Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill

Speaking about Part 3, there is really only one matter here to discuss. The principal Act is the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992. Part 3 of the bill amends that principal Act with a provision that is designed to provide some certainty and reassure people that the provisions of the Public Works Act 1981—that is, sections 40 to 42 of the Public Works Act “do not apply (and have never applied) to the sale or disposal [blah, blah, blah]” of State housing land.

💬 Tim Macindoe: That was the best part of the speech.

Thank you. This provision should be dedicated to the Hon Dr Nick Smith, because he has form when it comes to the disposal of State housing land and the buy-back provisions attached to that land. As followers of this issue will note, he got himself into a terrible pickle last year with his vacant Crown land project, which was unveiled with wonderful fanfare in the Budget and a promise of 500 hectares of vacant Government land that would be developed for housing in Auckland.

What happened because of the buy-back provisions—not dissimilar to those that exist within the Public Works Act, but existing, in this case, in Treaty settlement agreements by a number of the iwi in Auckland—was that the good doctor failed to negotiate, or consult I should say, with iwi who have those rights of first refusal. He got himself into a terrible mess, to the extent that 4 months after his grand Budget announcement he found himself in court with Ngāti Whātua and Tainui and others who, through their legal action and negotiation, were able to extract some pretty amazing concessions from the Minister for Building and Housing by way of giving them first dibs as development partners on all that vacant Crown land. Even more remarkable, actually, is that there was a commitment that the Government would provide in one case, I think, 30 percent of the houses in those projects to be affordable, which is something that this Government hates to do. It just shows you what a mess Dr Smith got into by failing to properly take into account the buy-back provisions that are found within the Public Works Act but which in this case existed within Treaty settlement agreements around the right of first refusal.

I think it is good to get some clarity on that, in this case. There would be a lot of people wondering, for example, with the National Government intending to dispose of so much publicly owned State housing land, whether or not much of that land—or probably a significant chunk of it—would have been acquired under the Public Works Act, quite possibly. People would be wondering whether the buy-back provisions in the Public Works Act applied. What this part does is it basically makes it very clear that those provisions do not apply to State housing land and never have. I think that is probably all there is to say about that provision.