Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe tēnā koutou e te Whare. It's—I mean I would genuinely say a pleasure to stand and speak in this House for the first time in 2021 but I will be completely honest and say that in walking back into this place it felt and smacked immediately as we started the argy-bargy throughout question time to be completely separated from the reality of the many New Zealanders that we represent.Hon Scott Simpson: Who's next on your list? You can go.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: So Scott Simpson what I'm here today to talk about—what I will use the Address in Reply debate to talk about—is the housing crisis. Members in this House may recall that throughout the election we had the Minister of Finance and the shadow Minister of Finance the Hon Paul Goldsmith from the National Party at that point in time playing a game of Monopoly. It was a charity game to fund-raise for a worthy cause philanthropic but none the less to me it smacked of quite a bit of irony. The reason for that is for those who aren't aware the game of Monopoly has its origins in a game originally devised by a woman called Elizabeth Magie in 1904. At that point in time it was known as The Landlord's Game. The Landlord's Game was intended to be a practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences".Now I don't at all intend to read too much into what these two members of Parliament were up to. Of course this was for a charity match. But none the less what is represented in that game of Monopoly formerly The Landlord's Game is not supposed to be an aspiration in this country. It's supposed to be a warning that all of us in this House should heed because when you do high school or undergrad economics you're taught about the supply and the demand curve you're taught about the way that the market is supposed to operate through exchange—free exchange—driven by self-interest. And that self-interest—that rather ahistorical theory and way of teaching economics—is supposed to provide the most optimal the most effective and the most efficient allocation of resources. But to any who've been paying attention to the way that housing and wealth are allocated in this country over the past 30 or 40 years—far longer even than I've been alive—it is pretty evident that it hasn't been operating that way.The question I guess is where is the housing crisis in this picture of the economy and economics particularly as often lauded by particularly members of the Opposition? I'm sure that the so-called libertarians that sit next to me in this Chamber—haere mai—would say that the market just isn't free enough. And I have engaged in debate with them a substantive number of times where they've said "You simply have to remove the rural-urban boundary because you've got to let the city sprawl." No not the slightest mention of how we're to build the infrastructure that is of course to enable exactly that—you've also got to allow these massive apartment blocks to just be built and crop up but not in our backyard.Look fundamentally what we're talking about here if we are to realise some version of the so-called free market is to realise that right now the market is entirely geared towards what the so-called rational man in this ahistorical economic theory would absolutely be gearing themselves towards because you effectively have a State-guaranteed investment in the form of housing at present. What I mean by that if we're to run through all of these facts and figures—in fact at the Finance and Expenditure Committee which a number of members presently in the Chamber were present for we had the Reserve Bank Governor in front of us I attempted to—but unfortunately was cut off as a result of the time running out—have the Reserve Bank Governor agree or admit to exactly this because the facts are this: two-thirds of wealth in this country is held in housing stock. Loan-to-value ratios have been so low for so long that many investors have leveraged themselves up to the hilt—many being enabled to do so as a result of the capital gains that have continued to accumulate on the properties that they have in their back pocket. As a result of all of those things those potential defaults of those mortgages present a huge financial system liability.This is a huge huge ballooning problem and it will not be satisfied by simply attempting to deal with it on the supply side. We have to deal with the fact that again these economic theories of the rational man or otherwise effectively mean that all sensible people who were simply looking to increase their self-interest and realise greater gains out of the market would of course be investing in housing. It simply makes sense at the moment. So the question then becomes: why have we taken off the table and labelled as too much of a political hot potato one of the things that experts across the board are calling for and that is a sensible conversation about taxation in this country?I'll refer to a column by Marc Daalder from Newsroom who said "The average house in Auckland Tauranga Wellington [the] Kapiti Coast and Queenstown earned more in untaxed capital gains over the final three months of 2020 than the average New Zealander earned in pre-tax income over the entire year." You may remember that our Minister of Finance wrote to the Reserve Bank asking them what to do with regard to the ballooning housing crisis and the housing unaffordability issues that came up in question time today further and further escaping particularly first-home buyers. In both that response from the Reserve Bank and also other letters which have recently been uncovered by Stuff.co.nz's Thomas Coughlan the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has advised that when it comes to unconventional monetary theory or application as the case may be such as quantitative easing it is for the Government to take action to deal with the social consequences thereof. It is for the Government to figure out how to best implement policy—be they laws or regulations—to ensure that inequality does not take deeper root in this country.All of these issues are fundamentally interconnected and that's something that I'm really proud that we in the Green Party of Aotearoa understand at a base level. You cannot begin to meaningfully engage with conversations like climate change and the terror that global warming can bring upon oneself when you really engage with the science on that if you are stressed on a day-to-day basis about survival. If you do not have a house that is a home then the amount of transience particularly as a renter that may befall upon you and your whānau has flow-on effects into your ability to get a stable education. And speaking to those who are teaching in many different schools across this country particularly in lower socio-economic areas that is indeed a massive issue—our young people are moving from school to school to school as they move through the rental market as their whānau does not have enough money to put food constantly on the table.I guess my final question to this House today in this first speech on this first day that we're back in 2021 is: do we have the guts to have these conversations or are we just going to continue to throw accusations back and forward at each other? Are there going to continue to be escalating narratives and bogeymen about the idea of taxation? And God forbid that we tax wealth as we do work in this country because right now there is a huge burden that is falling on people in this country who already do not have enough and it continues to compound the more that we continue to enable and allow by virtue of doing nothing inequality to run rampant throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. I actually hesitate to suggest that all of us in here actually kind of know that. We kind of know that the tax system is quite fundamentally unfair in that respect. We all kind of know that we should be able to have this debate and discussion as actually a number of us do behind closed doors but in this place in a more sensible and mature manner.So if I can put one hope if any on the table for 2021 it's that we're finally able to debate progress and discuss and solidify meaningful fair tax policy in Aotearoa New Zealand to address inequality—fundamentally the housing crisis. Kia ora."