Goff Phil: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: General Debate[Sitting date: 19 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5950. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I want to talk about how this Government has destroyed the Kiwi dream of owning your own home and if you are living in a rural area—like you do Mr Speaker—owning your own farm. I want to tell Maurice Williamson that we will look at the numbers OK. We will look at the numbers to see how many applications the Overseas Investment Office has declined for the sale of farmland in the last 4 years. Do you know what that number is? Zilch zero none. Every one of the 400 applications made by foreign investors to buy up New Zealand farms has been rubber-stamped by this Government. Yet I remember John Key saying in 2010: “We will not allow New Zealanders to become tenants in their own land.” Empty words—hollow words from a hollow man.I remember better what Mr Key and Mr English said in 2009. They said on coming into office that they were going to free up the rules enabling more land to be sold and then they did their focus group. The focus group said that a fundamental part of what New Zealanders believe in—why our forebears came to this land was to escape the squirearchy to escape being a tenant to escape being a farm labourer and to own their own farm and own their own land. So we got the words change from John Key but we did not get the practice change. Since John Key became Prime Minister between a third of a million hectares and a million hectares depending on the definition of “land” has been sold to foreign interests—between a third of a million and a million hectares.But I want to talk about the other side which is how it affects urban dwellers. In my city of Auckland in the last year average house prices have gone up by $116000 or 25 percent shattering the dreams of young families who want to buy a home of their own and pushing up the rents of those forced to continue renting by three or four times more than the rate of overall inflation. Part of the problem is supply but what aggravates the problem is that according to the Reserve Bank 10 percent of those sales are to foreign investors who never intend to live in New Zealand—never intend to live in New Zealand.Today we have the lowest rate of homeownership in 64 years. That is the statistic. Which one of those National members is proud of the fact that the young homebuyer of whatever ethnicity cannot buy their own home in Auckland? They get outbid at the auctions every time by the person at the other end of the telephone from a country overseas who intends never to live in this country. What good does it do New Zealanders to allow foreign investors to come here take advantage of nil capital gains tax and nil stamp duty make a fortune and rack-rent properties to New Zealanders? What good does that do the New Zealand family who want to do what you and I Mr Speaker wanted to do when we were their age which is to buy a home that they could call their own? At the very least we should be slapping on a stamp duty of 15 to 20 percent—as they do in Hong Kong and Singapore in case somebody thinks it is racist—or ban foreigners entirely from buying existing homes as they do in Australia. This Government does nothing. Dreams are shattered and foreign speculators are laughing all the way to the bank.