Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. The population of New Zealand is 4.2 million, and I can guarantee that just about every single one of those 4.2 million people knows that there is a housing crisis in New Zealand, except for 59 of them. There are 59 people in New Zealand who, I know, do not realise that there is a housing crisis in New Zealand. They all sit over there.

💬 Pita Paraone: Where?

Over there, on the other side of the House. Everyone else in New Zealand has seen the pictures on TV of people living in their cars. They have seen the pictures on TV of children trying to do their homework by the interior light of the vehicle. They have seen pictures of people living in tents on their relatives’ back lawns. They have heard the stories about marae having to open their doors to allow whole families to stay for a number of weeks because they have nowhere to live. All New Zealanders have seen those stories, except for those people sitting on the other side of the House.

When it comes to a plan to address housing, those people have employed what I call the ostrich strategy. They have put their heads in a hole in the sand and tried to pretend that things are not happening around them. The trouble is, when you have got your head in a hole in the sand, the part that everyone can see is the posterior sticking up at them. What we would call that in Māori is whakapohane. When you show your backside to the people, it is a sign of contempt, and, to me, that is what this National Government is doing to the 41,000 homeless people in New Zealand—it is just showing contempt for the situation and the predicament that those people find themselves in.

It is the Government of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. The Government members do not want to see the problem that is staring them in the face. They do not want to go out and see the people down on Lambton Quay living in doorways. They do not want to see the people living in tents on their relatives’ back lawns. They do not want to see the people down at the marae. They do not want to see any evil. They do not want to hear any evil—they do not want to hear what we are saying, that there is a crisis. Their modus operandi is deny, deny, deny. They do not want to speak any evil—they do not want to say the “c” word: crisis. They do not want to acknowledge that there is a housing crisis. If they see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, then, in their minds, no evil exists. But let me tell you that a housing crisis does exist in New Zealand.

We know that we have a new Prime Minister, and we know that he is no leader; he is a follower. Here is his chance to actually follow a plan from the Labour Party. The architect of that plan is my learned colleague sitting to my right, Phil Twyford. It is a plan that will see 10,000 houses built every year, for 10 years.

All we have heard from the 59 people across the way—who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil—is a mishmash, hodgepodge, patchwork of random thoughts and ideas that are going no way to addressing the issue of homelessness. Let us have a look at some of their stunts and stupidity. There is Bill English selling off State houses, taking $1.8 billion out of Housing New Zealand, blowing the budget, and putting homeless families in motels. There is Nick Smith announcing that he would build houses on land that turned out to be unsuitable for residential housing—I think there was a cemetery; I think there was a power station or a pump house or something—

💬 Phil Twyford: Government House—the Governor-General’s residence.

The Governor-General’s residence.

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

You may think that I am joking, but that is the truth. John Key declared that there would be 65,000 social houses, but he had no plan and no money because all he wanted was a big number in his speech, which he was delivering to a group. Then, remember Paula Bennett’s flying squads—they flew out and they could not see the problem. They failed to find the record number of families sleeping rough; they obviously did not look hard enough. Then Bill English abolished the housing portfolio. Is there actually—[Interruption] I am getting there, Mr Assistant Speaker. Is there actually a Minister for housing?

What this bill does—it is really, really simple, and the people across the way should take note—is it “amends the Housing Corporation Act 1974 to increase the supply and affordability of housing and land by requiring the Minister of Housing to undertake an affordable house construction programme that will build 10,000 affordable houses per year.”

Now, here are the two clinchers—everyone should take note. The first part of the plan is that the Minister must prepare a plan—must prepare a plan to build 10,000 affordable houses. Here is the real clincher—and I think everyone should take out their pens and their notebooks. The second part of the plan is to implement the plan. Develop a plan—such as the one Phil Twyford has developed, called KiwiBuild—and build the houses. That is all it takes.

It is pretty simple. In clause 4 inserting new section 50T: “(1) The Minister of Housing must prepare a plan in consultation with the Corporation for the building of 10 000 affordable houses per year for first-home buyers. (2) Within 6 months of the completion of the plan required under subsection (1), the Minister must present a copy of the plan to the House of Representatives.”—so that we can all see what is in the plan, and then—“(3) The Minister of Housing must—(a) ensure that all targets set out in the plan are met; and (b) report to the House of Representatives annually on its progress.” It is pretty simple: if you want to build houses, you have got to have a plan. Like I say, all we have seen is a mishmash, a hodgepodge, and a patchwork of random ideas, and the situation has not improved.

The second part of this bill, new section 50U inserted by clause 4, is that “The Corporation will be responsible for managing the development of affordable housing under the plan …”. This is what the plan means: the Housing New Zealand Corporation must ensure that the houses that are built are, first of all, affordable, because people have to actually be able to afford to buy them. We are talking about homeless people here or people renting, who need to be able to afford to buy houses; we are not talking about people who have already got one or two or three houses and they want more in their portfolio. The houses that are to be built must be sold to first-home buyers—those young people, and maybe some not-so-young people now, who do not have a house. These houses are not to be used for speculation. It is pretty simple stuff. The Housing New Zealand Corporation must ensure that all the houses built must meet all legal standards required, and are warm, dry, and safe.

It is a pretty simple plan, and the members of this Government over there need to open their eyes, open their ears, and, when we have the vote, open their mouths and say “Aye”—that they will support this bill.

In the last quarter there were 2,500 houses built in Auckland—2,500—and people said: “Wow, that’s a lot of houses.” The sad reality is that in the last quarter in Auckland alone, 4,000 houses needed to be built, so there is a shortfall of 1,500 houses. Let us extrapolate that over 6 months: that is 3,000 houses that we are falling behind with. Over a year that is 6,000 houses that are not being built that need to be built. And that is in just Auckland alone—we are not talking about the rest of the country.

As I have said, there are 41,000 homeless people in New Zealand. The most common complaint of constituents who come to my offices—after they have had a moan about Child, Youth and Family, the other most common complaint is about the lack of housing. They want us to help them to get into homes. In fact, I saw a guy the other day in a backyard in west Auckland who is living in a tent on his relatives’ lawn. That is unacceptable in 21st century New Zealand—that we have people these days who will never ever be able to afford a home to call their own. Imagine how soul-destroying that must be, knowing that you are going to raise your kids for ever living in someone else’s house. That has got to stop. All it will take is for this Government to support this bill. I commend it to the House. Kia ora.

I stand to take a call on this bill, and, first of all, I just want to bring to the attention of the previous speaker, Kelvin Davis—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry to interrupt. I should have said: the question is that the motion be agreed to.

OK, first of all I just want to talk about the so-called Labour KiwiBuild plan. I am sure that the previous speaker omitted in his speech to mention an interview with his leader by a guy on The AM Show—who is that? Mr Duncan Garner. He asked Mr Little whether or not the Labour Party’s KiwiBuild policy—building 10,000 houses per year as the target—would actually occur. What did Mr Little say? He said no. He said they would never achieve 30,000 homes in the first 3 years. He said: “Maybe 20,000 homes.” He also said that in order to do that, they would have to bring in foreign workers—foreign workers—to do this. Considering that Labour is a party that goes around and looks at Chinese names of people who are buying homes in Auckland, it is a little bit rich—when the Labour member gets up and has a crack at this Government about our comprehensive housing plan that has got results on the ground, is it not?

It is whacking 10,000 houses per year around the ears—that is what our comprehensive housing plan is doing. So when we start looking at the great things to do with our comprehensive housing plan, 5 years ago in this country we were building 13,000 homes a year nationally. We are now building 30,000 homes a year nationally. That is more than what Labour is promising within its KiwiBuild programme. In Auckland alone we have gone from 4,000 a year to 10,000 homes. That is whacking—this is what I am saying about Labour’s KiwiBuild programme. National’s comprehensive housing plan is actually whacking your one around the ears left, right, and centre, and a poke in the front, Mr Deputy Speaker.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t have one.

We are actually training people in New Zealand in the construction workforce. Our construction workforce is numbering over 40,000 people in training, and the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation is actually bursting at the seams in making sure that it has got all of these apprentices working within the building and construction sector.

We just need to look at the rebuild of Christchurch. Let us have a look at that. Let us have a look at how difficult it was to start with to get the rebuilds and the new builds done there. We had to find building people. We had to find carpenters and builders. We had to find construction companies to come in and do that rebuild. What did we find? Yes, we needed to build the workforce. We did not target overseas workers. We came within New Zealand itself—those who live in New Zealand.

💬 Sue Moroney: What? Which Christchurch are you talking about?

Yes, we had a few, but we did not rely on them solely, Ms Moroney. We have not relied on them solely.

💬 Sue Moroney: You’re completely out of touch.

So therefore we are building our workforce within our country itself, Ms Moroney. We need to start to listen about what is actually happening under our comprehensive housing plan, Ms Moroney.

💬 Sue Moroney: Have you ever been to Christchurch?

We are looking at the Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms, Ms Moroney. Let us have a look at the RMA reforms that we have been slogging away at in the Local Government and Environment Committee, because these reforms are going to improve and fast-forward the building consents in New Zealand. I know that there is lots of yelling from across the way, but if you just hush up a bit you will be able to learn quite a bit about our comprehensive housing plan.

Let us start talking about our KiwiSaver HomeStart. There are 20,000 people who have received HomeStart grants. That is more than $89 million that has been paid out in subsidies to first-home buyers, to couples who actually qualify for this grant. When we start to look at the KiwiSaver funds, for those buying their first home, we are looking at 31,400 in the year to March 2016. That is $486 million of savings put towards homes, people’s first homes.

I tell you, this comprehensive housing plan that we have on this side is working for the people of New Zealand. We are getting people into their first homes. That is what it is all about—that is what it is all about. Our residential building activity has increased 19 percent nationally and 27 percent particularly in Auckland, to 2016. This is an amazing comprehensive plan. You must admit that, must you not, because so many people are benefiting from it.

Not only is Housing New Zealand Corporation involved in this but there is also the local government as well. This bill states that the corporation will monitor and implement the plan that is developed. Of course, we are working in partnership with them, with local government, to make sure that affordable housing is going ahead in this country. There are 213 special housing areas that have been opened up under this Government—213. How many special housing projects were opened up when Labour was in Government? Oh, that is right, Labour did not have any because it did not see it as an urgency, and we did, and we have taken the bull by the horns.

We back up everything in this comprehensive housing plan. We have the numbers, we have the people, we have everything that you do not have in your KiwiBuild. You do not have it and you never will have it because your plan has got too many flaws in it. There are too many flaws. First of all—[Interruption] Asian—

💬 Kris Faafoi: I’m enjoying it—keep going. Keep talking. I’m enjoying it.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! We only need the odd indication that you are having a good time, Mr Faafoi. We do not need it repeated 15 times, or we will wonder just what you are up to.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let us move on to insulation. Let us move on to Warm Up New Zealand. That has been a National Government policy. Let us warm up New Zealand. We are actually making sure that social houses receive subsidies to insulate the houses and we are looking at that also with landlords as well. These are the things we have promised over the 9 years that we have been in Government, and we will continue to keep this plan going.

All in all, when I start to look at all the great things that have happened in our comprehensive plan, I doubt that it would ever happen under a Labour housing plan, because it does not have a housing plan. There is nothing, is there? There is nothing, absolutely nothing. When you have got a housing person who really does not like people with Asian-sounding names, then you are pretty much done for, are you not? You are pretty much done for.

In closing my speech, I will never support this bill. I will not support it going to the Social Services Committee. It is a waste of time. It is a waste of parliamentary time to try to even put a bill forward that is actually going to hamper the fast growth of housing in this country. To be quite honest, it would be shameful should it go ahead, because it is just wasting Parliament’s time. It will slow down everything that we have currently done. We are speeding up, we are going forward, because that is what this side of the House does. We are a party of action. We plan. We do our action and we do it for the benefit of everybody in New Zealand—even for you guys over there and all your whānau. All right? So, without any hesitation, I do not support this bill. I will never support this bill. Kia ora.

I want to thank Kelvin Davis for bringing this bill to the House. If the National Government had a scrap of sense, it would grab Kelvin Davis’ bill with both hands and run with it, but it will not. I know it will not, just like it will not tax speculators; it will not cut back on immigration to ease the demand pressures in the Auckland housing market; and it will not shut down negative gearing tax breaks that last year allowed property investors to write off $650 million in losses. It will not genuinely reform the planning rules or the way that infrastructure is financed, even though people like Nick Smith and Bill English have been blaming the Resource Management Act for 10 years for expensive housing but have done nothing about it after 8 years in Government. It will not rewrite the rules for renting, even though more than 50 percent of New Zealanders now rent but have no virtually no security of tenure. It will not apply decent, modern minimum standards that would ensure that all rental properties are warm and dry, even though 50,000 kids go to hospital every year with preventable infectious and respiratory diseases that are caused by poverty, overcrowding, and cold, damp homes. It will not stop the State house sell-off and instead build more State houses, even though that Government is now spending millions of dollars every month housing thousands of homeless New Zealanders in motels.

It will not do all of those sensible things, and for that reason the National Government will not tonight vote for Kelvin Davis’ bill, which would implement Labour’s policy—our KiwiBuild policy—of building 100,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers. It will not even admit that there is a housing crisis when the census data tells us that there are 41,000 New Zealanders who are homeless and living in severe housing deprivation, and that our biggest city has the fourth-most unaffordable housing in the world. Apparently, according to the Prime Minister, Bill English, when 40 Wellingtonians line up on the side of the street just to look at a rental property, that is a problem of success.

This bill, Kelvin Davis’ bill, is based on the simple truth that when you have a housing shortage, you build more houses, and that is Labour’s policy: to build more houses. And it is a policy that successive Governments in this country followed over decades. They did things like the State Advances loan policy, the capitalisation of the family benefit, that members actually, I would bet on all sides of this House, benefited from—their families, their parents and their grandparents benefited from those policies that gave New Zealand the highest rate of homeownership in the Western World and housed generation after generation of Kiwi families, and that is what Labour’s KiwiBuild policy would do.

When we change the Government, we will build 100,000 affordable homes—high-quality but modest affordable homes for first-time buyers. That will ease the housing shortage that is partly responsible for driving house prices sky-high, and locking out a whole generation of young New Zealanders from the dream of affordable homeownership. Under this policy and under Kelvin Davis’ bill we will set up a $2-billion revolving loan fund that will be spent approximately 20 times over a 10-year period and will be fiscally neutral at the end of it. The taxpayer will come out even, but we will have added 100,000 affordable homes to the housing supply.

We are going to crank up the construction industry and run it at the top of the cycle for a decade. We are going to train thousands of young Kiwis in the construction trades. We are going to have an affordable housing authority that will cut through the red tape and provide master-planned communities with all the amenities that people need that will be full of high-quality, affordable KiwiBuild homes. The National Government used to be ambitious for New Zealand, but now it is tired. It has run out of steam. It has run out of ideas. It does not believe that it is the Government’s job to ensure that all New Zealanders have a decent roof over their heads. They are so woefully lacking in ambition, they do not even believe that a Government can build decent houses for New Zealanders to live in.

I am rising in opposition to the Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill. Just in response to that last speaker, Mr Twyford, who wanted to give almost a scorecard approach to the Government’s wins versus the Opposition’s losses—all you would need to weigh up is the Warm Up New Zealand housing programme; look at the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill last year, which introduced insulation standards for social housing; and look at Budget 2016, which actually increased the number of places available for social housing. So I think what we can do is look at the reality of the argument. When you look at this bill, it is solely premised on the belief that it takes the Government’s intervention—the State’s intervention—to construct houses. But when you actually look at the constraints on housing and affordable housing at the moment, it is to do with two key things, and that is what I will be touching on in my call tonight.

I first just want to tell a story, if I can, that will illuminate my call tonight. Many years ago in the late 1990s I travelled the Czech Republic. I was on the outskirts of Prague ordering my coffee and my lunch and I was struggling to speak the language, but luckily there was a lady next to me who spoke quite a bit of English. I started having a talk with her over lunch, and I naively said to her: “Well, it’s been quite a few years now since the velvet revolution and the velvet divorce. It must be great to live in a country now where you have such freedoms.” And she said to me: “Matt, well, yes, we have freedom now, but we must never forget every day we must focus on people who say they want to support us but actually just want to take power away from us.”

This bill underpins very much the Opposition’s approach, not so much about housing, but this is about centralising power—it is only the State that can intervene; it is not the hard-working builders. They are the ones who are the experts on the ground and they know how to get out there and build. This bill is pitched as a very benign: “If you don’t plan to fail; you fail to plan. You need to have a plan.” It has nothing to do with that; it is purely the Opposition’s ideology that it knows best and only it can deliver the houses to those vulnerable New Zealanders.

Look at that track record of my region. Look at the track record of my electorate in Waimakariri. What the Government did was intervene to free up that sector so they could go on and build affordable housing for the people. We lost 23,000 houses in the earthquakes. They have been rebuilt and what that was about was the Government intervening under the Land Use Recovery Plan and freeing up land. This is not an issue around construction of houses; it is an issue around land availability. Even if the Government intervenes, it would still need to free up the land, and that is what we did in Canterbury. Not only that, we incentivised and sent signals to the building sector about how it can deliver homes under the cap of $450,000 for affordable housing. When we had the KiwiSaver HomeStart roadshow not only was the one in Rangiora town hall packed with young families looking to see how they could buy their first house, but it was packed with building companies and builders wanting to learn how they could build houses under the cap so they could get KiwiSaver HomeStart loan applicants. That is the framework that the Government should be providing.

This is a false argument. When you look at it, what are the terms? Under this bill, it is pretty weak. It is pretty light. Where are the definitions of affordable, first-time buyer, and speculation? What is the difference between someone speculating versus someone who just needs to sell their house when life changes for them? And that is why I do not support this bill.

I am very proud to rise tonight in the House to support my colleague Kavin Delvis—

💬 Kelvin Davis: Oh, kia ora, Marama.

Kia ora, Kelvin Davis—sorry. The Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill proposes to build 10,000 affordable homes, which is, over 10 years, 100,000 affordable homes. We absolutely need more affordable homes. This country is facing a housing crisis the likes of which we have not seen, and the Government owes it to New Zealanders to admit that we have a housing crisis, to actually just say the words: “We have a housing crisis.”

Homelessness is driven by a lack of affordable housing. Again, that is what this bill is wanting to fix. Again, this Government will not commit to ending homelessness, because by denying that there is a housing crisis in the first place, that lets it off the hook for actually trying to sort it. At the moment the homelessness we are facing, again, is a detriment that we have never seen before—41,000. In 2006 homelessness was at a level of 1 in 120. Now it is 1 in 100 people who are homeless. So the cost of doing nothing, which is what has happened to our country under the leadership of the National Government, is incredibly expensive and morally and disgracefully wrong.

We saw how expensive it is, for example, with the emergency funding blowout, where this Government is putting people up in motels because there is not enough housing, State housing, social housing, or affordable housing to be able to have everybody in a home, so $2 million was set aside for the year earmarked for this particular emergency cause. But, instead, nearly $8 million was spent in only a few months—in only a few months—because this Government does not have a handle on the extent of this crisis and what is actually happening around our country.

Another example of how this Government is trying to undermine exactly what is happening can be seen with the major discrepancies in the number of social houses and how social housing places are even counted. We have the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment saying that there are just shy of 61,000 social housing places; except social housing Minister Amy Adams says that there are 66,000 social houses, so undermining the extent of the crisis as well as trying to make the fix-up look better than what is actually going on. Also, we have a waiting list of 6,000 people for a State home amidst a Government State house sell-off. We could go on all night about the failure of this Government to address housing and to ensure our people in our communities do have a warm, dry, and secure home to live in.

But it all goes to the Government’s denial of the crisis so that it does not have to fix it. Why does it not want to fix it? Because it is more important to protect speculation, which is the buying of houses as a business, than it is to actually uphold the core responsibility to ensure everyone has a good home.

Building more affordable homes in the thousands, in the numbers that we actually need, is absolutely the step that we need to be taking. The Government owes it to properly commit to having a plan to actually get us there. It was unfortunate to hear the member Joanne Hayes feeling quite outraged at this bill—she was quite outraged by the end of her speech. She drew some pretty long bows and compared this legislation with wasting time in the House. What is this House for if it is not to debate the housing crisis? She said: “This Government works for all New Zealanders. We have got everything sorted.” That is offensive to the realities of what is actually happening to our people in our communities today. I am quite appalled that she stood to say that. Thank you.

Firstly, tonight can I just start with where I agree with Kelvin Davis. The first, obviously, is that Te Tai Tokerau is a pretty awesome part of New Zealand, and I am certainly happy to agree with him on that. I am also happy to agree with him that it is important for parts of New Zealand to have more houses built. I do not think there is any denying that. We would all agree that there are parts of New Zealand that do need more houses to be built. We are seeing house prices going up in particular areas in New Zealand at quite a large rate, in large part due to a lack of supply of housing and the inability to get those houses built. We have seen a couple of circumstances where this has occurred in New Zealand in past years; the first one was in Christchurch.

If we look at the reason for that in Christchurch, obviously there were a couple of very devastating earthquakes, which meant that there was an absolute housing shortage at the time. So the Government responded in an appropriate way to actually work through ensuring that we could speed up some processes to get houses built quickly and ensure that land was freed up. We have seen bills come through this House to do with the Riccarton Racecourse and others to free up land so it would be available for the private sector to be able to meet the growing demand for housing in Christchurch. What has happened as a result of that is that now we have seen a stabilisation of housing prices in Christchurch—because the Government responded in a way to allow the private sector to address some of those issues.

In Auckland we have had similar issues with a constriction of the amount of land available. It is not rocket science to know that when you have planning processes that put an urban limit around an area so you cannot spread out further but you cannot actually then subdivide smaller and increase the density of housing, there is only one way that prices will go—because you have choked supply. Demand continues to increase and, of course, the prices go up.

This Government has responded to that. The Auckland Council—and credit to the Auckland Council—has responded to that. It has made appropriate changes to its unitary plan, which is now allowing for a widening of that urban limit and also for greater intensification of housing, and that is freeing up some land. We have obviously been putting through special housing areas, over 200 of those, and we have seen that an estimated 70,000 new homes are to be built in those areas. We are on track. We have got some things in train, and we are addressing the issues that will allow us to be able to increase the supply and, therefore, address some of the housing issues in a place like Auckland.

This evening, earlier, we had another member’s bill before us. It was the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill. On the other side of the House I heard a number of speakers decrying the length of the bill. They said: “Oh, this is a short little bill. It can’t mean much. If it is just a short little bill it really isn’t going to achieve much at all.” This is how big this one is. It is about the same size. What it smacks of when you have a bill like this is it simply works off this principle: if we say it, it will be so. If we say it often enough that we will build 100,000 houses, then magically 100,000 houses will appear. That is what this bill does—it says we are going to magically make 10,000 houses per year appear in the places where they are needed most.

You cannot magically make houses happen. Actually, I have heard criticism that things are not moving fast enough, that you cannot live in consents, and all these little pat lines that come out from across the House. Guess what? Even if the Government was to build those houses, the Government would still be subject to the Resource Management Act. The Government would still be subject to the planning processes and everything that it takes to get houses done.

This Government is not sitting idly by. This Government is not just leaving it entirely up to the market. We have seen the KiwiSaver HomeStart package, which has seen greater numbers of young people able to access it so they can buy their new home. We have put up $1 billion worth of infrastructure funding to ensure that those growth areas will get the infrastructure that they need. It is not simply just a case of saying: “If we say it will be built, it will be built.” No; what needs to happen is the appropriate measures need to be put into place to ensure the market is able to respond. That is what this Government is doing, that is why we are seeing so many more houses built, and that is why we do not need this bill. Thank you.

I think we need to consider this bill with reference to the background facts, because one thing is for sure, and that is that this Government has been trying to hide the size of the housing crisis in New Zealand for several years, it continues to do so, and it actually denies that there is a housing crisis at all. However, Treasury reported just recently that the housing shortage in New Zealand, as a whole, is 60,000 houses, approximately, right now—60,000 houses right now, today—and it is growing by 40 houses per day. That is the size of the deficit. That is the magnitude of the crisis. But the Government’s response has been to deny the figures, as it always does, and it continues to deny that there is a housing crisis at all.

Last September the International Monetary Fund—another independent source—put New Zealand top of the class for housing unaffordability in relation to how much we earn, compared with 30 other developed countries. We also topped a list of 64 countries for house-price growth in the past year. So what is the Government’s answer to that? To fiddle with the figures, as it always does, and to try to fiddle with the Resource Management Act, which will actually make little or no difference to the supply problem for housing in New Zealand, despite the claims made by Nick Smith and others on the other side of the House.

In fact, this crisis is one that the Government actually created. It created it through poor policy and a failure to intervene effectively, and it has been in power for coming on to 9 years. That poor policy-making and that ineffectiveness has been at the root of the housing crisis, and yet those members want people to elect them again. Well, people would be crazy to do so, because this problem is only going to worsen, and one of the drivers for that, despite claims to the contrary from those across the other side of the House, is that immigration continues to run at a net gain of 71,000 a year. We in New Zealand First think that is at least 10 times too high. It is putting massive pressure on prices of houses, on rents, on infrastructure, and on services like health, education, and social services. In the last 5 years alone, Auckland has swelled by 188,000 migrants. Where on earth will they live if there is not a genuinely comprehensive housing plan to house them? House prices in Auckland have jumped a staggering 29 percent in the last 2 years because of this Government’s poor policy-making and ineffectiveness.

The Government has scrambled to try to look as though it is doing something. It wants to appear to be solving the housing crisis, even though it denies that there is one. The truth is that most people on that side of the House and their supporters do not really want to solve the housing crisis, because they feel that they get an advantage from it. They do not care about others who cannot afford to buy a home in New Zealand, and those are the ones whom New Zealand First does care about.

These facts are the background facts for why this bill is so needed. We need 140,000 houses over the next 7 years, and that means we need 20,000 houses per year, not the 10,000 in this bill. That is the truth of the matter for the whole country. Auckland alone needs more than that, so it is really not a very adequate bill as far as that is concerned.

Mr Doocey said that the Government policy solved the problem of unaffordability in Christchurch and Waimakariri. No, it did not. Many, many thousands of people there cannot buy their first home, as is the case in many other parts of the country. We do need a system that allows people to buy houses on equal terms, as well as making sure that the number of houses is available. New Zealand First has policies to do that by providing sections and built houses to be sold to them over 25 years on easy terms. That is what affordability means, and that answers Mr Doocey’s question on that.

To start, I want to acknowledge the member in charge of this bill, Kelvin Davis. The Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill, as we know, is inspired by the Labour Party’s KiwiBuild policy. We know that under the KiwiBuild policy, Labour would allocate $2 billion to build 100,000 houses over a period of 10 years. In this bill, the member is proposing to build that exact number of houses—10,000 houses per year—improving the supply of houses to make houses affordable, and improving the supply of land. But if you look at Labour’s policy that is allocating $2 billion to build 100,000 houses over a period of 10 years, and if you do the maths properly, with $2 billion we can build not 10,000, not 100,000, but only 4,000 houses. That means you have to recycle your funds. Recycle, recycle, recycle—not five times, not 10 times, not 20 times, but 25 times. Is that practical? No, that is not practical.

As this bill is based on this flawed policy of the Labour Party, I am taking this call to oppose this bill. I can understand the intention behind this bill. On this side of the House, we value homeownership highly as well, and that is why we are continuing our focus on improving the supply of houses. To make houses affordable, yes, we need to have a strong supply of houses, but it is also about quality and it is also about choice. I visited a special housing area development in Three Kings, which is in Mount Roskill. What I saw there was this really nice building coming up with lots of houses in there. There was a real community feeling. There was a lot of choice. We do not want to see house after house that look like clones of each other. We want to give first-home buyers the choice. There should be choice, there should be quality, and they should, of course, be affordable. We know that it is about improving the supply of houses, and that is why we have a wide programme under way, which includes freeing up Crown land, which, as I have already mentioned, has special housing areas. We are also constraining building material costs, and then we have the KiwiSaver HomeStart package, which helps people get into their first home. That will help 90,000 people get into their first home.

The other thing is the Resource Management Act reform that is coming before the House. If the member is really serious about making houses affordable, I urge the member to go and talk to his caucus colleagues to support the Resource Management Act reform, because that will definitely reduce complexities and cost. That will definitely improve affordability of houses. If the member is serious about it, I urge the member to talk to his caucus colleagues to come and support Resource Management Act reform.

Yes, there is a $1 billion infrastructure fund. We know that housing development needs to be supported by infrastructure. I was in Hamilton a few days ago. The mayor there was really looking forward to the process. We know the applications are closing at the end of this month. I would like to see the same thing happening in Auckland as well.

Supply of houses is one side. There is another thing that we need to do to help people get into their first homes. That is, people need to have a reliable source of income, because they have to pay their instalments, their mortgage. For that, they need jobs. Under the National Government, in the past 3 years we have created 250,000 new jobs. The forecast is that there will be 150,000 new jobs by 2021. The other thing is that if you have employment now and then, casual or temporary, that does not help. You need to have a consistent source of income to pay your instalments. If you look at people who are in paid employment, 90 percent of them are in long-term permanent employment under this National Government. This is a very important aspect because this gives the confidence to people to go out and commit, because buying a house is not a simple thing. It can be a 15-year or 20-year kind of commitment.

As I said, this bill has good intentions but it will not deliver what it intends to. This National Government is already running a very comprehensive housing plan, and we are already starting to see results from our comprehensive housing plan, so I do not support this bill.

I rise to support the Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill, in the name of Kelvin Davis, and am pleased to do so. This morning’s New Zealand Herald carried yet another story—yet another story—of a house in Auckland that had been flipped on for a ridiculous price. It sold for $819,000—itself a fairly eye-watering price for a lot of families—and it was resold for $900,000 the same day. It sold for $819,000 in the morning and $900,000 in the afternoon, making an $81,000 profit over lunch. It is pretty impressive. It is a pretty impressive way to make a living. I think most people in this country should be houses. If you were a house, you would make a lot more money than you would earn in a job, and, of course, we also know that you do not have to pay much tax if you are a house; you only have to pay tax if you work for a living.

The thing about houses in New Zealand is that they are no longer homes to live in; they are financial instruments that are being traded by an investor class who enjoy a privileged tax status that does not apply to any other asset class in this country, nor does it apply to people who have to work for a living. But the thing about this average Papakura house—built in the 1960s, made out of brick; a fairly average house, which sold for $819,000 in the morning and $900,000 in the afternoon—is that it should not have even cost $819,000 in the morning. Right? It is a pretty average house. The median income in this country is just shy of $50,000, so this house—this fairly average suburban house—was 16 times the median income of the average person. That is an extraordinary statement of failure in terms of the New Zealand housing market.

House prices in New Zealand, on average, are roughly 10 times the average income. By one measure, New Zealand is now the fourth-most unaffordable country for accommodation in the entire world. We have a very low population density, but we have this extraordinary unaffordability. By another measure—and I think it was the International Monetary Fund measure that was mentioned earlier—we are the most unaffordable. By one measure, we are the fourth-most unaffordable, and, by another measure, the most unaffordable country in the world when it comes to housing.

The thing that I like about this bill, actually, is its simplicity. The Government keeps saying that it has a comprehensive housing plan. It says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and yet we have this extraordinary market failure after 9 years of this Government.

One of the things I like about this bill is that what it says is that the Government should have a plan. Well, if it has a plan, it has got nothing to fear from this bill; it could just submit the plan that it has got. The problem is that this bill also calls for actually building houses, not just having a plan. In that, I can see why the Government does not support the bill. It might have a plan, but it is not actually building any houses, and so I can see why it is not all that keen on this particular bill.

But the simplicity of this bill—the idea that, when it comes to one of the most important responsibilities of Government, it is to ensure that our people actually have accommodation and housing and a roof over their heads—is, I think, its great strength. It says that in Government one of our primary responsibilities is to ensure that our people are not living in cars and garages, that they have adequate accommodation, and that, therefore, in a very simple way, we should instruct the housing Minister to come up with a plan and start building some houses.

It is absurd that we have gotten into this situation in the first place. It is because this Government does not have an interest in actually building houses. It actually has an interest in maintaining this speculative economy, because that is good for its voter base—the same people who benefited from the superannuation adjustment announcement the other day. It wants to appear to look like it is solving the problem, which is why it makes announcement after grand announcement, but its actual results are nothing—lots of heat and light and noise, signifying nothing.

This Government, when it comes to housing, is, as they say in Texas, “all hat and no cattle”. This bill would ensure that it actually went out and built some houses. I am pleased to be able to support it.

This bill, the Housing Corporation (Affordable Housing Development) Amendment Bill—I mean, it is a laudable name. No one could really complain about the aims of the bill and the name of the bill, and, as the previous speaker, James Shaw, said, it is a simple bill, and he argues that its simplicity is its greatest strength.

When you look into the bill, it says it will ensure that homes that are built are affordable, but there is no definition of what affordable means. Minor detail, you might think, but it has no practical sense, other than a laudable aim. That simply will not work. It is a shame. The bill goes on further to say that the homes must not be used for speculation. Quite what speculation is—as my colleague Matt Doocey said before, people’s life circumstances can change, so is it going to require people to hold a house for a set period of time, during which they cannot sell it? When their circumstances change, how does that work? I can see another Government department coming out to make all the measurements on that, so perhaps there is some method in Labour’s madness on that one; I am not sure. I am not having a real crack at the member, because I think he has had a good go on this, but he has not really gone into a lot of detail. That is really where the whole thing falls down.

We have looked at the things that are causing the issues—talking about the cost of housing, which is referenced a lot by people in here. It is not the cost of building the house that has caused houses to go up in price in Auckland—and they are significantly in Auckland; it is happening a little bit elsewhere, but it is mostly in Auckland—it is a shortage of supply. I think Jono Naylor actually gave a pretty good explanation of the guiding principle of economics, which is supply and demand. And I think that, really, we have got a shortage of supply, which has driven up demand, and that has driven up price along with that.

But costs have gone up due to building costs as well, and a lot of that, and the shortage of land, comes back to the Resource Management Act (RMA). The Productivity Commission estimated that the RMA had added $15,000 to a house cost on average and extra costs added $30,000 on average to an apartment, and that over the last 10 years $30 billion had been added to the building costs for homes in New Zealand. Over that same period 40,000 fewer homes have been built—40,000 homes. If they were available in the market today, or had been produced through that period, we would not have the shortage that we do today. So you would think all those who are speaking in favour of this bill would be queueing up to help pass our RMA legislation; but anyone who thought that would be sadly mistaken, because they are not, and yet that is very clearly one of the key drivers of the shortage, which has driven the prices up, causing all of the issues, really, that this bill aims to solve.

In the meantime, another issue that is going on for us is the construction boom. It topped $19 billion last year in the construction industry, and there has been a huge number of houses built—30,000 homes in New Zealand, 10,000 of which were built in Auckland. Of course, that is constraining the supply of workforce to build those houses—and there is also a commercial construction boom, as well—but there has been a huge growth in jobs. There are 240,000 people working in the construction industry, and there are 10,000 apprentices being trained, so it is a huge opportunity to get more people into the workforce, build better homes—we do need better homes, and more homes. We have seen what has happened in Christchurch when supply really builds up momentum, where the terraced houses in Christchurch that were built for the so-called affordable end of the market are having difficulty selling now because of the supply and demand. The suppliers of demand are immutable, as is well known in the economic sector, and that has certainly shown up with what is happening in Christchurch.

To sum up, I think this is a bill with great aims, but it is fatally flawed because of its lack of definitions, and it really skirts around the main issue, which is supply and demand driven by poor RMA legislation. I urge other supporters of the bill to support the RMA legislation. Thank you.

Kelvin Davis—5 minutes in reply.

Oh—I am devastated, I am traumatised. You know, I am broken. I really thought that the National Government members, when they heard all the great arguments and heard the stories about people living in cars and families having to live in maraes and children doing homework by the interior light of a car and people living in tents on their relatives’ backyards, I really thought that they would say: “Kelvin, thank you very much for bringing this awesome bill to the House. This bill’s beauty is its simplicity in that we have got to have a plan and then we have got to implement that plan—a plan to build houses and then implementing that plan to build those houses.” Instead, I hear from their speeches that they are not going to support this bill. I am surprised.

I am very appreciative of the support from the Greens and New Zealand First and my colleagues here. It is very sad that the National Government is going to condemn yet more people to living homeless and not being to afford their own houses. Forty-one thousand people, we hear, are homeless, and that looks like it is going to continue.

At question time today I listened to the leader of the Labour Party, Andrew Little, ask the Prime Minister which of Nick Smith’s so-called successes he is most proud of: (1) building fewer houses than we did 12 years ago, (2) falling building consents, (3) selling off State houses during a housing crisis, (4) the lowest homeownership in 66 years, (5) that we have got the fourth-most unaffordable city in the world, or (6) that foreign speculators are buying more of our houses than ever before. I listened to the Prime Minister’s quite lengthy answer, and I guess I can summarise it in these three words: “Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.” He had absolutely nothing of any sort of intelligence to say about the National Government’s housing successes.

That is reinforced by what I heard from the members speaking now. First of all, Jo Hayes says to us that the National Government’s housing plan is whacking our housing plan around the ears. Well, there is a reason I never felt those whacks, because there is nothing in their housing plan, so it is a bit hard to get whacked with nothing. Then there are those words that they come out all the time with: “a comprehensive housing plan”. When I was sitting down that end of the House there, next to Megan Woods, we had a little thing going that every time we heard the National Government members say that they had a comprehensive housing plan we would say “skol”—you know, like the old drinking games at university. Well, the Speaker told us off because we were saying it so often that we were actually drowning out what the members on the other side were saying. So we started just sipping water quietly. Well, if it had been anything stronger than water we would have been rolled out of the House instead of walking out of the House at the end of question time.

Actually, it was really strange, the contradictions between what the members were saying: Jo Hayes was saying something; Matt Doocey was saying something else. It is really poor form for party members to contradict each other. Jo Hayes was saying how much they are doing, how much this Government is doing. This Government is doing this, this Government is doing that. Matt Doocey says it is not the role of the Government to fix the housing crisis. So what is it? Is it the role of the Government and the Government is doing heaps or is it not the role of the Government? We are a bit confused by the responses from the other side.

Then there was Dr Parmjeet Parmar. She said: “We’ve got to provide people with choice. People don’t want to be living in houses that are basically identical to the one next to them.” I heard her say that just now, and I am thinking to myself: “You know, if I was homeless I don’t care what the house looks like. I don’t care if it looks like the one next door or the next 10 houses down. It’s better to live in a house that is identical to the neighbours’ than to live in a car, a tent, or on a marae.”

It is really upsetting that the National Government does not want to pick up this KiwiBuild plan that will see us build—we are helping them out, and yet they do not want to accept the help that we are offering them. It is really sad, but it is not surprising, because this Government is just going to continue to condemn more people, more children, and more families to homelessness. The 41,000 who are homeless now—that number is going to rise. Thank you.