Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill

Thank you for your advice earlier, Mr Chair. I do appreciate it, and I appreciate the opportunity to make a wide-ranging contribution to this debate. I do feel strongly about this, but I will certainly be speaking, though, to one clause in the bill, and that is clause 2, the commencement of the Act and of Subpart 3. I wish for the House to consider that we change the commencement date to 1 April 2018. I think that way we could be certain that a Government that cares about State housing and a Government that cares about our most vulnerable will be in Government, and we can have that debate again. We can ensure that this bill is never implemented. That will be what I will move, and that is for the reasons that I am now about to give.

What has happened here with this bill is that we are rushing it through the House without the opportunity for public input. It is a bill deliberately designed to reduce State housing in this country. It is designed to take the Government out of the provisions for social housing. As we have heard from many members in this House, the problem with that is that the private market is not delivering the affordable and adequate social housing that is desperately needed in our society.

I will give another example that has not been brought up. This is an example of a woman whom I met just last weekend on one of my home visits in the suburb of Wakari. I went to visit this woman, and she said she was quite happy for me to tell her story because she feels strongly about this.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Where?

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What suburb?

Wakari, in Dunedin. She said to me that she is fearful that she will not be allowed to stay in her State house any longer. It is a three-bedroom State house. She is now living on her own, but she uses the other two bedrooms frequently to take care of her grandchildren when her son is called to work at short notice. She has grandchildren whom she cares for in that house. She has lived in it for a good chunk of her life because, for one reason or another, she has never had the opportunity or the prospect of affording to buy her own home. She would love to, but she has never been in a position to afford her own home. So the State has said: “Look, we will look out for you. You are a good contributor to our society.” She has always worked, up until recently. She is now unable to find work as she rapidly approaches retirement. She has been made redundant several times. There is simply just not enough work in Dunedin for this woman, who would like to work like she has her whole life, in order to keep affording a standard of living that we could call living with dignity.

She tells me that now she has to save to buy a cup of coffee. She has got a good friend who rings her up every week and says: “Let’s go out for coffee.” She is embarrassed by the fact that she cannot go out every week with that friend because she cannot afford the cup of coffee. When she has paid her insurance, which she does refuse to give up—and she says that that is discretionary—she has only $20 left over every week with which to feed herself. She has an elderly dog that she refuses to give away and that she has cared for for many years. She said: “That dog eats pretty close to $20 worth of dog food a week.” She has got nothing—absolutely nothing—to live off each week. When she goes to get a haircut, her kids donate her money to get it. That is not the kind of living in dignity that we would want for our citizens. That is not the New Zealand I signed up to, where someone who has worked for their whole working life bar the last few years, because they cannot get work, is forced to worry about whether they are going to have a stable place to live and whether they can care for their grandchildren adequately. Even now she is living in a house that is fairly cold, I would have to say, from having visited her. She is a good woman.

We need to make sure that in our society there is adequate protection and that people who are in need are looked out for and looked after so that they can continue to make a constructive contribution to our society, through the caring for grandchildren, through the voluntary community work that that woman does, and through other means.

The point that I want to come back to is that the case for this particular intervention has not been made, because there is a market failure. I mentioned this in my earlier contribution, the market failure that sees many families who want to get into affordable houses being unable to get into them and families who want to provide warm, dry homes for their kids to live in being forced into the private market because of unmet need in the State sector. Those people are in a position where they cannot—they cannot—get what they need out of the private sector. If we had an adequate State housing sector, that would force private sector providers to meet that need at the level that the State housing sector meets it and it would address that market failure and the unintended consequences we see in the existing market.

One thing that I have noticed in all of the legislation that has gone through the House is that there has been a lack—

Thank you very much for the chance to speak on the title and commencement clauses of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. This is one of those points in the Committee stage when we get to proffer some alternative titles for the piece of legislation. I have got a pretty simply one—just one: it is that we change the title to “Social Housing Reform (State House Sell-off) Bill”, because, in all reality, that is what this is about. There has been a programme over time, since this Government took office, to slowly move back from taking any responsibility for social housing in New Zealand. I would challenge any member on the other side of the Chamber to take a 5-minute call—none of these 30-second calls that they have been taking—to try to say why this is not a State house sell-off bill, because that is exactly what this is.

Part 2 of this bill looks at some of the policy advice that Housing New Zealand will no longer be offering to the Government. It has offered, over time, lots of advice to the Government. Just some of the advice that Housing New Zealand has offered to the Government is about one cul-de-sac in Porirua. It is not about whether the Government should upgrade those houses or look at making sure that we do more for those communities. It is about Quotable Value. It is about getting those houses ready for sale. There is no plan or advice from Housing New Zealand to replace those houses.

If anyone in this House wants to come to Calliope Crescent in Cannons Creek, they will see that there is a big swathe of land there that has been empty for about 5 years. When those houses were taken away, the Government promised that it would replace them and that that community would flourish again. But nothing has happened. Kids now use the land for games of touch, because there is a park there now. This Government should have stuck to its word and should have replaced the homes that it bowled over. It should have put houses there, for that community to flourish. But no, there is nothing.

There is only one side of this equation that the Government is interested in, and that is getting rid of State homes. It is not interested in replacing them at all, and that is the cold hard reality of this Government.

💬 Andrew Bayly: We’ve still got 65,000 of them.

I can hear some interjections. Those interjections are longer—longer—than the speeches that members on that side have given. So I challenge the member who is interjecting to get to his feet. If you are so proud of this piece of legislation, get up and take a call—get up and take a call. I will make another invitation. Come to my area and spend just half a day looking around, and see how proud you are of the last 7 years of wrecking the Housing New Zealand sector in this country.

As I said in my speech on Part 1, I came to this Parliament in order to protect and build on some of the opportunities that I was given as a child to make sure that I got to the privileged position I am in today. But on the other side of the Chamber, they want to keep the privileged position that they have got today for them and their privileged friends. They do not care about the most vulnerable people in our country, who are struggling to make ends meet. They have the most simple of rights in this country, and that is to have a good safe warm home—a roof over their heads. That is too much for this Government to ask. The Government is glossing it up in the language of flexibility, and it is taking a fair bit of flexibility with the truth. That is the reality of what this Government is doing. For 7 years it has been slowly winding back its responsibilities for social housing. So I do think that this bill should have its title changed to the “Social Housing Reform (State House Sell-off) Bill”, because that is all it enables this Government to do.

At the very beginning of this plan, this Government said that the likes of the Salvation Army would be interested in purchasing these homes, in working in our communities, and in making the lives of these people better. Uh-uh, it is not interested. The Salvation Army does not want a bar of it. I have spoken to a local iwi that also has experience in this area. Iwi members say it does not make sense for them to do it. So if the market does not work for them, and if the market is not working for these vulnerable people, then on whom does the responsibility fall to make sure that people get a decent home in New Zealand? It should fall on the Government. This piece of legislation sees this Government washing its hands of this responsibility. Come to Cannons Creek, come to Ascot Park, and come to Titahi Bay, where there are vacant Housing New Zealand homes and people desperate to get into them. Government members will not, because they do not care.

I am very happy to take a call on the preliminary clauses of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill, and a very inappropriately named bill it is. What they should really call it is the “Social Housing Reform (Wholesale Privatisation) Bill” because that is exactly what this bill is really about. It is about the Government abrogating its responsibilities when it comes to the provision of affordable, quality rental housing to those New Zealanders who are not in a position to buy their own home. It has been a long-held tradition in New Zealand that the State will ensure that its citizens are adequately housed. From the time of the first Labour Government that built so many of the State houses that the National Government is now content to hock off, we have had a tradition in New Zealand that the State will be an active player in the housing area, so that families have a warm, dry home and a roof over their heads. This Government is walking away from that principle.

I think of the areas like Pōmare, Trentham, and Naenae where, under this National Government, we have seen houses boarded up and abandoned, only to then be demolished and that land handed over to private developers. It is not just in my area that that is happening, it is happening up and down the country. I have made it very clear from the beginning of that process that the provision of the ultimate number of social houses—that is, affordable rental houses for people on low incomes—is not decreased. I think it is good that there should be some redevelopment—that there should be some rebuilding. Some of those houses are past their use-by date and need to be replaced. I would not accommodate people in some of those houses. I do not think they are fit for families, and demolishing them and replacing them is good. But it should not be at the expense of the overall number of affordable houses. Reconfiguring those neighbourhoods is the legitimate thing to do, but what is the practical reality we are seeing? In Pōmare there is a good redevelopment happening, but most of those houses are privately owned. Where did those families go, which the National Government booted out?

There were some social issues in Pōmare, caused by a very small number of people, I have to say. There are a large number of people there who were good law-abiding citizens, just trying to make their way in the world, who got treated very harshly by Housing New Zealand and by the other Government agencies involved in that. But the problems in Pōmare have not gone away just because the houses have been demolished. They have been relocated elsewhere. We are seeing problems emerging in other parts of the electorate, in other parts of the Hutt Valley, where some of the people who were causing the problems in the first place have simply relocated to. The problems did not go away. The Government’s busting up of the Pōmare community in the way that it did did not deal with the issue and it did not deal with the problem. Wholesale privatisation of that social housing market is not going to make any of the problems go away; in fact, it is going to make some of those problems worse.

The bill could easily be called the “Social Housing Reform (Increasing Intergenerational Inequality) Bill” because the Government seems to have given up on the notion that future generations of New Zealanders should have the same access to affordable housing, to buy or to rent, that previous generations had. The Government is giving up on that notion altogether. First-home buyers are being shut out. The only solution to giving first-home buyers a bit of additional assistance is to allow them to cash up their retirement savings—more of their retirement savings—to buy their first home. It could be called the “Practical Reality Bypassing Bill” because the Government is now going to be ignoring advice from Housing New Zealand. It is interesting—we could call it the “Abrogation of Responsibility Bill” because, despite the fact that we have now got three Ministers in the Government responsible for social housing, none of them seem to be willing to participate actively in the debate.

I do have a technical question regarding clause 2, which covers the superannuation provisions coming into effect on, or basically being backdated from, 1 April 2015. The question I have got is does that mean that people who transferred from a non - KiwiSaver scheme into a KiwiSaver scheme prior to 1 April 2015 will not be eligible, or does it mean that, basically, providing they had done it by that point, they would be covered by this provision in the bill? I think it would somewhat thwart the intention, given that most people in KiwiSaver would have joined up before 1 April 2015. It somewhat thwarts the intention of what they are trying to achieve—and I am sure the Minister in the chair will be able to answer. It is a pretty simple, straightforward question, I would hope. It seems to me that the idea behind the backdating is that providing someone had done it by that point, they should be eligible. I certainly look forward to having that clarification.

This bill, I think, instead of being called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill, should actually be called the “Flog Off State Housing to the National Party’s Property Developer Mates Bill”. That would be a far more accurate representation of what this bill is about. It is, on the surface, some little sort of vanilla kind of enabling legislation, allowing more flexible purchasing contracts. But, actually, what this bill is designed to do is to give the Minister extraordinary discretionary powers to do sweetheart deals with property developers. Instead of simply, as the current law allows, being allowed to extend income-related rent subsidies to the people who buy these State houses from the Government, this bill gives the Minister wide-ranging powers to do any kind of deal—to crank up the subsidies, crank them down, or to do away with the subsidies and just agree on direct payments. It gives amazing freedom and discretion to the Minister to do those sweetheart deals.

The reason that the National Government is giving itself these powers is that it cannot give these houses away at the moment. It spent months saying that the Salvation Army was going to take them, and that ended in tears when the Salvation Army said: “Sorry, not us.” Paula Bennett, Nick Smith, and Bill English have been travelling up and down the country basically trying to hock off these houses to anyone who will take them, and they are not getting any takers. This bill is about giving the Minister the freedom to do sweetheart deals, or anything it takes, to basically offload billions of dollars’ worth of publicly owned State houses.

It could be called the “Cabinet Club Housing Policy Bill” because what is really going on here, at the heart of this policy—when you strip away Paula Bennett’s mealy-mouthed platitudes about social housing—is a massive transfer of wealth from the public to private landlords and property developers. The Government is looking at divesting and flicking off billions of dollars’ worth of State houses that have been paid for by generations of taxpayers and State house tenants—flicking them off at knock-down prices to anybody who will take them. Those houses will then go on to the open market and people will make a killing on those houses. I guarantee that they will end up eventually just simply being rented back to the same people, who need a decent roof over their heads, but this time they will be paying higher rents and the taxpayers will make up the difference with a hefty subsidy directly into the pockets of landlords. That is the model that Bill English is pursuing. It is a huge transfer of wealth from the public to private landlords and property developers—that is fundamentally what is going on here.

We saw recently, in the New Zealand Herald, reports of how the National Party funded its election campaign last year. The big cheques were made out by property developers. This policy is the big payback—it is the big pay-off. That is what the Cabinet club is all about. It is about giving big business—in this case, property developers and big landlords—the opportunity to put their hands in the public pocket and benefit from billions of dollars’ worth of State housing that generations of New Zealanders have paid for. State housing is not intended to line the pockets of private landlords, as this National Government wants to do, but to put a decent roof over the heads of the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Nothing rankles more with New Zealanders than that basic idea that the reason we have a Government is to make sure that things work for everybody—that every kid in this country gets a decent start in life.

💬 Chris Bishop: Well, we’re raising benefit levels.

That is why, Chris Bishop, we invented State housing in the first place. And I know that your party has never had any truck with State housing. You do not like it, you do not believe in it, and you do not want to have anything to do with the people who live in State housing because it makes you profoundly uncomfortable. The social and economic system that you stand for does not care what happens to the bottom 20 percent. You do not give a damn about it and you are quite happy—

💬 Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): There is a point of order. [Interruption] Sit down when I am on my feet.

💬 Tim Macindoe: This member is repeatedly bring you into the debate—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): There is a point of order. There is a point of order and it will be heard in silence. And you can sit there and point and say that he knows he should be sitting down, and so did you, but you did not and he did not, and, you know—what do you think this does for the reputation of this House? For goodness’ sake! Now, I have a point of order from the Government chief whip.

💬 Tim Macindoe: This member is repeatedly bringing you into this debate in manners that are completely inappropriate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Carry on.

As I was saying, there is one thing that rankles more than anything else with New Zealanders, and that is when the Government dismantles the very systems of social support that are designed to guarantee that every child growing up in this country gets a decent start in life.

We are at this stage of the debate looking at the title of this bill. We have had a number of suggestions as to how we could better title this bill. I thought that I would remind the House that it is not that long ago that I think it was the Law Commission, or it might have been the Legislation Advisory Committee, that told this House that bills must have titles that reflect the intention of that bill. It is very important that we have proper titles on bills so that when the public picks a bill up and they read it, or they see the heading, they know what that bill reflects. I have thought for a long time that that was very good advice to give to any Government when it is bringing in a piece of legislation. It must be a title that reflects the intention of the bill.

I have to say that the title of this bill does not, by any measure, reflect the intention of the bill, because it is called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. You have got to go to the first word—that is, “Reform”. “Reform”—what does “Reform” mean? It implies improvement—it implies improvement. We are being told that these reforms are improvements, but no evidence has been given in this debate for improvement. No research, no evaluation, and no reports have been given by anybody that this is an improvement to social housing in New Zealand. I would have liked just one bit of evidence that this measure has been looked at properly, but instead we are going to push it through under urgency—even though part of it has been done for 4 years—and no evaluation, and no input from the public, has been held.

So how do we know that this reform is going to be an improvement? The word “Reform” should be removed from the title of the bill, because that is what it implies—improvement. Then the next words are “Flexible Purchasing”. Well, everybody knows what that means, so why not just say what it is? It is the sell-off of State houses to other organisations, but not to community groups. That was the intention when the Government had its regulatory impact statement done, with a little bit of consultation with the community sector, and had it published back in March. That was the intention, but what happened in the meantime? Campbell Roberts, who I think is one of the most respected people in the Salvation Army, came out and said: “No, we can’t participate in this great social housing reform involving a flexible purchasing arrangement. We can’t participate because we cannot afford to buy the houses, because we would be in debt for 10 years, and we would have to change what our philosophy and our approach is in terms of the provision of services by the Salvation Army.” Those services are there to help to protect and lift up the most vulnerable in our community.

The Salvation Army told us that if its money and its attention had to go into buying houses under this community housing project, it could not stick to its core values, philosophy, and principles in terms of providing those services. So the Salvation Army pulled out, but the problem was that you had the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister going around New Zealand telling New Zealanders: “This is a great policy because the Salvation Army will take the houses. It will be part of the flexible purchasing arrangement.” That fell flat on its face.

We do not now know who the flexible purchasers in the community sector are going to be, because we do not know of any, and neither does the Government. But what we do know is that there are flexible purchasers out there who are very, very interested in buying up State houses cheaply. I have to say that my colleague Phil Twyford is correct—they are property developers. I understand that many National members are new constituency members, so maybe they have not had so much contact with their constituents at this stage, or maybe they do not have many State houses in their electorates, but if they go out and look, they will see that State houses are already being sold off to property developers at knock-down prices. There are plenty of examples. Go out and look. State houses sold to property developers at knock-down prices—how does that improve—

It is a great opportunity in this stage of the debate to draw together the themes of what is in and what is not in this bill. We have got the date of commencement and we have got the title, which is an opportunity for us to pull these themes together. My colleague Chris Hipkins mentioned the proposal for a commencement date that postdates the next election. If the Government had a shred of honour, given that it is removing from the New Zealand people the opportunity to make submissions on this bill and have it go through a select committee and given that it is simply ramming it through under Budget urgency, and if it had the courage of its convictions, then it would commence the bill after the next election so that New Zealanders can vote on it and cast their votes on whether they think Housing New Zealand should be a provider of social housing to New Zealanders who need it or whether it should be just another commercial landlord.

This is a bill that could have so many names. It is part of the panic button for this, the Government’s seventh fiscal deficit Budget. So perhaps it could be the “Housing (Broken Promises) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (Give With One Hand and Take Away With The Other) Bill”. Perhaps it could be the “Housing (No Surplus Again This Year) Bill”. Those themes are all common parlance, common knowledge, amongst New Zealanders who are sighing with sighs of resignation because they have given up on this Government. They have given up on the Government having a new idea or a vision or a strategy for growing jobs and growing incomes, for making life fairer or easier for those New Zealanders who just do not have enough to get by.

My colleagues, God bless them, do the hard work that members opposite seem to find it too hard to find time to do. My colleagues are working with families week in week out who are living in cars, who are living overcrowded with three or four families in one modest three-bedroom Housing New Zealand home, who are living in garages, and with children not able to go to school properly or being shunted from school to school. If you do not have a decent roof over your head, the cost of that is measured in broken lives and underachievement and our country being the poorer for it.

So the Government is, essentially, stealing from the future to do a cheap and nasty job of today. Sadly, this bill is part of that cheap and nasty New Zealand. It is cheapening it. It is cheapening it by taking what was part of the envy of the world, our comprehensive welfare State, and carving it up and throwing it over to private property developers. Members opposite might smirk. Who knows—maybe some of them might be getting a cut or maybe the party is getting a cut from some of those wealthy, wealthy property interests that lobby the Government up-hill and down-dale. Maybe that is the source of the smirking that is going on by members opposite. But I tell you what: there is no smirking going on in west Auckland, where people are crowded into unacceptable, damp, overcrowded houses and the waiting list is getting longer and longer.

What New Zealanders are saying to us now is that it is just too hard. The only people getting a Housing New Zealand home are people who are mental health consumers, long-term invalids, or some very few who have been in extreme poverty for years and years and years. You know, how often is it now that you are in a major city and you walk down the street, and there is someone sleeping rough on the sidewalk? I remember that when I came into this House around 20 years ago you would not see that. You would not see much of it under a Labour-led Government either. We used to look at places like America where people sleep rough often, and we used to look down our noses and say that it would never happen in New Zealand. Well, it is happening now.

Gutting Housing New Zealand from being a social housing provider to becoming a commercial landlord—members opposite can smirk all they like, but the New Zealand public will have their say at the next election because they damn well know what it means. It means more for the people who have already got a lot and more hardship for the people who are already doing it tough. And they have had a gutsful of it—a bloody gutsful. So members opposite can smirk all they like. Carve up Housing New Zealand, throw away the welfare State, give up on the ideal that Jack is as good as his master, and the New Zealand public—[Interruption] Yes, I know, and throw John Campbell off prime time while you are at it. Make sure that every major news outlet is staffed by Government-friendly journalists. All that will prolong your miserable life in Government by not much, because New Zealanders do not like to be told what to do. They will have their revenge at the ballot box.

This bill cannot possibly go through under the title that is set out in clause 1 of the bill. The title that it is given is the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. We have all gone to school. We know what the word “reform” means. It means to make better, to improve, to make more effective, to make more capable of delivering the results that ordinary working families need. There is not a member in this Committee, not even a member on that side of the Chamber, who believes for a moment that this bill carries out that purpose. It is a total misrepresentation. God knows that this House does need a social housing reform bill.

I just want to take 1 minute of your time to read out this commentary, which I picked from one of my local papers. It is actually from the electorate of the member for Hunua. This commentator talks about “desperate families, two sometimes three families sharing a small house, usually in South Auckland, with the kids suffering from inadequate food, poor clothing, and often-poor health, a direct result of over-crowding and rents consuming half of an average wage.” Do you know who that commentator was? Do you know who it was? It was Don Brash. That is what Don Brash, the one-time leader of the National Party and the one-time leader of the ACT Party, is saying in a publication in Andrew Bayly’s electorate. That is from just 2 weeks ago. I happen to agree with Don Brash in his description of the housing crisis that faces New Zealanders at the moment—a housing crisis that for the first time does not affect just the people at the bottom of the heap. This is a housing crisis that affects a lot of ordinary working New Zealanders, who desperately hoped in this Budget and in legislation under this sort of title that they might have been given a break to get a decent roof over their heads and to bring their kids up with a chance in life.

What we have seen is rents going up six times the rate of inflation in the last year in the city of Auckland—six times the rate of inflation. Rents have gone up on average by $1,300 a year in Auckland in the last year—by $25 a week. It would take up the whole of the extra benefit given to vulnerable families who are on a benefit, and it is affecting other New Zealanders as well. The price of a house in Auckland went up by $103,000 last year—in 1 year, by $103,000. That is a 15 percent rise and that is putting pressure on those who are renting. People cannot afford to buy their own home and those who would normally have been able to afford to buy their own home are now competing with the most vulnerable for the rental housing that is available. A social housing reform bill would have addressed the problems of a housing shortage and housing affordability in Auckland, which is now reaching crisis proportions. The National Party may have its head down, but even its former leader Don Brash spoke the truth about the nature of that crisis.

So what have we got from this bill that will help? Is this bill, and this title, about the Government stepping up to meet its responsibility? No, it is about the Government opting out of its responsibility by facilitating the selling off of social housing to the private sector. It has cut social housing—1,600 fewer State houses in its last term in Government—and now it is selling off a couple of thousand not to the Salvation Army, which Bill English used to talk about, the lovely Salvation Army that would look after people, but to private developers and to private landlords. That does not solve the housing crisis. This is not a social housing reform bill; it is a bill to privatise social housing, to gut Housing New Zealand and its ability to do the job that our forebears 80 years ago this year in this House set up, which was to provide State housing so that every child in New Zealand had the chance for a decent life because they had a stable, secure, affordable home—warm and healthy—to enable them to have good health, good education, and a better life. That is what reform is about. This bill does the opposite.

I move, That the question be now put.

No. The time has come to suspend the Committee for the lunch break. The Committee will resume at 2 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

I would like to speak to the title of this bill, which is named the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Before I come to why I think it is misnamed, I want to just recap the main features of the existing housing crisis in New Zealand. First of all, we have got the lowest rate of homeownership in the private ownership market in over 50 years. Secondly, we have got the highest prices for houses ever in New Zealand. Thirdly, those prices are amongst the highest in relation to income as they are in any part of the world. Fourthly, the Government has already sold off thousands of rental houses. Fifthly, we have got poor-quality rental stock around the country—in Auckland, but also in the provinces—because we have got no minimum standard of housing, and yet this bill does away with the advice function of the ministry.

I want to address where this leads. In particular, in one little subsection of housing, when you have such high housing need and no place for people to stay, you not only get an increase in homeless people, you get people staying in substandard accommodation. We are now actually seeing middle-class people—who used to be insulated from this sort of thing; I know of people in this situation now, and I did not of know people in this situation a few years ago—who, if they suffer a family breakup, for example, have to move with their child into another house and share a bedroom. These are middle-class people. These are not the lowest-income people. The person I am referring to, whom I will not name, is in full-time work, but he is in that situation with one of his children.

Even further down the tree, the people who are less well-off get forced into even less desirable situations—namely, caravan parks. I want to just reflect on where this is heading in New Zealand because we now have more people than ever living in caravans and caravan parks. I came across this article in respect of where it has got to in the United States, because this is the path that we are on currently, with all of those factors I have talked about. It is in the Guardian Weekly of 15 May—just this month. It says that “America’s poverty trap is offering up sharp profit margins for private landlords,”. I hope people in here are shocked by this. This article refers to the number of people who are living in caravan parks in the United States—and its problems have been growing for longer than ours in this regard. How many people do you think are living in caravan parks in America? Have a guess.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: A million.

A million?

💬 Dr Megan Woods: A million.

A million is an enormous number of people. You would think that is right, would you not? Did you know that the answer is 20 million people—6 percent of the American population now live in caravan parks. And it has become a big industry for the big end of town because they do not even own their caravan in their caravan park—6 percent of all Americans now live in caravan parks.

I would hope that the housing officials who are sitting there looking at this would be ashamed of their bosses, who are forcing through the House legislation to say that the officials cannot give advice about that being where this trend ends in New Zealand. That is why this bill should be named something different from it being about remedying social housing problems. It actually makes them worse, and it should be about the trend towards caravans, because that is what is happening in New Zealand.

Paula Bennett, who should hang her head in shame in this Chamber, refers people to the local caravan park in west Auckland. In west Auckland and South Auckland, the camping grounds are bulging at the seams because New Zealanders—some of them in work—have to live in camping grounds. Under this Government we are going down the same path that America has, where it has now got 20 million people living in caravan parks, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world too, and we have got increasing numbers of people living in cars, sharing houses, living in camping grounds, or being completely homeless.

This bill will make it worse because it allows the Government to abrogate its responsibility—to escape income-based tenancies and State houses because it can sell them all off and move them to some other function that is not properly funded. And who will make more money? Again, it is the big end of town. Who makes money out of all these trailer parks and the misery in America? The owners of the trailer parks. How many people are affected in America? Six percent of its population. This legislation should be called the “Housing (Promotion of Caravan Parks as a Band-aid) Bill”.

This bill needs a very serious title, I think, because it is a pretty serious issue that it covers. I think we should take it seriously, and I believe that the title needs to be actually a lot longer, even though it is quite a long title already. In particular, it must be descriptive of the content of what is in the bill.

So I would like to propose a more accurate title. It will be a bit longer, but I think it will be worth the extra words. It would be the “Measures to Make the National-led Government’s Appalling Record on Housing Reform Since 2008 Even Worse Bill”, because I think that is actually, fundamentally, what this bill does.

The title could be longer, of course, because there are other things in it that show how bad this legislation is. For example, it could refer to measures to reduce housing stock in New Zealand, because that is one of the most obvious effects of this particular piece of legislation and the principal Act that it amends. Secondly, it could refer to encouraging higher rents and house prices, because that is also what it does, and that is, of course, for the benefit of selected private housing providers and nobody else in the community. Rentals are far, far too high already, and the rate of increase is far too great. Thirdly, it could refer to a failure by this Government to improve rental house quality over the 7 years it has so far been in power. The quality of rental homes has not improved. Little or nothing is being done about that, and this bill fails to address it. So the title could also be, as another alternative, for example, the “Measures to Reduce Rental Housing Stock, Increase Rents, and Ensure No Improvement in Private Rental Home Quality Bill”, because that would also be a very descriptive title for this legislation.

Another alternative might be the “Housing (Weasel Words) Bill”, because I do not think I have ever heard so many weasel words in a piece of legislation itself and in the descriptions around it. I want to refer to just three of them.

First of all is the term “housing independence”. What does that really mean? “Housing independence” really means being abandoned to the rigours of a dysfunctional rental market. That is actually what we are talking about when the Government refers to housing independence.

Another word that is often used in relation to this bill is “flexibility”. I think that really means that Ministers, through the excessive powers given to them in this bill to give directions, will be empowered to do dodgy deals behind closed doors with a variety of housing providers.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am sorry—[Interruption] It is my responsibility to look at the member.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: I was blocking the view.

OK. The third term is “tailored contract”. I think that what that means is that some will get privileges and provisions that others will not get. There will be no transparency and there will not be a level playing field, so I do not think that is a particularly good term to use either, and yet it is one that is bandied about the Chamber without any real attempt to define what it is.

Finally, another possible title for this bill could be the “Suppression of Housing Demand Bill”, because that is the whole thrust of both the principal Act and this amendment to it. The suppression of housing demand really means pushing people out of State houses who should not be pushed or bullied out of State housing. In fact, many such people should actually be encouraged into State housing as a good, secure housing solution for them. It will make it too hard in the future for people to get a State house. That has been a problem for a long time. This legislation will make it worse.

I have suggested at least three ways in which the title to this bill could be improved, and I would be happy to support a change to any one of them.

Can I first of all commend you, Mr Chairman, for your choice of giving the call to me against my colleague, who has been competing for it longer than I have, actually, and may not be too popular with you later on. It is good to be able to have an opportunity to speak to the title and commencement of the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill.

I listened with interest to Denis O’Rourke from New Zealand First, who just made a very substantive contribution. It is in keeping with the style of the debate on the title and the commencement of bills that we talk about alternative names that they could be called. He quite correctly pointed out that the purpose of this legislation is to continue what the National Government has been doing by stealth, which is the selling-off—hocking-off—of State houses to the private sector. It is not so that we can have better provision of affordable houses, not so that we can have more affordable houses, but just solely so that the Government can get out of that provision of social housing and, you know, presumably spend less on supporting vulnerable families.

I commend Denis O’Rourke’s recommendations in terms of the way that the name of this bill could be changed. But actually, if you look at the name of the bill, Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill—who on earth would know what that means, anyway? Flexible purchasing, to the National backbenchers, who are going to put their names on the public record alongside this bill selling off State housing—I am sure they have not read it. It is quite obvious that the National Government got to its caucus before the Budget, and they were briefed and were told that this was all about flexible purchasing and remedial matters. They would not have asked. None of them would have had the courage to ask the Minister what it actually meant and what they were going to be voting on and putting their names beside.

So even though I agree with Mr O’Rourke and other colleagues who have spoken about changing the name, the title is actually so meaningless that I do not know whether it would even matter. But if we want to say what this bill actually does, then we should be much more honest.

The spin around the media that has been associated with this legislation is quite extraordinary. The term “moving to housing independence”, which, presumably, in this conservative model that John Key is now promoting—this conservative-compassionate model that he is now promoting—presumably that means something.

💬 Phil Twyford: Being thrown out on the street is what it means.

Actually, Mr Twyford is right. What it does mean for many people in State houses is, quite literally, that they lose their home. It is not just a house that they happen to go to after work, after school, every day. It is their home. It might not be as flash as the Parnell mansion, but, actually, people have a very strong attachment to their home, and people in State houses have every right to maintain that attachment, unless we are offering them a better opportunity. Moving to housing independence by telling people that they no longer have the tenancy rights of a State house and they have to go into the private market is not offering them a better choice, but that is all that Paula Bennett and Bill English are offering them.

Prior to the lunch adjournment I listened to some of my colleagues speaking, and I was actually pretty dismayed at the sniggers and sneers that came from members of the National Party backbench. When David Clark was talking about a friend of his who was no longer able to afford to have her hair cut on a regular basis, and her children were paying for that—the rent had gone up to such a point that she did not have any spare money at all—they were sniggering about that. David Clark also said: “That is not the New Zealand that I signed up to”, and I want to totally endorse those comments.

When we are talking about what values we have as a society, what is important to us, what makes us proud to be New Zealanders, then it has always been, for me, that we do have an egalitarian society. We do have people who are respected regardless of their level of wealth or income, people who are considered as part of the community, and people who have a stable home to call their own—whether they rent it or own it. They are still contributing members of our community. This bill is another step away from that vision, away from that respect of individuals, away from the ability of New Zealanders to be able to afford to live in a home, because the Government thinks that subsidising their rent is a priority.

I move, That the question be now put.

No, this bill has not been to a select committee, and it is a very serious bill. Therefore I think all latitude will be taken at this stage of it.

Speaking to the title of this bill—in the title of the bill it has the words “flexible purchasing”. I just want to say that when you have a purchaser, you also have a seller, and the seller, in this instance, is the Government—the State. So I think that instead of having the word “purchasing” in it, the name of this bill ought to be “Social Housing Reform (Transfer of State Assets) Bill”, or the “Sale of State Assets Bill”. By the Government not using the word “sale” and using the word “purchasing” instead, it gives a different slant to that of the public’s perception, I believe.

Over the last few years we have had a number of debates about the sale of State assets. Changing the terminology now, in this instance, to have a bill that talks about flexible purchasing does not address the issue that this is a mechanism, a provision, for the Government to be able to sell State assets. The general public ought to have the opportunity to have their input, and they have not had the input in this instance. So I stand here to suggest that the name of this bill should be changed, and that the Act of Parliament, if this bill is passed, should actually be the “Social Housing Reform (The Transfer of State Assets) Act”.

I could equally say that it is the transfer of social housing responsibility as well, because the transfer of these houses to non-Government organisations, to property developers, also hands over the responsibility of social housing to those agencies. That is not right. It is not right, because the intent of what social housing is meant to be all about is helping those families who are most in need.

One of the things that I am really concerned about is the length of time. Once these transactions are made, how long does the responsibility of social housing afforded to the non-Government organisations last for? Is it 1 year, 2 years? After 2 years can they stop their responsibility of providing those houses as social housing, and then sell them on the open market at prices that, no doubt, those people who occupy those homes will not be able to afford? That is a big concern for me, because then, at that point, those houses stop being social housing. In this bill we do not know when that will be, because it is entirely at the Minister’s discretion as to how and when that would happen, if at all. We just do not know.

These are the kinds of things that could be fleshed out in an open process like the select committee process, where people have the opportunity to come and have their say on this particular issue. The title bears little resemblance, in my opinion, to what the final outcome and effect of this bill would be on social housing. So my suggestion is that the Minister should reassess this particular issue, and I agree with the sentiments of other contributors to the Committee on this particular matter that the title of the bill does not give a fair reflection of the content of the bill itself.

There is one other issue, and it is around Māori housing. I have read this bill very carefully and there is nothing in here that suggests to me that there is any way that the Government is upholding its Treaty obligations in providing and addressing the—

I move, That the question be now put.

No, I made it clear last time. I am not ready yet to accept the closure motion.

It is good to be able to take a final Committee stage call, one of many on this bit on the title and commencement clauses. As you yourself alluded to, Mr Chairman, this is a piece of legislation that is going through under urgency. It is the job of this Committee to ask questions and it is the job of the Government and the Minister in the chair to answer those questions when those questions are put in this Chamber. That is what we are elected to do and it is what we are paid to do. I would actually like to hear from some Government members, and have them get on their legs and actually examine the legislation that is under question.

In regard to the title clause of this piece of legislation, I have some questions for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Jo Goodhew. The legislation is entitled the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill. Well, I would like the Minister to direct me to the parts of this legislation that are going to act in a remedial way for the current housing situation that we face. I have read this legislation. My colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson suggested some reading for members opposite. She suggested they start with the bill, because it clearly was not on their reading list of things that they had examined before they came to the Committee for this debate. But I have read this legislation, and I cannot see anything that is going to be remediated in terms of the housing situation. My other colleague the Hon Annette King, in her earlier contribution on the title clause, drew the Committee’s attention to the advice of the Law Commission and that we actually should title bills in plain English ways in that the titles reflect what it is that a bill is doing.

I cannot find anything in here that is going to address the very real concern that the Hon David Parker talked about in terms of the trend we are seeing towards camping grounds in New Zealand, with the ultimate outcome being like the United States where 6 percent of people are living in camping grounds. In terms of this, I would like to know what is in here for Christchurch, a city that is facing a very particular set of housing circumstances. What are the remedial measures in this piece of legislation? We actually have a situation in Christchurch where some of the homelessness is caused by the fact that a number of our camping grounds where people were previously being directed have now been converted to workers’ accommodation. Rather than being places where people who are under housing pressures can go, they are where our housing rebuild workers are going, and that is putting further pressure on housing.

I would like to know what clauses in this bill are going to be remedial for the constituents whom I am seeing in my office. I want to know what clauses in this bill are going to be remedial matters, in terms of social housing, for my constituent who was threatened with eviction from her Housing New Zealand house in Hoon Hay, because in the 2 years following the February 2011 earthquakes she had her daughter and her 3-month-old granddaughter living in a caravan on the property of her Housing New Zealand house. Housing New Zealand tried to evict her because it said it was not right for her to have a caravan on that property. It was prepared to see this whole extended family, who were under extreme housing pressure, be in a situation where housing was something that was simply beyond their reach.

I want to know what clauses in this bill, the title of which purports to propose remedial matters, are going to do for that family. I want to know what remedial matters are in this piece of legislation for a constituent of mine who is currently in emergency temporary accommodation. Because she is classed as being in emergency temporary accommodation, the district health board will not proceed with her hip replacement surgery, because it does not consider that she has a safe place to go back to once that surgery is completed. I have not seen anything in this legislation that will do anything to remediate those situations.

We have had other Ministers who have sat in that chair through earlier stages of this bill who have waxed lyrical about how this is going to be the panacea for housing. But we are still struggling. I would like the Minister to get up on her legs to address these questions and tell the Committee. This is the Committee stage of this bill, where it is the job of Parliament to ask questions of the legislation. We would like some answers to those questions. How is it that this Government thinks it can bring a piece of legislation called the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill to the House when there are no remedial matters in the bill? Many of my colleagues have suggested alternative titles for the legislation. Another one of my colleagues the Hon Ruth Dyson has herself also drawn the attention—

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to speak directly to the title of the bill rather than the commencement clause. For those who are listening in the gallery, when we come to this stage of a debate, it is always the point at which we have the ability to rename the bill if we feel that its title is not befitting of its content or of what it intends, ultimately, to achieve.

An area that I think probably warrants a bit more discussion—and the title that I think is more appropriate for this bill is because of this—is that of Housing New Zealand being gutted further, which is a consequence of this bill. So I would propose that the bill be retitled “The Death Nail to Housing New Zealand”, because, as Phil Twyford has pointed out, although Housing New Zealand lost the substantive parts of its role some time ago, this bill actually removes any role that involves Housing New Zealand giving policy advice, direction, research, or information to the Minister. In fact, in Subpart 2, clause 20, it repeals section 3B(b). The effect of the repeal is that Housing New Zealand no longer has an objective of providing to the Minister of Social Housing advice and information on housing. Housing New Zealand no longer has any role in saying to the Government that we have a housing shortfall—a social housing shortfall, a homelessness issue, a gap in the market. That is no longer its job. I would have to say that any officials within Housing New Zealand who are worth their salt would probably not want to claim that they have got that job right now, given the response from the Government—because it has been particularly inadequate.

In areas like Auckland, we have seen house prices go up by $100,000 in the past year. There have been 40,000 people who have moved into Auckland in the past year alone. We are simply not keeping up with demand, and that is having a flow-down effect on our social housing market. People are unable to access homes. When you have groups like the Salvation Army coming to tell you that they have had new mothers leave hospital with a newborn child and sleep in the car because they cannot access housing, you know that you have an absolutely critical situation. We have a Government department that no longer has the job of telling the Government that there is a problem or that there are solutions to fix it. This bill is not just about the sell-down of Housing New Zealand; it is also about the fact that Housing New Zealand itself has been gutted. It is, essentially, the Government version of Quinovic. That is what Housing New Zealand is. It is now simply a property manager, and we on this side of the Committee feel extreme frustration about that.

As I have also said, I do see this as a bill that will exacerbate the problem in the social housing area. In my mind, I think that to capture this, it would probably be more appropriate to call it something like the “Continuation of Homelessness Bill”. Any bill about social housing should include some kind of provision to grow social housing stock. Labour has always said that it has no problem with the NGO sector being involved in social housing, but it is incumbent on the State that it does not abdicate its responsibility for the provision of housing—

💬 Chris Bishop: We are growing it.

—and that is what this Government has done. The member on that side of the Chamber is trying to claim that they are growing State housing. Let me just tell you, in the 1990s National sold 13,000 State houses, so it had quite a bit of ground to make up there.

But, equally, Mr Bishop, in my area of central Auckland, with regard to the Auckland Unitary Plan, in the submission from Housing New Zealand, it engaged Beca Group to do an enormous amount of work, where it was submitted to the council that every single Housing New Zealand house in the Auckland area should have any covenants that lay on them removed. Where the house was a historic home, it asked for it to be removed as a character home. Where there were any blocks on whether or not it could build upwards, Beca Group asked for those to be removed. Why? Why would it have done that? Because it makes it much more profitable to sell the blocks to a housing developer when there are no restriction on the way it is able to develop the land. The intent is to sell—absolutely—and that is not just my speculating, Mr Bishop; that is what is happening. In that area, Housing New Zealand is selling stock as fast as it can. The one that we have at least been able to stop is Spring Street. To prove the lunacy of what is going on in the social housing area: Spring Street is one of the few areas where we still have pensioner housing. Housing New Zealand proposed selling the housing to a private developer so that it could lease back the units. That is absolutely farcical, and yet that is what this bill is going to deliver us—more sales to private developers for no gain.

I move, That the question be now put.

I too am concerned that the bill here, the Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill, is inappropriately named. It really should be called the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill”, because that is effectively what it is. It does not in any way reflect what this Government intends to do with the social housing sector, which is to gut it. This has been on the agenda of National Governments for generations, and it does not stop here. We know what is going to happen. We saw what happened when the Salvation Army just the other day pulled out of the Government’s plan to push social housing towards it. The Salvation Army did the sums and it recognised that it was unable to run a social housing sector. This Government wants to push it on the Salvation Army in the way it has been done in Australia, except that what the Government has not calculated is that the Australian model, in comparison, is much, much bigger. The social housing providers in Australia are looking after tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, whereas here it is much more embryonic. It cannot scale up to that sort of impact.

We are sitting here under urgency, pushing through a bill on social housing that will radically reform and change social housing in New Zealand. We are doing it under urgency because the Government does not want those social agencies to come before a select committee and actually talk about what the real issues are and what is actually going to happen should this bill go through. So this is the best way of making sure that the public are kept in the dark and that everybody else out there is kept in the dark about what the Government’s real agenda is, which is to make sure that social housing is radically transformed from what we see today. What we are going to be seeing instead is that those social providers will not be able to cope with what the Government is wanting them to do. We will see a siloing effect within those community providers as well, where we will not have the overview that we have today. But, more important, we will see many of these houses begin to drift into the private sector to benefit private landlords. If there is one amazing trend of the last few years under this Government, both with the housing crisis in Auckland and what is going to happen here, it is the enrichment of private landlords. The few landlords are getting richer and the rest cannot afford to get into a house. That is what is happening, and will happen, with this process here in this bill.

This bill is wrongly named. It cannot be called the “Remedial Housing”—or whatever the hell it is supposed to be. It is the “Social Housing Rip-off Bill” because that is, effectively, what it is. It is putting private landlords and private homeowners before the rest of New Zealand. We have seen that all around. I have certainly seen it in my electorate. I have seen it all around the electorates where there are high proportions of social housing. We are seeing families and communities being disrupted because people are moving around after being turfed out of their house. Kids going to school are changing schools over and over. Many, many schools have 25 percent or 30 percent churn. Kids cannot learn. It is disrupting communities. It is hindering kids and their education, and, most important, it is ripping New Zealanders off. It is making sure that, instead of helping New Zealanders who need it, it is actually private landlords, who are going to be enriched. Certainly, the latest round of changes that have occurred to try to curb the housing crisis in Auckland are benefiting the private landlords.

First home owners are not getting a look in. People who need social housing are not getting a look in. This bill is dismembering the social housing sector and ensuring that those people who really need help are pushed to one side and the few, the rich few, who put the money into the coffers of that party over there, are the people who are being enriched and being favoured above the others. That is totally unfair, and that is why the Labour Party is absolutely in opposition to this bill.

The reason why I want to take a call in this debate—and we are on the title—is that this is the only chance this House has to examine this bill, to scrutinise this bill. It is the only chance New Zealand has to have this bill scrutinised by eyes other than the Government’s, which is why we are taking this debate so seriously. We are looking at each part of the bill and doing our job on behalf of the taxpayers of New Zealand because this Government would not let this bill, which has nothing urgent in it at all, go to a select committee. So I think we need to go step by step, taking whatever time it takes, to make sure that at the end of this process the people of New Zealand know that we did a good day’s work—maybe 2 days’ work, or it could be 3 days’ work—examining this legislation because the lazy Government opposite would not send it to a select committee. The best speech those members have made all day is: “I move that the question be now put.” That is the speech from Government on this very important bill that we have before us.

Well, I have some got information to bring to this Chamber. We are talking about social housing, which is what the title of this bill is, and it is about the flexibility that is going to come from this social housing reform. We have been told that we need this bill—and the title of this bill—because it is going to make changes in the way that community housing is provided. So I thought: “What do the community housing people themselves think about this bill?”. Well, they have just put out a press statement about this bill.

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, yes.

They have said this. The community housing organisations say: “the government’s budget initiatives on housing are too timid—and won’t deliver the results needed.” These are the very groups that the Government—it says—wants to hand over community housing to. They said: “We hear loud and clear that the government intends to transfer some Housing New Zealand properties for use as ongoing social housing run by community housing providers.” They then said: “What the sector is trying to communicate equally clearly is that the better future is one where those properties can be regenerated, made fit for purpose, and deliver a whole range of better community outcomes, not just put a new landlord in place.” Say yes now, Mr Bishop. They said we should “not just put a new landlord in place”.

They asked, what about the regions? “What are you doing for the regions?”, they said. They said that there was an urgent need to look at the accommodation supplement, “which currently costs the Government $1.1 billion, [and] is in dire need of review and adjustment.”, and they go on. So I suggest, members, that you turn on your iPads and have a look to see what the latest reports are from the very groups that are supposed to be the beneficiaries of this social housing reform.

As I said before, the word “reform” indicates that it is supposed to be something that is an improvement, but what we are hearing from the community housing sector is that it does not see it as an improvement. So this bill is not properly named, and I am sure that those who have been in this House for a while will know how important it is to correctly name a bill. We have been warned many times that we ought to name bills correctly.

Let us listen to the only submission that we have received on this bill, and that has come in right now from the umbrella group Community Housing Aotearoa. That is the only submission we have got because it was not allowed to make one, so it has put out a press statement. I have read out to the members opposite what that group thinks about this bill. Well, if that group counts for anything, the National Government would be pulling this bill and saying: “Let’s send it to a select committee and hear submissions from New Zealanders.”—maybe even a tenant or two. Heaven help us that they should be allowed a voice when it comes to community housing! You see, the Minister for Social Housing blew it yesterday when she told us what tenants are thought of and called by the National Government. Do you know what they are called? They are not called tenants or people; they are called cohorts. She said: “We are talking about cohorts.”, and she was not calling them tenants or people. That really is an indication of how out of touch the Government opposite is when it comes to social housing.

I move, That the question be now put.

I think we are in the position now where the Committee can make a decision as to whether it wants to move to a vote.

I understand that a member was ejected from the Chamber earlier for commenting during a vote. I did not identify the member who just commented through this vote and who was not meant to be commenting, but if I had, he would have been joining the other member.

on behalf of the Minister for Social Housing: I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters (Social Housing Reform) Bill, the Taxation (Social Housing Reform) Bill, the Housing Corporation (Social Housing Reform) Amendment Bill, and the KiwiSaver (HomeStart) Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 78.

I move, That the report be adopted.