Heatley Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHeatley Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12790. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei):I happily rise in support of this Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. What it does is it fulfils the suite of initiatives that this Government has worked on across housing. What we have done is we have made it very clear to the electorate that there is no silver bullet and that is certainly the reflection back to us from builders developers those buying a home and those in the banking sector. The New Zealand First Party policy—its whole immigration policy I guess—of attacking Asians and saying: “No more Asians in the country.” is not the silver bullet. The banks builders and developers are saying that the Greens’ policy is just to write a cheque with the country going into more debt. The Greens’ policy of borrowing money overseas to build houses for people I guess and handing it over to them with minimal contribution from those people is not the way to go. And of course the Labour Party policy which is confusing and difficult to follow is also not the way to go.Bankers essentially builders developers and first-home buyers are saying to us that there is no silver bullet. There is a suite of measures that you have to take and this bill really is the last of those that we are putting in place. We have been interested in the demand side. National has looked very hard at the Welcome Home Loan scheme where we provide insurance for those who are borrowing—borrowers’ insurance—so that they can borrow and we have looked at KiwiSaver deposits as well. Colleagues across the House and all parties cannot deny the statistics that interest rates under this current Government for the last 4 years have sat at around 5 and 6 percent compared with 5 or 10 years ago under the previous Government—the spend-and-tax Labour Government—when interest rates were sitting at 9 10 or 11 percent consistently.I do not think New Zealanders have forgotten that interest rates were around 9 10 or 11 percent under the previous Government. They appreciate the fact that good economic management under our team has seen interest rates sit at around 5 or 6 percent. Those percentage differences are 4 or 5 percent between a Labour Government and a National Government. On a $300000 mortgage 4 or 5 percent well 5 percent is $15000 in interest a year. That is an awful lot of money. One percent on a $100000 mortgage is $1000 and 5 percent on a $300000 mortgage is $15000 interest a year. Under Labour policy that is an awful lot of money each year to come up with. That is something we have focused on—interest rates.Also of course we are getting Housing New Zealand to better use those quarter-acre and half-acre sections. A lot of subdividing is going on on public land and Housing New Zealand land. We are subdividing and using the proceeds to build new State houses and using the land that is subdivided to also build houses on for families to buy privately. That is an excellent idea—the use of Crown-owned State-owned or HousingNew Zealand - owned land. We see it at Tāmaki and obviously we see it at Hobsonville. There is also the Social Housing Unit the investment that we are putting into the social housing sector where we are going for a dollar for dollar and sometimes a $2 for $1 investment in housing as well.But this bill specifically looks at the last piece of that puzzle. It is not just interest rates it is not just the Welcome Home Loan scheme it is not just subdividing Crown-owned land and it is not just those other actions that we are taking. We are also looking at the land supply across New Zealand. What this legislation will do is it will mean that more land is freed up for subdividing particularly in high-demand areas like Auckland. There is a concern from those on the far left that we are carving up New Zealand’s beautiful countryside but it is a great reminder to people when you consider that New Zealand’s residential housing sits on around 1 percent of New Zealand’s land. So about 1 percent of New Zealand’s land—give or take a bit; it is not that accurate—is actually under residential housing. Even if you doubled it it would be only 2 percent. So the absurdity—the absurdity—of claiming that we are taking over New Zealand’s green space or keen agricultural land is brought to the point when you consider only 1 percent of New Zealand’s land is actually under residential housing.This is good legislation. I acknowledge the Auckland Council for how it has worked hard to make it even better in the select committee. I commend the bill to the House as part of a suite of measures that we are taking right across the board. I commend it to the House.