Twyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13162. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū):Tēnā koe Mr Chairman. Let me make some opening comments as we set off on Part 1 of this bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. I want to make it very clear from the beginning that Labour supports the notion of housing accords. We support the idea of special housing areas. There is a housing affordability crisis not only in Auckland but in many of our other bigger cities particularly the high-growth parts of the country. It is a crisis that is having huge economic and social effects on the people of New Zealand. The Kiwi dream of homeownership is slipping further and further out of reach under this Government. A generation of New Zealanders now finds it nigh on impossible to purchase their own home. A generation ago that was considered to be part of the Kiwi birthright. Now the numbers the very high rate of homeownership which we treasured for so long and were so proud of are plummeting. In the last 5 years we have seen precious little action or seriousness by this Government in addressing that problem.As well as the dream of homeownership slipping further out of reach the housing crisis has had a massive negative effect on the health and well-being of the poorest and the most vulnerable New Zealanders who are driven into the private rental market in huge numbers where they live more often than not crowded into substandard housing. It is not uncommon particularly in the centres where housing is at its most unaffordable for families to be living cheek by jowl squashed into the spare rooms of their friends neighbours and relations and for people to be living in caravan parks in a quality of accommodation that no one in this country in this day and age should have to inhabit. Children—too many of them—are being hospitalised for preventablerespiratory diseases because they are living in cold and damp homes. A major factor for that relative social hardship is an overall housing crisis that has driven prices up beyond the reach of ordinary Kiwis that has denied so many people a shot at homeownership and that has had the knock-on effect of pushing New Zealanders further and further down the chain to face often substandard inadequate housing. It is high time that the Government did something serious about this housing crisis.But I am sorry to say that this bill the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill does not measure up to any kind of benchmark for a serious concerted well-thought-through response to the housing crisis. What it isis the fast tracking of the elements of the Auckland Unitary Plan that will bring in more greenfield land than would otherwise be the case and some fast-track consenting to deliver special housing areas. As I said Labour is not against the idea. There is a housing crisis. In Auckland because of the historical legacy of the old metropolitan urban limits that are now about to be replaced by the rural urban boundary in the Auckland Unitary Plan there is a land supply problem that has been responsible for driving up land prices and as a knock-on effect driving up residential property prices. This bill is premised on the notion that if you open up extra greenfield land somehow it will magically flow through into affordability. In the course of this debate we will unpick the shonky thinking and poor logic that underpins this bill.As my colleague Jacinda Ardern commented in the Social Services Committee when the Hon Nick Smith came along as part of the estimates and was quizzed about his housing policies the Minister explained his thinking that underpins this bill and it is essentially that—