Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill

I am very pleased to take a call on this particular bill. I want to say from the very beginning how disappointing it is to see the National Government’s wholesale privatisation agenda when it comes to State housing in New Zealand. I want to talk from experience about this. What does this actually mean in practice? In my electorate of Rimutaka, the National Government decided that it was going to deal with a housing area in Pōmare that had significant problems—Farmer Crescent. What did the Government do? First of all, it booted everybody out. It completely evicted all of the tenants in that area. It left the houses empty, and they got vandalised. Then what did it do? Next, it came along and demolished all of the houses. It demolished all of the houses. Then what did it do after that? Well, of course, the Government hocked off the land to private developers—to private developers—which is exactly the approach of this National Government. It is about making opportunities for private developers.

Did the problems disappear? Did the families who lived in those houses, who were the subjects of many of the social problems, simply disappear? No, they just relocated elsewhere. The problems went with them to the other locations. The Government did not actually deal with the underlying problems and the underlying issues. So what have we seen in Pōmare? Yes, they have got some nice new houses in the area where there was previously a whole lot of State housing. Only a fraction of them are social houses. Only a fraction of them are social houses, and the rest are privately owned.

💬 Hon Bill English: Isn’t that terrible! Shocking!

And what is the problem with that, Bill English asks. The problem with that is that the overall number of social houses is decreasing.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: He’s saying: “Isn’t that terrible!”.

And he is saying: “Isn’t that terrible!”. The overall number of State houses is decreasing. I say to Bill English that I actually like the idea of mixed neighbourhoods. I grew up in one. I grew up in an ex - State house, with a State house next door, a private house on the other side, and a bunch of State houses on our street. It is a great way to grow up as a Kiwi kid. I am fully supportive of that. But I tell you what: we have got to make sure that there is an adequate number of social houses if we are going to change the make-up of neighbourhoods. And that is not what this bill is going to achieve. What it is going to result in is a wholesale sell-off of existing State houses, and there is absolutely—

💬 Tim Macindoe: Saying it a thousand times won’t make it true.

OK, look, I will open it up to Tim Macindoe. I will put the same challenge to him that Andrew Little put to John Key and Bill English and the others this afternoon, which they did not take up. Will they guarantee that every one of their new houses that is going to be built will be affordable? It is an open invitation. It is an open invitation right now: will they all be affordable houses that the National Government is going to be building? No one—no one—on the Government benches is willing to make that promise to New Zealanders, because they know that is simply not going to be the case.

Here is another example. Will those members guarantee that the number of publicly owned social houses will not decrease? No—no: absolute silence from the Government. So when it comes to the provisions of this bill, it is not willing to guarantee that the number of publicly owned social houses will not decrease. These are families whom we are talking about. These are their homes that we are talking about, and this Government thinks that they should be hocked off—they should be hocked off—and it is not willing to guarantee that the overall number will not be decreased. I think that says an awful lot about the priorities of this current National Government.

💬 Tim Macindoe: That’s what this bill is all about. We are working to increase the provision—

No—here we go. So Tim Macindoe is saying that this bill is all about increasing the provision of social housing. Who is going to deliver those houses? Who is going to deliver those houses? Because all of the organisations that Bill English and Paula Bennett and Nick Smith said were going to front up and deliver those houses have said that they are not interested in it; they have said that they do not have the capability to deliver it. So now the Government is bringing a bill before the House that is going to increase the scope for private developers to be involved in this.

And, of course, what do private developers want out of this? They want to make money. They want to make money out of it, and fair enough. That is their job. That is what private developers do. That is one of the reasons why, over the history of New Zealand, Governments have been actively involved in the building and delivery of social housing in New Zealand, because the Government can do it cheaper and it can provide a higher quality of housing than private developers have done in the past. That is also one of the reasons why many ex - State houses contributed to the provision of affordable housing for first-home buyers. This Government is not interested in that. It is happy to sell them off, but it is not going to replace them. Previously, when Governments have sold off State houses to allow first-home buyers into their first home, they have made sure they have been replaced. Not this National Government.

We saw, under the mother of all Budgets and under the tenure of the Government that took over from that, a massive reduction in the number of State houses in New Zealand. And what was the impact of that? The impact of that was that more and more New Zealanders ended up on waiting lists. And how did this Government deal with that increase in the number of New Zealanders on waiting lists? Well, first of all, it just dropped the bottom two categories off the waiting list altogether. So if they were a priority C or D person on a waiting list, it just cut them off altogether—pretended they no longer existed. Those people are still out there looking for houses, but this Government does not want to know anything about it. This Government is not interested in making sure that there is sufficient provision of social housing for people who cannot afford to buy, and sufficient provision of affordable housing for those who want to get into their first homes. It is looking the other way.

It is going to cost someone a million dollars—within a few months it is going to cost a million dollars for someone to buy a home in Auckland, on average. That is an absolute disgrace, and that has happened under the tenure of this National Government. It is simply out of ideas when it comes to dealing with the real issues around housing in New Zealand. It has got no real plan for more affordable housing for first-home buyers, and it is turning its back on those who cannot afford to buy a home and who do need that extra support when it comes to housing. Who pays the cost? It is the children and it is the families who will pay the cost for that. Of the 6,000 people who applied for social housing in the last quarter, 4,000 did not even make it on to the waiting list. They did not even get on the waiting list. Two-thirds of people—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! The Committee is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow. Nō reira, ka kite anō.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Friday)