Shearer David: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18104. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): That was a fine speech by the person who should be the member for Epsom Paul Goldsmith. He should have been elevated in the last reshuffle that Mr Key did rather than Nicky Wagner. How he missed out I do not know when he did his best not to win Epsom. Why was he not elevated up the rankings?He did touch on two or three issues that I think were relevant. He touched on the current account deficit—the worst in the Western World worse even than Greece’s. Good on you for bringing that up. He also brought up the issue of Government debt which is currently at $60 billion—$60 billion—and that is the result of having to finance five deficits in a row.I congratulate Mr English on his sixth Budget his final Budget in his position in office. He finally gets it right and he crawls across the line and gets us into a Budget surplus. The margin of error is really why he got across. The Government had to cut things it had to put things on 4-year time horizons in order to be able to get across the line but he managed to do it with the last and final Budget that that man will ever deliver to this House. He will never be able to replicate nine Budget surpluses in a row which the Labour Government was able to deliver year after year after year.What is the reality here? The reality is that despite all the crowing by this Government people are not doing as well as they want to. What we are seeing is that the increase in wages over the past year the average increase—including all those richlisters who get factored into it as well and who bump up the average—was just 1.6 percent whereas inflation went up 1.5 percent. So we are seeing a 0.1 percent increase in people’s real wages. Forty-six percent of New Zealanders did not get any wage increase over the past year—46 percent. So when you are asking who is benefiting the great bulk of New Zealanders the great bulk of Kiwis who are out there working hard trying to bring up their families the best way they can are not benefiting. Instead the people who are benefiting are those who could afford to buy some time with a Cabinet Minister or who belong to a Cabinet club so they can get preferential access to people whom nobody else would ever have a chance to meet. That does not feel right to me and it does not feel right to most New Zealanders out there either.We want to help people who are working hard to get ahead and we want to help them particularly in the area of housing. A family I know—a husband and a wife and two kids—were renting a house close to inner city Auckland. They were saving like crazy to try to buy their own house. What they were doing to it as they were going along because they wanted to live in a decent home was they improved that rental property they were living in. They painted it put in a vege garden and made a whole bunch of different improvements to the place. What happened? The landlord chucked them out gave them notice and put in another family at a much higher price off theback of their hard work. So they went further out in Auckland because they could not afford to be in the same place as they were before so their kids had to go to a different school. And what happens? They save and they save and they save to try to get there. They are improving that place as well but they tell me that they cannot get ahead. They just cannot make it because as they are saving the prices of houses are getting beyond their reach.A guy came up to me the other day when I was in one of my local markets and said: “I’m a 42-year-old teacher. I earn a reasonably good living but I will never be able to buy a house and it is a really sad fact that I’ve actually come to that conclusion. I’ve flatted with other people. I’ve saved as much as I can. I’ve cut out all the luxuries in life so I can try to get ahead and get a house but I do not believe that I will ever be able to afford a house despite my parents saying that that is what I should do.”That is what it is all about. It is about a Government that will give opportunities to Kiwis and New Zealanders and that is able to give people what I believe they deserve and what is a birthright for us which is the ability to own your own home. You know despite the fact that the prices are going through the roof you have got the incredible statements by John Key that there is no housing crisis and there is no problem. I quote what he said: “there’s no fundamental underlying reasons to believe there’s a problem in our housing market”. Well three-quarters of New Zealanders do not believe him—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Finish the quote.DAVID SHEARER: —and three-quarters of New Zealanders do not believe Nick Smith either. Let us take a look at the facts.Hon Phil Goff: At least 80 percent.DAVID SHEARER: Eighty percent. I was going to say 76 percent. I was even conservative by saying “three-quarters” which is 75 percent but it must be—Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s moving.DAVID SHEARER: It is moving all the time you are absolutely right—just like house prices in Auckland. The average house price in Auckland now is $700000. That is the average house price. And this Government has now ensured that people will have to have a 20 percent deposit to get into one of those houses. Well do the maths around that. That is a $140000 deposit that they are going to have to come up with in order to get into an average house in Auckland—$140000. Who on earth can afford that? Does that sound like anything that a first-home buyer could ever afford?House prices are going up. They have gone up 22 percent right across the country and 40 percent in Auckland. And when you put that to this Government what is its reply? That houses went up a bit more years ago. Well how about taking responsibility for what is going on right now? You have been in Government for 6 years now. You saw this coming and you did nothing. And if this Budget is anything to go by you are still doing nothing because a $3500 saving on building materials less than 1 percent of any house that is being built does not go anywhere near to solving the problems.We have a real solution to our housing crisis. We are willing to take the courageous brave decisions that need to be taken. We are willing to get in there roll up our sleeves and get stuck in. So what are we going to do? Make a real difference. We will build 100000 houses over a 10-year period. We will use the economies of scale to be able to keep those houses cheap enough for ordinary New Zealanders to get into. We will raise a capital gains tax. Anybody would tell you that taxes are not the sort of thing you want to introduce but three-quarters of New Zealanders actually believe that it is the right thing to do. Today in the paper Westpac’s economist said that a 15 percent capital gains tax would reduce the amount of speculative value in houses by 22 percent. Why does this Government not listen to all the objective advice rather than listening to its own spin?We will limit offshore speculators which the Government does not even want to measure because it does not want to know what we already know that these people are driving up prices. If you ask anybody who goes around to auctions in Auckland and ask them about speculation they will tell you that there are lots of people out there who certainly are not New Zealanders and who are out there speculating. In Auckland 2750 homes were bought by foreign speculators in a year and we build 4000 homes a year. Three-quarters of all those homes are actually nullified by the fact that people are out there speculating.We will bring in loan-to-value ratio restriction exemptions so that although Auckland and Christchurch might have a loan-to-value ratio restriction placed on them at least let the people in the rest of New Zealand off those restrictions so they do not have to have a 20 percent deposit in order to be able to afford their own home. And we will bring in healthy home guarantees so that even if you are in rental accommodation you will be able to have a warm dry home. They are real solutions and that is what Labour will deliver on 20 September.