Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill

I want to make some comments about the title clause and I have three suggestions for the Committee to consider in respect of alternative titles for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. The first, coined by my colleague Jacinda Ardern, is the “Trickle-down Housing Bill”. I want to say how unconvinced we are by the last-minute desperate effort by the Minister of Housing to defend himself from accusations and pressure about the fact that this bill does not contain any real mechanism to deliver affordable housing. By inserting at the last minute a provision that gives the Government the power to issue, by Order in Council, some requirements for a certain proportion of affordable housing units in a qualifying development gives us no confidence at all. I want to tell the Committee why.

The first reason is that requiring a proportion of affordable housing units is what is known as inclusionary zoning. This Government, within a month of being elected after the 2008 election, repealed the inclusionary zoning provisions that the former Labour Government had passed. This Government did away with all of the intentions of including State housing and affordable housing in Hobsonville, the biggest, most promising urban development opportunity in Auckland. We have heard from the Minister on numerous occasions at the select committee and in this Chamber that he does not believe in inclusionary zoning. He does not believe that it works. He does not believe that it is a good thing. So giving the Government the power to require inclusionary zoning by Order in Council gives us no confidence at all that it will actually happen, for those reasons.

The second title that we think is worthy of consideration is the “Poor Quality Housing Bill”. I just want to point to some aspects of the bill that do give cause for alarm. Clauses 32 and 61 of the bill, for example, have the effect of essentially taking the Resource Management Act out of consideration when considering qualifying developments in special housing areas. They strip the Resource Management Act out of the decision-making process for special housing areas. It is pretty clear, when you think about the reported comments of the Minister where he told the New Zealand Herald on 25 May that Aucklanders need to get over their nimbyism and accept lower quality developments if they want affordable housing. The Minister said: “Higher quality equates to high price.” and that Aucklanders need to accept lower quality developments.

This is one of the really disturbing things about this bill—that it seeks to speed up the provision of affordable housing by reducing the quality protections and the environmental protections that we would normally apply to housing developments. That, I think, is a real concern to Aucklanders. They do not want slums, but it is clearly the view of Nick Smith that if Aucklanders want affordable housing, they have to accept lower standards.

The third title that I want to suggest and that I think would be a much more suitable title for this bill is the “Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater Housing Bill”. There are three things that National wants to trade off in order to deliver more housing development in Auckland. The first is democracy, and we know from the override clauses in this bill that it is willing to take, yet again, more powers away from local government. The Human Rights Commission expressed concern about this in its submission on the bill and talked about the constant centralising of powers and taking away from local government.

The quality protections and the environmental protections I have already mentioned. The last point I want to make is that this bill thoughtlessly undermines the protection that certain special areas, like the Waitakere Ranges, enjoy by dint of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act. That Act, until the passing of this bill, has enjoyed primacy over other district and regional plans. Those other plans are required to be consistent with the provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act. But, unfortunately, this bill dilutes those protections and it requires only the provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act to be considered. They do not have to be consistent with those provisions.

I want to carry on in the same vein that my colleague has been—suggesting alternative titles for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill that will really reflect its true intent, or the intent of the policy that this Minister of Housing is following. Let us look at the history of this. It was only when the Labour Party came up with a very popular housing policy that, all of a sudden, this became urgent. Perhaps we should call it the “Let’s Take the Focus off Labour’s Housing Policy Bill” because, indeed, prior to that, the Government was not particularly interested in this area. The way in which the provisions of this bill have been spelt out gives the lie to the fact that this is not all that genuine in terms of a real response to what this side of the Chamber has said all along, that the focus needs to be on affordable housing. That is where the big problem is, but, somehow, the Minister has his own ideas as to how that is to be fixed.

The second title, which I think my colleague has already taken, is what Jacinda Ardern coined—the “Trickle-down Process Bill”. It is as if that will work it out, but that has already been taken now. The other point is that this bill has a provision that states that when it becomes an Act, it will be repealed in 5 years’ time. So it could be something like the “Housing (We Will Fix it in 5 Years’ Time) Bill”.

Think about it for a moment, because that is about the time that this Government has been in power. It intends, in the same length of time, to fix the housing problems of New Zealand. It is not credible to believe that by creating some special housing areas through the provisions that are here, we will have fixed the housing problem and we will have moved on. We do not think that will happen, indeed.

The driver of this particular policy that the Minister has taken is the use of the market—that the market, really, is the only mechanism by which our housing problems will be fixed. Nobody believes that, except the Minister. So maybe it should be called the “Housing (Leave it to the Market) Bill”. This is a failed market, yet the Minister has so much confidence that the bill will fix it up. Perhaps all that the bill will achieve, when you think about it, is it will enable more land to be made available to the developers who want to build big houses. They will build them through a faster process, through the planning process that is in Part 2 of this bill. It will be a faster process to get land available and thereby it will make—[Interruption] Sorry, Minister?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s a short title debate.

Well, a faster process is what the Minister is proposing here. That is not credible. It is not credible that it can be done in that period of time. But maybe it does belie the true agenda of this Minister: to advantage one side. The other area that we have constantly talked about on this side is the override provisions, which we find entirely objectionable, despite the fact that there is now a mediation clause in the bill. Another name could actually be—and this should generally be in there—the “Housing Accords and Overrides Bill”, because the override provision is objectionable. It is hidden there somewhere. There is a little change in there around mediation, and that fixes it! It does not.

Perhaps the other one that we object to is this notion that there are provisions hidden somewhere, introduced at the last minute and hidden in the amendments, that state that by Order in Council the affordability question will be answered. We notice the Minister has taken no calls on that at all to explain how the Order in Council would work. We all appreciate the Minister being in the Chamber and engaging with us, but on that point, Minister, you have not. Perhaps you ought to have, and maybe you can still do that. It needs an explanation as to how that is going to work. It is the Minister’s own answer to our requirement and our objection to there not being a process of the type that addresses affordable housing.

In the end, the bill is suboptimal in terms of what it can achieve. We will not be supporting it. Thank you.

I actually find it sad to be rising to speak on this bill, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, when there is such a genuine need to have something done to deal with the issue of affordable housing. During the course of this debate the Minister of Housing has finally said something about an Order in Council, as my colleagues Rajen Prasad and Phil Twyford have alluded to tonight. But when you look at this bill, it is not a bill about affordable housing, and that is what we need.

We oppose this bill, but I actually say there is no pleasure in doing so because we are genuinely committed to seeing effective changes in the area of housing. For Labour, housing is a huge and important policy area. It is going to make a difference to people’s quality of life and a difference to children’s health and education. Accessing housing at a price that people can afford and being able to own their own house are part of being part of a community and feeling like a person has a place in their community.

In terms of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, others have talked about renaming it. Well, I thought you could keep that name, except perhaps add on to the end the phrase “(But Not Affordable Housing)” so that the title would be the “Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas (But Not Affordable Housing) Bill”.

We do see the need for bold action to address the housing affordability crisis, and we support the idea of a short-term mechanism to stimulate the building of affordable housing through accords with councils in special housing areas and fast-track consenting. We do not actually have a problem with that. During the course of this debate—and I have tried a couple of times previously to have a say on this—we have heard all sorts of comments made by the Minister, which are actually not true, about what our motivation is and what our housing spokesperson is and is not saying. We do actually agree that there needs to be land supply and that planning regulations do need to be looked at in terms of housing.

The Minister is looking at me, so I think maybe I could help him out on this and quote from Phil Twyford on the matter of land availability, because I want to set the record straight. It was said earlier today that we did not think that land supply was an issue. This is a direct quote from Phil Twyford in the second reading of this bill: “There is no doubt—and I want to put to rest any suggestion by the Minister of Housing in his last speech—that this party does not accept that land supply is a problem in Auckland. It is clearly not a problem in Tauranga and other regional centres that suffer extreme housing unaffordability. But for the sake of this argument let us be very clear and put on record that there is no doubt—the data makes it crystal clear—that constraints on land supply in Auckland and the failure to intensify is behind an increase in the price in land that has flowed on to the price of housing. But land supply is only one factor in the housing crisis, and the National Party has a fixation with it.” I just wanted to set the record straight on that. I think it is pretty important.

We supported this bill going to the Social Services Committee because we were interested in seeing whether there was some value in this bill. However, we are not going to support this bill, because we believe it is flawed in its design and it will not achieve its stated aim of more affordable housing. The mechanism is not there in the bill. The Minister is now talking about what he may do by Order in Council, but in this bill there is nothing that ensures that of the new houses that are built in special housing areas, a portion of them will be affordable to low and middle income earners.

At the moment there is something like 5 percent of new residential construction that is affordable. That is just meaning that so many New Zealanders see no hope of owning their own home. I want to particularly note young New Zealanders, like my niece who is currently finishing her university education with a large student loan. I do not believe she sees that at any time in the foreseeable future she will be able to pay off that debt and save enough money to buy her own home in this country.

💬 Andrew Little: She’ll be overseas by that time.

That is right. In all probability, as my colleague Andrew Little says, a bright young woman like her will probably end up going overseas for a better income and a better future. That is not what we want and what we need in this country. So, again, I say that this bill picks up only a couple of factors underlying the crisis—

I do not often take calls on the title and commencement clauses in the Committee stage because, to be honest, sometimes it feels a little bit silly, making up new titles for a bill. But I did want to take a call tonight on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill and propose four alternative titles. They are four alternative titles that speak to serious issues, both of process and content, with this bill.

The first alternative title I would like to propose is the “Quick, Let’s Cobble Something Together to Announce in the Budget Bill” because that is indeed what this bill is. I have had a look at the Budget papers that were released in association with this bill. What is very clear from those papers is that this is not a bill that has been a long time in production, in policy development, in consideration, in consultation with departments and related Government agencies, or in consultation with affected local authorities. In fact, it was cobbled together very quickly so that the Minister of Finance could make housing a centrepiece of Budget 2013.

In fact, what this Minister wanted to announce was an urban development agency, right up until as recently as March of this year. That is what he was hoping to announce to be the big centrepiece of housing in the Budget. I am disappointed he did not get to do that, because I think it is a very interesting idea and one that has a lot more potential, depending on how it is designed, to address the crisis of housing affordability than what we ended up with in this bill. But evidently he was not able to get that over the line, so something was drawn up very quickly instead and that was this bill that we are debating in the Chamber tonight, the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. But it could equally have been called the “Let’s Cobble Together Something to Announce in the Budget Bill”.

That poor process that was followed for the development of this bill has followed through with other stages of the bill. We have heard speakers on other parts of the bill talking about the very limited time that was allocated for submitters to make their views known on the bill, and the very limited notification of affected territorial authorities and potential stakeholders about the opportunity to make those submissions. Many of the submitters who came before us at the Social Services Committee spoke of their concern about the process—that it is a very substantive bill, making very substantive changes that had a big effect on them, but they did not have a lot of time to progress. Indeed, in the select committee it was very pressured for officials, for members of the committee, and for the Parliamentary Counsel Office to draft and make the changes to the bill that were required in the time that was allocated for the committee to consider it. That, again, is a reflection of the rushed way in which the bill was put together. The fact that such substantial changes were required after the select committee process speaks to the fact that the bill was drafted in rather a hurry and needed to be clarified and significantly amended at the select committee. It is not an ideal process.

The second title I would like to suggest for the bill is the “Housing Accords and Urban Sprawl Areas Bill”. As my colleague Eugenie Sage set out in her contribution a few moments ago on Part 2, that is, in fact, what the special housing areas are likely to create, particularly because there is no requirement that they include a particular percentage of affordable housing, and that is what we have largely been debating in the Chamber tonight.

What is likely to happen is that housing developers and property investors will build large McMansion-style houses, just as they do currently in greenfield developments on the urban fringes, because that is what is profitable for developers. We heard from a number of submitters that to make a profit in the construction industry you need to build large houses with large footprints, so that you can recover all those variable costs of building and make a profit. Because there is no requirement that those developers build affordable houses, they will not. They came to the Social Services Committee and, in fact, they told us that themselves. They do not expect to see any increase in the provision of affordable housing, and the bill is likely to result in more of the kinds of development that we are seeing already. As we have heard, they are likely to be in greenfield areas on the urban fringes.

As my colleague Eugenie Sage has pointed out, there are a number of hidden costs associated with those types of development, which actually mean that, yes, although the cost of land, perhaps on face value, may seem lower—

I move, That the question be now put.

In the debate on this part of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, there have been several attempts to give it a correct title. I opened up the Dominion Post this afternoon and found the perfect title for this bill on page 2: the “First Rung of the Property Ladder (Tough Climb) Bill.” What we do know is that this bill has very little to do with people who want to buy their first home getting into a home. So let us try the “First Rung of the Ladder (Tough Climb) Bill”, because, Minister, it is going to be an awfully tough climb to get into a house as a first home owner under this Government. This bill is nothing more than flimflam when it comes to affordable housing. We have found that out as we have debated this today.

Then I look further on page 2 of the Dominion Post and I find a headline that says: “Buying a home with a low deposit gets even harder.” It is interesting, is it not, that commentators—not Labour politicians, or the Greens, or New Zealand First—writing stories about housing are telling New Zealanders that nothing this Government is doing is helping them to get into a home.

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: You’ve had a shot, Annette. You’ve had your shot.

Low deposits are getting even harder—for the member from Maungakiekie who is interjecting. Getting on the property ladder has just become harder, with banks nudging up fees charged to borrowers with small deposits.

What we are finding out is that this bill ought to have a title that reflects what is happening. I think it was the Law Commission that said that we often have bills that have grand titles that do not relate to what the bills actually mean. I think we need to have a title so that people are not misled about what this grand bill that the Minister of Housing has introduced in a flurry of activity, with only 2 weeks of submissions for people to look at it—

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Not true.

“Not true.”, said the chair of the Social Services Committee. Have I got something wrong? Have I got something wrong, Mr Chair? He walked to the Table, and said, when I said it was 2 weeks for submissions, that it was not true. Would the member like to correct me if I am not correct? Well, I believe those on the Social Services Committee would know. Perhaps the chair of the select committee was not there? Well, if he was there, his mind was not there. So I believe that we ought to have a bill that is correctly named, as the Law Commission often said. Perhaps the Minister is going to take a call, because one of the things that he did not do before dinner was take a call and answer some of the questions that could have helped give this bill a proper title.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because the member didn’t bother to read the bill. It’s in the bill.

He has got his opportunity, instead of just sitting there flapping his lips. He could stand up and he could answer some of those questions that would maybe give us the correct title. One of them is about affordable housing and his—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The lazy member should read the bill.

Oh! I am certainly not lazy, but I do not make things up, like that Minister. He has got a record of making things up, and of creating figures and facts to suit himself. So I think perhaps that he might like to get to his feet and tell us about the Order in Council. Tell us about the Order—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Lazy and embittered.

I see my cousin over there, up to his usual tricks—a few nasty jabs and gibes. He can never debate a single issue without throwing in some nastiness. I do not know how it is I ever got related to him. It is not in our side of the family. So I have to say to the Minister: get to your feet, Minister. Get to your feet and answer the questions about when the Order in Council will be introduced, what will be in that Order in Council, and then maybe—just maybe—this bill could have its correct title.

I move, That the question be now put.