Twyford Phil: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7857. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I think by some oversight this bill has been misnamed. I wonder whether it is possible to put up an amendment in the title and commencement clauses part of this debate to rename it. I think a much more accurate description of this bill would be the “Taxation (Trying to Manage the Optics) Bill” because that is basically what this bill is. It is an exercise in political cynicism. It points to I think an interesting sequence of political responses that this Government has made to the housing crisis. In the first couple of years it was clearly hoping it would go away—that if it did nothing if it sort of played dead and played possum did not move then maybe the housing crisis would just pass right over them and nothing would happen. But it became clear I think about 3 years ago that the housing crisis was inflicting some pretty serious damage on the Government. It put Nick Smith in the job of being housing Minister. The strategy ever since then has essentially been to look as if they are doing something and this bill is a classic of its kind.It is all about the optics. It is all about trying to do as little as possible while actually conveying the impression of activity. We have seen exactly the same thing go on with the whole issue of non-resident foreign buyers. Members on that side of the Chamber have denied denied denied and rubbished the idea that offshore speculators were having any kind of negative impact in the Auckland housing market and then when this bill was announced its companion was a bill that required non-resident foreign buyers of residential property to register with the Inland Revenue Department. Another nothing another bit of flimflam from the National Party designed to make it look as if it is doing something even though it has denied that foreign buyers are an issue. It is designed to make it look as if it is doing something while having negligible impact.We have seen it with the special housing areas. Again this was a big flagship initiative to increase the supply of housing like this bill basically tackling one of the main causes of the housing crisis. In this bill’s case that is property speculation. The special housing areas as we saw today have delivered only 102 houses in Auckland over the last 2 years but there has been an interesting evolution actually. At the same time that we have been discussing this bill at the Finance and Expenditure Committee what has happened is that the Government’s strategy has shifted a little bit interestingly. I think it is so nervous that the Auckland housing bubble will pop on its watch. The very people whom John Key has been pandering to not wanting to do anything that might disturb the upward trajectory of house prices—up $180000 on average in the last year—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am now warning the member to actually speak to the bill—it is not a general debate on Auckland housing.PHIL TWYFORD: The thing that this bill purports to tackle—the rampant property speculation in Auckland that has been driving prices higher and higher that has delivered an increase of $180000-plus on the average Auckland house in just the last 12 months—threatens the very economic stability and financial stability of our markets and the well-being of a third of this country’s population. And probably more because if the bubble in Auckland bursts there will be egg on a lot of people’s faces. It will damage the livelihoods of a huge number of people and probably tip the entire economy into recession. This bill will do nothing about that. It will do nothing to foreclose on that scenario and that is not only an act of political cynicism but an act of utter irresponsibility.So the finance Minister is reduced to now being a commentator talking up the risk of the bubble bursting while his Government is shepherding this bill through the Committee—a bill that will make little if any difference at all. All the commentators have said it from the moment it was announced prior to the Budget. The Law Society the accountants Ernst and Young KPMG—all of the submitters who came along to the select committee have just torn this bill apart and said that it is a chaotic confused piece of legislation.