Robertson Grant: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10059. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): That was a shabby speech from Sam Lotu-Iiga because his side of the House has to take some responsibility for turfing out 13000 households from State housing in the 1990s. That is what Sam Lotu-Iiga’s National Government did. In the 1990s people lost their homes under National—13000 State houses were sold off and it takes years and years Mr Lotu-Iiga to come back from that kind of shabby policy. So do not lecture this side of the House on Michael Joseph Savage’s legacy. What Michael Joseph Savage stood for was actually looking after people not turfing out people into the street like National has a record of. This party on this side of the House stands proudly on its record on social housing. That side of the House has no idea whatsoever about what social housing is about and we will not be lectured by Mr Lotu-Iiga and his colleagues on that.Once again National has come to this House with a programme of tinkering to try to solve a housing crisis because that is what this is about. Yes availability of land is an issue but availability of land is only one small aspect. It will not deal with the greatest element of the housing crisis and the issue that the National Government should be focused on in this legislation today and that is the affordability of housing. Mr Lotu-Iiga and his colleagues think that a $700000 home 1 hour’s drive from the Auckland central business district represents affordable housing. That is what Mr Lotu-Iiga and National believe and that is wrong. There is nothing in this piece of legislation that will really address the underlying issues around affordability of housing because this Government is not prepared to roll its sleeves up and ensure that there are houses being built. That is what Labour’s KiwiBuild policy is about. It is about actually rolling up our sleeves and saying: “We’ll get alongside construction companies and we’ll make sure those affordable homes are being built.”All this legislation does—all this legislation does—is set up some targets. It does not ensure at any point that there will be affordable housing. All it says is that the land will be there. It does not say anything about affordable housing. Labour has the plan that says we will actually get that affordable housing. This simply does not go there.Melissa Lee: How?GRANT ROBERTSON: They on that side of the House ask how. It is really simple for my National Party colleagues. We build houses—10000 houses a year in the affordable frame. Melissa Lee answer me this. Is a $700000 house affordable?Melissa Lee: The average price is $350000 for a section.GRANT ROBERTSON: A $700000 house is affordable. Yes she does believe that a $700000 house in Auckland an hour from the central business district is affordable. It might be affordable for Melissa Lee but it is not affordable for most Aucklanders and that is what is missing from this piece of legislation. It is very important to focus on the fact that what this does is set up special housing areas that will give consideration to affordable housing. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I have a member on my left and a member on my right who are interjecting on each other and they do not have the floor. It is totally out of order and disrespectful to the person speaking.GRANT ROBERTSON: It is important to note that what is set up under this legislation under the accords in the special housing areas is a process that will give consideration to affordable housing. It will not actually ensure that affordable housing is built; it will simply give consideration and that is typical of the tinkering. There is a lot of talk about giving consideration to things in this Budget. National is going to give consideration to warrants of fitness for rental housing. It does not think it will actually do it; it is just going to think about it. This is the Budget about thinking not about doing when it comes to housing. We actually need warrants of fitness for rental housing across the board. It may come as a shock to the National Party to learn that only 20 percent of children in poverty live in State housing. Eighty percent of children living in poverty live in private rentals and that is not covered at all by this.Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Wait for the next bill.GRANT ROBERTSON: We certainly will be talking about it in the next bill. This bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill does enable once an accord is developed between central government and local government a process to go in place that will see some fast tracking and some streamlining of processes within the Resource Management Act.We on this side of the House are saying that we are prepared to see this bill go to the Social Services Committee so that we can debate those issues. But I give fair warning. Sending a bill of this nature to a select committee for a few weeks is completely unacceptable. If the Government is going to propose major changes to the Resource Management Act to the way that the Resource Management Act is implemented when it comes to land we need to know that that has been thoroughly debated. Sending it off for a few weeks will not make that happen. There may well be improvements that can be agreed on between central government and local government in this area but we are not going to be able to give that adequate consideration without a proper select committee process.When we look at the relevant bit of the legislation that covers this what we discover is that under this bill the rights of appeal when there is a special housing area established will be limited to developments of four or more storeys. That fits in with elements of the Auckland Unitary Plan and it is quite clear that the Government has finally got around to working out that it should actually do something to facilitate the implementation of the Auckland Unitary Plan. But bear in mind that this legislation will now cover the whole of New Zealand. It is not just about Auckland any more. Therefore if we are going to be deciding that the limit of four storeys or more is the relevant limit we actually need to think about what that means in other parts of New Zealand. So it is all very well to propose to this House these changes when they are based on what happens in Auckland but that is exactly why we need a full and properselect committee process so that we can actually analyse how this will have impact on the rest of the country. The proposal from the National Government today is to restrict that select committee process to a few weeks up to the end of July and I do not believe that that is acceptable at all.The fact is that land supply is only one part of the equation and if National had a fully comprehensive housing policy that it was bringing to this Parliament it would talk about far more than this. Mr Lotu-Iiga cannot rely on the next bill because that does not do it either. It does not do it either because the National Party has been in denial about housing from the moment it came into office. The Government has finally caught up with the fact that there is a housing crisis. It has finally caught up with it after house prices have gone up by 36 percent in the time that this party has been in office—36 percent. But for the last few years all we have heard from John Key is that there is no housing crisis and along the way people in Auckland have been priced further and further out of the housing market. To come to this House with a bill that tinkers around and says: “Yes we’ll put some things in place that might allow there to be more development in Auckland.” is not enough to make sure that we address that housing crisis.If National was serious about addressing the housing crisis it would add to this a process of how to build more affordable homes. It would put into place a capital gains tax which members on that side of the House have refused to acknowledge is an important part of dealing with the housing crisis. They cannot see why all but two developed countries in the world have a capital gains tax but apparently it is a terrible terrible thing for New Zealand to consider. Taxing capital taxing the National Party’s mates—that would be a terrible thing to consider. A capital gains tax is an important part of a good sustainable housing policy.The housing market has failed. Labour has recognised that with our KiwiBuild policy. National has come to the party very late with a bill here that will address one aspect of the problem of housing in Auckland—one aspect of the problem of housing across New Zealand. This is a bill that needs thorough debate. We are prepared to send it to a select committee because we believe it needs to be analysed. We are prepared to send it to the select committee because the Government has finally caught up with the needs of Auckland and the fact that parts of the Auckland Unitary Plan need to be put in place. But we send it there with significant reservation because this bill changes important aspects of the process of resource management approval. We want to have a thorough debate about those processes. Our support for this bill is not guaranteed past the select committee consideration and the Government needs to give serious attention to a proper select committee process so that we can put in place a proper affordable housing policy. This bill falls well short of the mark of the kind of housing bill that should be coming to this House.