Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): Labour will be supporting this bill because we will support any piece of legislation that is going to be about building more affordable homes in Auckland. What we on this side of the House recognise is that there is a housing crisis and that first-home buyers are locked out of the market and it does not make sense to use prime land for grazing cows when it could be used for affordable housing. The development will also be a great opportunity for Ngāti Paoa as a developer of the houses so it is good to see their historical wrongs addressed through the right to build houses on this land and the provision of 2 hectares for the development of a marae.Ultimately this is only 300 homes. Auckland is building 8000 homes per year fewer than it needs. The Government needs to step up and build more affordable houses. In fact the new Prime Minister Bill English needs to show how he is going to fix the problems Key papered over—problems like the housing crisis which John Key refuses to acknowledge is real when the rest of New Zealand knows how real it is particularly in their own lives or in the lives of families who are struggling not only to buy homes but to get affordable rentals or to find homes where their children can be healthy because of the state of some of the homes that have not been repaired by that Government.We recognise that with this development it will mean a loss of green space for the community and the Government will need to work closely with the council to make sure that there are adequate facilities for recreation in the area. What we also recognise is that this is actually the ninth project in the Government's underwhelming surplus Crown land scheme. Let us just point out a few of the other underwhelming ones.We have got Nick Smith who promised 500 hectares of housing with the first houses being built by the end of 2016. Here we are at the end of 2016 still only just confirming the sites. We are unlikely to have even a fraction of 500 hectares developed and they have not even started building the houses. The second example of the underwhelming nature of that Government when it comes to housing is that the early sites it identified for the Crown land scheme included ridiculous places it could not build on including cemeteries substations and the Governor-General's house of all places. The third example of underwhelming housing schemes that I would like to use is the programme that was set back months by the Government's refusal to recognise Ngāti Whātua's right of first refusal resulting in a legal challenge.Peeni Henare: High Court.CARMEL SEPULONI: High Court as my colleague Peeni Henare has said. So it has been underwhelming.At the moment whatever we can support no matter how underwhelming it is we must support because we do have such a huge housing crisis. It has spiralled out of control under that National Government. We have got first-home buyers as I said locked out of the market and 41000 people are homeless. That number has increased significantly under the National Government and those members should be ashamed of themselves for it. New Zealand's rate of homeownership is the lowest it has been since 1951. In fact for the Pacific community which has the lowest homeownership rate now it is something like 18 percent. The Auckland house price has more than doubled since National took office to over $1 million and the crisis is now spreading around the country. As people move out of Auckland because they cannot afford to live there the house prices in other parts of the country are starting to skyrocket as well.So this is not just an Auckland issue. The housing crisis is a national issue. In fact it is a National Government issue if it would only recognise that. One in seven Auckland houses are now sold to major property speculators; 78 percent of renters cannot afford a deposit on the average New Zealand home—this is over a million people locked out of homeownership; 35 percent of offshore speculators pay no tax on their rental properties because of tax write-offs; and English and Bennett are focusing on selling off State houses instead of building new ones despite the Horowhenua and Invercargill sales falling through.I saw a really good example of what is happening with Housing New Zealand and State housing when I was in New Plymouth recently. There was a development that was meant to take place—Jonathan Young is in the House. He has done nothing to address this issue. There was a development that was supposed to take place. It was promised back in 2008 that those houses would be bowled down and that new houses would be built on that land and that there would be a higher rate of provision in terms of Housing New Zealand houses. Instead it is now 2016 8 years later under that National Government and nothing has been done—except that some of those houses have been knocked down. Some of them have been boarded up but nothing new has been built there and there is less of a provision of State housing than there was when that Government started.When I put through an Official Information Act request to try to find out why that was the case I got the response back saying that there was no demand for Housing New Zealand houses. There is demand for Housing New Zealand houses. You only need to speak to the emergency shelter in New Plymouth member for New Plymouth Jonathan Young and you find out that it has had a 33 percent increase in the number of people having to access emergency shelter because they are not able to access Housing New Zealand housing or any other housing.The only reason that it looks like there is less of a demand on Housing New Zealand is that the Government has made it harder to get on the Housing New Zealand register. It uses that as a reason to not develop the houses. It is disgusting to think that in the context of this national housing crisis here we have these empty boarded-up homes as well as houses that have been knocked down—so a whole lot of land free where houses could be built by the Government to house these people who need housing—and yet nothing has been done. The member for New Plymouth should be ashamed of himself for not advocating for his constituents like he should have.Pointing out all of those things I also need to just point out the fact that Labour does have a plan. This housing crisis is real. We recognise that. We have got a plan to address it. Labour has committed. We committed a few years ago. We continue to maintain this commitment to ensuring that every New Zealander has a warm dry affordable home. We take that so seriously that a bill was put in under our leader Andrew Little's name. We have talked about the fact that we will be building more affordable homes—100000 over 10 years. The Government thinks that that is too aspirational but we do not think it is too aspirational. We think it is achievable actually because we are the party of aspiration. We have talked about fixing Auckland's planning rules—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: The party of desperation.CARMEL SEPULONI: —cracking down on speculators and giving more support to those in need. That is real aspiration. That is real aspiration and that is what New Zealand wants to see: a political party that will actually address the serious issues and challenges that we face as a country. I see Jonathan Coleman yelling at me from across the room. There is a reason he was not selected by his colleagues to be leader of the National Party. There is a reason so maybe just for the next couple of days he should potentially just sit there quietly for a little while and reflect on whether or not he is actually as popular as he thinks he is. Thank you very much.