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Govt forced to defend overseas sell-off

Author
Frances Cook ,
Publish Date
Mon, 29 Jun 2015, 10:36AM

Govt forced to defend overseas sell-off

Author
Frances Cook ,
Publish Date
Mon, 29 Jun 2015, 10:36AM

UPDATED 4.00PM: The government is defending a decision to let an Australian group buy up to 500 state homes.

Queensland housing provider Horizon Housing is interested in buying some of the Housing New Zealand stock due to be sold next year, and Finance Minister Bill English said over the weekend "we're interested in doing business with them".

Prime Minister John Key told Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning that even if the deal goes ahead, the homes will be kept as social housing.

"It's worth remembering they're a Queensland charity, they're an Australian-based charity so we're not talking about selling them to nasty property developers," Key said.

Labour leader Andrew Little has retorted that although the PM is calling the group a charity, it's actually a not-for-profit using a corporate model.

"They are no different to any other corporate," Little said. "They want to have the strongest possible balance sheet and they've got to make money from what they do."

"That's what would be happening, and we will be the mugs who will be paying for it, the New Zealand taxpayer."

"Once they sell these houses, and more importantly the land that they're sitting on, to an overseas buyer, that's  it. They're gone. We won't get that land back again. The land is too valuable."

New Zealand First doesn't believe proceeds from state house sales will be pumped back into new and improved state housing.

Leader Winston Peters is adamantly opposed to any such deal and doubts any of its proceeds will be put back into the sector by the Government.

"They did it with respect to selling off state assets if you recall. Did they buy new assets as a consequence? No they didn't - they used it to prop up their failed budget."

The State Housing Action Network, which opposed the sell-off, has written to Horizon warning it not to get involved in the government's plan.

"Already New Zealand's most credible social-housing providers, the Salvation Army and the Methodist Mission, have announced they will not buy into this policy," the group's convenor, activist John Minto, told Horizon's chief executive Jason Cubit.

"We are asking the Horizon Housing Company to do the same.

"If you decide to proceed and cooperate with this policy it's only fair that we point out you can expect to be the subject of ongoing community protest action here in New Zealand."

 

 

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