Street Maryan: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Street Maryan: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12852] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I will try not to raise my voice quite so much this time but members should not let a lack of volume or intensity make them think I do not feel strongly about this issue. I will take a moment to explain how the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 was to work because I think people are overlooking that and I wonder whether anybody on the Government benches actually knows how that legislation was to work and what it was to do. 
The whole point of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was to provide local authorities with the ability should they so choose—it was not mandatory—to require developers to set aside a portion of any residential housing development say 10 percent for affordable housing. So if a developer was about to build 200 houses the local authority could say that 10 percent of those houses needed to be affordable within an affordable purchase range for that area. This was to be done by the local authority. It would have been compulsory for the developer to adhere to that provision. As a result out of 200 residential properties being built 20 would have been available for purchase by low and modest-income families. That is not such a big ask. 
My colleague Steve Chadwick referred to Queenstown as one of the areas where this was seen as a very desirable thing. I spent some considerable time with the mayor councillors and staff of the Queenstown Lakes District Council talking about affordable housing. There they were with a grand plan to make Queenstown a tourism Mecca not just in the winter months when it is but also in the summer months when people do not automatically think of Queenstown as a tourist destination but head for the beach. 
In order to make Queenstown a year-round tourist attraction what were needed were some employees who could work in the service and tourism industries that would serve that town and that district. In order to get those people in there needed to be affordable housing because the housing in Queenstown cost so much that people in low-wage service occupations did not have a hope in Hades of renting or buying a residential property. 
Along with purchase prices there are ratchet rents. As purchase prices go up so do rents. Council rates go up and landlords require more rent to cover the rates increases that are on the rateable value of the land. As that increases so rents increase. So Queenstown Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Nelson where I live were the top five most expensive cities and towns in which to buy a house in New Zealand. Property prices were the most expensive in those five areas of New Zealand and they still are. Tauranga is beginning to catch up; I think it might be No. 6 now. But certainly those five areas remain the most expensive areas in which to buy a house. So the provision that was made available to local authorities in respect of affordable housing was another tool in their tool kit. It went alongside the waiving of development levies—they could waive development levies in order to get these properties built—and could have provided housing for workers who were needed for the kind of growth that was being anticipated in Queenstown. 
The same is true of Nelson. I spent time with the mayor and councillors of Nelson and with the mayor of Tasman District. The areas adjoin—the boundary goes down the middle of Champion Road in Nelson—so they are affected by similar movements: industrial growth population development and so on. In Richmond in the Nelson electorate there are great hopes and plans for industry development for value to be added to the wonderful primary produce that happens in the Richmond Nelson and Tasman areas. With industrial growth come jobs with jobs come workers and with workers come their families. If the mayor of Tasman District Council wants the industrial growth that the council was planning for and is continuing to plan for in the Lower Queen Street part of Richmond then affordable housing suddenly becomes critical. The rents in the Nelson area including Richmond are exorbitant and they make it very difficult for young families to live. 
So all of this was part of a plan and it is as clear as day that in the repeal of this modest provision—which as the Minister of Housing I never claimed would fix the affordable housing problem; it was one mechanism for addressing it—the Government is exposed again as having no plan for economic growth; no plan to assist families into their first homes; no plan to increase jobs; and no plan to upskill young people introduce them to trades and develop the skills that could have been encouraged by rescuing the building and construction industry through a method of this kind. 
The whole purpose of being in Government is to use the leverage of the Government for the advantage of citizens. That is the whole purpose of being in Government. If this Government cannot see that purpose and if the only citizens it is interested in advantaging are that narrow elite of its mates who donate to the National Party then let us see it for what it is. Let us see this ignorant bill for what it is. 
The Minister of Housing has had no ideas about how to address housing affordability. I suspect he must be masquerading as an idiot because surely we cannot have a Cabinet Minister who is an idiot. This man Phil Heatley masquerades as an idiot. Everything he has done diminishes the opportunities for New Zealand families to own their own homes and diminishes the opportunities for investment in the building and construction industry which could generate jobs encourage apprenticeships and train up and provide a future for young people. 
Every turn this Minister of Housing takes leads us in exactly the opposite direction negating opportunities stifling job creation and limiting possibilities. That is something a Government should never do—never do. That is what the Government is doing with the repeal of this provision which is optional. I toyed with the idea of it being mandatory but it is only optional and it is a travesty for this Government to repeal it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The first amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to omit Part 4 is out of order as being a direct negative under Speakers’ ruling 111/4. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 54 be agreed to: 
to amend section 277A(1) by omitting “a principal” and substituting “one”.