Street Maryan: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 Although it is true that I rarely agree with a word that comes out of Tau Henare the member who has just sat down it is also true that I would not wish his recent health episode on him or on anybody else. But I marvel at the way in which he is able to take that life-threatening situation and weave it into any discussion of legislation that is currently before the House. There is admirable— 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Let’s see if he can do it on the Legislation Bill. 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: I am sure that Mr Henare will find some tangential relevance to it. However I will speak to the part of the legislation that we are looking at at the moment that repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. I will say four things about infrastructure because this legislation originally presented itself as part of the Infrastructure Bill. 
It seems to me that if this Government was even halfway towards being serious about investing in infrastructure housing would be a prime objective for it. Housing clearly provides shelter. It provides more than that; it provides security. Where people are able to buy their own home it provides a sense of homeownership which gives a feeling of investment in a community. It provides security for communities as well as for families on their own. The possibility of moving towards affordable housing is diminished by the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. 
I say this not simply because that Act was my legislation when I was the Minister of Housing but because it is one of a series of tools in the tool kit to help to address the spiralling cost of housing that we saw happen in the 2000s—particularly from 2002 to 2007. That escalation of prices which was brought about in large part by an escalation in the value of land caused an inflation in house prices that led people to borrow on unrealistic terms on the basis of an inflated asset. We now see more mortgagee sales than ever before. We are still seeing housing affordability being out of the grasp of young families. We see more and more young families who would aspire to be first home owners but who are unable to realise that dream—a dream that has been fundamental and quite central to the Kiwi dream—and we see with the repeal of the Act one of the tools in the tool kit for combating housing affordability problems being taken away. 
More than that if this Government was serious about infrastructure it would realise that investment in housing has multifaceted benefits for our families our communities and our society. Jobs could be created if the Government was serious about tackling the problem of housing affordability. 
Under the previous Labour Government we were keen to release Crown land in order to build affordable houses. If the Government retained the value of the land but people could afford to buy the house then that was one way of getting people into homeownership which was what we proposed in 2008. I also announced in 2008 the shared equity scheme which allowed houses on the private market to be subsidised by the Government over a period of time. If the Government put in some money young families in particular who were able to afford to make some contribution would then be able to buy out the Government’s share over time as their circumstances improved. All of these efforts together provided a web a tool box of things that could help New Zealand families to achieve their dream of homeownership. 
Not only would an investment in housing and in the building of houses create jobs but also it would create education and training opportunities through apprenticeships. That is another area that has been let slide by this Government. It is not focusing on job creation. It is not focusing on the kinds of skills that our young people need in order to equip themselves to participate in society—in order to equip themselves to get a job. 
I will refer to some of the submissions that were made on the legislation in its original form. The Human Rights Commission stated that affordable housing was a critical component of having an adequate standard of living and that it regretted that the Act was being repealed without anything else being put in place to replace it. Age Concern stated that it wanted to register its “disapproval of what appears to be a process of ‘repeal by stealth’ ”—burying the repeal of the Act inside an Infrastructure Bill so that the consequences for affordable housing could be disguised or glossed over by this Government. Age Concern went on to state: “The Affordable Housing Act has been in force for just a year.”—hardly enough time to determine whether it was working—and “high housing costs relative to income are often associated with severe financial difficulty and can leave households with insufficient income to meet other basic needs such as food clothing transport medical care and education.” That is Age Concern looking perhaps at grandchildren who want to strike out and own their first home. 
The National Council of Women stated that it was concerned that a “previously laudable section” on restrictive covenants had been “watered down” in the revisions to the Property Law Act in the bill. The Auckland Regional Public Health Service stated that it was “premature to repeal the Affordable Housing … Act until there is clear evidence that the housing market is delivering substantially increased numbers of affordable homes.” The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services said the decision to repeal the existing legislation was “based on an internal review conducted by the Housing New Zealand Corporation that has not been made public.” It said that was an “insufficient basis for repealing the whole Act”. 
Those organisations are not left-wingers. They are not people on the margins of society but they are groups who work with people who are on the margins of society. These people form the conscience of our society and this Government is choosing in repealing this Act to ignore that conscience. New Zealanders particularly young families will be worse off because of that. Thank you.