Robertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11782. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]6.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “I’d expect the financial system to take account of the inherent risk of rapidly rising house prices. Particularly the buyers. The buyers need to pay attention to the fact that interest rates will inevitably rise even if in the next couple of years they can’t see that happening quickly. The debt related to mortgages lasts a long time”?Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: Yes. As I said in that interview mortgages do last a long time and buyers who are stretching themselves when mortgage rates are the lowest in 50 years just need to understand the risk or the pressure they will be under if and when mortgage rates come up.Grant Robertson: Now that he has acknowledged the housing bubble would it be less risky for homebuyers if the Government had launched a Government-backed building programme for affordable housing as recommended last week by the Employers and Manufacturers Association and the Property Institute of New Zealand?Hon PAULA BENNETT: I do not believe that. What the Minister is merely saying is that actually we have mortgage rates that are incredibly low. What a lot of households look at when they are borrowing is their capacity to pay that mortgage and less about how much they are actually borrowing as such. What he is concerned about of course is that as those mortgage rates go up there may be some concerns about their ability to pay it back. That is the point that he was making.Grant Robertson: Which of the following Government contributions has added the most to the housing bubble: (a) allowing building consent levels to sit at record lows for 4 years and still refusing to build affordable homes at scale; (b) repealing laws to promote affordable housing; (c) refusing to put in place restrictions on offshore speculators; (d) encouraging first-home buyers to buy the houses they cannot afford through deposit subsidies; or (e) all of the above?Hon PAULA BENNETT: Those sound like Labour policies that were rejected by the public but what I will say is that we are doing a heck of a lot around housing in New Zealand. We can see that in that we are building at least 40 houses every working day in Auckland which of course is four times what it was when we came into office. We can see the detail in what is going on in the current situation of really years of neglect that has happened by a combination of people but progress is definitely being made.Grant Robertson: Is his advice for first-home buyers on the risk of the housing bubble bursting after 8 years in Government finally an admission of the complete failure of this Government’s housing policies?Hon PAULA BENNETT: I think that first-home buyers understand better than the member does that there is some risk when mortgage rates are as low as they are and they are borrowing to capacity in their ability to pay it back—that they will be taking into consideration if those mortgage rates do go up.