Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Green Party is supporting this amendment proposed Part 5 from the Labour Party. As the two previous speakers very well explained it is vital that we address the issue of foreign capital in our housing market. It is very simple. The Green Party believes that every New Zealander should be able to live in a warm healthy safe secure home and they should not have to spend more than 30 or 40 percent of their income to access that. That is a fundamental human right. That is good for our society. If the Government wants to achieve that outcome it has to be realistic about the many various challenges that are impacting on our housing market and it is not realistic for the National Government to avoid this part of the debate and claim that anyone who raises the reality of foreign capital pouring fuel on the housing fire that is happening in Auckland—it is just denying reality; it is a basic economic fact. I heard some of the members last night like David Seymour and some of the Government members talking about housing markets and how they should work and one of the key things that they did not address is that housing is not a commodity. It is not like cars or bicycles or dishware or glasses or pens. It is not like that because real estate is fixed and so if we have a lot of money coming in for a fixed amount of land and number of houses then of course it is going to increase the price of that and it is going make it harder for people to access housing. The reality is that every home that is sold to an overseas investor is a home that a local family cannot buy. We do not have a capital gains tax we do not have a warrant of fitness and we do not have really adequate renters' protections and so we have got these foreign speculators. There is nothing wrong with being foreign. It is just you know they are not invested in New Zealand they have got no requirement to look after their tenants and they are able to make tax-free capital gains on the appreciation of property prices. That is not good for New Zealand and that is not good for our economy and let us just be realistic about that. The Green Party policy is a little more ambitious than this amendment. Actually this amendment does not ban all foreign buyers at all. It just requires people buying residential property to be New Zealand citizens: either people who normally live here or people intending to live here indefinitely. It even allows for people temporarily coming to New Zealand and intending to sell their property when they leave to buy property and people buying bare land with the intention of building new houses or homes or buying existing dwellings with the intention of upgrading them into a greater number of dwellings—they are all able under this amendment to buy land and property. So it is actually quite a reasonable approach and I cannot understand why the Government would not consider such a reasonable well-researched proposal that will definitely have an impact on house prices in Auckland and make homes more accessible to New Zealanders who live here and do need a place to stay. The Green Party message is very simple. Our longstanding policy has been to limit sales of property to residents and citizens. I am an immigrant. There is nothing xenophobic about saying that you have to have the intention of living here or be a citizen if you are going to buy property because that keeps the market domestic and accessible for the people who need to live here. It is a simple message: if you want to make New Zealand your home you are welcome to buy a home here. If you want to become a permanent resident or citizen you are welcome. If you want to come and do those things and buy a house please please—that is absolutely available. Right? But if people are going to sit in offices in Sydney or Singapore or San Diego and play games with our property market to make a buck without actually putting in any real investment here in New Zealand then that is not welcome. I think most New Zealanders would agree with that. It is really unfortunate that the Government is not willing to debate the issue and that it just claims that anyone who raises the issue is racist or xenophobic when it actually has nothing to do with racism or xenophobia or not wanting people to come to New Zealand. It is about protecting homes in New Zealand for those people who do live here and making sure that they are accessible to all people in New Zealand.