Housing Legislation Amendment Bill

I am really pleased to see this new Part 3. I think there is no doubt that this is going to significantly strengthen what is a flawed and disappointing bill, based on the first two parts. Part 3 will really strengthen this bill. It is quite consistent with the goal of this bill, which is housing affordability and, particularly in this case, an increase in the supply of housing.

We made a number of criticisms in the first and second readings, especially when the Hon Dr Nick Smith was in the chair, about the limitations of the Government’s policy of special housing areas. It has yielded very few new homes in the 3 years since the Government legislated the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act. We have seen in Auckland—I think, in 3 years—only 1,300 new homes have been built in the special housing areas. It is highly debatable how many of those would not have been built if the Act had never been passed in the first place. At best we can say the special housing areas have perhaps brought forward some houses that would have been in the pipeline anyway.

The other big defect, of course, in this whole policy approach is that it has resulted in very few affordable homes, which, after all, is what people are so desperate for. We have seen in Auckland—Dr Smith was kind of pressured by Auckland Council and this Parliament into allowing a requirement for 10 percent of new dwellings in the special housing areas in Auckland to be required to be affordable. But we know, also, that in other parts of New Zealand where he negotiated housing accords he refused point-blank to allow a requirement for a certain percentage of affordable homes.

The approach that we see set out in Part 3 of this bill is a whole different approach to tackling this problem, and it recognises that we currently have a broken housing market. In fact—yesterday, I think—Dr Smith, Minister for Building and Housing, acknowledged to Newshub, I think it was, that he was willing to concede that the Auckland housing market is “out of control”. After 8 years in Government and after 3½ years as housing Minister, he has acknowledged not that there is a housing crisis but that the Auckland housing market is “out of control”. One of the ways it is out of control is that it is not delivering any affordable houses. Only about 5 percent, according to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister—only 5 percent of the new homes that are being built are affordable.

Part 3 of this bill, which I will dub the “KiwiBuild” part of this bill, would actually result in the construction of thousands and thousands of new, high-quality, affordable homes for first-home buyers. What this part does is it amends the Housing Corporation Act and says that the Minister for Building and Housing—for the moment let us assume that is the Hon Dr Nick Smith—must ensure that affordable housing is built—

💬 Grant Robertson: Not in about an hour.

—for the moment—that the Minister for Building and Housing must prepare a plan in consultation with the corporation for the delivery of 10,000 affordable houses per year for first-home buyers. This is the first decent housing policy that we have been able to debate in this House for many a day. For years—how many years?

💬 Hon Members: Eight long years.

For 8 long years we have had to come to this House and debate one inadequate, ad hoc, piecemeal, panicked housing policy after another. Finally, hallelujah, we get to debate a proper housing policy. It happens to be a housing policy that a majority of New Zealanders support, according to the most recent opinion polls. I think it was about 60 percent of New Zealanders who said they wanted to see a Government-backed building programme to deliver large numbers of high-quality affordable homes for first-home buyers. So, happy days. Our time has come.

Can I just start my contribution by doing something that I have not done yet in this debate. There has been some acrimony during the debate—it has been quite heated—so I want to take the opportunity to thank the Minister for Building and Housing for giving us the chance today to debate proposed Part 3 of this bill. Without him, we would not have had this chance today to debate this excellent proposed Part 3 put forward by my colleague Phil Twyford. We have not had the opportunity to debate a policy of this depth, and one that will make this much difference to the supply and affordability of housing in New Zealand, until today, so I want to thank the Minister for Building and Housing for bringing this omnibus bill to the House so that we can have this debate today.

I want to pick up my colleague Phil Twyford’s comments about what the Minister said yesterday, because the Minister did give an acknowledgment yesterday that the Auckland housing market was out of control on the one hand—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Did not.

—that’s exactly what it said—and then, on the other hand, that he had no plans to change his approach. They were the two options: yep, it is out of control, but the Minister has no plans to change his approach—a continuation of his head being placed deeply in the sand, unable to see that he might have an alternative. So today in proposed Part 3 we have that alternative for the Minister. We are answering his question, and it is the implementation of a measure that will actually build affordable housing. The Minister, when he came to the House yesterday, said that this bill was about improving the supply of housing and improving affordable housing. We reluctantly supported Part 1 as having a minuscule impact on that point of increasing supply and increasing affordable housing. Now here we are in proposed Part 3, where we are really doing it, with 10,000 affordable houses per year—10,000 affordable houses per year. Is this needed, Mr Chair, you may well ask? Well, it most certainly is, because we know that we are thousands of houses short of what is needed in Auckland and around the rest of the country.

A lot of the debate on this bill so far has focused on Auckland. I want to make the point that proposed Part 3 does not specify Auckland, and for a very good reason: there are other areas of New Zealand facing housing stress right now when it comes to affordable housing. This could apply in areas like Wellington, Tauranga, and Queenstown—the places that are really under stress at the moment in terms of whether or not there is affordable housing. So this is needed. We are around 40,000 houses short since National came into office, in terms of what is needed in Auckland for the pipeline of affordable housing. In this proposed Part 3, somebody is finally stepping up in this House and saying: “We’re going to put a number on it—10,000 houses per year.”

No doubt, should those members get off their chuffs and get up, we will hear the negativity from National telling us that it cannot do this and that we do not have the labour force. That party used to be ambitious for New Zealand, but that is all gone. It is all negativity. Well, here is the chance. They can recapture some of that ambition and back proposed Part 3—10,000 affordable houses.

But there is more. There is more in this proposed Part 3, because Phil Twyford has put this up not just with a pipedream of 10,000 houses but with a plan to do it. “Within six months of the completion of the plan required under subsection (1)” to build those 10,000 affordable houses, that copy will come back to this House. That is about democracy. That is about making sure that this House knows that this will happen. This is not just a Government coming here saying: “We’re going to have a special housing area and there might be some houses here and there might be some houses there.” This is an actual plan that will come before this Parliament. And then the Minister for Building and Housing—now, this might be a stretch for the current Minister, but we will see—“must ensure that all targets set out within the plan are met and report to the House of Representatives annually on its progress.”

So rather than the Minister’s current approach, which is to deny and divert—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Are you on Part 3?

I am on Part 3. I am reading it out, Gerry, actually.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Part 3?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Part 3—right here.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: We’re reading your proposal. You’re mixed up.

No, no, no. Part 3—right here.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: A little confused.

No, no. Part 3—right here, mate.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Someone give him the right bit of paper.

Part 3—right here. It is all good, Gerry. It is all on the amendment.

This is the problem with the Government: it does not understand. It does not understand that it actually takes Government leadership to get affordable housing. That is what Part 3 will deliver. The Government should back it. It has not done anything else that is useful in terms of affordable housing.

I welcome the opportunity to debate Part 3, which has been put forward by the Labour Opposition in a proposed amendment in the name of Phil Twyford on this bill, because it exposes for everybody to see what a bunch of flakes those members are when it comes to housing policy. What this bill says is that if we just simply pass a bill that says that 10,000 affordable houses will be built each year, whammo! Magically, it is going to happen! That is all you need to do. It is sort of like, you know, we could pass a bill through the House and say: “Let’s pass a bill that says everybody has a job. Let’s pass another bill: everybody be cured, and everybody be healthy.” That is the sum total intellectual grunt of the Labour Opposition—a magical, one-page amendment that is suddenly going to get 10,000 houses a year built. It is laughable.

What is so contradictory is that when we had the first part of this bill, which would actually have provided some land to build houses—oh, they are all opposed to that. They do not want us fast tracking the land planning process to get the houses built. Then when we come to say “Well, actually, we think we should use some vacant Crown land to build the houses”—oh, no, no, no, no. The Labour Party says you cannot do that. All you have got to do is magically pass this proposed Part 3, and you will get 10,000 homes built.

Here is some news for the Opposition: the number of new homes that are being built is growing at the fastest rate on record since 1922—

💬 Andrew Little: Half the rate of 1974.

—since 1922. No, no, let me just take Mr Little through it. In each of the last 4 years, Mr Little—each of the last 4 years—residential investment has grown by more than 20 percent per year. It grew by 20 percent in 2012, another 20 percent on top of that in 2013, another 20 percent in 2014, and then again in 2015. Here is a challenge for Mr Little: tell me 4 straight years ever in the last century that you have had more than 20 percent compound growth in residential construction. Tell me when ever.

💬 Andrew Little: 1974 to 1978.

He says 1974. Let us get the data—I have got it in front of me. In 1974, under the Kirk-Rowling Government, when inflation was running at 15 percent, and they offered mortgages at 3 percent, you had one year in which house building boomed, and then the country was paying the bills for it for the next 10 years. If Mr Little’s model is that of a failed Government, the 1972-75 Government, man, I want to be telling the electorate that, because the financial damage that was done at that time was a debacle. It was a 1-year boom, and it bust the following year.

What is different is that this is a sustainable housing programme. This is a programme that has seen growth year after year, 4 years in a row. Independent programmes show that in the next 3 years there will be record levels of building in Auckland, to the point that a city the size of Whangarei is being built in this term of Parliament, and in the next term of Parliament there will be another. Here is the problem: when it comes to Resource Management Act reform, the Labour Party is opposed. When it comes to offering first-home buyers the help in getting a deposit with HomeStart, they are opposed. When it comes to fast tracking a new unitary plan for Auckland—

💬 Phil Twyford: We voted for your HomeStart.

—they are opposed. When it comes to reform of the social housing sector, I actually do not know whether they are for or against, because one minute Mr Twyford is in favour, and the next minute he is against. Actually, every member of this Committee knows that Parts 1 and 2 of this bill will get more roofs over people’s heads. They will get more houses built. Actually, will I ask Sir Noel Robinson? Sir Noel Robinson says this bill is the difference between 500 houses being built in Papakura, or not—500 houses in Papakura.

💬 Phil Twyford: We voted for that one, Nick. We voted for that part of it.

No, actually, you voted against urgency and you voted against the introduction of this bill. Let it be plainly on the record that you blocked those. I say to members opposite that you cannot have a Wailing Wall of concern about people who are under stress on housing, and then come down to this Parliament and oppose every practical measure that we bring to get houses built; every practical measure, Mr Little, you have opposed. Mr Little and Mr Twyford are not interested in solutions. They are interested in playing the politics, getting the Wailing Wall of their inquiry, but when it actually comes to the measures that will get homes built, they are opposed. When you want to do things that will get houses built, they are opposed.

So I ask them this on this bill: why is it that the Auckland Council supports this bill, but the Labour Opposition does not? I hear from Labour all the time that we should be listening to local government. Why is it that Local Government New Zealand supports the extension of the special housing areas, but Labour and the Opposition parties do not—do not?

Actually, it is really strange—over the adjournment, Labour said “We are going to declare a state of emergency over housing.”, and then we come to the House and we say “Actually, there’s a really practical thing we can do to get 8,000 houses built, and we need to go into urgency to make sure those 8,000 houses are built.”, and what does it do? It opposes urgency. So can the next member speaking for Labour explain why they want a state of emergency declared on housing, but why they will not sit down and do the hard work in this Parliament and pass the bills that are necessary to get the houses built.

Whoo! Who got the Minister going again? We are now debating new Part 3, which is my colleague Phil Twyford’s amendment to the Housing Legislation Amendment Bill that proposes to ensure that there are 10,000 affordable houses per year planned for, and specifically for, first-time buyers. So that is affordable. Then our Minister for Building and Housing got up and talked about the Opposition members being flakes.

Gosh, Minister, we really need thousands of affordable homes. We need thousands of specifically affordable homes, not just your homes that you are planning to build that will then be available for speculators—because they are the only ones who can afford those homes—to be able to use for building business and capital for their own wealth, which also then gets passed on to renters, who will have to be the avenue for those speculators to recuperate their capital put-down.

That is what happens when you do not ensure affordable homes. Not only can ordinary New Zealanders not buy those homes, but renters are forced, more and more, to live in homes where speculators are able, in this current market, to charge enormous rents—rents that my colleagues Phil Twyford and Marama Fox and I heard at our homelessness inquiry are diminishing families, absolutely destroying families. There was never a more urgent time when we needed thousands of affordable homes.

The Minister has just stood up and declared in this Chamber that we cannot fix it. That is what he just said. He said that we cannot fix it and that we cannot have the vision of having affordable homes for our country, and he accused the Opposition members of being flakes for even suggesting the idea. That is what he just did in this Chamber, ladies and gentlemen and all genders. He just stood up and declared that we cannot have this vision—we just cannot. That is this Government, ladies and gentlemen. We just cannot have this vision of the thousands of affordable homes that this country needs.

We need them. Take all your resources, Government, take your special knowledgable people and work it out, have a plan—that is what new Part 3 is talking about. Come up with a plan. I do not want to hear about however many houses are being built now compared with whatever other time. You should have come and sat at the table at the inquiry, looked those submitters in the eye, and had a profound understanding that we need thousands of affordable homes. This Government can do it but it is choosing not to, and that is having an impact on the everyday lives of our people—our own people. Children, the elderly, families, and single people across the board need us to have that vision for our country.

New Part 3 is asking for a plan—a plan to ensure that the Government will do it, because the private developers will not want to, and they have not. That is why the current bill that we are debating is even in this House, because the developers are not going to provide affordable homes. The Government has to. If it had any profound connection to our communities, it would understand this, and it would instead get up and declare: “We can fix this. We can provide thousands of affordable homes because our people need them and it will get worse if we don’t. We will gather our resources, our technology, and our expertise and we will sit down and work out a plan.” That is all that this new Part 3 is asking to do. At least have that ambition for our families, Mr Minister. At least declare that you want to end homelessness and that you have a vision for every person in this country to have a warm, safe, and affordable home.

That is the vision that our country is wanting, and do you know who else had this vision? I will tell you. It was your own Prime Minister. In a debate in, I think, 2008 with the Rt Hon Helen Clark, he was asked: “How do you define ‘rich’?”. The now Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, replied: “Where a family can go to sleep every night in a bed, without having to worry about money.” Who does he think deserves that security? Who does the Prime Minister now see that vision is for? That is the definition of “rich” that he gave, back in 2008, but who does he think deserves even to go to sleep in a bed every night, let alone not have to worry about money?

Not all of our people are going to sleep in a bed every night, and if they are, that bed might change the next night. This new Part 3 of the bill is an incredible part of the journey to change that, Minister, and you have just stood up in this Chamber and said that we cannot do it. Your Government has just declared that you cannot fix this.

Well, I am glad that the Greens have a plan to. I hear that Labour has a plan to. We are the people who need to be in Government so that we can fulfil our vision for New Zealanders to absolutely not have to go to sleep at night in their beds worrying about money. That is what we heard in the inquiry, and that is being reflected in the poll result that my colleague Phil Twyford referred to earlier, where even New Zealanders who are not experiencing homelessness themselves right now understand that it is wrong—60 percent understand that this is not cool. This is not cool, Minister.

Our country can do better. We have our people as our wealth. That is our richness, and we are not protecting them. This new Part 3 of the bill, from my colleague Phil Twyford, is an incredible step in that direction. Where is your aspiration for our people? Thank you.

I just want to make a couple of comments about the speech we have just heard from Marama Davidson. It was delivered in a loud, tub-thumping style that relied heavily on what was supposed to be an emotional plea to consider the proposed part that has been put forward by the Labour Party. The first question I would ask is does that member bother to look at the processes that are available—through the select committees and the question facilities available to members—to actually find out how many houses are being built in New Zealand at the present time, to notice what is the increase in the number of houses being built in New Zealand, and to understand how many houses the Government is actually building in New Zealand, over and above the private sector? And then, has she thought for a moment to consider why it is that developers are building houses that people apparently cannot afford? Developers do not do that. They build houses that people can afford. If they are in an upper price bracket, that frees up others in the market. That is how markets work.

But it is not at all how the Green Party thinks. The reality is that when the calls are coming to “get a plan”, it is really saying: “We love sitting in a windowless building, listening to the misery of people, and pretending that we care.” Because that is what it is—pretending. Anyone who votes against this bill today is just pretending that they care about people. Opposition members love the opportunity to get in front of the television and say “Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it terrible?”, but they will not do a single thing to make it move.

The speech offering from Dr Nick Smith was absolutely right. Every initiative that the Government has put forward to advance more housing being available on an affordable basis for more New Zealanders has been opposed by all of the Opposition parties—all of them. I think that it would be worthwhile for the Minister in the chair, Dr Nick Smith, to reiterate all of the facts that were in his contribution before, in the hope that they might sink in. The reality here is that no plan—no plan—around housing can be delivered without the land, and this bill is about making the land available. Everyone knows that if it is available, it will be built on. If it is available, it will be built on.

I just want to say to those people who get all excited about the average house price in Auckland—they all say: “Isn’t it terrible? It’s hit $1 million.” Well, those people need to consider what averages are. They need to go and have a look at TradeMe, they need to go and have a look at New Zealand real estate—

💬 Chris Hipkins: Let them eat cake—let them eat cake.

—and actually have a look at where the vast majority of houses and the prices on them sit. The reality is—I know that Mr Hipkins was absent last night. I cannot say he was absent from the House, but he was actually in the vicinity of Parliament watching the Auckland housewives programme. He was telling me about that this morning. He was fascinated that one of them was considering buying a $7 million property and saying it would be lovely for their family. That is not reality; that is somebody else’s dream. But that house will sell at that price and it will affect the average that is paid for an Auckland house.

It does not, though, reflect the average aspirations of people who simply want to live in a house, or what they can afford to pay and what is available to them in the market. So for all the impassioned pleas that we got from the member earlier saying “Please, sit in a room, join with all the best brains,”—apparently they are all in the Opposition—“and come up with a plan for sorting out affordable housing.”, without the land, that is not possible. This bill is about making that land available.

I also take issue with the commentary from Phil Twyford.

💬 Phil Twyford: On or by?

No—well, by. I can understand why he would take issue with the commentary on him, but I want to assure him that I do not listen to too much of that. I think he is one of the better-performing members of the Labour Party. He deserves his place on the front bench and, in that regard, he is a shining light among what is a pretty dark offering, or—that is not fair either—a dim offering. When he talks about the fact that Labour supports initiatives to increase housing in New Zealand and to increase the amount of affordable housing in New Zealand, his argument—

I understand why the Hon Gerry Brownlee is so dismissive of averages, because that was a below average performance, the likes of which we have not seen for a long, long time in what has otherwise been a scintillating political career.

I want to respond to some of the assertions made by the Minister in the chair, Nick Smith, who, in typical National style, has heralded the great, bounteous virtues of its excessive building programme, claiming to have stated facts, but there was not a fact amongst them. The reality is that when you look at the house-build programme at the moment, it is below the number of houses that were consented in 2004. Last year there were 9,651 houses consented, compared with over 12,000 in 2004—so much for the biggest building programme ever in the history of New Zealand.

But here is the telling figure. Here is the telling figure. If you have a look at the build rate per 1,000 people in New Zealand—because, let us face it, when you have got a bigger population, of course you should be building more houses. We have got more people and we have got a rapidly growing population. We have got to build even more houses. But if you have a look at the number per 1,000 people, sure, it is 6.3 in the past year, compared with 13.1 in 1974.

The Minister dismisses those figures and says “Oh, but look at interest rates in 1974.” Well, actually, a lot of those people were building houses under the State Advances Corporation rate of 3 percent. And then he says inflation was much higher. But hold on. We have got record low inflation right now, as measured by the CPI, we have got record low interest rates, and people still cannot afford to buy their first home. That is the truth about New Zealand today.

Unaffordability of housing has never been worse or greater or better—however you look at it. Here is the thing: a lot of people cannot buy their own home. That is what is happening in New Zealand today. And if you are living in Auckland—and Gerry Brownlee might be dismissive of the $1 million home. He sort of says “Well, just because on this day somebody pays $7 million for a house it doesn’t mean to say that a house down the road is worth as much.”

I do not know whether he understands things about property markets, because that does not make sense. What is happening right now is that in Auckland, and in other cities around New Zealand, thousands and thousands of New Zealanders—people who live here; some of whom have been born here, others who have come here to live—cannot afford to buy their own home because the prices are out of reach and the banks are clamping down on lending. The people trying to get the houses are working harder and harder, and saving harder and harder, and they still cannot afford to buy their own home. If they are lucky to have rich parents who can back them and bail them out, they might get their home. You hear the stories of young couples with mortgages of $800,000, $900,000, a million bucks. They are in their 30s, and they are on salaries of 60,000, 70,000, or 80,000 bucks. They have a pretty tough time. They are terrified that one of them might lose their job. They are terrified that something might change their circumstances and they will be out on the street. That is the reality for far too many people today.

And then there are those in other parts of Auckland City and other parts of the country who want much more modest housing and who simply cannot get it, or whose incomes are so low they are dependent on renting, and the rents have gone sky high and they cannot even afford to rent. That is why Part 3 of this bill is so vital. It is part of the endless supply of ideas that the Labour Party has to come up with in answer to the housing crisis.

The Minister scoffs at the call to have emergency powers or to declare a state of emergency on housing. It is a crisis. We are in a housing crisis. We can do better. The miserable kinds of millimetre-by-millimetre measures that this Minister is taking are simply not good enough. They are not helping enough people in a timely enough fashion. We have to do better. Part 3, with its promise of a Minister having to prepare a plan for 10,000 houses each year, is just the start of the comprehensive package and the endless supply of constructive and positive ideas that the Labour Party has. That is why we did support the special housing area amendment, which we have just voted on, and we will support any constructive measures that will get more houses built and more New Zealanders into their own home.

New Zealand First will vote in favour of proposed Part 3 of the bill, as tabled by the Labour Party, and will do so with considerable enthusiasm because it deals with developments and the development of affordable houses. The Minister for Building and Housing does not seem to understand this, and Gerry Brownlee especially does not understand it—that this is what people want, and it is not what they are getting under this Government. This proposed Part 3 is completely consistent with New Zealand First policy, in contrast with National’s vacuous claim that it has a comprehensive housing strategy when, in fact, it has none—just a litany of failed policies, including the special housing areas, which have delivered only 1,300 houses over the last 3 years. All of that shows that this National Government is just a bunch of dead-heads, do-nothings, and dripping dipsticks when it comes to housing.

This new part is, instead, exactly what this country needs—exactly that this country needs.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Double the number of houses by doubling the number of letterboxes!

What this country does not need is a Minister like the failed Gerry Brownlee, in every portfolio that he has got. What New Zealand First wants is a housing commission. We want a housing commission reporting to this house so that it can carry out the long-term strategic planning that has never really happened for housing in this country. We want to see that happen, well-resourced with people who know what they are doing, who are out of the political arena, and who can do it objectively and effectively. We also want that body to establish a company, which we call “Kiwi Housing”, and we would want that company to buy developed land, sell it on easy terms, or sell already-built houses to the public. That is exactly what we want the Government to do, and we want that to happen because we know that the private development market in this country cannot cope with the current situation. It has not been able to cope for the last several years, yet this Government says: “Let’s hand more and more of the responsibility for that over to them.” That is all it is doing—nothing more. That is absolutely not enough.

What New Zealand First targets as housing, for the whole of New Zealand but especially for Auckland, is 20,000 houses per year. I am not just doing one-upmanship over the Labour Party; this is based on my reading of what is required under the Auckland Unitary Plan. Over 7 years that would amount to 140,000 houses, and the Auckland Unitary Plan indicates that that is the scale of housing that is actually required. A target of 20,000 houses a year by the Government, with direct Government investment, is actually completely achievable. That Minister in the chair, Nick Smith, does not think so. That is because he is not capable of it and neither is his whole Government, but anyone with any ability and any determination and the right approach to housing would be capable of it.

When I look at the last part of this proposed Part 3, I can see that it does some very important things in terms of what it is about, and that is to ensure that houses are affordable. I am not going to get into the argument about how you define affordability because all we need to do is ensure that the new entities I have spoken of would ensure that houses actually get built, effectively by the Government and by direct investment in homes, and in homes that are on modest-sized sections—modest-sized homes—and for, therefore, modest prices. Not only that, there need to be mechanisms for people to be able to buy those homes directly on easy terms. That is also in New Zealand First’s policy, and it should be the sort of thing that we would see happen under the provisions for proposed new section 50U, “Corporation to manage affordable housing development”, under this proposed new part of this bill.

Other parties do have comprehensive and actually effective housing plans and strategies, which this Government does not have. That Minister, the “Minister of Homelessness” in this country, should step down, and the whole Government should get out of Government in this country and let others do what we can do.

We now have a bid-up on the flaky, one-page policy from the Labour Party, which says, with a one-page amendment, we will magically build 10,000 affordable houses per year—we have got the New Zealand First policy. The New Zealand First policy is that we just put a one-page amendment and we magic the number—let us do 20,000 houses per year, with a one-page amendment—and, magically, we have suddenly built the houses.

The very first point is—because I know there are colleagues on the Opposition benches incapable of reading, so I have done a really simple graph. This is the level of residential investment, in inflation-adjusted terms, of about the last 25 years—25 years—and what it shows—

💬 Hon Annette King: What’s the source?

—is that over the last—oh, the member says: “What’s the source?”. The source is Statistics New Zealand, and it records the level of residential housing investment—and guess what? It shows that over the last 5 years there has been the biggest increase—20 percent growth every year, for 5 years—in the amount of new home construction and residential investment in New Zealand. But I can do even better than that—I have got the figures all the way back to 1922. So I have another challenge: tell me the years—and I say it to New Zealand First, I say it to the Green Party, I say it to the Labour Party—tell me 4 years any time in New Zealand’s history in which there have been faster real increases in the level of housing investment.

I have got another lovely graph that I would like to share with the House, and this is a graph—just for the excitable members of the Labour Party—that shows the level of ratio of house prices to average earnings. Again, this is prepared by Statistics New Zealand. What it shows is that in 1999 the ratio of house price to income in New Zealand was 4:1—4:1 in 1999. Members will know there was a huge deterioration—see, the graph leaps up. Things completely went to custard—and what years were those? That was from 2003 to 2008. The ratio went from 4 to 8. My question is this: what Labour housing legislation did we have between 2004 and 2008? Zero—not a single bill. We had the worst deterioration in New Zealand history and you did absolutely nothing, and then between now and 2016, that ratio has not moved. So I say to Labour members: shame on you. The worst deterioration occurred in housing affordability, and they did absolutely nothing. Over the last 4 years we have seen the strongest growth in residential construction ever.

Here is the last point I would like to make: this magical amendment says that you can build 10,000 houses every year. I have got a lovely quote here from Mr David Parker from the 2014 election campaign. He said this: “It would not be possible to build 10,000 houses in our first year, nor our second year or third”—

💬 Hon David Parker: Oh, rubbish.

That is what you said. In fact, you said: “it would take us 5 years to ramp it up to 10,000 homes per year.” That is what he said—but do you know what?

💬 Hon Annette King: Come on, sunshine—what’ve you done?

I will tell you what we have done: when we came to Government, New Zealand was building 13,000 houses a year, and that number is now 29,000 per year.

I seek leave to present some statistical information, which I will shortly acquire from the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Can I ask the member whether it is material that is otherwise publicly available?

Well, it will very soon be available on the Hansard record, and I would advise anybody interested to read it there.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, no. Can the member just answer the question—

That would be publicly available.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is publicly available. Then I am not going to put the leave to the Committee, based on the precedents from my predecessors in the Chair. Has the Minister finished?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I think, on that basis, the next speaker had better be the Hon David Parker.

The point I was making before the election, of course, is that KiwiBuild, in addition to all of the houses that are currently being built by the private sector, would add to supply. Of course it would not add to supply overnight, because you have got to issue contracts and you have got to get planning consents. We promised that we would build 100,000 extra affordable houses over a 10-year period. The Minister for Building and Housing, in the last day or so, with Paul Henry, admitted that the Auckland housing market is out of control—the first time that he has admitted that there is a crisis, but he still will not use the word.

I heard our colleague from New Zealand First describe him as the “Minister of Homelessness”. I prefer the alliteration of the new term that has been devised in this debate, which is the “Minister of Houselessness”. I think that is going to stick. Minister, why is it that we are bringing forward all of these credible additions to housing policy to fix this problem? It is because we do have a state of emergency. We have got the lowest rate of homeownership since the 1950s, and it is still going down. We used to have higher rates of homeownership than Australia; now we have got lower rates of homeownership than Australia. The average house price in Auckland has risen to $1 million, and the median has gone up too. We have got people living in garages, in cars, on the streets—

💬 Andrew Little: Under bushes.

—under bushes, and under bridges. We have got homelessness in numbers that we have never seen, ever in the history of New Zealand. We have got economic consequences that are going beyond the housing market and into the rest of the economy, where exports are down and speculation is up. We have got people having to spend far too much on housing, and they are not investing enough in the real economy, which is where jobs and higher incomes come from.

We have got Reserve Bank policy now ineffective because the banks are not passing on interest rate cuts. The banks are saying that prices are parlously high, and they are worried that if they drop interest rates they will feed the bubble and make things worse. In the midst of all that, we have the “Minister of Houselessness”. Cartoons in the last day have shown that he has not got the screen appeal of Agent 86, but the Maxwell Smart of National does seem to be embarking on operations for KAOS rather than for the Government.

We have heard from the Minister who has just sat in the chair, Gerry Brownlee. His answer to New Zealand when he said that these higher prices do not matter was: “New Zealanders, follow my example; eat cake.” We have had the saboteur from National come forward with a policy that says that we need an omnibus bill. Why did the Government do that? It wanted to whack through, under urgency, changes to the long-established principles under the Public Works Act that people, as part of their rights if they have a property taken off them compulsorily, should actually have it offered back to them in some circumstances. It wanted to change that rule of decades to preserve it for a subset of the population, which is Māoridom, but for non-Māori rights holders, in respect of land previously compulsorily acquired and then disposed of, it did not want to confer that old right.

So what did the Government do? It had this clever idea of an omnibus bill. The Speaker ruled that in order for that to be justified, this has to be a wide debate. So, as a consequence, it has offered the Labour Party the ability to put forward comprehensive housing policy as to how we would fix this housing crisis, which brings me to Part 3. Mr Chairman, you will hear other parts, I am sure, relating to some of the other matters that the Minister in the chair, Gerry Brownlee, raised recently, relating to the need for Resource Management Act reform, and we have got some ideas around urban boundaries that we have already announced and will be discussing later in this debate. But this one is actually getting the Building and Housing Group, through the Minister for Building and Housing, to bring forward a plan for affordable housing. You know, of the 1,300 houses that have been built in these affordable housing areas, fewer than 150 of them have been affordable, but we need tens of thousands of affordable houses, and 150 from this failed special housing area shows we need this plan.

The reason why new Part 3 is such an anathema to the Government is that it lists, in this first clause, everything that the National Government is not doing. But, first of all, let me just address a couple of things that the Hon Gerry Brownlee said.

What Gerry Brownlee did was he highlighted the major difference between the National Government and a Labour Government. Mr Brownlee believes that the market will deliver optimal outcomes, always. So you leave it to the market, the Government does not have to do anything, and away you go—you will get optimal outcomes. A Labour Government believes the Government actually has a role in providing the settings and the regulation and an environment where citizens actually can do well, and when markets are not working, then the Government must step in. And this is why new Part 3 of the bill actually delivers for Kiwis. It is Labour’s attempt—it is Labour’s solution; it is its plan—to say: “Do you know what? At this point in time the market isn’t working. The Government has a very important role to play, and this is a plan.”

Let me go through new section 50T(1) in new clause 12 and highlight the words that actually make this work. The first one is “must”—“The Minister of Housing must”. It is not “may”. It does not denote any sort of voluntary, subjective actions; it says that the housing Minister “must” do something.

Let us use this in an ordinary context. “He must turn up or else he will be in serious trouble.”—it is “must”. Throughout this bill that we are debating at the moment, there are a whole lot of “mays” and this sort of stuff, which means that the Minister might do something if he feels like it.

The second word is “prepare”. What “prepare” actually means is you have got to do some serious work—not ad hoc, not get a bill and rush it through under urgency, not sort of hoodwink the people, but you have got to do some serious work. So the housing Minister “must prepare”.

The next words are “a plan”. “A plan” means you have actually got to have something that you can deliver. Again, it is about work, but it is also about putting a vision out there—something that you can take to the public that they can take hold of and believe in.

So what we have got so far is that the housing Minister must prepare a plan. Now, here is the big word: “in consultation”. What “consultation” actually means is sitting down and understanding the issues from the people who really know what is happening. It means really getting a grip with those who are going to have to deliver them, those who will end up benefiting from them, and those who have got to end up making the laws. Rushing legislation through Parliament under urgency is not about consultation.

Doing what Nick Smith is doing at the moment without consultation is not good law, and that is why, yet again, we are back here. You know, I have been back for, what, 18 months, and it seems that the majority of the bills that I have been speaking on are remedial bills that are amendments to sort out a bill that was passed 1, 2, or maybe 3 years ago. It is just really sloppy, because I do not think that the level of consultation has been strong enough or robust enough to actually come up with good law in the first instance.

The fifth word that I want to highlight is actually “delivery”. “Delivery” actually means achieving results—not talking about it, not saying “We will do this.”, but actually achieving it.

Let us put this in ordinary usage—for example: “He delivered on his promises.” That means that what he did is he came through with what he said that he would do.

The sixth term is “10,000”—“10,000” sounds pretty simple. It is 100 times 100, or 10 times 1,000. It is not 1,300 into 70,000. It is actually a defined target that we will meet. It sends it out there, and it is a promise that we will deliver on—10,000. People understand it, and it will make a difference.

The seventh word I want to talk about is “affordable”. The definition of “affordable” has been talked about for the last 24 hours in this Chamber, but “affordable” is not over $500,000. “Affordable” means that people have a realistic chance of actually getting into the market. They know that they can have an aspiration, they can have a dream, and they can have something to look forward to because they know it is achievable. “Affordable” means that New Zealanders can have a chance.

And the final one is “first home buyers.” I am not talking about speculators; I am not talking about overseas investors. So when you add this up, it says: “The Minister of Housing must prepare a plan in consultation … for the delivery of 10,000 affordable houses per year for first home buyers.”

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I am delighted to see some passion in this Chamber. Unlike Minister Brownlee, passion is what this is about. Nick Smith showed enormous passion. Passion for development, passion for investment, passion for speculation, passion for business as usual, passion for ignoring Part 3, which is proposed in an excellent amendment from the Labour Party, which has given us something to hope for and hold on to in this ridiculous debate, which, prior to that, was about nothing useful at all. So if people want to dis members of Parliament for being passionate, they better not go out there on the street—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: They better not!

They better not go—

💬 Hon Member: Don’t show passion!

Do not go out there and tell people to not be passionate. If you are sleeping in your car and you wake up in the middle of the night, the person is passionate to have a home. And how does it go down in the Chamber? “Don’t get passionate, Marama Davidson. Don’t show any feelings. This isn’t about feelings. Let’s get some graphs instead. You cannot build a house out of a graph, but if we get up a whole lot of graphs, it will look like we’re doing something.” Fail, fail, double fail.

I want to just congratulate the Labour Party on actually having a plan, because we have been fighting about housing in this House for a few years, and the Labour Party has got a plan that we can all buy into because it has got specific targets for actually doing something for people. The homelessness inquiry backs up what this plan talks about. The homelessness inquiry backs up the need for passion. What makes change is passion; it is not graphs, people. Nobody gets passionate about a graph except people who do not understand what passion is.

💬 Marama Davidson: Or connection.

Passion and connection are the most important things for families who feel like they are being ignored by this Government.

It is a bit like swimmable rivers—the same Minister says we cannot have swimmable rivers because it is all about birds. This same Minister is talking about housing, “We can’t have affordable housing because”—dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. “The graph says everything’s OK.” It is all about “no”, it is all about “not”, and it is all about “won’t”.

Let us get on to Part 3, because this is about something constructive, and I want to tautoko the comments of the previous speaker, Stuart Nash, who looked at the language. Language is important. Language is critical. The language that he referred to is very, very important. It is really important that there are dates in this Part 3 amendment. It is really important that it says: “Within six months of the completion of the plan … the Minister must present a copy of the approved plan to the House of Representatives.” Wow, that sounds a little bit real—6 months!

If you are living in a car, 6 months seems like quite a long time to wait, but I think people understand that; if there is a plan they would be prepared to hold on. They would be prepared—as have Te Puea Marae, Manurewa Marae, and all the marae—to say there needs to be a plan, and that they are working towards a plan. But this bill, this ain’t a plan. Except for this part, this bill ain’t a plan. Well, it is if you are passionate about investment, if you are passionate about speculation, if you are passionate about taking away land that belongs to Māori, if you are passionate about looking like you are doing something when you are really not doing something—yup, it is a plan for that. But it is not a plan for people who are homeless, not a plan for first-home buyers.

What I like about this plan is that it acknowledges—and I said this last night when I talked about the State Advances Corporation and the ability that we had in my day. Not that it is over; I am still passionate, obviously. In my day, you could get a home as a first-home buyer and start your life. That is what this part actually says—it says you can do those things: “Ensure that the houses are sold to first home buyers and are not used for speculation;”. Oh my goodness, a rule about speculation! Praise the goddess, somebody cares.

I do not want to hear from a Minister of the Crown in any Government that it is faux emotional to give a damn about homelessness, about houses being inaccessible and unaffordable. If the Government has completely lost touch, that is one thing, but we have not. The people on this side of the Chamber, we are prepared to do something. We just want to do something, because if we do not do something, the fabric of our society means that everyone will sleep badly. The rich will sleep badly inside their speculator-driven, investment-rich barbed wire fences and, on the outside, the poor in their cars and garages will sleep badly as well. So we need to stand up for this.

Earlier, the Hon Annette King asked the Minister where the regulatory impact statement for Part 2 was. The Minister responded by saying that we should take his word for it—that nothing untoward would happen—and the image that came to mind was President Richard Nixon when he said: “I am not a crook. I am not a crook.” We all know what happened to him.

Later on, the Minister came down to this Chamber and showed some graphs to show how good a job he has been doing, trying to tell us that the supply of housing has increased under his ministership. But I have to say, he was so animated in that contribution that all I could see was the image of somebody that needs to be in a straitjacket and not have anything to do with housing—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, no. The member will resume his seat. I think the member has gone a little bit far there, and he should be more restrained in his comments.

The Minister asked this Committee to explain why there is a need for a state of emergency on housing. I want to spend a bit of time talking about that, because, despite those graphs, we have today the average price of housing in Auckland at $1 million. Why is that? Because there is a short supply of housing—a short supply of housing—and we have an increasing population. Today, as of last year, we have the highest population increase since 1974.

The Minister, I believe, is wrong when he brings those graphs down and says that he has been doing a good job. The only reason house prices are, on average, over $1 million in Auckland is because the Government has not done its job in increasing housing supply. Why is it that since this Government came into power, homelessness—people living in cars—has increased by 20 percent? That is why we are calling for a state of emergency. Why is it that today we have 42,000 people living in cars, living in overcrowded conditions?

Part 2—and I have heard Gerry Brownlee say this is about increasing the number of affordable houses. I do not understand how Part 2, which is about removing the rights of people, is going to be able—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): We are debating Part 3.

—to increase the supply of affordable housing.

Part 3, however, is what ought to be happening. This is the part that discusses the exact number of houses that should be a target. Part 3 is about having a plan to increase supply. Nothing in Part 1 or Part 2 suggests that the supply of housing will increase, so this is what needs to happen. The Minister says that his Government is doing all it can, but the reality is that unless it addresses the supply of housing, unless it cracks down on foreign speculators, unless it changes what the real purpose of Housing New Zealand ought to be, none of that will happen.

The purpose of Housing New Zealand, from the outset, was about helping people in need. Those members have changed that, and today it is because of that that we are seeing an increasing number of people in homeless situations. The only way that this Government can address that, if it is sincere about it, is increasing the number of houses—not only in the private sector, but also in the social sector. But how can those members do that when it is their policy to sell off State houses? How can they increase that supply for those in need if they are selling State housing into the private sector? Those are the conflicting aims of what they are proposing, as opposed to what we are introducing here in Part 3.

Unless houses are built, unless houses are affordable, the rest of New Zealand will not be able to buy into the market. At the moment, with the average price of houses in Auckland, it is only the top 10 percent of income earners who can afford houses at those prices. But the top 10 percent of income earners will not be buying houses for themselves. They already have houses, so if they are in the market, it is because they are in the speculative market. The only way that somebody on an average income of $60,000 can afford a house is if housing is made more affordable, and we can do that only by increasing supply.

I would like to speak to the new clause 12 in new Part 3, and I want to acknowledge my colleague Phil Twyford for putting forward this extremely important part of this legislation. But I do have a concern about it because section 50T(1), in new Part 5B in new clause 12, says: “The Minister of Housing must prepare a plan in consultation with the Corporation …”. I also want to pay homage to my colleague Stuart Nash and thank him for breaking down some of the language around some of the functions that we want to achieve with this new Part 3, but I have serious concerns about its achievability with the current Minister for Building and Housing. That is the point that I would like to make.

If we are asking the current Minister of housing to prepare a plan, we would want a Minister of housing to have experience of preparing a plan, and from what I have seen of Minister Nick Smith in the period that he has been the Minister for Building and Housing, I would say that all of his policy interventions have been, to use a word I do not use a lot, extemporaneous—that is, without prior planning or thought or preparation. What we have seen from the Minister in the past 4½ years, I think it is, of his being the Minister for Building and Housing really has been shambolic. The fact that we are here in urgency extending one of those pieces of legislation points out to me that the Minister has not been experienced or well versed, and he has not had any success in preparing a plan and executing it.

We also do not think that we have any chance of the current Minister of housing delivering 10,000 affordable houses. So what really needs to happen for new section 50T(1)—which is amending the Housing Corporation Act 1974—to be really, practically, put into place is, essentially, a change of Government. If we want someone to act as the Minister of housing and “prepare a plan in consultation”—and we have not seen a lot of that with this Minister, or with the other Ministers of housing, I believe, also. The lack of consultation the day before Budget day showed how much consultation goes on within those three.

There is a lack of consultation in the ability for the current Government to provide 10,000 affordable houses per year for first-home buyers. So this amendment does set to put in a policy that will help address the housing crisis, and if the Government is true to its form—Mr Nick Smith has got on his feet many times and said that we are not serious about building more affordable homes for New Zealand. Well, if Government members are serious about that, then they should, and they could, support our new Part 3. I am not holding my breath, because of the track record of the current Minister for Building and Housing. So although I think it is a great amendment to the Housing Corporation Act 1974, if we are going to really effect it, then for at least the next 12 months I think the Government should consider changing the personnel, because it simply is not going to happen with Nick Smith in the seat.

Then, after the next election, new Part 3 will become much more functional, because Phil Twyford will be the Minister of housing and we will make things happen. We will get affordable housing into Auckland, especially, and into other areas of New Zealand that need it. And it is not just Auckland where affordable housing is needed. It is needed in Wellington, it is needed in areas like Rotorua and Tauranga, and it is needed in some areas in the South Island. Then, finally, the amendment that is being put forward by Phil Twyford—new clause 12 in this amendment, which would insert this new Part 5B into the Housing Corporation Act—will actually be able to achieve something. That is something that this Government has been woefully short of trying to achieve in its last 8 years.

Mr Assistant Chairman, thank you very much indeed for giving me the call today. I want to address a couple of points that the Minister for Building and Housing raised in his contribution around the question of affordability of housing and the need for new Part 3, because he really was questioning whether or not there was a need for this and perhaps the Minister in the chair now, the Hon Judith Collins, might like to respond. He raised a couple of graphs with statistics up in front of the Committee that it was felt we needed to know about. Well, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that he has made international headlines today. It is a huge moment in Nick Smith’s political career. He has made the headlines in the United Kingdom. I will just read you the first paragraph from an article in the Guardian today: “New Zealand has the world’s most frenetic property market, with prices in Auckland now outstripping London, and possibly dashing the hopes of British buyers hoping to escape Brexit.” So Nick Smith is now causing a crisis and chaos not only in New Zealand but also in the United Kingdom. He has gone global with his chaotic ways.

What the rest of this article goes on to tell us is that New Zealand has actually managed to be awarded a silver medal, which has been upgraded to a gold medal by Knight Frank, which has put together international house price rises around the world—a comparative graph. If you do it without looking at it in real terms, Turkey tops the list with a 13.9 percent price increase, New Zealand is second with 11.2 percent—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Get back to the part—relevance.

—but if you put it into real terms, it is a gold medal - winning performance from Gerry Brownlee and the National Government. The “relevance” from Gerry—the relevance question. This is about affordable housing, and the world is telling Gerry Brownlee that New Zealand is getting to be the most unaffordable place in the world for housing.

I do have to have a caveat. That was today’s news when we got the gold medal. Yesterday we got the information from the OECD that New Zealand has the second most over-valued housing market compared with rents and the second most over-valued housing market compared with incomes. So it is silver medal winning there, but gold medal winning in the latest numbers from Knight Frank, which is why the Minister was wrong in his intervention when he said everything was fine and nothing needed to change, because he has got a contradiction going on here. This is that on the one hand he is telling Newshub today that the Auckland housing situation is out of control but on the other he is saying that nothing needs to change. This is what needs to change: new Part 3 of the bill.

Throughout this debate, whenever we have managed to pry a National member or Minister off their seat to get up and talk to us, they have told us that although they understand all these problems they do not need to do anything different. Well, it is indeed the definition of madness to keep doing the same thing and expect the outcomes to change, and that is the problem with this bill. We have just had a sigh from the Minister in the chair and I do feel sorry for her, having to sit there now, because Nick Smith’s housing policy is so chaotic, so out of control that the Government had to bring a bill here to correct various mistakes he has made and open up the opportunity to actually have a debate about things that will make a difference to the supply and affordability of housing. New Part 3 does that. The Minister who was in the chair, Nick Smith, came down to this Chamber and tried to deny the reason for this. It is plain to all of us on this side of the Chamber that new Part 3 fulfils that.

I want to now go through new section 50U(2) to talk about the elements of what this kind of affordable housing development would look like. In particular, I want to talk about the notion of the importance of houses being sold to first-home buyers and not used for speculation, because that is the big difference between new Part 3 and Part 1 of this bill. Part 1 of this bill is the National Government’s view on how one does this, which is that you simply create these special housing areas and hope—hope for the best, hope that some form of affordable housing might actually be delivered in there. You do not do anything to make that happen. You do not show any leadership. You do not recognise that there is market failure. You just hope and have faith in the great, grand housing market to deliver affordable housing. It is not working, it is not happening, and that is why new Part 3 is necessary.

In the spirit of generosity, I seek leave for there to be question time at 2 p.m. today, notwithstanding urgency, and for there to be a third reading of the Housing Legislation Amendment Bill to be taken from 4 p.m. today, and at its conclusion the House resume with Government orders of the day.

Is there any objection to that suggestion? There is objection. [Interruption] The Committee does not agree.

I am not surprised that Government members want to cut this debate short, but I thank them for this opportunity to bring forward the Labour Party’s comprehensive plan to deal with the housing crisis. Although they may not have any ideas for how to deal with the significant issues facing New Zealand, we do and we welcome this opportunity to debate them. I particularly welcome this opportunity to debate Phil Twyford’s amendments.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am just going to interrupt the member because we are coming up to 1 o’clock and I do want to indicate that I was convinced by the Leader of the House to do something that was improper. I want to apologise to the Committee. I should not have put that leave, because it is leave that could have been taken only in the House and not in the Committee. The time now is to have some kai. I will resume the Committee at 2 o’clock.

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

I was barely getting started when I was so impertinently interrupted by the lunchtime break. I want to commend, and congratulate, my colleague Phil Twyford for the excellent amendment that he has put forward that provides a concrete solution to some of the housing challenges that New Zealand faces.

The amendment that Phil Twyford has put forward is the first part in what will be a comprehensive plan by the Labour Party to deal with the housing crisis in a way that the Government has failed to do, and we thank it for at least giving us this blank canvas, this opportunity—this opportunity—to deal with the crisis that it has created and does not have any solutions to fix it.

So, moving to this particular amendment that my colleague Phil Twyford has put forward, which requires the housing Minister, with the Housing New Zealand Corporation, to develop a plan for the delivery of 10,000 affordable houses per year for first-home buyers, I want to speak first of all to a minor amendment that I have added to that, which would insert the word “new” after “10,000” in new section 50T proposed in new clause 12. That is very important because we have several thousand State houses already and what I would be concerned about is if the Government was to use this to, basically, justify the hocking off of the existing State housing stock and say that it was increasing the supply of affordable houses by selling off State houses.

By adding the word “new” into this, we are making it very clear that this is not about tinkering around the edges or reshuffling the cards, as this Government only seems able to do; it is actually about dealing with the fundamental issue, which is that there are not enough affordable houses and we need more of them. My colleague Megan Woods will shortly be speaking to another amendment that adds a particular time frame that is required for this to happen, and I think that is a very important clarification to this also.

I want to move further forward and look at the provisions in proposed new section 50U, which are the clauses that deal with what this affordable housing development should include. It says: “In implementing the affordable housing development the Corporation must: (a) Ensure that the houses completed are affordable;”. That is really important because if we reference back to the debate we had earlier about the special housing areas, we learnt during that debate that only 10 percent of 75 percent of them are actually going to be affordable houses—so that is around 5,000 affordable houses out of the total of houses that are being developed. It simply is not enough. Let us be clear: the 10,000 that this proposal suggests also is not enough, but it is a start, and it is a heck of a lot better than the Government has been proposing or willing to do anything about.

Between the last census in 2006 and the one in 2013, the population of Auckland alone grew by 110,000, and the Government is saying that it thinks 5,000 affordable houses is enough. It simply is not. There is an entire generation of Aucklanders, in particular—but New Zealanders, as a whole—who are being shut out of the housing market because of a shortage of housing supply. I listened to the mayoral debate on Radio New Zealand National this morning as I was driving to work—[Bell rung] Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry, you had 1 more minute.

I did have 1 more minute, yes—thank you. I listened to the debate on the radio this morning—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Just checking, just checking!

I listened to the debate on the radio this morning, and even Vic Crone, the National Party - supported candidate for the mayoralty of Auckland, was saying that it is a crisis and that there are not enough affordable houses, and yet the National Government is not willing to step in and actually, finally, do something about it.

This proposal put forward by my colleague Phil Twyford—a concrete proposal—to do something about the housing crisis is an opportunity. I hope the Government will embrace it, because it has basically been saying that the Opposition is all talk and that we have not got any real plans. Well, here they are and there are a lot more of them to come. I look forward to the Government’s support, because if it is actually serious about dealing with housing affordability, it will support this amendment, and it will make the commitment to build 10,000 affordable homes every year. That is the minimum that we are going to need if we are going to provide the entire generation who have been locked out of the housing market the chance to get on the housing ladder.

I rise to take a call on new Part 3. This morning we heard wailing and the gnashing of teeth. In fact, Annette King got up and she pleaded: “Where is the regulatory impact statement for Part 2 of the bill?”. She said that the democratic process means there should be a regulatory impact statement. We now are on new Part 3 and I do not see any regulatory impact statement for new Part 3, but that is OK. That is OK. Help is on its way. I have actually started to write a regulatory impact statement myself just to support and help the member over here. I realise that this was scribbled up at last minute, and put together to try to prolong this process as well. Here is the thing on this regulatory impact statement that I have managed to put together, which, I think, could be of use to new Part 3—the proposition that is here.

I have to give a historical analysis of this as part of a regulatory impact statement, and this goes back to 2014. For those who can remember, the election manifesto talked about housing, and what did it talk about? Well, the first thing it talked about was the KiwiBuild scheme. It talked about 100,000 houses. It talked about over 10 years that it would take to build that. It talked about approximately $2 billion. But then we heard the Hon David Parker, and what did he say? He said that actually that was not achievable. He said: “In fact, we wouldn’t do 10,000. We would do 4,000. In fact, in the second year we’d do less than that—possibly 2,000.” My regulatory impact statement says that there is a risk here. There is a risk in this new Part 3 if it was to take place.

The second thing that I think is really important in this regulatory impact statement is that coupled with the KiwiBuild scheme was the capital gains tax. Those who can remember—

💬 Hon Member: Ah!

That is right—those members went out and said that that was important. We hear the words about speculation and speculators, but my regulatory impact statement says this: that coupled with that, if they included in the 2014 manifesto the importance around the capital gains tax—we know that that was not popular. In fact, it was so unpopular that Labour had the worst election result that it has had in a series of years. So what has it done? It has taken that out. It has taken that away. It has minimised the risk to the KiwiBuild scheme. [Interruption] That is right. There is the silence of the lambs at the moment on the other side because they know this is true. They know that this is true. My regulatory impact statement is actually stating that we cannot afford that and, in fact, that will not be good enough as it is.

As we can see in here, the report says 10,000 affordable houses, but in the regulatory impact statement that I have now there is another risk that has emerged. Although there is a prenuptial agreement between Labour and the Greens, New Zealand First is now jumping in. Denis O’Rourke, this morning, said: “It’s not good enough to build 10,000 houses per year. We are going to build 20,000 houses.” That is how ridiculous it is, because now Denis wants to join in. He wants to have a prenuptial to join into this three-way partnership to say we could just build houses. The Minister himself said this: “You can’t just throw out figures and think that that will resolve the issue around the housing affordability, around more housing. You have to have a comprehensive plan.”

Do not worry, help is on its way. I need to reiterate that in my regulatory impact report there is significant development that is happening at the moment. For instance, apparently under this term of Government, 85,000 new homes will be built. That is right. Not 100,000 in 10 years, no—85,000 new homes, and 40 homes per day in Auckland alone. We know that in 2008, when this Government came into play, it was around 10 homes per day, in a working day, up in Auckland. It is now at 40. There were 2,000 homes built on Crown land, and the significance of that is quite important.

Although we are talking about Part 3, we are talking about 10,000 homes. My regulatory impact report says that actually there is help on its way. In fact, it is here already and it coming through a National-led Government. Fifteen thousand people have now experienced—that means they have been able to take the HomeStart package where what they get has been increased to $20,000, to ensure that they can actually have a deposit on a house as well. Two thousand homes have been redeveloped on Housing New Zealand land.

There are 42,000 apprenticeships, because we know that it is not just about, as new Part 3 says, having a figure to build homes. You need to, first of all, look at the construction. You need to look at land supply, and that is particularly what this bill is looking at: land supply. In ensuring that we rezone the land, we ensure that we fast track the consenting process. To ensure that is really important. I have real concerns about new Part 3 and its achievability to meet its goal.

We think that we are making a difference. The last thing I want to say is that in the construction industry, we see another 40,000 that have been added—this is making a difference. This is the Kiwi Dream, not for the future, not for 2017—this is the “KiwiBuild” scheme that is happening right now, here in New Zealand. We know it is making a difference.

I really welcome this opportunity to continue the debate on housing in New Zealand, and to talk with other members across the Chamber about the wide range of solutions that we have to resolve the housing crisis. I must thank Nick Smith and Gerry Brownlee for giving us this opportunity to do so—for the entire rest of the day, as I understand it. Well done, them. Let us give them a clap. Good work, National. We really did need to have this housing debate, and we appreciate the opportunity.

The Green Party will be supporting new Part 3, which has been proposed by Phil Twyford, and we also welcome the opportunity to speak about the issues raised in that part. It not only provides a target, which is critical, for the number of homes that need to be built, and for which Government will then be responsible for delivering in some form—there are many different ways for Government to deliver that housing, most of which involve relationships with the private sector, with the community sector, and with iwi Māori in delivering those homes. That is a very healthy approach to housing provision in New Zealand, an approach where the Government takes fundamental responsibility for making sure that citizens—every citizen, every resident of this country—have access to warm, dry, safe, and affordable homes, and then works with the entire New Zealand community to deliver those homes to a target. So we are very pleased to see the 10,000 homes target in this part, and we look forward to supporting it.

Not only do we need a target but we do need to make sure that those homes meet a range of criteria to make sure that they work for the communities and the people who are going to be living in them, and that they are affordable. And by affordable, of course—there is a range of views about what affordable means. But at least if we say in the legislation that those homes must be affordable, we leave ourselves open to the opportunity to work through what that looks like and what that might mean—I have a view—and then to make sure that those homes are built to that target, too. I think that is a very wise provision. The requirement in this part for the homes to be warm and dry and meet safety standards is, I think, absolutely critical.

I would refer the Committee to a current campaign that is being run by SafeKids Aotearoa. That is a child health - focused public organisation, and it does policy work and community engagement on accidental child injuries. It has some terrible numbers about the kinds of injuries that children suffer every day as a result of living in homes that are not safe for them to be living in. So it is now engaged in this fantastic campaign around the country to work, primarily with those in rental homes—landlords and tenants—to find ways to help support and promote safe housing for children. As we know, the majority of New Zealand children live in rental accommodation. Certainly, the majority of children who live in poverty live in rental accommodation, so it is really important for those children who have other pressures on their health and well-being that at least the home that they live in is warm, is dry, is properly ventilated, and is properly heated but also is safe in other ways.

I would invite members and members of the public to look at the SafeKids website and to look at that campaign, and understand that the kinds of safety measures that this incredible public health organisation is promoting in order to protect the well-being of children in homes can be provided through the changes that are proposed by Phil Twyford. And why is that? That is because Phil Twyford’s amendment proposing new Part 3 of the bill does require that those new homes that are built have safety parameters built into them. It gives the Government the tools it needs to develop those standards in a much more effective way for the health and well-being of our children.

There is no doubt that New Zealanders across the country are concerned about the negative health impacts of poor-quality housing on our children. We hear about the 40,000 hospitalisations every year of children for preventable illnesses that are caused by not having a warm, dry, and safe home to live in. We know about the 150 children every week who suffer some kind of—

It is a pleasure to take a call on this part, because I would like to speak to my amendment to the amendment, which Chris Hipkins foreshadowed in his contribution to the Committee. Before I do that, I would like to join other colleagues in congratulating Phil Twyford on bringing amendments to the Committee that mean that we can, in this bill, debate some real issues of substance around housing. They are things that might actually add to the debate, and, like other members, I would like to thank the National Government for giving us this extended and protracted period to debate housing in this Chamber, because it is something that we welcome.

My amendment is to proposed new Part 5B—new clause 50T(2). What it does, according to subsection (2), is state: “Within six months of the completion of the plan required under subsection (1) the Minister must present a copy of the approved plan to the House of Representatives.” My amendment to that inserts, after subsection (1), “but not later than 1 March 2017”. So it is not good enough, under this amendment that Phil Twyford has brought forward, for the Minister to sit back and do what he has done for the last 8 years, which is precisely nothing to address the issues of housing affordability—so there is then an onus on the Minister to actually do something. Until we change the Government later next year, we have to have legislative requirements to get this Government to actually do something.

Mr Ngaro gave a contribution in which he told us: “Don’t worry, we’re doing it anyway.” Nobody believes that. People can look around, they can look at the gold medal that New Zealand won in terms of housing affordability just today, and see that housing affordability is at a crisis point in New Zealand. Too many New Zealanders are being shut out of the Kiwi Dream, and if Mr Ngaro thinks that the National Government is currently doing enough, then I think it is absolutely critical that we have this debate and expose the Government for the do-nothing Government that it is on the issue of housing affordability. If the people on the opposite benches think what they are doing is adequate to address the issues we have around housing affordability, it is no wonder that we are in this muddle and that we have too many New Zealanders shut out of housing affordability.

So the amendment we are putting forward would require this Government to do something. This Government, which has had 8 years in office, has been presiding over an escalating problem. So a plan would have to be produced. That would be a first, because what we are learning every time one of the few Government members do get on their feet and take a call—and I do commend the Government members who actually have got on their feet and taken a call—is that more and more the layers of the onion are being peeled back to reveal just how much this Government does not understand the problem that New Zealand is facing here.

What is revealed every time one of the Government members speaks is the lack of ability to grasp the real problem. The real problem is that there are not enough houses being built at an affordable price. It is the Labour Party that has come up with a plan to do that. We are going to put a plan in place, we are going to put a target in place, and we are going to build those houses.

That brings me, also, to another provision in this amendment that I would like to speak to, and that is new clause 50T(3), where the Minister must report to this Parliament on progress. What we have learnt from the last 8 years is that some accountabilities have to be put in place. It is not good enough for a Government to just sit back, do nothing, and then claim, as Mr Ngaro said, “Don’t worry, help is already on the way.” Well, that is absolute codswallop.

What is more, the people of New Zealand absolutely do not buy that this Government is doing anything to address the issue of housing affordability. It has taken a comprehensive plan from Labour. We will get the chance to debate over the course of today and tonight, and possibly tomorrow, what that comprehensive plan looks like. This Government needs to see up close what real action on housing looks like.

I think that sometimes in public policy debates we are, perhaps, subject to a bit of historical amnesia and perhaps we imagine a past that never really was. The great Labour narrative that came out is that, just like we are selling all the old tea towels and all the old crockery for fund-raising on the Labour website, if we could only hark back to the past, it has got to be better than Labour’s present. Almost anything would be better than Labour’s present, but, sadly, the past was not that good either, and it is important to understand one’s own history.

If the Labour Party members were to read the excellent Gael Ferguson book Building the New Zealand Dream, one of the first things they would learn is that Michael Joseph Savage, the first Labour Prime Minister, said he would not trust the Ministry of Works to build a fowl house. The interesting thing is that when the Labour Party says the Government will build houses, it never means that the Government is going to build houses; what it means is that the Government is going to contract the building of houses out to private enterprise.

Then you have to ask what the role of Government actually is. Does the Government have some magic ability to override all of the constraints on building new homes that have been currently identified as leading to a limitation on housing supply in New Zealand, high prices, and homelessness? Labour members have no such prescription in this amendment that will solve the problems of a limit of land that councils will allow anybody, including the builders contracted by the Government, to build upon. There is no solution in this amendment to solve the very real problem that infrastructure funding incentives are too weak for councils. There is nothing in this new part that will solve either of those problems, or in any of the other new parts, if we are allowed to mention those. The interesting thing is that when one starts to investigate one’s history, the facts become terribly clear, and from the Labour Party’s point of view, it is terribly depressing. This idea that there was once a golden age when the State built all the houses, in reality, never ever was.

Let us take building consents for 1961, for instance—a very good year for home building in New Zealand. There were 24,397 residential consents issued in our country in 1961, when only 2 million people lived here. That would be a little bit like issuing something like 55,000 or 60,000 consents for the current New Zealand population today. How many of those houses were built by the Government, or at least contracted by the Government to be built in 1961? Well, the number, you might be interested to know, was 2,749. How many houses does that leave? The Labour Party members are trying to do quick mental arithmetic. How many houses were built by the private sector in that year, 1961? There were 21,648. Even in the heyday of Labour’s State home - building halcyon period the truth is simply that the private sector built almost 10 times more houses than the State ever could.

Why it is believed that this history that never was is going to save us, I cannot understand. But what is very clear is that there is nothing in this new part that is going to solve the real underlying problems in the housing market. The fact is that those problems were never solved. The Government never built houses; it always contracted out to Fletcher’s. Even in some of the best years of home building in New Zealand, the State was a bit player—a 10 percent player at best.

We could have anticipated the porosity of this argument from the way the Labour Party members have behaved in the last 24 hours. The first half of the debate was all about due process and rushing through complicated, far-reaching reforms under urgency without due process. Then in the second part of the debate—oh, wow, we are now going to introduce three new parts that are far more far-reaching in their implications, in the Committee stage with no public consultation whatsoever. Well, I guess that is just politics. I guess that is the Labour Party for you—rudderless and ignorant of its own history.

I want to start by just referring directly to what this amendment does, because my colleague Mr Seymour seems confused. In his contribution he seemed to claim that, first, the Government cannot deliver housing, despite all the evidence, and it is the private sector that has always delivered housing. Well, we have tried that. It is not working. That is why we are here. That is the first point. The second point: this amendment is about delivering the KiwiBuild plan. If Mr Seymour knew anything about the KiwiBuild plan, he would know it is about partnering with private developers in order to deliver affordable housing, which is what most of the special housing areas that the Government has unsuccessfully delivered attempted, unsuccessfully, to do—something that Mr Seymour is voting in favour of. So what he seems to be voting against, I think, as far as I can tell, is scale. He just does not want to do that many affordable houses, or is it just simply that the Labour Party has put the idea forward, and it is petty politics? Either way, this amendment is the one thing that will actually fulfil the policy goals of this bill.

If you go to the general policy statement in the bill, it says: “The Bill amends 2 Acts that relate to increasing the supply and affordability of housing.” It does not really do either. If you go over to the second page, it says: “The purpose of the Bill is to support the wider Government programme of work to increase the supply and affordability of housing, and to maintain the momentum of strong growth in new home construction.” The only place where there is momentum is in house prices. That is the only place where we have momentum, if you are asking not just in Auckland but anywhere in the country. We are not delivering houses at the pace we need.

This amendment fulfils the general policy statement of this bill. Without this amendment, this bill really is hollow. Just because you say it, it does not make it true. This bill does not have the substantive amendments required.

Coming to some separate clauses, I want to start with—because there has not been much discussion about it—proposed clause 50U, “Corporation”—as in Housing New Zealand—“to manage affordable housing development”. This is the way that we are delivering the KiwiBuild plan. But I think what is really important here is that we are putting parameters around what the corporation has to deliver, because, unlike the special housing areas, there has not been necessarily the impetus to ensure that we are increasing stock.

Let me give you an example: Spring Street in central Auckland was designated a special housing area. It is a group of pensioner houses—one-bedroom units—of roughly 40 units, all currently held by Housing New Zealand. It decided that this was prime real estate where you could build more housing. So there was a tender process where Housing New Zealand decided that it would sell the land to a private developer, but that private developer would only be required to then lease back to Housing New Zealand—how many units?

💬 Louisa Wall: How many?

Forty—the same amount we already had. What an absolutely ridiculous proposition. We would put ourselves in the position of selling prime real estate—and we know that, because of the way Housing New Zealand operates, it will be under market value—to a developer to develop. It could put on however many private dwellings that it chooses to make a quick buck, none of which are required to be affordable, and then lease back at top dollar to Housing New Zealand the same number of units it already had. That is pure stupidity—pure stupidity.

So it makes absolute sense that we have proposed clause 50U here in this amendment, which not only ensures that the houses that are completed are affordable but also we are ensuring that they are not used for speculators and that we are making sure first-home buyers have access to those units.

The other thing that is important and I want to note in this amendment is, of course, that we are focusing on speed and affordability. The average house that is currently being built in Auckland is 200 square metres. By default, it is not affordable. So having someone who goes into the market with the express purpose of building houses that are smaller—smaller, yes, but the average house built in the UK now is 90 square metres—is what we need, and it is not what the market is providing, Mr Seymour. We let the market try. It failed. We have the worst rate of homeownership in 50 years. This amendment, Mr Seymour, is about turning that around and actually doing what the bill claims it is trying to do.

I would like to just start my contribution on new Part 3 by referencing some of the comments I heard made this week in the homelessness inquiry, because it is quite relevant this part of the bill. I will start with the comment from Shamubeel Eaqub talking about how “homeownership died in 1991, and renting sucks. The housing market is fundamentally broken, and Housing New Zealand has not built enough homes.” I think that pretty much sums up the drive for this new part. It is actually taking some sound economic advice and using that as an input to drive good public policy-making.

I would also like to just go back to the context of this new part of the bill sitting within this piece of legislation and reference back to the first piece of special housing accord legislation, which also went through under urgency 3 years ago. We were told that this whole model that the Government is providing us is to bring about affordable housing and increase the number of houses that were being built. What we heard at that time was that it was necessary to be done under urgency because it showed the Government cared and that it needed to happen because if you looked at Auckland at that time, in 2013, the average house price was about $735,000 and, God forbid, there was an expectation or a possibility that the average house price might rise to $1 million within 3 to 4 years. So that legislation was needed under urgency to prevent that possibility. Well, how ironic is it that on the same day that house prices in Auckland exceeded $1 million, the Government is coming back with the same legislation to extend that same provision that has so comprehensively failed.

I am very pleased to be supporting new Part 3 of this bill, which actually has some hope of succeeding—some hope of actually delivering New Zealanders affordable housing and getting those houses built. As Shamubeel Eaqub was saying, Housing New Zealand has not built enough homes, so, actually, we know what part of the solution is, and it is for Housing New Zealand to build more homes.

Mr Seymour can quibble over the details of who is going to be there with the hammer. Actually, nobody has ever thought that we were going to be sending Nick Smith out with a hammer. That is not what Mr Twyford is suggesting with this amendment, though, actually, it would be more constructive than what Nick Smith is doing here. This amendment is actually taking responsibility, and I do think this conversation is really important. If I am honest—and I am not speaking for anyone else in my party when the arguments are coming up about how we have complained that there is not enough information for us to make our decisions on the previous parts, yet we are presenting this without people having the possibility of consulting—I personally do not have faith that the Government is going to allow this to pass. But I am absolutely committed to reflecting the views we heard from the homelessness inquiry and giving New Zealand the chance to consider the alternative, and to consider that, actually, yes, this could be possible. We could have some responsible public policy intervention in housing.

I do want to speak to another aspect of this new part, briefly, around the ability for these homes to be safe and warm and dry. That is also one of the problems we have with the free-market approach that the Government is using with the State housing accord, as opposed to this more direct model where, actually, we can ensure that all of those houses are warm and dry as well as affordable, improving people’s health, improving their quality of life, and providing returns to the Government in terms of educational improvements, better work productivity, savings to the health budget, all round—

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. To help inform the Committee in the debate, I seek leave to table figures I referred to in my earlier contribution, building permits residential building consents from—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. My question is: is this in the public domain? Where are these figures from?

It was assembled by the Parliamentary Library for my office on 13 July this year.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): From the Parliamentary Library—specifically for you?

Yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Oh well, I will put the leave; the Committee can decide. Leave is sought for that purpose, to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection.

I am pleased that the member for Epsom took the opportunity to refer once again to his data, because earlier in a contribution on this debate I championed the life of some of the founders of his party. It is not a very old party. Like him, it has not been around that long. They were people of great principle, great integrity. They knew the history of this great country of ours in a way that, sadly, that member does not. You see, the thing about this is that when you want to refer to historical matters of this great country of ours, you actually have to get all your history right, not just the bits that suit your argument.

So the thing is this. In Labour’s great house-building programme of the 1930s, led by the great tōtara of the Labour Party at that time—the Michael Joseph Savages, the Peter Frasers, the Dan Sullivans, the various others—they did not rely on the Ministry of Works to build the houses. They relied on a whole host of contractors and others, including Fletcher’s. The great empire that is Fletcher Building today—or whatever it calls itself—actually has as its origins, from that very time, a progressive Labour Government with a progressive founding director of that great company that actually built the houses. And they did some pretty incredible things. I recently had the privilege of visiting Savage Crescent in Palmerston North, which was one of those progressive housing developments designed and developed at that very time—because it was not just about housing, it was about community as well.

Here is the interesting thing: Mr Seymour referred to the building consent figures from 1961, as if they somehow magically happened themselves, without any impetus at all. What he forgets, of course, is that was not long after the, sadly, short-lived but powerful and very good Nash-led Labour Government, which introduced the 3 percent housing loans. That was the impetus for that house-building programme. That was why there was a spike in house building, because that Labour Government knew at that time that more houses were needed and it knew that the Government had a role to play in making sure that happened. And that was the way that it happened.

Sadly, we have now an ACT Party representative who does not respect the fullness and the greatness of this country’s history. What he does not want to admit, like many members opposite, is that the greatest moments of this country and its social and economic and political development have had at their heart the Labour Party. Oh, yes, at every turn—at every turn—the Labour Party has led progress and development, for the benefit of all citizens. That is why the new Part 3 amendment introduced by the Labour Party is so important. It is just one element of the genuinely comprehensive package for housing to meet the needs of the present housing crisis, which is now a matter of urgency. But good on the Government and the present Minister for realising that something has to be done, although he cannot bring himself to say that there is a crisis.

We can all see that the special housing areas, no matter how kind of muted the ultimate impact—OK, good idea. Let us extend them. That is why we support that. We do not support Part 2, but this has allowed us, the Labour Party, the opportunity to now put before this House the genuinely comprehensive housing package that we have got. New Part 3 allows us to talk about our programme, the KiwiBuild programme, which is about 10,000 houses a year. All new Part 3 does is require the Minister to not only take up the proposal but to report in an effective and timely manner on it.

We can do this. The Government can actually do this stuff. It requires political will. If the Government of the day does not do it, then let all members of this House who have been part of this debate provide that impetus to let the Government see the light and get on and do the job that New Zealanders are demanding that it does. Far too many New Zealanders now see no hope and no future and no prospect of owning their own home. We have to do better. If the Government, after 8 years, cannot do better, then let us do it—let us do it.

So I am thankful for the opportunity that the Government has given us to lay out our plan, but it is now—as this motion for this whole legislation tells us—urgent, and if the Government knew what it was doing it would urgently adopt our plan.

I want to concentrate my contribution on new clause 50U(1), which looks at the Housing New Zealand Corporation being responsible for managing the development of affordable housing under the plan. I have been the beneficiary of the way that Housing New Zealand Corporation used to be under a Labour Government. What I mean by that is that in those days Housing New Zealand had at its heart the desire to not only house people but help people and communities develop communities. The way that it did that was it included within its mandate the ability to have community housing, which allowed community organisations to benefit from the housing programme put in place by the Government and to have access to housing for community groups. What this amendment in this particular clause does is that it requires the corporation to once again become the heart of community development, as it once was. Not only will this look at providing affordable housing; it will also look at providing appropriate housing.

During the homelessness inquiry that has been around the country, one of the overriding concerns that has come out of this is that the housing we are currently building is four-bedroom, executive homes, when what we actually need are one- and two-bedroom homes. We need modest housing. We need housing that will help us to house the elderly and to house people who are single and single-parent families. We have this overburden of these large houses. We have a surplus, almost, of bedrooms, when what we actually need is much more appropriate housing of a kind that will suit the needs of our communities.

What this Government has done over the last 8 years is to not only scale-back that involvement of communities, of them being to participate with Housing New Zealand to develop in consultation and cooperation the types of housing that they need for their communities, but actually do something a lot more sinister: it has actually taken the community out of its programme. When we look at the removal of the four well-beings out of the requirements for local government, it really speaks to the heart of what sits in this bill and why we oppose this bill and why we are supporting Part 3. We need to put communities back into our housing plans.

I want to use the example of what happened in my own community, in Aranui, where at one stage Housing New Zealand was proposing some redevelopment of homes. The community got engaged in that discussion and helped it to design homes that were fit for purpose—one- and two-bedroom homes, single access and with garages, which were really useful for elderly people. In the latest iteration of developments by Housing New Zealand into that same community, when the community asked for consultation to be part of the process, it was denied the ability to effect any change to the plans that Housing New Zealand was making in that community. What that has resulted in is an intensive development that has gone into the Aranui community of two-storey homes, with several homes on what were the properties of one or two, which have now become developments of four, five, or six, and there are single accesses into these large groups of homes. They are a complete anathema to the way that this community wanted those homes to be, because there was a lack of consultation.

All through this discussion, all through this debate, there has been this thought that consultation should sit at the heart of when we are making such significant changes. That is no different to, when we are looking at new Part 3, how we want our communities to develop. There is no doubt that good housing, affordable housing, and appropriate housing is actually the way we develop our strong communities. I would urge the Government to support this, because this is the way we are going to build our strong communities, where people know that they are able to stay in the same house night after night, and where they have security of tenure.

I want to talk about two things in relation to this new part of the bill: first of all, supply, and, secondly, affordability, because those are, in fact, the crucial issues. First of all, supply. That means, actually, the rate of new house building. Labour and the Greens say 10,000 houses per annum; the Government, per Alfred Ngaro, seems to be saying 14,600 per annum, because he talked about 40 houses a day, and if you multiply that by 365 days you get 14,300. In fact, the Government is getting nowhere near that rate of building. Nevertheless, that is what he claimed, for some reason. But neither of these are actually enough.

If you look at the Auckland Unitary Plan, and other indicators, actually, the real need in Auckland over the next 7 years is a minimum of 130,000 houses if immigration is going to continue at a net gain of 70,000 people a year—70,000 people a year. If that were curbed, then maybe that need could be reduced. But the fact is that with that magnitude of net immigration the need in Auckland alone, over 7 years, is 130,000 houses. That is why New Zealand First has, for the last year or more, had in its housing policy a target of 140,000 over the next 7 years. We took notice of all those indicators and we put in our policy 140,000 houses over 7 years, which is 20,000 a year. That is not just political one-upmanship; it is actually based on research and actual need as indicated by independent parties. It is not an invention by New Zealand First. It is what the actual need is if immigration is going to continue at the current rate.

Yet, if you were to believe Alfred Ngaro, the Government wants to build 14,600 a year, which is actually 102,600 houses over 7 years. Yet his own Minister, the “Minister of Homelessness”, said that that was unaffordable, unachievable. He said that all of the parties on this side of the House had unachievable targets, and yet Alfred Ngaro actually says it should be even more than that. So this Government is in total disarray. It does not actually have a target in its so-called comprehensive housing plan. We do not really know what it is trying to do. All we know is that it is doing some haphazard things and what it has amounted to is, as I have said in the past, a litany of failed policies and no comprehensive housing plan whatsoever. In fact, all it has been doing with the special housing areas is to build a pathetically small number of houses—1,300 over the last 3 years—which is nowhere near the need.

The point, however, is that whatever the target is, there is a genuine need out there, and it is not ever going to be met through Resource Management Act reform. It is not ever going to be met through special housing areas and accords with local government while the reliance on building the houses themselves is left totally in the hands of private developers. Megan Woods, in her speech, said it is the Labour Party that has the plan. Well, actually, it is not just the Labour Party. New Zealand First, for the last 3 or more years, has had that sort of plan for Government intervention in the market to actually build houses, to develop and build houses—appropriate houses, affordable houses, modest houses that people can afford as their first home—and to sell them on terms that people can actually afford. We have always said that. We have always known that direct investment by the Government is the only way that this housing crisis can be solved. The private market alone will never do it—it will never do it—and that is what this Government does not seem to understand.

I want to move on to affordability, because that—

I move, That the question be now put.

I am going to take the mover of the amendment—Phil Twyford.

I am proud to be the mover—and the shaker. It is appropriate that we are debating this issue in this housing bill this afternoon, because the role of the Government in fixing a broken housing market is one of the fault lines that runs through this House. It divides the left and the right. It divides the people who have a kind of childlike, touching faith in the ability of the market to fix itself from those people like us, who, informed by history and experience, have a confidence that the powers of Government can be used to do good in our community and that it is the job of the Government to actually make markets work for everybody. That is the idea that lies at the heart of our KiwiBuild policy and this proposed new Part 3 of the Housing Legislation Amendment Bill.

These days the Government is very fond of talking up what it calls a massive building boom in Auckland. Well, just how massive is that building boom? Currently, in Auckland, 9,651 homes have been consented in the last 12 months. That means that about 8,500 homes have been built. In 2004, 12,937 homes were consented, so we are way below—25 percent below—the peak of 2004. If you factor in population growth, currently, under John Key, we are consenting about six homes per 1,000 population at the moment—six homes per 1,000 per year. Under Norman Kirk’s prime ministership in the mid-1970s, New Zealand was building 16 homes—16 homes—per 1,000 population per year. So this is far from being a building boom.

I want to talk about why using Government procurement—using the power of the State to stimulate the construction of new homes—is a good idea in the current market. Our construction industry has been gutted of skilled labour by the boom-and-bust cycle, which goes up and down like a roller coaster. Every time the market goes down, we lose half our skilled tradespeople. They leave the industry, and often leave the country. A Government procurement programme like KiwiBuild, as embodied in new Part 3, would maintain the supply of new residential builds at the equivalent of the top of the market and keep it there in a countercyclical way for a decade, giving local New Zealand construction firms and all of the industry trades that support them the certainty and the volume to increase their production, to take on more staff, and to train the 5,000 apprentices that we estimate would be needed to build the labour force to implement this policy.

It would allow using companies like Mike Greer Homes. Mike Greer has pioneered state of the art off-site manufacturing at his Concision factory in Rolleston in Canterbury, and is using the latest high-precision, digital, German equipment to build high-quality homes at a much more achievable cost. These are the kinds of benefits of building up the workforce and employing new design and production technology to build better houses at a more affordable cost. It will also allow us to bust through the rorts and the anti-competitive practices that plague the building supplies market.

I could walk into a Home Depot in California and buy treated Pinus radiata framing timber for residential construction at a quarter of the price that I would pay if I go to a Bunnings Warehouse or a Mitre 10. Our building supplies market is seriously anti-competitive. It is uncompetitive. Kiwis are paying nearly 30 percent more than Australians for exactly the same building materials. Through this policy—building 10,000 homes a year using Government procurements to that—we can cut through those supply chain blockages and drive down the cost of building. This is how Labour will restore affordable homeownership to a new generation of New Zealanders.

I move, That the question be now put.