Parker David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 28 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6869. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The last speaker Amy Adams claimed credit for New Zealand’s debt position. This Government has borrowed more money than any other prior Government in New Zealand’s history. I am not blaming it for all of that—I am not blaming it for all of that. It has had the Christchurch earthquake and it has had the global financial crisis. It has been appropriate that after more than a decade of surpluses New Zealand ran a deficit during that period. But the deficit it has to be said was made worse by National’s income tax cuts 40 percent of which went to the top 10 percent of income earners. It also has to be said that the criticisms of Dr Cullen’s management of the books are arrant nonsense. Under his stewardship New Zealand reduced gross Government debt from 40 percent of GDP to 18 percent of GDP and net debt went to zero. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Got your figures right this time? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Have I got my figures right? Yes I have on this occasion and I do apologise for my error yesterday when I did get them wrong which I acknowledge. This Government has failed in a number of ways. It was going to stem the tide of people going to Australia; 180000 have left. It was going to make unemployment better and that is why it had the Job Summit; it has since got worse—the worst in 13 years. It was going to proceed with asset sales—always a flawed policy—but it hasn’t worked even in its flawed form. It is on the wrong side of tax policy. We need significant tax policy. It is on the wrong side of changes to monetary policy. It is on the wrong side of savings policy and now it is on the wrong side of housing policy. 
New Zealand is not building enough affordable houses. The power of the State needs to be used to remedy this problem. Homeownership rates in Auckland as Annette King said have dropped to under 60 percent. Homeownership rates for people who are younger than 40 are now under 50 percent. We are going to have rising rates of elderly poverty in New Zealand unless we get on top of this problem. The Productivity Commission said that we are not building enough low-cost affordable housing—smaller houses that the market is not causing to be built—and not just in Auckland. The commission said that we have got extreme housing unaffordability also in Wellington in Tauranga - Bay of Plenty and in Christchurch. In addition there are some smaller localities like the Queenstown Lakes District and Nelson where we have got a similar problem. The answer to that is to use the power of the State to build these things in bulk. We are not saying they are going to be shoddy houses. They will be quality houses. They can be built for around $300000 on average across the country and for the Government to deny that—again it is on the wrong side of that debate. There will be a combination of apartments terraced houses and stand-alone houses and overall they will be able to be built for a cost of around $300000 on average throughout the country. In Auckland it might be slightly more but it will not be a lot more. We know this is possible; the Government denies that it is. 
The second part of this of course is that we need to free up land. So how do you do that? The Government says that you actually truncate fair processes under the Resource Management Act. We actually say make them work—a national policy statement under the Resource Management Act to make it easier to consent affordable land projects. The Environmental Defence Society and planning lawyers have all come out and have said that this is the way to go. We know it works. We did something similar in respect of a national policy statement to help the consenting of renewables. Indeed it works even before the document has statutory effect because local government and developers see what is coming and they see where the opportunities lie. 
The National Government’s criticisms of this have been pathetic. Who does it get out of the blocks first? Well it is always the person who misleads. It is actually Mr Joyce. Mr Joyce got up and said on National Radio that the $1.5 billion—which is what the total capital cost is at the maximum; none of it on the operating account—was a subsidy of $15000 a house for 100000 houses or whatever it was. He did not get it. That was the opposite of what was said in the papers. The next attack that was made on it was that the land cost is ridiculously underestimated by the Labour Party which again is untrue. The next criticism was made that this number of houses can not be built when that number of houses—more than that—was being built less than a decade ago and indeed back in the 1970s in times when more affordable housing was being built. These sorts of houses were being built to market. 
Then National said the Labour Party was proposing to have low interest loans. That is not correct. The Labour Party is using the power of the State. All costs will be passed on to those who are purchasing these properties including interest as a small margin over the Crown’s costs of funds. These houses will be affordable.