cut off the waiting list from categories C and D moved under this reviewable tenancy policy— but we are now looking at another 3,000 people, potentially, being evicted from State housing under the changes in Part 1. It is also important because of the needs assessment process, which my colleague Jacinda Ardern referred to, which will in Part 1 of this bill be transferred to Work and Income. What we are finding with the needs assessment process is that tenants are not getting to have a needs assessment even when they ask for one. I would like to know from the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Building and Construction, what provisions there are in Part 1 that would ensure that every tenant who approaches Work and Income—it was formerly Housing New Zealand—to have a needs assessment done, to assess their eligibility for a State house, actually gets an assessment.

From experience, what we know happens is that someone goes to Housing New Zealand, says they want to check whether they are eligible for a house, and Housing New Zealand puts them through this ridiculous process called “Options and Advice”. That process really should have been renamed “Options and Bad Advice”, because they were briefly screened, and on the basis of that brief screening they were told: “I’m sorry, you are not eligible.” But they had not gone through the needs assessment process that Part 1 of the bill promises but does not show how it is going to ensure it actually occurs.

People were then walking away, coming into our offices, and saying they had had a needs assessment. So you would say to them: “Well, what category did you end up being assessed as A, B, C, or D?”. They would say, for example: “I was a 2”. You would say to them: “There’s no such thing as category 2.”, and they would say: “No, they told me I was a 2.” So you would ring Housing New Zealand, ask whether this person had a needs assessment, and the department would say: “Yes, they did. We went through and determined their eligibility.” You would say to the person: “Did they ask to see your bank account number? Did they ask to see proof of identity?”. “No”—well, then, that was not a needs assessment.

The ridiculousness of the situation—and it was the former Minister of Housing Phil Heatley who put this in place—was having to spend hours on the phone just getting Housing New Zealand to admit to the fact that it actually had not done a needs assessment and could not tell you whether that person was going to be category A or category B. That function is now shifting to Work and Income, and what we need in this legislation is a provision that says that anyone who wants a needs assessment to assess their eligibility for a Housing New Zealand property should be able to have one. We do not have this in legislation. We know that we are simply going to see that practice again—

I move, That the question be now put.