Little AndrewANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): You can tell just how serious this Minister is in getting this piece of legislation through because he is relying on the crack team of Craig Foss to have to usher him along to get the bill through—this is how vital and essential this piece of legislation is. The reality is that the Minister cannot bring himself even now—10 days out from the expiry of the special housing area legislation and having to rush through this piece of legislation—to admit what every New Zealander knows and that is that we have a housing crisis. We have a housing crisis. He is just cobbling something together at the last minute because he has suddenly realised that the dream of special housing areas is about to fly out the window with so few special houses built—he has got to do something about it.I do not know how he persuaded his Cabinet colleagues to take the time of the House to pass this through under urgency when he has known when he will have known when he did know that the legislation that we are now amending was coming up for expiry only 10 days away—only 10 days away. This urgency in this House for this piece of legislation is an expression of the complete and utter shambles that housing policy is in under this Minister for Building and Housing and this Government. That is what this is about. This House is taking its valuable time at this important time of the year to sweep up after this Minister yet again because of the total shambles that his policy is in. Every effort he has made every policy he has introduced on housing has completely turned to custard.You look at the special housing areas and you look at the number now that are being offered for sale on TradeMe for land banking—they get the special housing areas and yet some developers have no intention whatsoever of fulfilling the criteria and actually getting houses built. The whole condition of getting expedited consenting processes was that these developers with this special status would actually get houses built. But that is not happening in far too many cases. It is true that the Minister says there are a handful of them they have got their applications lodged and they have just got to bring it on a bit—this is with 10 days to go before the expiry of this legislation. There are far too few houses being built on special housing areas and that is the problem—they have gone to land bankers.The reality is that we have a chronic shortage of housing in Auckland and in other parts of New Zealand and this Minister and his Government have failed to deliver for the thousands of New Zealanders struggling to get their first home. Let us not be mollycoddled by the figures that both the Minister and the Prime Minister have been trotting out. Let us be very clear that the 9651 houses consented in the last 12 months are below the 12000—nearly 13000—consented in 2004. That was at a time when Auckland's population was much much smaller. So on a per capita basis the building programme right now is way behind—absolutely way behind. If you have a look at what Statistics New Zealand says and its analysis of the number per thousand people—sure it has risen to 6.3 in the last 12 months from the low of 3.1 in 2011 but that is still only half what it was in 1974. That is the real measure—number of houses per thousand people—and this Government is way behind.It is a comparative issue and it is about New Zealanders' prospects about getting into a house. It is no longer just any house because plenty of builders are building the big expensive McMansion million-dollar-average houses—plenty of those. It is that those on modest incomes are working hard sometimes at more than one job—couples with several jobs between them—saving hard working hard chasing that Kiwi Dream but they cannot get it. They cannot get it because this Government does not care about affordable housing. This Government does not care about affordable housing. This legislation will help five—five—out of 154 special housing areas. We know that of the other 149 there are plenty that are just being land banked. That is all they are. There is no serious programme—there is no serious programme—to accelerate affordable house building under this Government in New Zealand today.We could support this first part of this legislation because at this stage anything—the smallest thing the smallest skerrick of anything—that will help get one extra affordable house I have to say that we have to support it. We would have to support that. But that does not explain or justify why the Minister has included these other provisions on the offer-back provisions under the Public Works Act. That is completely unrelated to anything to do with special housing areas and getting more affordable housing built. It is not needed. The provisions are not needed to achieve the objectives that he has of using special housing areas to get houses built. It simply is not needed. That assumes of course that even if these other special housing area applications are approved by the council after this legislation passes it will lead to more affordable housing very quickly—even assuming that the Public Works Act provisions are not needed.The reality is—and I want to hear from David Seymour from the ACT Party about this because I think that the good burghers of Epsom will be very interested to know what is potentially happening to their property rights. Those who lounge back in the leafy streets of Epsom and Parnell wondering how their investment properties are going they will be wanting to know whether or not any property they own or that they have an interest in or have had an interest in that has been purchased under the Public Works Act—whether they are going have the right to get it back because under these amendments they will not. Their rights will be traduced. Private property rights will be traduced in these provisions. It is not standard practice for the Labour Party to champion the cause of private property owners but in the absence of the Government and so far in the absence of the ACT Party we have to. We have to because nobody else is and we ought to take that sort of measure very seriously. This House should not be passing legislation that traduces those rights quickly or inadvisedly or expeditiously just because we have a Minister who has performed so woefully in his portfolio that we are down to desperate measures.The reality is this: New Zealand needs a genuine comprehensive housing plan to fix the housing crisis. We need a housing policy and a housing package that is going to get more houses built including if necessary in Clutha-Southland but certainly in the many other areas around New Zealand: Auckland Hamilton Tauranga Taupō—as I discovered the other day—even up the Kāpiti Coast parts of Wellington Nelson and Queenstown. New Zealanders are looking for an answer. They are looking for leadership on the issue of housing—genuinely affordable housing—because those on modest incomes those on reasonable incomes who work hard and save hard and do the best they can no matter how hard they try cannot get their foot on that bottom rung of the housing and homeownership ladder. That too we should be concerned about.This piece of legislation the first part adds a mere skerrick a mere iota of difference to that objective but that is all. But the other part the second part the offer-back provisions will not help one bit. We are opposed to those and so we cannot support this legislation in its current form.There remains a possibility I hope that during the passage of this bill through the House under urgency the Minister might come to his senses his colleagues might come to their senses David Seymour might come to his senses and say: You know what? We all agree there is a housing crisis. We know something has to be done. We do need those special housing area provisions as small a contribution as they will make to the housing crisis but we do not need to traduce private property rights and create a constitutional crisis that we just don't need." If that happens we could support the legislation but not in its current form—cobbled together in a hurry because this Minister is so desperate to prove once again that he does not have to get absolutely everything wrong. Well he is on a hiding to nothing on that already so let us just be honest about it. Let us just be honest about it.This legislation if it confines itself to the special housing area issues alone we can support. In its current form we cannot because it takes unnecessary steps that will add nothing at all to additional housing affordability and while that is there this legislation cannot be supported and will not be supported. I simply urge the Minister to look carefully and listen carefully. If we want to do the right thing for New Zealand and the housing crisis it will not be in this bill in its current form."