6. Housing—Supply Affordability and First-home BuyersGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of FinanceHousing—Supply Affordability and First-home Buyers6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with his predecessor's reported statement that the Government was keen to get the cost of housing down so that whether people owned or rented a house they did not use such a large proportion of their income paying for it"?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): Yes and that is in fact the case. Overall affordability of an average mortgage repayment on a medium-priced house currently costs 38 percent of gross household income compared with 49 percent back in 2007. Improving housing costs relative to incomes is a priority for the Government and—Grant Robertson: Interesting numbers and dates here.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well actually 2007 for the member's benefit was the highest ever rate back for quite some time as far as records are available and today is around 38 percent. The Government is focused on improving housing costs relative to incomes by encouraging increases in supply of housing—Grant Robertson: Not working.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —and today's consent data shows that it is working with a total number of houses consented in the year of nearly 30000—up 10 percent from last year—and the most for any calendar year since 2004. And we expect that to continue to increase.Grant Robertson: What responsibility does he take given his failure to support the building of affordable homes for first-home buyers needing to borrow $400000 on average to get into their first home and his recent admission that they are hugely exposed to risks from rising interest rates?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Unlike in Labour's control economy people actually get to make their own decisions in terms of their investments and they go into their mortgages based on the affordability of their mortgage repayments and of course interest rates are at historic lows. My concern about that is they may not necessarily stay at historic lows and that is the nature of the comments I have made in the last few days and I think it is important that people think about that over the next period when considering entering into new mortgages.Grant Robertson: Does he think it is people's own decision that the rise in housing costs in 2016 totally wiped out any income increases they had according to Statistics New Zealand's household expenditure and income survey?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well I think we have to be careful about these individual small changes both on increases in incomes and in housing costs. But I think the good news is the trend is good because in 2007 we reached a peak of the cost of a house mortgage relative to income which was 49 percent of people's incomes. That is the correct figure unlike Mr Robertson's alternative facts and this year it has been running at 38 percent. It is still a bit higher than we would be comfortable with but it is a significant improvement on what it was back then.Grant Robertson: What is his response to the Reserve Bank Governor's assessment that he "has an ongoing concern about the imbalance between supply and demand in housing"? In other words after 8 years the Government is still not building enough houses.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Reserve Bank Governor not only made that concern apparent in the Finance and Expenditure Committee today he also discussed it with me as late as yesterday. But he also signalled that he was very pleased to see the increase in construction that is occurring and the very big increase in the number of building consents and like me he believes that the supply response is growing and that is indicated in the figures. Again I say for the member's benefit that the number of houses consented in the last calendar year was 29970 up 10 percent in 1 year and the most for a calendar year in 12 years—the most since 2004.Grant Robertson: When his first comment on housing as Minister of Finance is to caution first-home buyers against buying a house can he see what a complete failure his Government's housing policy is?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: If the member thinks that was my first comment on housing as Minister of Finance then he must have been asleep for the whole of January."