Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): We heard Bill English the new Prime Minister in his opening contribution to the debate on the Prime Minister's statement. We have a new Prime Minister but we do not have a leader. It is leadership that has gone missing from this National Government and we have gone in the space of a few short weeks from the Key Team" to the B-team. It is sad to see. The really telling example of Bill English's leadership deficit was when he turned up at Rātana this year and gave the people at Rātana a lecture on small government and said to them that National had reached the limits of what Government could do—unbelievable.Māori homeownership under this National Government is falling through the floor. Māori homeownership is now less than half the rate of the general population. Māori have been hammered by National's housing crisis. They are four times more likely under this National Government to be waiting for a State house and five times more likely than the general population to be homeless according to the last census. Bill English says he has reached the limits of what Government can do. He has run up the white flag. He has got no ideas. He has got no appetite for reform. By contrast what did Andrew Little say at Rātana? He said: "We will work with you." We will use KiwiBuild to build 100000 affordable homes for first-home buyers and in doing that we will house thousands of Māori families in their first home. We will partner with iwi and other Māori organisations. We will look at collective mortgages. We will look at innovative ways that we can work together to drive up the Māori rate of homeownership. That is leadership and that is the kind of thing that we have not heard from Bill English over the last few weeks. It is hard to lead and be courageous and tackle the real challenges and problems that this country faces when you are in denial but denial is the National Government's mind-set when it comes to the No. 1 problem the biggest challenge facing New Zealand today and that is the housing crisis. It was appropriate that we kicked off the start of the new year with a new report from Demographia the international thinktank that monitors and indexes housing affordability. It was a real wake-up call to the 8 years of failure and excuses that passes for a housing policy under this National Government. The Demographia report showed that once again New Zealand ranks as one of the most unaffordable countries for housing in the world. It showed that Auckland our biggest city ranks behind only Sydney Vancouver and Hong Kong for unaffordability—that is the cost of purchasing a house relative to income. That more than anything shows that 8 years of failure of this National Government in the housing area has made this country an international basket case for housing.But did Bill English have anything to say about housing in his state of the nation speech? Not a word. He offered no hope to the tens of thousands of frustrated Kiwi families who only want a crack at the Kiwi Dream of owning their own home. He had nothing to say to the more than half of the New Zealand population who live in rental housing these days who are facing because of the state of the housing market the most astronomical rent increases. In Auckland according to the most recent data from TradeMe average rents have gone up by more than $5000 in the last 5 years. How can working families find an extra $5000 to pay the rent? No wonder—no wonder—the leading statisticians and analysts tell us that it is the housing crisis it is housing costs that are driving the big increases in poverty and inequality that we are seeing. But Bill English had nothing to say about this in his state of the nation speech. He had nothing to say no hope to give to people who are living in squalor because of his housing crisis.I want to mention the case of Auckland woman Tracey Penny who featured in a Television New Zealand story recently that was brought to light thanks to the excellent work by my outstanding colleague Carmel Sepuloni. Tracey Penny has been on the waiting list for more than a year to get a State house. She is a tetraplegic after a childhood accident. She has been living in a van for the last 6 weeks with her partner and a 4-year-old toddler. It is completely unacceptable that this should be allowed to go on in New Zealand today but for a year she has been languishing on the State housing list because in west Auckland there just are not any available State houses. There is no emergency housing for people like Tracey Penny and people like 84-year-old navy veteran Frederick Shimmen who was living in a shed in my electorate a shed that was open to the weather. He was sharing makeshift cooking and bathroom facilities with several other tenants who were paying hundreds of dollars a week to rent buses and a shared shed and caravans on a property in west Auckland. This is the face of Bill English's housing crisis because Bill English has been the architect of what passes for a housing policy under this National Government.It is all about leadership and when Bill English said that they had reached the limit of what a Government could do he exposed the bankruptcy of ambition and the bankruptcy of ideas. What is the result of this? The result is that families have been shut out of homeownership. People are living in squalor and all the Government can do is tell them to be patient. All over New Zealand people are facing steep rent rises and not just in Auckland. In regional centres like Tauranga Wellington Hamilton and actually all over New Zealand we are seeing rent increases of 10 to 15 percent a year.What is the Government doing? It trots out an endless series of announcements that are designed to make it look as if it is doing something about the housing crisis but in fact it is just an elaborate series of excuses designed to throw people off the scent and provide cover for a deliberate policy of inaction. Nick Smith's vacant Crown land policy which the Government has been talking up for the last few months has resulted in not a single new house being built since it was announced a year and a half ago. He promised that new houses would be built by the end of last year but they are still in the planning stages and doing earthworks. He promised 500 hectares of land would be available; he will be lucky—on the latest information that we have got under the Official Information Act—to deliver even 1/20th of that.Bill English has been going around talking up this great Government-backed building programme and talking about a building boom. Well there is no boom—there is no boom. We need 16000 houses a year just to keep up with population growth in Auckland—16000 new dwellings. The latest data shows they have only just consented 10000 in the last year. The deficit of 30000 homes that has built up in Auckland under National's watch is increasing by 6000 a year. It is getting worse. Is there any wonder that house prices continue to outstrip people's ability to pay them?What will Labour do? We have a housing policy that is jammed full of constructive positive solutions. We are going to build 100000 affordable homes. We are going to raise the build rate to what it was in the early 2000s and what it was under Norman Kirk in the 1970s. But the National Government says it cannot be done because it lacks ambition for New Zealand. We are going to ban foreign speculators from buying existing homes just like they do in Australia—a policy that has channelled $30 billion into the construction of new homes in the last year. We are going to improve rental standards and make sure that every rental home in New Zealand is warm and dry because it is not good enough in Labour's view that 50000 kids are hospitalised every year with infectious and respiratory diseases.These are our policies. We are going to reform the planning system to make it more pro-growth to encourage people to build more without sacrificing the quality of our built environment and we are not going to continue to sell State houses. National is selling 3000 State houses in Christchurch even John Key's childhood home when it should be building thousands and thousands of extra State houses. That is the kind of leadership that is the courage that is the determination and the ambition that Andrew Little's Labour-led Government will show when we fix the housing crisis."