Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): The Estimates contain a very long list of piecemeal tinkering housing policies and grudging half measures and I want to go through some of those with the Committee. But I have to say first that it has been quite something to watch the Government's housing woes come to a head in the last few days when it announced a billion-dollar loan to councils for new infrastructure for housing development. I want the Committee to imagine the brains trust of the National Government's housing policy. Paula Bennett Nick Smith and Bill English are sitting around the table in a scene from the Austin Powers movie with Nick Smith as some kind of Dr Evil with hair with his little pinkie out going A billion dollars—bwahahahaha!". It is true that the billion-dollar loan promise did generate one or two headlines but it did not take very long for the pundits and the critics to unpick this latest piece of piecemeal tinkering from the Government and to point out not unkindly—and David Seymour the Government's subsidiary brand and the sole member of the ACT Party in this House was unkind enough to point out to his coalition partner that all the Government was doing was changing the lender because councils can borrow that money any time they like almost as cheaply as the Government can. The Government's entire policy—the so-called billion-dollar policy—was simply changing the lender. Someone else also pointed out that instead of being a billion-dollar policy it was a $25 million to $30 million policy because that is the cost of the interest payments that councils were being given a temporary holiday from and of course they have to pay back that money. So it just illustrated that the whole country is desperately waiting for solutions. It is waiting for a Government that will admit that there is a housing crisis and that the plummeting rates of homeownership in this country are a national disgrace. The fact that we have got children as young as 11 sleeping under bushes on the side of the roads—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): It is not a general debate. Come to the Estimates.PHIL TWYFORD: —thank you Mr Chairman—is a cry from the heart for some serious policy that will actually do something meaningful about the housing crisis. What is the Government doing? Let us talk about some of the things because the Ministers love to talk about this comprehensive housing plan. Well what does the comprehensive housing plan include? Well in the area of emergency housing it includes flying squads that do not exist—flying squads that actually have never existed. They are simply officials from the Ministry of Social Development doing the job that they are normally paid to do. There were no flying squads. And Paula Bennett made it even worse for the Prime Minister when she advised him that Government officials had gone out with the Salvation Army and knocked on the doors of cars at Bruce Pulman Park in South Auckland. Well that never happened and it has now entered political folklore.We have got emergency housing grants in the Estimates from Paula Bennett that are supposed to cover the cost of 7 days in a motel because Paula Bennett's solution to the housing crisis is to block book motels. That is what it has come to in this country. A country that once prided itself on putting a decent roof—having a warm dry home for all families in this country and now we have got Paula Bennett block booking motels. Her big announcement recently was that she was going to let people off for the first 7 days but what we know from the Government's own officials is that it takes—Carmel Sepuloni: 155 days.PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you Carmel Sepuloni. The average length of time is 155 days. That is 5 months that it takes the Government to find housing for homeless people and yet Paula Bennett out of the generosity of the taxpayer's heart is going to let people off the first 7 days. Well the Government's own figures tell us that that is going to lumber these homeless families with bills of between $25000 and $35000. Alfred Ngaro: I don't know about those figures.PHIL TWYFORD: Alfred Ngaro who is the Government's sort of self-styled human face of its disastrous and punitive social policies who is the chair of the Social Services Committee had to front up to the television cameras yesterday and explain why the National Government would not support a cross-party inquiry into homelessness. How embarrassing—how humiliating. We have seen a whole lot of other policies from Nick Smith. We have seen special housing areas where he promised 39000 houses in Auckland—very few of them are affordable—and the Government has built only a thousand of them in nearly 3 years. It is a total and utter failure. That is the centrepiece of the Government's supply side initiatives in Auckland. Two Budgets ago it promised to reduce the cost of building materials because we are paying too much in this country for the building materials like Gib board and roofing material and concrete. Nick Smith promised to knock $3500 off the cost of building materials for a new house. Well what happened as a result of that policy? Building material prices went up by more than the $3500 he had promised to save—a complete sham and a fiasco. We have got the National Government in this financial period we are talking about selling off State houses to merchant bankers public-private partnership investors from the UK and offshore companies in the middle of a housing crisis. It is not content to just leave thousands of State houses empty and it is not content that it has sold down the number of State houses by 2500 since 2011 while families are living in cars and garages but it is persisting with its misguided mission to flog off thousands of State houses and it does not care who buys them. Merchant bankers property investors—you name it they are all lining up to get their snouts in the trough. We have got the brightline test that was supposed to crack down on property speculation. It has had zero effect. I hope members of this Committee saw the recent QV figures that came out. House prices in Auckland are going up faster now than at any time in the last 12 years.Louisa Wall: 15.4 percent.PHIL TWYFORD: 15.4 percent in the last year; thank you Louisa Wall. The housing market in Auckland is out of control because everything this Government does has failed. It has had no effect. I think it is interesting if people saw Fran O'Sullivan's piece in the New Zealand Herald a couple days ago which was titled "Why won't Key act on housing?". That is what Fran O'Sullivan asked. She said he is giving baby boomers a bad name. Bernard Hickey wrote a very interesting piece this morning a very insightful piece. It said that John Key had taken a tactical poll-driven approach to the housing crisis for the first few years. It said that he was just looking at the housing crisis and thinking "Well people are getting richer. Their house prices are going up." oblivious to the powerful speculative forces that are at play in the Auckland housing market. And now they are utterly out of control. It takes 50 years now to pay off the average house in Auckland. It is a disaster. We have the lowest rates of homeownership—the lowest rates of homeownership—in 65 years. We have families living in cars and garages and this National Government is in total denial because it does not believe there is a housing crisis. Apparently it is a challenge; it is not a crisis. This Government is so out of touch that the Prime Minister thinks—and I think this is why the Prime Minister has not acted on this. If there is one thing that this Prime Minister stands for it is that he likes to see people making lots of money. When John Key sees speculators getting rich in the Auckland housing market he has got the Gordon Gecko motto—he thinks greed is good. Let us not get in the way of people making a killing at the expense of Generation Rent. Never mind that Monte Cecilia Housing Trust has to close its doors because it does not have enough emergency housing for all the people who need it.This Prime Minister is so out of touch with the aspirations of ordinary New Zealanders that he does not think the housing crisis is a crisis. He thinks it is OK that people are getting wealthy at the expense of the half of the population who are living in rental accommodation.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): So back to the Estimates.PHIL TWYFORD: The entire list—this catalogue of piecemeal tinkering that we see in the Estimates debate—of grudging half-measures that this Government wheels out almost every week are deliberately designed to make it look as if the Government is doing something about the housing crisis while it is doing as little as possible. I want to come back to where I started which is the billion-dollar promise to fund infrastructure for new development. On the surface it looks like a lot of money—a billion dollars—but what we need to do is change the way that we finance infrastructure for development. We need to better manage urban growth and stop the artificial restrictions that are driving land prices so high. What the Government should have done is introduce genuine reform to the way infrastructure is financed and adopt Labour's plan to allow bond financing of infrastructure paid back by a targeted rate. That would make a difference."