Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It is almost all over Nick. It is almost over. This debate has been I think a microcosm of the housing debate that New Zealand has been having for the last couple of years. At the centre is an incompetent Minister for Building and Housing who has for the last 17 hours embarrassed and infuriated his colleagues. He has subjected them to a humiliation in this House as what the Minister promised would be a small inconsequential clarification has turned into a marathon 17-hour debate that has shown National's housing policy to be limited inadequate narrow in focus and inconsequential. It has been put up against—quite unfairly really—a bold comprehensive housing reform agenda backed by the Opposition parties in this House and even some of the Government support partners from time to time which have a vision to transform the housing crisis that this National Government has got us into.The bill in question is also a bit of a microcosm of this Government's housing policy—Grant Robertson: It's chaos.PHIL TWYFORD: —and the way the chaotic way that Nick Smith discharges his responsibilities as housing Minister. One of the two parts epitomises the sort of microscopic tinkering that has come to be the hallmark of this Government's housing policy. It is the extension by 3 years of the special housing areas policy that Nick Smith described 3 years ago as an interim measure while the Government's long-term affordable housing strategies bedded in. Well we have spent much of the last 17 hours debating the extension of this so-called interim measure—the special housing areas—which have demonstrably had marginal positive effect in the last 3 years in our country's biggest city where the 42000 shortfall of dwellings that has accumulated under this National Government is getting worse by 4000 every year. What has Nick Smith's centrepiece policy achieved? An additional 1300 dwellings over 3 years with no evidence that those houses would not have been built if the special housing areas policy had not been in place. All it has done is bring forward some houses that the market would otherwise have built of its own accord.The second part of the bill epitomises the shonky incompetent discharge of ministerial duties by Nick Smith. He failed to think through the transition issues around the cessation of the special housing areas legislation and what happened? Eight developers in Auckland faced the prospect of being left flapping in the breeze when the special housing areas legislation came to an end so we have had to pass this bill in order to allow those developments to carry on. We do not mind doing that. We think it is a rather fruitless thing to do. We do not think the special housing areas are having much effect. But actually when you stack them up against all of this Government's other housing policies they are probably the best the Government has got. But that is a very very low benchmark. So we are willing to vote for it and we have made it very clear from the beginning of the debate that we would vote for Part 1. We did vote for Part 1 in the Committee stage and we asked repeatedly that the bill be split in two so that the second part which we think is completely untenable—to be confiscating people's property rights under the Public Works Act—could be sent to a select committee. We have asked repeatedly that it be sent off to a select committee. My Supplementary Order Paper 212 which the Government—ACT and National—voted against would have split the bill in two allowed the first part on the special housing areas to be passed tonight and given those eight developers in Auckland the breathing space that they need. But we would have sent off National's and ACT's confiscation of private property rights. We would have sent that off to a select committee.David Seymour: Oh come on Phil.PHIL TWYFORD: David Seymour—the self-styled protector of property rights of classical liberal political thinking; the man who today voted to take away the private property rights of New Zealand citizens in a shabby shonky little bill that Nick Smith has shepherded through the House. What a disgrace. How can the ACT member in this House hold his head up with any kind of self-respect? No one will be able to believe a thing he says in future about his belief in the sanctity of private property rights. If the bill had been split we would have happily voted for the first part in order to give eight property developers in Auckland the breathing space that they need.Housing policy under this National Government has been an unmitigated disaster. There is hardly a commentator a reporter anybody in New Zealand who does not believe that it has totally stuffed up the handling of the housing crisis in New Zealand. Hardly a few days go by without some new international report that says that New Zealand has the most unaffordable housing in the Western World and we saw one come out just in the last 48 hours. International media are now covering New Zealand not through the lens of The Hobbit or what a great tourist destination we are. The issue du jour for the international media is the housing crisis and the fact that under John Key's Government which is so ambitious for New Zealand we have an epidemic of children growing up in cars and garages and pensioners living out their days in suburban campgrounds paying hundreds of dollars to rent single-room cabins. What a disgrace. That is New Zealand under John Key.What has been the response to this meltdown in the housing market? We have a Government that refuses to even acknowledge that there is a housing crisis. We see one panicked poll-driven piecemeal housing announcement after another. Probably the low point in the last few months has been Paula Bennett making up stories about Government officials going out with the Salvation Army knocking on the car doors of homeless people in South Auckland. What a disgrace. Actually you know what was worse than that? Paying people $5000 to get out of town and presenting that as some kind of social welfare or housing policy. Actually no the worst thing—the low point—was definitely when Paula Bennett's office leaked confidential personal information to the media about Hurimoana Dennis who has been a national hero for the work that he has done at Te Puea Marae. That speaks volumes about this National Government and what it does. The housing crisis has been getting worse every year—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. We do not want this barracking across there on something that is not related to the bill.PHIL TWYFORD: The housing crisis has been getting worse every day every week every month every year of the 8 long years that National has been in Government. It is so out of touch no matter what the issue—whether it is arguing against its own Government definition of homelessness and severe housing deprivation which it does not accept even though it was devised by Statistics New Zealand Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development. It is so out of touch that it has on two occasions now deliberately manipulated and selectively presented the data on foreign buyers in the housing market that has been collated by Land Information New Zealand and tried to suggest that foreign buyers account for only 3 percent of property transactions when it is patently obvious to everybody that the real figure is more than three times that.The Government members are so out of touch. They refuse to do anything about either banning foreign buyers or taxing speculators in any meaningful way. They cling to this outdated mantra that the housing crisis is only a supply issue. They talk supply supply supply but what do they do? They make the special housing areas their flagship policy. It has been a spectacular failure. The shortage of dwellings in Auckland is getting worse by the day. The Government has no answers. It is so out of touch it does not bear thinking about. The only prospect for fixing this housing crisis and restoring affordable homeownership and decent housing for the people of New Zealand is to change the Government in 2017 and the policies that we have presented to the House this afternoon are the housing policies that we will take to the next election. Under our Government they will be the biggest overhaul of housing this country has seen in 80 years.