Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Well that was like a Punch and Judy show without Judy. That was quite a rant that we heard from the Hon Dr Nick Smith passionately defending his record. He is much loved by political cartoonists is Dr Smith. I think it is because drawing him must be such a satisfying task for the nation's political cartoonists. But I am sorry to say to the Minister that he has become really a symbol of failure in this Government's housing policy. He has come to embody the fiasco—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I regret interrupting the member. I just do want to warn the member interjecting from my right that his interjection is a reflection on me. He is referring to a matter that is solely mine and the width of this debate was set by Mr Speaker right back at the beginning. It was very clear that it is a broad debate. So I do not want that sort of reflective interjection thank you.PHIL TWYFORD: This Minister measures his success as building and housing Minister by comparing the rate of residential construction with the depths of the global financial crisis when demand collapsed in the economy and basically the building industry went dead for at least a couple of years and many of our skilled tradespeople left the industry and left the country. That is Nick Smith's benchmark for success: the depths of the global financial crisis.But notwithstanding all of the bluster that we heard from Dr Smith it needs to be pointed out that we are still building in Auckland fewer houses per year than were being built in 2004—fewer in Auckland than were being built in 2004 and fewer than were being built in the time of Prime Minister Norman Kirk in the mid-1970s. The picture is even more grim if you compare the current build rate with a per-thousand population. Because of the rising population we are now building fewer houses than at many points over the last 30 years.The Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel estimated recently that under this National Government the shortfall of dwellings in Auckland has built up to the tune of 42000 dwellings. That is the scale of the shortage that has built up on Dr Smith's watch. It is currently getting worse by about 4000 a year because only about 9600 new dwellings are being consented annually—you can take 10 percent off that actually because the actual build rate is generally about 10 percent less than the consenting rate. So probably only 8500 dwellings are being built every year in Auckland when the city needs at least 13000 just to keep up with population.I want to say a couple of things about the special housing areas. Part 1 of this bill extends the special housing areas out—from the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas legislation—by 3 years. So I want to ask the question really: what is the benefit of the special housing area legislation? We know it is the Government's main policy when it comes to trying to increase the supply of new housing. The special housing areas are only lines on a map—little zones that basically attract fast-tracked consenting. That is all they are. There is no guarantee that houses will be built and we can see from the numbers that over 3 years 154 special housing areas have been gazetted but little more than a third of them actually have building consents being issued. After 3 years of this policy little more than a third of them actually have building consents.What we can see in the special housing areas is that they have actually been a magnet for land banking. They have encouraged land banking by providing the fast-tracked consenting status. By giving them a kind of special status as special housing areas they have actually encouraged land banking. You can see one example after another of special housing area land being marketed by real estate agents for land banking—I kid you not. And what did Dr Smith do a couple of months ago when he was asked about land banking in the special housing areas? He said: Yep there are 14 special housing areas where they've been given their resource consents. They've got special housing area status but they haven't even applied for building consents." He promised that he would write a stern letter to those land bankers and threaten them with the full force of—well I do not actually know what he threatened them with but he certainly sounded very intent when he was being quizzed about this on television's Q+A programme. It turned out that he wrote only four letters to the land bankers—four letters—and if you read the letter it was not really a threatening letter to the land bankers; it was much more of a wet bus ticket where he encouraged them to go and have a conversation with the council. That must have been pretty scary for those land bankers!The other thing about the housing accords that we know is that very few of them have any real affordability requirements. Len Brown and the Auckland Council basically browbeat the Government in the Auckland Housing Accord into giving them the power to require that up to 10 percent of new dwellings be affordable but actually in most of the other housing accords around the country—in Wellington in Nelson and in Tauranga—Nick Smith and his officials point-blank refused to allow affordability requirements to be included in those housing accords. So as a result very few affordable houses have been built because in an overheated and undersupplied market what happens of course is that the developers choose to build more expensive houses so that they can make bigger profits.So the special housing areas have been underwhelming. They have made very little difference. No one can say with any certainty whether or not they have actually resulted in a net increase in the number of houses that have been built. At best the special housing areas might have accelerated the development of some houses that were already in the pipeline.We would vote for Part 1 of this bill to extend the special housing areas in order to ease the transition problems caused by the poor drafting of the original housing accord and special housing area legislation which as has been pointed out in this debate would cause some cost uncertainty and delay to eight developers in those special housing areas in Auckland unless this legislation is extended. If the bill did only that then we would have been willing to support it. It is not much it is no genuine contribution to fixing the housing crisis and it is resulting in very few houses actually being built and even fewer affordable ones but we would have been willing to support it as modest as it is. But we cannot vote for this bill while it includes Part 2 a provision that would take away rights that people have under the Public Works Act that former owners would have to have Government land that is being re-designated for the purposes of State housing—it is taking away their right for that land to be offered back to them.It was very very illuminating in the first reading debate of this bill when Grant Robertson pointed out that if there was no change required if the Government already had that right unfettered to be able to use the State housing designation to either dispose of land or to use it in housing developments and not have to offer it back to former owners under the Public Works Act—if the State already has that right why are we here? Why is it in this bill? Why is this bill being rammed through under urgency?Jono Naylor: So that you can understand it. PHIL TWYFORD: Well I just think the member is being frivolous if not insulting. There is no reason that we have heard offered in this debate from the Minister for Building and Housing or from National Government members why Part 2 is in this bill. The Government says it is clarifying the powers it has to do this to ignore the offer-back provisions in the Public Works Act but if that right already exists if the Government already has that power why is it legislating it? Why is it pushing it through under urgency? We believe that when you take away people's property rights as this bill does then you should at least do it in a careful deliberate and thoughtful way and subject the bill to the normal scrutiny expert advice and public submissions that you get in a select committee hearing. Why is this bill being rammed through under urgency?Finally I want to say that this bill epitomises the kind of piecemeal tinkering that has characterised the Government's so-called comprehensive housing agenda which is not comprehensive at all. It is simply a whole lot of reactive half-baked policies that are making very little difference."