Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe; tēnā koutou e te Whare. I've been engaged in this dialogue about this law which has become far more interesting actually subsequent to the Supplementary Order Paper placed on the Table yesterday as a result of the Government's announcement than the speeches that we heard at for example the first reading when the technical amendments were far smaller to the Income Tax Act. But in those conversations with people on social media there are a number of folks who are raising the fact that they played by the rules—they played by the rules and they got ahead by playing by those rules so they should be able to lock in those gains forever. Then there are those who have also played by the rules but haven't necessarily managed to get into particularly the property market where not just—you know two-thirds of wealth in this country held in property which is effectively as noted by a number of different commentators across this country and notable economists. Property in this country has for a very long time been effectively Government guaranteed not obviously explicitly but effectively.One of the many reasons for that is because of the fact that two-thirds of wealth is held in property is because loan-to-value ratios have been so low for so long. It is because those mortgages that are held by investors actually present a huge financial system liability should they fall over. This is why the Greens have been engaged in this dialogue around the need for a really soft landing because this bubble as estimated by a number of prominent economists across the world is very likely to burst unless we meaningfully rise to the challenge in front of us which is this rampant housing crisis.Alongside that the facts and the reality of it I've engaged with a few people in talking about the history of a game which is probably quite renowned or well known to many of us—that's the game of Monopoly. The game of Monopoly was invented in the early 1900s by an American woman called Elizabeth Magie. She herself identified as a Georgist for those who are interested in political theory. But the actual original name of Monopoly was The Landlord's Game and it was invented as a gamified version of how unfairly a system or economy operates when you continually emphasise the accumulation of private land at the expense of the many. The whole point was to try and educate the players of this game about the importance of directing investment towards productive outcomes. Yet for some reason or another as The Landlord's Game by Elizabeth Magie was bought by and I believe eventually produced by Hasbro and has turned into Monopoly the game that kids know and love it seems to have become the rule book that many a politician wants to reinforce.But society is not a board game. When the rules are not working for the majority of people as evidenced by those statistics that I brought to the fore last night that have been incredibly well reported that the top 10 percent of New Zealanders own 59 percent of the wealth and the bottom half own just 2 percent and the majority of that wealth is in housing and when you have wealth inequality particularly of that scale that wealth inequality continues to compound and get worse as we have seen. Society life governance and politics is not a board game. When the rules are not working we have an opportunity to change them.There's been a lot of discussion in this debate so far particularly from the Opposition who railed in favour of you know the points put forward by the property investors' lobby saying that this is just going to increase rents and that this is just how the market works. Well dare I say it they're engaging in a little bit of economic tomfoolery because the reality is as we see constantly market rents are always the highest that the market will possibly allow at that intersection of supply and demand. We know that supply has been so low for so long as a result of successive Governments and their neglect and inaction that there is simply not enough homes that landlords or those who are holding that property are willing to put on to the market at rates that are affordable to those renters. In turn there is an immense amount of land banking and speculation that goes on where development should be under way. I can point to a number of car-parks which are just flat tarmac in my electorate which demonstrate the immense policy and political failure over the past several decades because that should be a space where density is done well.I also need to point to the other kind of rhetoric that is often thrown out there when we're talking about property investors. So often that's mum and dad investors and I have heard other politicians in these debates referring to their own parents and how these investments in properties were their retirement plans. Just for the sake of offering a contrast of opinion in this Chamber because this Chamber isn't particularly well represented in the form of renters if we're talking about mum and dad investors we also need to talk about mum and dad renters like my mum and my dad because there's a number of those around the country as well. If we're talking about those mum and dad investors and we're trying to capitulate that these are the people who are going to be so massively impacted by this then they must be those who sit at the very top of the pecking order which makes them a very specific niche of mums and dads that top 10 percent of our society who own 59 percent of all of the wealth. Dare I say it the rules have been tilted in their favour for far too long.So this is one small part—one I might add Treasury gave the Government the advice that this should be extended beyond the 10 years which is currently in the bill; should be to at least 20 or 30 years. The Greens favour it for indefinitely because the very purpose of the brightline test by the way is to just make sure that the test of intent actually applies properly under the Income Tax Act—that is it initially was intended that if you are selling something with the intention of making an income in the form of capital gains then you should be paying tax. We've just kind of ignored that. The reality is that the brightline test simply enables another layer for the IRD to enforce that with far better efficacy.So the Greens support this bill. It doesn't go far enough in our opinion and I'm sure we'll have a flurry of other debates about this. I mean I'm sure that the Labour-led Government and the Labour Party in particular feel as though they've hit just right when they've got the right wing railing against them and they've got the left railing against them on the other side. But there is so much more that we can do if we want to meet the scale of this crisis particularly the latent crisis of inequality in this country which if I may add in my final few moments flows through to every other challenge that we face whether it is climate action or inaction and the way that that will disproportionately impact our lower socio-economic communities; whether we're talking about schools and the fact that transience is increasing at an enormous rate and how that is impacted by the lack of security that parents and that whānau have in certain rental properties and the need to move constantly yanking their tamariki out of primary school and placing them into another halfway through the term.Equality should I hope in future be the foundation of the kinds of things that we're talking about wanting to achieve in this Parliament because I think that we can really get carried away with that kind of economic tomfoolery that I alluded to just before. We have an opportunity and dare I say it an obligation in this House to rule for all New Zealanders and that doesn't just mean protecting those who currently have done pretty well out of the way that the rules work. Again I want to just clarify that this is in no way shape or form intended to be construed as an attack on those people. It's simply to say that society functions best when we ensure that everybody has the basics. The Greens support this bill. Thank you.