Street Maryan: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Street Maryan: Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12848] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
I rise to speak to the Infrastructure Bill and to Part 4 in particular. This part would repeal the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008. I want to back up a little bit. This legislation had my name on it as the Minister of Housing at the time. I ask the Government to reconsider the inclusion of the repeal of this Act in the Infrastructure Bill. 
The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 was enacted as a deliberate and constructive method of addressing a problem that had become endemic and that was the lack of affordable housing across New Zealand. The lack of affordable housing along with other influencing factors had led to an extraordinary surge in the price of houses between 2000 and 2007. Between those years we saw the average cost of houses in New Zealand increase by 80 percent. This was part of the problem that has led to banks irresponsibly lending to people who would not normally have any way of repaying such loans and that has led to the escalation of private debt in New Zealand. However banks continued to lend to people as land prices and house prices escalated during those 7 years. 
The Labour Government knew that something had to be done about this situation if ever we were to have another generation of New Zealanders who could get their feet on the bottom rung of the housing ladder and so have the kind of security that all of us aspire to have for ourselves and our families—that is the ownership of our own homes. That ownership of our own homes is very fundamental to New Zealanders’ views of ourselves and to the kind of lifestyle and the quality of life that we generally wish to uphold and improve on for ourselves. However affordable housing was escalating out of the reach of first-home buyers so the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was one method—not the only one—that the Labour Government brought in in order to alleviate this problem. 
The Government we have now has done nothing to address the lack of affordable housing nothing to address the inability of families on low and middle incomes to get the kind of independence and security that they can get by owning their own house. This Government is in fact working in the opposite direction and the repeal of this legislation is part of that reverse direction. 
When I was putting forward the legislation I went to a number of developers. I went to the big developers—those who are responsible for large residential housing developments and construction. I asked them what was wrong with this bill and what their objection to it was. They said that they made more money out of building one McMansion than they did out of building 10 affordable houses. They said that there was no economy of scale for them in building 10 affordable houses and that they could make a fortune out of building one or two McMansions in Botany Downs rather than providing affordable housing in South Auckland. I asked them to explained to me how that worked. They went through it and said: “Well you do this much for plumbing and electrical wiring. You add these kinds of overheads in if you make it two storeys.” On they went and explained it to me. 
About 8 months later when the bottom was falling out of the building and construction industry those very same people were coming and knocking on my door and saying: “Minister have we got a deal for you. We can build 10 affordable houses.” Suddenly they saw the building and construction opportunities drying up before their eyes. If anybody was able to provide some leverage to enhance building and construction it was the Government because building on Crown land was one of the few options that the building and construction industry had left available to it. And this Government calls this legislation the Infrastructure Bill! 
If the Government were serious about infrastructure if it were even halfway serious about creating jobs it would look at the leverage that the Crown has in all its Crown landholdings—such as the land in Hobsonville—and it would start to release that land for the building of affordable houses. Not only would the Government then create jobs and stimulate apprenticeships because apprentices would have somewhere to go but also it would provide through that mechanism the means for new families young families on low and middle incomes to get into the housing market. This Government continues to pull up the ladder behind it. There are people in that Government who have benefited in the past from Government assistance to housing and now the Government continues to pull up the ladder. 
Please forgive me if I am raising my voice but this really riles me. There is nothing more fundamental in this country than the right to shelter and the ability to have and own one’s own home has forever been part of the Kiwi dream. This Infrastructure Bill might as well be called the “Destruction of the Kiwi Dream Bill”. This is a nonsense. If this Government goes around the country one more time saying: “Look what we’re doing in infrastructure.” then I want every other New Zealander to ask: “How does that work in housing again?”. Mr Joyce thinks that he is improving infrastructure by rolling out roads. I suggest that he would do better by improving public transport. But what is happening in the building of houses? 
Even this very small measure this optional measure this provision that local and territorial authorities were not obliged to take up but could benefit from taking up is being taken away. Not only has this Government on 1 July axed the shared equity scheme—which was a way that the Government could assist low and middle income earners into their first home by providing some capital investment which over time a family could buy the Government out of—but also it now wants to take away even a provision that was optional and that local authorities could use to good advantage in order to encourage residential housing developments in their areas. Local authorities could do that through the provisions of this affordable housing legislation. But no far from encouraging infrastructure this Government is depleting infrastructure. It is denying jobs it is denying skills training and it is denying people the opportunity to buy their own house their first house and to get on to the bottom rung of the homeownership ladder which allows people to improve their prospects lever themselves out of minimal wages and improve their standard of living. This measure is an injurious provision to put into this legislation.