O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): How dare that Minister over there the Minister for Building and Housing claim the success of special housing areas when after 3 years we see 1300 houses having been built. Now we have a panic measure to expand that by another 3 years. That will not help the situation because success will not result from a failure; it will just be more failure. This Government should not be allowed one more day in power when it has made such an unholy mess of housing in New Zealand through its own actions. It is this Government's actions that have actually caused the housing crisis and it is this Government's inaction that has failed to remedy it. In addition to all of that you have a situation where as a result of an open-ended immigration policy—which actually does create significant demand despite denials by the Government—it then has to panic to provide more homes when that could be avoided by having a sensible immigration policy and a genuine strategy for building homes in New Zealand.The housing policy that is actually claimed to be a comprehensive housing policy is none of that. It is nothing at all like that. It is getting worse. The effects of it are getting worse through Government inaction and the need for this particular bill is just evidence of that.Look at the results in Auckland where people are actually leaving in droves because they cannot buy houses there because of the prices. They cannot rent there because the rents are too high and between 2008 and 2013 32184 of them left Auckland for Wellington Waikato Canterbury and elsewhere while 3000 less than that number went there from those areas. So there is actually a drift away from Auckland because of these problems. The problem with that is as Shamubeel Eaqub said: The challenge for a lot of people is they're not able to get the same kinds of jobs or job security in other parts of New Zealand." That is probably why it is only a third of the people saying that they have actually considered it.It is actually worse than that. It is worse than that because in fact while 32 percent of Aucklanders want to move out because of housing pressures another 36 percent would also go if they could get adequate employment in the other regions. That outflow is actually hurting Auckland's economy. As Alan Johnson of the Salvation Army said: "There's people leaving Auckland in bigger numbers than ever because of the house prices. It will undermine the city's competitiveness. People doing lower-paid jobs particularly in the service and construction sectors need to be able to afford to live in the city." Is that not putting it in a nutshell? So the fundamental problem as we all know is that housing in Auckland is actually unaffordable and worse than that it is still a runaway problem. The failure to deal with that is all based on this Government's neo-liberal belief in the market as being a way of solving these problems. It seems to think that blaming local government and providing more liberal planning laws will somehow result in a solution to these problems. Of course it is as I have said exacerbated by an open-door immigration policy. And it is caused by Ministers—three of them in fact—who are simply not on top of their jobs. They simply do not know how to do this; they do not know how to solve it and they should all resign. In fact the whole Government should go and let parties into Government that can actually deal with these issues.In the context of such comprehensive policy failure—and that is what it is—New Zealand First will not support this bill. In that context New Zealand First will not support this bill. There are two reasons. The Government is hanging its hat on one primary action: these special housing areas. New Zealand First does not have a problem with special housing areas in themselves. We do not disagree with that. That is OK. It is actually consistent with New Zealand First policy. But in fact it is not enough because all it does as I have already indicated with local government agreement through housing accords is to define land available for housing. It does no more than that—and because it does no more than that it does not necessarily result in more houses being built and especially it does not result in more houses that people can afford to buy being built. Therefore it is a failed policy and for that reason—because it does not go far enough it does not do enough—how could New Zealand First possibly agree to such measures to extend it?After 3 years of failure and because of the Government's failure to actually invest in housing rather than just provide for these areas we have a continuation and we will continue to see a worsening housing crisis in Auckland. Without actual investment in the purchase of land and the development of land by the Government this problem will never cease because the market cannot—cannot—provide what is needed in New Zealand. And that is no surprise—that has actually been the case for a very long time in this country and it has not changed. Why this Government thinks it will I cannot possibly imagine.The pathetic 1300 house result will actually continue. Maybe it will do a little bit better than 1300 over the next 3 years but that is such a drop in the bucket it does not even begin to address the housing crisis especially in Auckland. New Zealand First's housing policy is much better than this—and I can see the Minister grinning.Hon Dr Nick Smith: I'm laughing.DENIS O'ROURKE: Look at him laughing. He should be laughing at himself because we can see his policy in total failure and yet he will not listen to anybody else. The fact is that New Zealand First wants a housing commission to do the strategic planning that this Government does not even consider to be necessary.Secondly New Zealand First would establish Kiwi Housing to buy and develop land on a scale that this Government has not even considered to ensure modest homes are built for modest prices and to allow easy term repayments for people who wish to buy them.The second and unrelated part of the bill is to change the law—not to confirm it or clarify it as is being claimed—to change the law to allow the sale of State housing land without offer-back provisions. That is the normal process. Those offer-back provisions are the normal process under the Public Works Act because they protect the rights of people. Those rights should always be respected and should not be done away with simply because this Government is in panic mode over housing in New Zealand. That is not good enough. People's rights are worth more than that. We will not support that provision for that reason alone.In addition to that the fact that the Government is looking at this actually demonstrates its failure of strategic planning and implementation. If it had looked forward enough done the planning and had a decent strategy it would actually have the time to buy and develop land without having to do these short cuts and without having to compromise people's rights.I want to point out some of the words that the Government claims justify this. On the end of the justification are the words "where the disposal is necessary to achieve the Crown's housing objectives." Well what are those objectives? The Government claims they are to build more houses—but this is State housing land. It is social housing land we are talking about and the objective of the Government is actually the sell-off of State houses in the absence of a genuine and comprehensive programme for the building of more State houses. It is also their objective to fob off State housing to community organisations many of which are actually not capable of doing that job simply so that this Government can minimise its involvement in social housing. For all of these reasons there is no possible way that New Zealand First will vote for this bill."