SpeechDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): I think we need to consider this bill with reference to the background facts because one thing is for sure and that is that this Government has been trying to hide the size of the housing crisis in New Zealand for several years it continues to do so and it actually denies that there is a housing crisis at all. However Treasury reported just recently that the housing shortage in New Zealand as a whole is 60000 houses approximately right now—60000 houses right now today—and it is growing by 40 houses per day. That is the size of the deficit. That is the magnitude of the crisis. But the Government's response has been to deny the figures as it always does and it continues to deny that there is a housing crisis at all. Last September the International Monetary Fund—another independent source—put New Zealand top of the class for housing unaffordability in relation to how much we earn compared with 30 other developed countries. We also topped a list of 64 countries for house-price growth in the past year. So what is the Government's answer to that? To fiddle with the figures as it always does and to try to fiddle with the Resource Management Act which will actually make little or no difference to the supply problem for housing in New Zealand despite the claims made by Nick Smith and others on the other side of the House. In fact this crisis is one that the Government actually created. It created it through poor policy and a failure to intervene effectively and it has been in power for coming on to 9 years. That poor policy-making and that ineffectiveness has been at the root of the housing crisis and yet those members want people to elect them again. Well people would be crazy to do so because this problem is only going to worsen and one of the drivers for that despite claims to the contrary from those across the other side of the House is that immigration continues to run at a net gain of 71000 a year. We in New Zealand First think that is at least 10 times too high. It is putting massive pressure on prices of houses on rents on infrastructure and on services like health education and social services. In the last 5 years alone Auckland has swelled by 188000 migrants. Where on earth will they live if there is not a genuinely comprehensive housing plan to house them? House prices in Auckland have jumped a staggering 29 percent in the last 2 years because of this Government's poor policy-making and ineffectiveness. The Government has scrambled to try to look as though it is doing something. It wants to appear to be solving the housing crisis even though it denies that there is one. The truth is that most people on that side of the House and their supporters do not really want to solve the housing crisis because they feel that they get an advantage from it. They do not care about others who cannot afford to buy a home in New Zealand and those are the ones whom New Zealand First does care about. These facts are the background facts for why this bill is so needed. We need 140000 houses over the next 7 years and that means we need 20000 houses per year not the 10000 in this bill. That is the truth of the matter for the whole country. Auckland alone needs more than that so it is really not a very adequate bill as far as that is concerned. Mr Doocey said that the Government policy solved the problem of unaffordability in Christchurch and Waimakariri. No it did not. Many many thousands of people there cannot buy their first home as is the case in many other parts of the country. We do need a system that allows people to buy houses on equal terms as well as making sure that the number of houses is available. New Zealand First has policies to do that by providing sections and built houses to be sold to them over 25 years on easy terms. That is what affordability means and that answers Mr Doocey's question on that.