Prasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12791. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):It was interesting to hear from the previous Minister of Housing Phil Heatley about his ideas. They were so successful that he had to give up that portfolio to somebody else. Clearly although he argues that this is a comprehensive programme that the National Government has it actually is not. What members on this side have been arguing quite consistently is that this is a piecemeal approach. We all agree that there is a problem. We would have thought we would agree on how to fix that problem. In fact that is not so difficult. The general approach to fixing a problem is to identify all of its pieces address all of them and integrate the solution. Any idea that the Government has come up with in any area that is like that members on this side have supported. This is a bit like the welfare reforms—bits and pieces here and there. We have not been able to reach agreement on this particular prescription.This bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill primarily is about addressing the housing crisis in Auckland. Because there is a sunset clause it expires after 5 years and it is a response to a particular problem. But it fails—it fails on several dimensions to address those problems comprehensively. I want to talk about these. Others have talked about these as well. The stories of the holes in this particular policy prescription are legendary. We can all tell that time and time again. There is actually daylight between the problem of housing as we all understand it and the impact of the policy prescription that this bill contains. There is daylight. Just to name one or two problems: it does nothing about affordable housing and it does nothing about social housing. I will come back to that as I go on.What drives this policy is this Government’s ideological understanding. What it has done is it has converted that ideological understanding into a theoretical position. The theoretical position that it has come up with is that this problem has all to do with land availability. This has now filtered down to that one prescription. Somehow it is the hallmark of those who do not have the capacity to think about complex problems in their entirety in addressing solutions so they simplify them along single dimensions. There is this kind of philosophy of National and the theoretical underpinnings that this reflects and this has all come together. That policy is laissez-faire. In the end the policyprescription that emerges from that kind of thinking is laissez-faire—do the least possible and then expect the market to resolve the rest of it. That actually creates a huge hole—Simon O’Connor: Actually laissez-faire’s a prescription; it’s not a philosophy.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —in the distance between I say to the member from Tāmaki the solution and the problem. This might be a solution to the problem but it is not a comprehensive solution to housing our people.I think the story is told much more graphically when we take what the Minister of Housing said. The lack of any requirement for affordable housing is because if we build a $700000 home then those with a $300000 home will move to the $700000 home and this creates affordable housing. There is no concession to communities at all. There is no concession at all to where people have lived for a long time. There is no concession at all to where people have made their homes. Somehow they will move out into the distant suburbs. They will move into some other suburbs and create housing.There is this notion as Jacinda Ardern said where trickle-down housing is also a hallmark of the right. It is a hallmark of laissez-faire philosophy. It is a hallmark of conservative ideology. The market is the mechanism Mr O’Connor which your party has come up with to say it will solve everything. Where has it done that? Give me an example where the market has solved these kinds of problems. There are none. There are not any. There are not any. They have all had to be cultivated developed in a whole series of solutions. So Mr O’Connor there are not any. I think that to stand up and defend half-baked policy must really hurt members on that side. The Minister has adopted a theory that does not work. The theory is to increase land supply and everything else will fall into place. Well it will not. And of course I do not think they care. I do not think that members opposite actually care because so long as somebody will build those very expensive homes—[Interruption ]—for that member’s mates to occupy then it does not matter.Well this side cares. This side cares about those who are on modest incomes—middle-income and low-income New Zealanders—who have saved enough money and want to get into a house. Of course the Government says: “Look we have brought interest rates down.” That is rubbish. That side has not introduced one policy that has brought interest rates down. That is interesting. That side says that when things go wrong it is the global economic crisis. When things work right it is the Government’s own doing. Well that is disingenuous—absolutely disingenuous—and that does not work. We know very well that there is a major problem of housing affordability and National Government members do not have any interest in addressing that because there is nothing here to address it.We all remember when that Government first came into office in 2008. Moana Mackay will remember this. Hobsonville was being developed right in the middle of the Prime Minister’s own electorate. What a hullabaloo there was there. There will be no show home—[Interruption ] He was—that is right. There will be no social housing over there at all because the land there was so expensive that the poor could not live there. The modest-income earners could not live there. Nothing has been done. What has happened to that? Now somehow it will happen. Well that was the honest position of National. It does not want low and middle-income people in those flash suburbs. That is what it is.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh we’re the “Workers’ Party”.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The member well knows it. The member Mr Simon Bridges may now deny it but that is so. That is absolutely so Mr Bridges. That is exactly what happened. Was he a member then that member? Was he a member? I am not sure. Butthat is what happened. No one believes this Minister. No one believes that the solution that National has come up with here will make the difference.The issue of rocketing costs is another aspect of the current housing crisis. That is not being addressed here as well. In fact if we look at the whole range of factors that impact on housing then it would be great if the Government addresses it. Poor productivity in the area is not being addressed. We have not developed the workforce here. We have not ensured that there are opportunities available. The ability to do large-scale building in the industry has not happened and that can be done. We need bold solutions and there is nothing bold in this. Cost of materials is one—why is it that the same materials we use here are cheap in Australia? When will this Government address that particular problem? The cost of that material is so high. The developers need more access to capital. That has not been addressed—a tax treatment.When we look at the range of matters that need to be addressed then that side does not have the answers. But probably the real cynical thing the real bullying tactic here is about the override provision. The override provision is a bullying tactic. What kind of belief does the Government have in its own prescription when it has to put in a clause that says if you do not do it this way then we will have an override provision. There is no need for an override provision. Every person who submitted to the Social Services Committee who knows about it agreed that this was highly objectionable. The lack of confidence in its own policy—it is one thing to bully those who want to build so here they have a set of provisions that says it will override. Well it is just not going to work.It will again be left to Labour to be hands-on in the housing area and to address these problems comprehensively. The Government talks about $300000 per section and how you can build more? I do not think the members opposite have heard about building several units on the same piece of land so that the unit cost of the land actually comes down. I do not think Melissa Lee has heard about it. I do not think Simon O’Connor has heard about it. Simon Bridges certainly has not heard about it. This can be done. This can be done and it will be done. So this is a bad bill and we will not be supporting it. Thank you.