Nash Stuart: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):There are just a couple of things I want to say. I want to talk about the title clause and the commencement clause. We have done the serious stuff. But do you know what? I think we should call this bill the “Commando Bill”. The reason I say we should call this the “Commando Bill” is that this is slipping something under the cover of night to screw soldiers. That is why I think it should be called the “Commando Bill”.The most disappointing thing is that Mr Andrew Bayly—or I should say Colonel Bayly; he was actually a colonel in the army—has stood up and said not to worry that this measure is only small and inconsequential. Well I pity that bloke if he has to turn up on the parade ground or worse at the RSA in a couple of weeks and explain to the veterans that this is only minor. This is not minor.I think we could also call this the “All Show No Style Bill” and the reason I say that is that everyone wants to do something to improve the housing market. Everyone wants to do something to allow young people to buy their homes yet this is what this Government has come up with. After 7 years this is the best it can do. The officials told us that this bill may help 200 or 300 people. That is fantastic for 200 or 300 people but it is not the 90000 young people whom the Government keeps crowing on about. In fact the officials took such a lackadaisical approach to this that they said they had not even modelled it and I do not blame them. I think they did what we did—they had a look at it they read it and they thought: “Oh my God! This is one of those election promises we are just going to have to do because the Government wants to do it.”Labour is voting for the bill and the reason we are voting for it is that the officials actually said—and these are their words not mine: “Well it does no harm to anyone.” So we are now passing legislation because it does no harm. Well I would suspect that that is not a great reason to pass legislation.Jenny Salesa: We have better things to do—yes we have.STUART NASH: You are right. We have much better things to do than pass pieces of legislation because they do no harm. I would have thought that the Government would have a legislative agenda like it had under the busy Minister Simon Power when we had substantial pieces of legislation on the Order Paper.Carmel Sepuloni: It’s gone downhill since he left.STUART NASH: It has gone downhill. We had substantial pieces of legislation that actually made a real difference to good hard-working Kiwis—not just good hard-working Kiwis but good hard-working young Kiwis who still hold that dream of homeownership and still believe it is possible.If they live in the regions they have got to have a 20 percent deposit. This provision is not going to give them a 20 percent deposit. The Hon Nick Smith stood up here and said: “Well if you do this and this if you’re going away from home and you’ve got this amount of money you may end up with $50000. And if you do that and you get a 10 percent deposit under this sort of scenario”—there might be five people in the country who qualify for this—“you can get a $450000 loan.”But to service a $450000 loan—to come under that sort of covenant—you need to have a household income of about $175000. There are not that many young people apart from maybe our senior whip who actually have a household income of $175000. As Mr Hipkins said they are worrying about how they are going to put food on the table how they are going to pay the bill to fix the car and what they are going to do with their children let alone whether they can service a debt of $450000.So this is really tinkering around the edges. In fact that is not a bad name as well—the “Tinkering Around the Edges While Rome Burns Bill”. That is not a great metaphor because we do not want to see anyone burning but I will tell you what—a lot of a people are suffering. The thing that really distresses me is that I wonder whether my four children are ever going to be able to afford a home. I wonder what it is going to be like in 30 years. There is one way that they will be able to and that is if there is a Labour Government in 2017 and it starts dealing with the issues that are important to New Zealanders.The one thing that this whole debate has really sort of honed for me—it has solidified and cemented my views around this—is that that party believes that the market has the absolute solutions. This party believes that the Government has a role to play in actually helping good hard-working Kiwis. I would argue if you look at the Auckland housing market that the market has failed good hard-working Kiwis who only want to own a home have a beer at the end of the day get on with life and not have these massive money problems. Of course the thing is that if they are not paying off their mortgage they are paying off someone else’s mortgage through rent and they just cannot get on that property ladder. Mind you having said that there are going to be a whole lot of developers by the sound of things with a whole lot of houses that they have just bought off the Government. Thank you very much.