Street Maryan: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10068. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Listening to that last speaker Phil Heatley who has just resumed his seat makes me want to spit. Quite frankly Mr Heatley had 4 years to start to care about housing affordability and he did not. This Government has now presented its fifth Budget in a row and this is the first time—the first time in five Budgets—it has thought to talk about housing affordability. And why? Because it has been spooked by our policy. It has been spooked by the offer of supply. That Minister who has just left the Chamber—that Minister—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! [Interruption] Order! The member knows that we cannot refer to the absence of members.Hon MARYAN STREET: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It took them a long time to respond to that did it not? But the Minister of Housing as he is now is so out of touch with housing needs that he does not even know about a woman with five children living in a garage in his own electorate—in his own electorate. So the reason that woman now has a Housing New Zealand house is that I made a fuss of it and made it a front-page news item. Within a day she had a State house. That is not about the provision of social housing; that is about a Minister being embarrassed that he does not even know the state of homelessness in his own electorate.We have Chris Tremain the real estate agent from Napier sitting over there saying: “People don’t buy houses at the average of the market.” The point is when they are first-home buyers and they live in Auckland they cannot afford even the bottom of the market. They cannot afford the bottom of the Auckland housing market. If your average is sitting at $735000 the bottom of the market is not going to be affordable either.First of all the thing that the Minister and his predecessor have failed for the last 5 years to do is acknowledge that there is a housing affordability crisis. There was a housing affordability crisis in 2007 when I became the Minister of Housing. Housing affordability was a huge problem because of the inflated expectations and borrowing that people had on the back of the wide boys who support the National Party. We know that that housing bubble collapsed—that housing bubble collapsed. We know what the history of that was and we know of the increase in mortgagee sales we have seen since then.We brought in a piece of legislation that was much more meaningful than the wishy-washy accord with local bodies that the Government is proposing in this legislation the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I brought in a piece of legislation that gave local authorities the legal tool in their tool kit to apply pressure on developers to make 10 percent of any residential development affordable housing in exchange for certain trade-offs such as waiving development levies. That was a voluntary piece of legislation. It should according to some arguments have been compulsory but in the end it was a voluntary piece of legislation. But it was much better than this piece of nonsense which says that qualifying developments “may” be required to include—“may” be required; I can hear them crying—affordable housing or may “give consideration” to the provision of affordable housing. These people who do not know the reality of most people’s lives do not know it. [Interruption] And do not tell me Mr Tremain that you do—Mr Tremain who owns 20 properties. I do not believe that he understands that there is a housing shortage and a housing problem.This piece of legislation has come about simply because the National Government has been spooked by what has turned out to be a very popular policy.Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Spooked?Phil Twyford: OK—panicked then.Hon MARYAN STREET: All right “panicked” will do. There are two things that are important in addressing housing affordability amongst the things that the members opposite talk about; that is quite right all of those things are important. But why then did this Government on coming into power in 2008 repeal the legislation that allowed local bodies to get into conversations with developers and provide affordable housing? Why did it axe that legislation? Why did it axe the shared equity scheme that would have allowed people to buy their first home by freeing up State-owned Crown-owned land? By freeing up Crown-owned land we were offering people the property which stayed in the ownership of the State and they could buy the house. Over time as the circumstances of that family improved they could buy the Crown out—they could buy the Crown out. The programme was axed by this Government.But I have to say in addition to axing good legislation and good programmes—including the Welcome Home Loan programme which saw thousands and thousands of people get into their first home once the KiwiSaver limit had been reached. They were able to maximise their contributions and have that matched by the Government and then they were able to get into their first home. No that programme was cut as well. So not only was the Government cutting programmes and repealing good constructive legislation but also it then chose to axe its own programme the Gateway Housing Assistance programme which was meant to assist people—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Honourable members the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the evening meal.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon MARYAN STREET: Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Before the dinner break I was railing against this Government’s Budget being its fifth Budget but only its first Budget to consider affordable housing. The reason for that is that the Government has taken fright even 18 months out from the next election because the Labour Party has announced a constructive solution to housing affordability that people have responded to very warmly. Because of that the Government has been spooked into action.In fact I would be grateful if the Government had been spooked into action but all it has got here in this bill is an accord that it can run with local authorities or the Auckland Council that says that qualifying developments building developments may be required to include affordable housing or may give consideration to affordable housing. If this Government cared about housing affordability why did it axe the previously existing legislation which was stronger than this and also addressed the issue of local authorities and their ability to provide affordable housing? Why if it cares suddenly about affordable housing did it axe Labour’s shared equity scheme? Why if it cares about affordable housing did it scale back the Welcome Home Loan programme? Why if it cares about affordable housing has it axed its own Gateway Housing Assistance programme?Why if it cares about affordable housing did it axe the Hobsonville project? The Hobsonville project was to deliver 3000 houses of which only 500 would have been social housing 500 of which would have been modest affordable houses for first-home buyers and the other 2000—how many do they want—would have been for private purchase. There could have been a range of houses of different kinds of affordability built there. But no the Prime Minister said: “No State houses in my backyard.” He called it “economic vandalism”.This Government has come very late to the stage of providing affordable housing. It says that we need to expand the metropolitan urban limits and that we also need to have more dense housing. Well that has been known for the last 5 years. That has been on the programme for the last 5 years. Why has the Government just awoken to it now?We will support this bill in its first reading only because we care about affordable housing not because we think this bill provides any answers. The other reason I want it to go to a select committee is that it has Resource Management Act implications and I do not trust this Government where the Resource Management Act is concerned. It deserves close scrutiny. Thank you.