Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I believe I may be able to assist with some of the points raised. I do not know whether I will be able to make it simple enough for a King's College old boy but I am certainly going to try my damnedest.Iain Lees-Galloway: Jealousy will get you nowhere.DAVID SEYMOUR: Jealous of what? The issue at hand comes down to a clash between two similar but really quite different concepts. One is affordable housing and the other is housing affordability. On the one hand when you talk about affordable housing you talk about a certain number of homes being available at a price for a segment of the market. Many of the interventions that are proposed by the political left are what I would refer to as affordable housing initiatives. Let us have inclusionary zoning to try to section off a part of the market at a certain price. Let us have the Government or some Government-related entity develop housing because it will somehow have different means and motives from the private sector.Denis O'Rourke: Exactly. What's wrong with that?DAVID SEYMOUR: Let us have some sort of subsidy for people to be able to afford housing. Denis O'Rourke—not much gets past Denis O'Rourke. I told the Committee that I was describing the policies of the political left and Denis O'Rourke has correctly surmised that I am describing his policies. Not much gets past Denis O'Rourke. The problem with the affordable housing agenda as opposed to housing affordability is that you cannot have affordable housing without housing affordability. The reason housing becomes unaffordable in the first place is that there is a shortage of housing supplied to the market and when that happens inevitably there is going to be a bidding war which those with the least income are going to lose. Until housing becomes affordable you are not going to achieve housing affordability. What will it take to increase the supply of housing supplied to the market and therefore achieve housing affordability across New Zealand and therefore make it possible for there to be more housing that is affordable for those with the lowest incomes? It is interesting to hear Metiria Turei referencing the median multiple measure which is a measure that has been popularised by my good friend Hugh Pavletich from Christchurch who is one of the co-authors of the Demographia survey. I wonder whether Metiria Turei has carefully read those Demographia surveys and I wonder whether she has spoken to Hugh Pavletich or Wendell Cox. I wonder whether she has discussed with Julie Anne Genter what she has read. What those reports say in no uncertain terms is that the reason we have a shortage of affordable housing in New Zealand as with any other market is that we have adopted land-use planning laws that constrain the amount of land upon which people are able to build thereby leading to a shortage of housing thereby leading to a bidding war that not everybody can win and those with the least money end up losing and end up with a shortage of housing that they are able to access. The economics of it are that simple and it is very good to hear that Metiria Turei has become a convert to this line of thinking referencing the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey—something that those of us on this side of the House have long looked to as a guide for making better housing policy. But if we wish to follow in those footsteps we need comprehensive reform of New Zealand's land use planning laws. It is not good enough that councils are able to draw a line around a city such as Auckland such as the metropolitan urban limit and say: Thou shalt not build beyond that line." That has created an enormous shortage of land which has created an enormous shortage of housing which has left people unable to afford any home whatsoever. Finally we must reform the way that we do infrastructure funding. Presently the councils cover too many of the costs and central government gets most of the fiscal benefit and that is why councils are unwilling to build more housing. What this Government really needs to do is reform those underlying fundamentals not tinker as Metiria Turei has suggested in her amendment."