Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Madam Chair—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order Madam Chairperson. I asked a question which you're allowed to do now inside my five minutes. I thought I'd be able to further respond to the Minister's answer to that question. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I will come back to you Hon Gerry Brownlee. Hon Gerry Brownlee: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The member Chlöe Swarbrick has been trying to take a call probably about five times now and I have been giving a lot of calls to the National Party.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I wish I could say that this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 23 and the changes announced today were as bold and as transformational and as sweeping as the property investors' lobbyists say they are but unfortunately I cannot. The tax loophole which has been alluded to by a number of other speakers actually isn't included in this Supplementary Order Paper but I would say that that is the thing the Greens are the most excited about. None the less I digress. We have had other speakers from the Opposition saying that this tax loophole change however would mean that housing investment in housing and housing as a business was treated differently to every other business in Aotearoa. If I may make the point housing is different because no other business or the commodity inherent in it is recognised by the United Nations as a literal human right. As any other business are you able to remove somebody's access to that human right because they are not able to afford it? I'd also just like to quickly make the point this morning outside of this Chamber on the steps of Parliament we had the Hīkoi of Hope and nowhere in that announcement today was the point around accessible housing for those with disabilities. So this debate is not about tax deductibility when it comes to housing. It is however about the brightline test as outlined in Part 2 of this bill. This is important because it will have some impact albeit marginal on the runaway housing prices that we are currently seeing particularly in my home of Auckland. In Auckland alone we saw house prices increase by $100000 in February 2021 alone. Homes are making more money than the people who need to live in them at present. I'd like to refer to the advice that the Minister received on drafting this SOP from Treasury in particular as other members have quoted—and here I quote—on balance the Treasury's preferred option is an extension of the bright-line period" longer than 10 years. It goes on to say that it may be relatively easy to avoid tax liability under a 10-year test by delaying the sale of the property. Treasury then went on to recommend a 20- or 30-year—I believe off the top of my head—extension to that test. My question to the Minister is: is this extension to 10 years a mere doubling of the five-year test not kicking the can down the road? Is it not dealing with the substance of the issue which inherently is wealth inequality in this country? Two-thirds of wealth in this country is held in property I might add.It makes a lot of sense to actually refer to the history of the brightline test in this country and in this law in particular. It appears as though there is some confusion by virtue of the contributions in the debate so far. So the brightline test as has been well elucidated by the Minister and others is something that was introduced by the former National Government in I believe 2015. Prior to that inside of the Income Tax Act there was something known as an intention test where if you intended to sell for capital gain then you should be taxed on that income. The problem as was identified by the IRD in multiple reports and annual reviews and otherwise is that it was incredibly difficult to apply this intention test. That was the reason that that brightline test was first instituted by the former National Government. It obviously then was extended in the first term of this Labour-led Government and now is seeking to be extended once again. But as I've already alluded to the problem right now when it comes to housing when it comes to wealth when it comes to inequality in Aotearoa and how it is continuing to compound is that the housing crisis is no longer necessarily just one of people flipping properties; it's of people hoarding properties. What we know is that this extension of the brightline test is not going to solve that problem and Treasury's advice says exactly that.So when we have a situation where Business and Economic Research reports that the top 20 percent of New Zealanders own 70 percent of the wealth when we have the household economic survey released at the end of 2020 saying that the wealthiest 10 percent hold 59 percent of all of the wealth in this country and the poorest half—the poorest half—hold 2 percent how do we seek to address that? I ask the National Party—I dare them to tell me that those New Zealanders in the bottom half are not hard-working."