Prasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13180. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. Really the clause that tells us whatthis bill is about is very clearly stated. It says it is about housing affordability. The rest of the bill is not about that. In fact I would have thought that the two members of the Government who have taken calls so far which includes the Minister of Housing would have justified these provisions and explained to us how they are going to achieve the objectives of this bill. The Minister has not done that and neither has the chairperson of the Social Services Committee. In fact what we have heard really is filibustering. Not filibustering but really—Darien Fenton: Blustering.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —blustering. It is blustering. The Minister understands perfectly. The Minister is doing what he has done in his other portfolios to wit ACC: create such a sense of crisis with the figures and expect everybody to believe it. Then in a very short period of time like in ACC there is not really a problem but the damage had been done. It is the same kind of approach here. Other Ministers have used it in social development as well. But we know that what is being designed here is the very thing that has failed. It is the housing market that has failed. It has not worked. It has not produced the number of houses required. The Minister can say as much as he likes about the previous Government etc. but I am not particularly interested in that Minister. I am interested in your performance Minister over the last 5 years in this particular area. No affordable housing has been built. What the Minister has done is preside over a crisis. So the housing market is failing.There are only two things that the Minister has addressed—the availability of land and regulations around buildings. There are only two things. But the Minister ought to know and I am sure he does that there are a whole bunch of other things that actually contribute to making housing affordable and they have not been addressed. How do loan-to-value ratios address housing affordability? The Minister has not answered the questions posed by the member forMāngere in terms of what is affordability and whether that family from his electorate on $20000 a year will be able to afford a house. These things will not work and the Minister knows they will not work.So here we are presiding over a time when house prices in Auckland have gone to $700000 and upwards—a 30 percent increase. The Minister’s rather cynical explanation during the first reading of this bill around affordability was that of course the new developers will build the $700000 houses so that people in the $300000 houses can move into them. Well that is what the Minister said. I think that is a cynical approach to take. But what should be happening here is addressing the whole range of things that contribute to housing development and that is not happening. This is failing Kiwis I say to the Minister in terms of getting them into houses which is the very thing that contributes as we know to their well-being. So here we are.The housing shortage is rife affordability is a problem and costs are high but those things are not being addressed here. How is it Minister that by making land available at the periphery of Auckland which is what the provisions will provide for—that is actually in the short period of time that people need houses—those houses will be built? They will not be built. The reason why the Minister has addressed this problem in this way is that that approach favours the developers. It favours those who want to build expensive houses in those subdivisions in those areas outside like Hobsonville. That member was part of a Government that would not let affordable housing be built in Hobsonville. I remember very well the Prime Minister saying: “Not in my backyard”—not in his electorate. That is still the context within which these provisions are built. I do not live very far from Hobsonville. Every now and again I have gone and seen the little ones that have been built.Hon Maryan Street: All seven?Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Is it that many? On that note I think some very very good Supplementary Order Papers have been put up by my colleague Phil Twyford. He is beginning to address the notion of affordability. In these particular areas there ought to be—