Twyford Phil: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11699. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to talk about the political train wreck that is the Government’s housing policy because that policy is at the heart of why this Budget has played so badly with the public. There are two things that are going on. The first is that homeownership rates are falling. Auckland has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world and speculators are running riot. The second thing is that we are seeing homelessness on a scale that we never have before. RNZ reported on Friday that children as young as 11 are living under bushes in South Auckland. The nation is shocked by that. Kiwis are deeply uncomfortable with that but it is made worse by the sight of this Government’s non-response to the housing crisis—a response that shows the Government to be breathtakingly out of touch with most New Zealanders.We had the Prime Minister advising first-home buyers last week to just go on TradeMe because apparently there are lots of affordable houses on TradeMe; that is if you like living in a houseboat or living 3 hours’ drive from the centre of town or in a one-bedroom shack. We also had the Prime Minister saying that homeless people should just run along to Work and Income and Work and Income would sort them out. That is completely and utterly out of touch. Then to cap it all we had the Prime Minister on Friday obviously nonplussed by the kind of heat he was getting on this issue flailing around and just making it up by saying that Government officials had been out with the Salvation Army trying to help homeless people who did not want to be helped. That was a complete and utter fabrication.What is going on here? This is odd. This is the Prime Minister who 9 years ago said that he was concerned about a growing underclass but he will not do anything about families living in cars. This is the Prime Minister who 7 years ago stood in this House and told us every day that he wanted to take the sharp edges off the recession and protect the most vulnerable in the global financial crisis. But his response to the fact that there are kids sleeping under bushes in South Auckland is to make up a story that blames the homeless for his own failed policy. The Prime Minister said that he was ambitious for New Zealand but he is clearly not ambitious for desperate young Kiwi families who just want a home of their own. This Government’s housing policy is collapsing around it. Every day the cartoons the editorials and the letters to the editor in newspapers all around this country are mocking the Government mocking its insistence that this is a challenge but not a crisis or as Simon Bridges said that it is a top-tier issue.Let us count some of the ways that this Government’s housing policy is a train wreck. We had Paula Bennett in a panic the day before the Budget was due to be released running around announcing one of her hare-brained schemes to pay people $5000 to get out of Auckland to get a house. Never mind that at the same time Anne Tolley is paying people $3000 to move to Auckland to get a job. Never mind that there are 41000 homeless people in this country according to Kate Amore a researcher at Otago University and that Paula Bennett’s policy that she announced to pay people to move out of town is designed to help only 150 people. Never mind that in Huntly one of the places that Paula Bennett wants to send people to there are no vacant State houses.Hon Nanaia Mahuta: How many?PHIL TWYFORD: No vacant State houses. But Paula Bennett apparently wants to pay people in Auckland $5000 to move to Huntly to get one of those non-empty State houses. On what planet is that a good idea? On what planet does that actually pass for a housing policy?Nick Smith the hapless building and housing Minister who thinks that the surge in homelessness is a figment of someone’s imagination got an extra $100 million in the Budget. He got it so that he can buy more Crown land but shortly before he made that announcement his own officials released information under the Official Information Act showing that having promised in last year’s Budget 500 hectares of vacant Crown land to be developed for housing Nick Smith spent the $50 million he was allocated and got how many hectares? He got 13 hectares. He promised 500 hectares but he got 13 hectares and not a single house was built.To be fair to the Minister he had to go back and exclude the power substations Government House the Mangere Lawn Cemetery and dozens of other sites that were included on the original list that his officials confirmed had been used as the basis for that list of 500 hectares. It is a farce and this was Nick Smith’s big policy in the Budget last year to build houses in Auckland. It follows in a long line of policies that are designed to make it look as if this Government is doing something about the housing crisis while doing as little as possible.In the Budget before Nick Smith promised to knock $3500 off the cost of a new house by suspending tariffs and anti-dumping duties on a range of building materials. What has happened in the last 2 years? Well plasterboard one of the building products that Nick Smith removed anti-dumping duties and tariffs from has increased more in price than the entire amount that he promised he would save under his policy. So the cost of building supplies has got worse under Nick Smith’s policy. And the granddaddy of them all was the special housing areas that were announced in the Budget before that—Budget 2014—3 years ago. According to Nick Smith they have been responsible for building only 1000 new houses in 3 years. That is the Government’s centrepiece Auckland housing supply policy—1000 houses in 3 years—when Auckland has a deficit that has built up under this Government’s watch of 40000 houses and it is getting worse by 4000 every year.So the question is why this train wreck has been allowed to happen day after day after day like Groundhog Day. Remember that this is the Prime Minister who made an art form out of swallowing dead rats. Remember Working for Families?Grant Robertson: “Communism by stealth”.PHIL TWYFORD: “Communism by stealth” but National kept it. Remember interest-free student loans? This Prime Minister he knows the U-turn. He knows the U-turn. Remember the City Rail Link? Does anybody remember that? He has announced it twice and still has not written a cheque for it but he made the U-turn. But why—why—has this Government continued in the face of all the evidence in a string of grudging half-measures and deliberately ineffective policies—why has it continued with this train wreck that passes for a housing policy? Well the ugly truth of it is that this Government simply does not care about homeless people. John Key could not have stood up last week and told the fabrication that he did—that Government officials had gone out with the Salvation Army to talk to homeless people who did not want to be helped. If he cared about homeless people he would not have stood up in front of journalists in this Parliament and told them that lie. Homeless people are not National’s people.John Key and Paula Bennett—two Ministers who benefited tremendously from the generosity of previous generations of taxpayers—got a good start in life thanks to the people of this country who were willing to fund through their taxes State housing and a welfare system designed to give people a hand up. But not only are those two Ministers happy to dismantle those structures which helped New Zealanders get a decent start in life but they are willing to go along with caricaturing and undermining State house tenants and people on welfare benefits and portraying them in the most unflattering light because they are not National’s people so National does not care about them.When it comes to Auckland house prices the ugly truth is that the Prime Minister has taken the view that he has more votes to harvest from homeowners who are happy to see their paper wealth increase as last year house prices in Auckland went up 25 percent. It is a cynical calculation that he can harvest their votes at the expense of Generation Rent—at the expense of thousands and thousands of young Kiwi families who are desperate only to get a home of their own. He does not care about the parents and the grandparents who desperately want to see their kids own a home of their own but the Government has lost control of this issue. It has gone past the tipping point and that is why those members are flailing around like chooks with their heads cut off. They are out of touch they are out of ideas and they are running out of other people to blame.