Twyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): What a disappointing contribution that was from the—Grant Robertson: No typical.PHIL TWYFORD: —a typical response—current National Minister of Housing. The Labour Party will be voting for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill at its first reading and we will be voting for its referral to the Social Services Committee. We do that in the knowledge that one does not lightly support a bill like this which overrides key elements of the Resource Management Act.This bill is the latest piece of legislation from the National Government that takes powers away from local councils and local communities and gives them to central government. It is one of a long line of provisions we have seen under this Government that actually strip powers from local communities. So in that knowledge we support it at this stage only in terms of its referral to the select committee and we support it because the provisions in this bill represent a partial victory for Len Brown and the Auckland Council in the face of the most extraordinary drama queen behaviour from Nick Smith over the last few months.Nick Smith turned up in Auckland 3 months ago accusing the mayor of killing the dreams of Aucklanders. He said that planning laws in Auckland and the Auckland Plan were strangling the lifeblood out of housing development in Auckland. And we had all sorts of dramas and histrionics from Nick Smith the “Minister of Housing Shortages” as he tried to create the same kind of crisis the same kind of drama he has created inevery portfolio area he’s had over the last few years. ACC was perhaps the worst and he has brought exactly the same approach to housing.What is very clear from the announcements about housing that we have seen from the Government over the last week is that it is utterly spooked by Labour’s policy Labour’s KiwiBuild policy to deliver 10000 affordable starter homes for first-home buyers. That has completely spooked the Government. We know that because we know that theNew Zealand Heraldopinion survey in January showed that 70 percent of New Zealanders supported Labour’s policy of putting 100000 Kiwi families into their first home. That has spooked the National Party and we have seen a flurry of desperate announcements as it tries to recover lost ground. So that is the context for this bill coming to the House today—the National Party’s troubled relationship with our country’s biggest city Auckland.National is offside with Aucklanders. Gerry Brownlee is completely offside with Aucklanders when it comes to public transport and the city rail link. Nick Smith has kindly offered himself as Len Brown’s opposition in this year’s mayoral election. No one else of any substance is willing to stand against Len Brown so Nick Smith gallantly offered himself and I think he has actually done a pretty good job of alienating Aucklanders on an issue that they desperately care about—affordable housing.So what is the result of all this drama queen activity from Nick Smith over the last few months? What we see today is a cherry-picking of some elements of the Auckland Plan. That is why I say it is a partial victory for Len Brown and the Auckland Council. But to be honest Nick Smith could have saved everybody a lot of grief if he had simply gone along with Auckland Council’s proposal to give the Auckland Unitary Plan legal weight upon notification. So once the plan was notified in September this year a lot of grief could have been saved and the Government could have saved a lot of political face if it had given the new unitary plan which includes the measures contained in this bill legal weight in September just as the plan would have had under the pre-2009 resource management law. But no Nick Smith has put everyone through a whole lot of drama.So what does the bill do? It creates the framework for the Government to negotiate accords with regional councils around the country. It has negotiated one with Auckland Council. That accord allows special housing areas to be set up with fast-track consenting and it will have the effect of bringing new greenfield land into the supply of the Auckland housing market which I think as most people recognise is one of many factors behind the high cost of new houses in Auckland. But the National Government would like to think that land supply is the be-all and end-all when it comes to solving the housing affordability problem and that deregulating the planning laws is the main solution. I think most people realise that it is not.House prices have gone up 36 percent in Auckland since National came to office and this bill is the best that National can do. It is rearranging the deckchairs on theTitanic tinkering with planning regulations and a whole raft of other things that we will debate over the next couple of days in relation to State housing. It thinks that by simply tinkering with planning regulations under the legislation that allows these so-call housing accords it will solve the housing affordability problem. That is the fallacy that underlines this bill.This bill will do nothing to guarantee that one more affordable house is built in Auckland. It simply opens up new greenfield land in the supply of land and fast-tracks the consenting procedure. The numbers that National bandied around for tens of thousands of new houses are simply targets for consenting. They do not guarantee a single new affordable home. I think Aucklanders will see through this. They will seethat this is a desperate attempt by the National Party to regain ground on the housing affordability problem.The housing market is failing. It is failing to build enough affordable homes. It has basically seized up because there is no money to be made currently for developers and builders in building affordable homes. Fast-tracking consenting and bringing new land into the system may be part of the solution but it will go nowhere near guaranteeing and assuring Aucklanders that they are going to see the production of new affordable houses.We saw yesterday the unveiling of the new development at Long Bay an hour’s drive from the central city. We saw houses costing between $750000 and $1 million. Is that National’s definition of affordable housing? We have seen Hobsonville where the Minister talked about affordable housing. Does he really think that $700000 houses an hour’s drive from the city an hour’s drive from where all the jobs are is National’s solution to the affordable housing crisis? It is simply just not credible.I want to point to one of the biggest problems with this bill and that is the very very weak language contained in the housing accord about affordable housing. The accord itself starts by acknowledging that improving the affordability of housing is a complex issue it requires consideration of wider issues not all of which will be able to be addressed under this accord. Well you got that right.Listen to this language which is actually in the accord itself. It is talking about when developers are seeking consents for new housing developments. “All Qualifying Developments are … required to give consideration to the provision of affordable housing”. They do not have to build affordable houses; they simply have to give consideration to the building of affordable housing. “Conditions of consent may include requirements for a proportion of the development to include affordable housing”. They may have to give them; there is nothing in here that requires builders and developers to build affordable housing. It is a joke. It is a charade.If the Government was serious about dealing with the affordable housing problem it would roll up its sleeves and actually work with the private sector and local councils to build affordable housing which is exactly what Labour will do under its KiwiBuild policy. Look at Hobsonville. Look at the Long Bay development. All the economic incentives in the building and development industries are telling developers to build houses that sell for three-quarters of a million dollars because that is the only way they can make a decent cut a decent margin on those developments.This bill will be supported by Labour as far as the select committee but we have reservations about it. We have reservations that will require considerable scrutiny at the select committee about the constraining of the rights of appeal under the Resource Management Act and we are very sceptical about whether this will do anything to achieve more affordable housing. It is typical of National’s weak tentative and timid approach to dealing with the issue of affordable housing. It pretends that tinkering with the Resource Management Act will result in more affordable housing for Aucklanders. We doubt that it will. It requires a serious response by the Government. It should pick up a hammer and actually build some affordable houses.