Bayly Andrew: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBayly Andrew: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2617. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua):I just want to dwell a little bit on the issue of the veterans which Mr Nash has been talking about for some time. The real essence of this bill is about introducing changes to the Income Tax Act and the KiwiSaver Act to deal with some discrepancies around how the taxation of the income replacement payments to New Zealand veterans is made. Essentially it is about tidying up some of the components of that and the proposed amendments will make it quite clear that the veteran income replacement payments are treated in the same way as ACC payments are made or interpreted for the purposes of tax social policy and KiwiSaver. So they are quite minor in terms of their actual drafting but they are just important little components to try to tidy up those aspects.What I would really like to turn my mind to is the whole issue about the rest of this bill which is of course about helping the 90000 lower and middle income New Zealanders acquire their first homes. Of course it is a package of measures. There is the $35000 that is available for people who contribute to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for a period of 5 years. That together with the KiwiSaver grant of $20000 means there is potentially a $55000 deposit available that people can join with their own savings to meet the minimum requirement for acquiring their new homes.One of the things I have heard quite a lot from the Opposition is about the lack of supply. I spoke about this briefly last night and if I could just have a moment on this. There are 100 special housing zones across the country. There are 80 in Auckland. I have two of them in my electorate in Hunua. The big one which I think is actually the biggest in the country is the Wesley property development which will contribute between 4000 and 4500 homes and another one just down the road about 2 kilometres will deliver another 700 homes. The Opposition has continually claimed that houses are not being built and factually that is totally incorrect. I was very disappointed to hear some of the earlier speakers tonight talk about this. I would just invite them to fly to Auckland hire a car and drive out to my electorate. If they stopped at the first place Mission Heights which is the area coming down to Flat Bush there are 1300 homes there. Every day a house is being completed there. If you carried on over the hill—probably another 15-minute drive—you would get to Maraetai and Beachlands. The population there at the moment is 8800 and it will increase to 17500 by 2021. There are just vast areas where the diggers the loaders and the bulldozers have been in clearing sites. Those sections are available for sale and there is an avalanche of new sections coming on for sale. It is the same in Clevedon another good part of my electorate—there are 700 homes. If you go to Pukekohe East there are a potential 10000 sections.So this claim from the Opposition that new houses are not being built and new sections are not becoming available is just not right. In fact the problem for my electorate is that we are going to have the equivalent of a new Hamilton in our electorate over the next 30-odd years and I have a council that does not actually have a lot of money to be able to support that infrastructure.Labour members particularly seem to be myopically focused on the Government building new homes. I just want to talk about this for a second. Just in terms of the total new builds in New Zealand the Government actually accounts for only 1 percent of all the new home builds—1 percent. The top 20 house builders in New Zealand actually account for 25 percent. The vast majority of new houses in New Zealand are built by one two or three-person building firms. That is why we need to create the environment to ensure that they can build houses and when the Opposition continually talks about creating new houses—they are the people who are going to deliver it: those one two or three-person businesses.In terms of homeownership at the Finance and Expenditure Committee we were briefed by the Reserve Bank Governor on this issue. The long-term 10-year average for first-home buyers is approximately 19 percent of all homes purchased in New Zealand. Even after the loan-to-value ratio changes that is still at 17 percent—i.e. within the statistical margin of error.