Infrastructure Bill

I am happy to stand and take a call. Labour will be supporting this Infrastructure Bill. We were disappointed, though, that we were not able to appeal to the Government’s sense of social responsibility when it came to Part 4. But we support the bill as it comes.

I think that members may consider some alternative titles appropriate for this legislation. Now that we have had the debate on the different parts of the Infrastructure Bill and we have seen its layout, it would be timely to rename it the “Infrastructure (Housing Is Not Infrastructure) Bill”. Clearly, this Government does not think that housing is infrastructure. We are being told that the purpose of this legislation is to support infrastructure development and to align the needs of the different utility operators. In fact, in the Chamber today Mr Gerry Brownlee stood up and told us that we did not even need the Infrastructure Bill, at all. He did not think that it needed to be progressed rapidly, because he thought he was doing such a fabulous job on infrastructure. I point out to the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister for Infrastructure, that his “Holiday Highway”, which will help him get to his holiday home, will not address the issues of housing in New Zealand, so I think that it is only right that this bill is renamed the “Infrastructure (Housing Is Not Infrastructure) Bill”.

If we look at Australia, we see that exactly the opposite is happening. Australians see housing as an integral part of any infrastructure package. Australia managed to keep itself out of recession. One of the things it did was invest heavily in social housing, and it is continuing to do so. If we want to keep looking at the areas where the gap between New Zealand and Australia is widening under this National Government, then a commitment to social and affordable housing has to be one of the biggest areas.

Perhaps another name for this bill could be the “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Māori Party Government Does Not Care About Affordable Housing Any More) Bill”. It was clear in the debate today on Part 4, when no one from the Government stood up to defend its decision to repeal the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act, that affordable housing is off the agenda for this Government. All we have seen since those members came into Government is a lot of theatrics. We have seen a lot of song and dance on the other side of the Chamber from the Minister of Housing, Phil Heatley. If pantomime could build houses, then housing supply would not be a problem in New Zealand. But, unfortunately, pantomime cannot build houses, and this Government has shown no commitment to doing so.

What has this Government done? It has got rid of the shared-equity pilot. That scheme is an integral part of any affordable housing policy everywhere else in the world, but it has gone. There was a 2-year pilot; 20 months of that 24-month pilot were under this National Government. What did it do? It told the Housing New Zealand Corporation to stop promoting it. Then at the end of the 2-year pilot the Government said that it would not continue funding it, because there was a really low uptake. Well, there was a really low uptake because no one knew that it existed.

That raises another question: what is the point of spending money on a pilot that no one knows about? It would be a huge waste of money. I will tell members the answer to that question: it was so the Government could claim that it was doing something about affordable housing, and could claim that it was taking shared equity as an option seriously, when we know that it was not. We were just very lucky that an honest Housing New Zealand Corporation staff member came out and said that staff had been told to stop promoting the pilot. Guess what! That staff member probably had to apologise to the housing Minister, Phil Heatley. It was just like the Housing New Zealand Corporation staff who went to the Local Government and Environment Committee on the Resource Management Act reforms and said that the reforms would do nothing for affordable housing. Those staff members were dragged in and had to apologise to Phil Heatley for being honest to the select committee.

I come to my second point, which is that we could also call this the “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Māori Party Government Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill”. I did not speak on this matter in the debate on Part 4, because I ran out of speaking slots, but I will bring members’ attention now to the advice we had from officials on this part of the legislation. It was pointed out that the Government had announced a two-phase review of the Resource Management Act, and had said that faced with the Resource Management Act it might consider a range of options for land supply, but that it would do nothing to address affordable housing. Affordable housing measures were not considered as part of the Resource Management Act’s two-phase review. So when Government members get up and say that they will fix the problems of affordable housing—firstly, by tax cuts, and, secondly, by Resource Management Act reforms—they are not telling the public that housing affordability is playing no part in those Resource Management Act reforms.

The second part of this “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Māori Party Government Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill” is the tax cuts. The Minister of Housing, Phil Heatley, said that tax cuts are National’s No. 1 policy for affordable housing. Let us investigate that a little bit further. Someone on the minimum wage is getting $3 a week in tax cuts—$3 a week. The Minister of Finance tells us that that will compensate for increases in GST, but he does not mention that people on the minimum wage spend pretty much all of their income on things that attract GST, so the measure is very regressive. They will be even more impacted on. That $3 a week is also meant to cover off the costs of rising inflation and any rent increases, and apparently it will also fix housing affordability. New Zealand families would have to be pretty good at budgeting to spread $3 a week as far as that. It just is not going to happen.

Once again we come back to the central point of this “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Māori Party Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill”. It will not fix everything. Every single piece of international evidence tells us that we need a mix of policies to address housing inaffordability, because a whole range of different things cause housing unaffordability. Land supply is one. Regulatory reform to ensure that it is cheaper and easier to build homes is another. There is a whole range of things, including wages and incomes. They are incredibly important when it comes to housing unaffordability. No one is claiming that there is a silver bullet, but allowing territorial authorities to require that developments that happen in their own patch include a component of affordable housing or social housing is an important part.

My next suggestion is around the area of restrictive covenants. Another name for this bill could be the “Infrastructure (National Thinks It Is OK for Restrictive Covenants to Exist for Affordable Housing) Bill”. This was cloak-and-dagger stuff. The Minister went out and said the Government would get rid of that power for local authorities, but it would keep the provision on restrictive covenants because it agrees that they are wrong. He said he would just transfer it to another piece of legislation. We thought that was fair enough and at least there was a silver lining to this cloud. However, National members did not tell us that they had changed the wording of what they were transferring. The original wording in the existing Act deals with covenants on land, and these covenants affect all future landowners. It is an agreement between landowners. There are covenants that say there cannot be educational, health, social, or any of that kind of housing in those areas. National members did not say that they were removing housing affordability from that provision. We said in the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act that there could not be these restrictive covenants for social housing or for affordable housing. National took out the provision regarding affordable housing. They think that it is OK to have covenants against affordable housing.

Secondly, we said in that Act that if any purpose of a restrictive covenant was to stop social or affordable housing, then it was illegal. We said it could be any purpose because we were told by the Human Rights Commission that it had seen cases where developers were saying that the primary purpose of a covenant was amenity value, but that it also had an unintended consequence of stopping, for example, disabled access being added to the property. We closed that loophole in the law at the Local Government and Environment Committee and we said that if any purpose was to stop the building of social or affordable housing, then the covenant could not happen.

So this Government—and it did not tell people it was doing this—said that it was going to go back to the “principal purpose”. It created a huge loophole, just like it did with the 90-day bill. It thinks that as long as it does not tell people that it is discriminating against disabled people, elderly people, or poor people, it can do that. It is exactly like the Government’s rhetoric and its theories on the 90-day bill—that is, as long as people do not say that the reason they are firing someone is that person’s ethnicity or gender, it is OK. It is the same with restrictive covenants. As long as we do not tell people that the reason the covenant is in place is to stop disability housing, mental health housing, social housing, or affordable housing, and as long as some other principal reason is made up, such as that the developer wants all the houses to look a certain way, or whatever reason might be given—such as amenity value, or that it is to get the sun in certain ways; we have heard of a whole lot of reasons through the Human Rights Commission—then it is OK and we will be able to stop social and affordable housing from going in. A huge loophole is being opened up.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Utilities Access Bill, the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill, the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill, and the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 152.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.