Robertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7888. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]8.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler that there are increased risks to financial stability arising from the dairy and housing sectors?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): It is up to the governor to make his own assessments about financial stability but I can agree with the governor’s full statement which reads: “New Zealand’s financial system continues to perform well despite a deterioration in the outlook for global financial stability and increased risks related to the dairy and housing sectors.”Grant Robertson: Is the Reserve Bank Governor correct to say that “House prices now exceed nine times gross income in Auckland placing it among the most expensive cities in the world.”?Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the Reserve Bank Governor made that statement he would simply be repeating statements that have been made any time over the past few years about the relative expensiveness of Auckland house prices. In fact that is why the Government initiated the Productivity Commission inquiry into land pricing I think 2—if not 3—years ago and why it has taken a raft of measures to try to make progress with more supply of housing into the Auckland market.Grant Robertson: Does he accept any responsibility for the increase in the price-to-income ratio for Auckland housing going from 6 in 2011 to 9.2 in 2015?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The responsibility lies with the decision maker which was the Auckland City Council and we are reaping the rewards of 20 years of misguided planning that was designed to stop the city growing. Secondly the responsibility lies with the people buying the houses. At a time when we have 50-year lows in interest rates clearly the buyers believe that they can afford those prices. I agree that that ratio is far too high and I look forward to the support of the Labour Party for further measures to help to reduce it.Grant Robertson: Is the Minister telling the House that he does not accept any responsibility for a 9.2 price-to-income ratio for Auckland housing given that we have heard the news this week that his special housing areas brought in by his Government have created a grand total of 102 houses?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is simply wrong about special housing areas—and I am not surprised because he almost never does his homework properly.Grant Robertson: Was he correct to say that his 2010 tax change would shift the economy towards savings investment and exports and away from the over-investment in housing of the past decade given that 5 years later the IMF says that we have “chronically low national savings” and the Reserve Bank says that rising house prices present a significant risk to the New Zealand economy?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes I do stand by those statements and here is one reason: because of the changes made in that tax package we now collect around $800 million more tax off landlords. So whatever the house price rises in Auckland are they may well have been more if we had not made that tax change and we have got the revenue to show for it.