Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I am very happy to take a call on this bill. The Green Party believes it is a fundamental right for every person in Aotearoa to live in a warm dry secure home—or have the opportunity to—a place that a family can count on whether they own or whether they rent to be their home as long as they wish to be there and it should be affordable.In the debate this evening there has been a lot of talk about what it is that affordability means—affordable housing housing affordability what is the difference? I think it is pretty clear. We do not have to make reference to the median multiple. If people have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing that is not affordable. So it is not about just first-home buyers although that is important too. It is about people having access to a place to call home without having to spend more than 30 percent of their income so that they have enough for all the other things that every person needs to live a good life in this country. The problem right now is that there are too many people for whom this is not available. They have to spend far more than 30 percent of their income to have a place to call home. As we have been hearing over the last few weeks during the homelessness inquiry that the Labour Party and the Green Party have been running together there are too many families young families and women and too many vulnerable people who do not have a place to call home and that is not right. It is not good for any of us in this country.This National Government has been irresponsible. The National Government members cannot blame anyone but themselves when they have been in power for 8 years and house prices are completely out of control. Homelessness is at a record high. They cannot point the finger at anyone but themselves. The reason why we do not have affordable housing is that some people in this country are making a lot of money from buying investment properties. They have got no incentive to rent them out or to do them up. Land prices are increasing so fast that they can just buy a house hold on to it and make hundreds of thousands of dollars on which they pay no tax. That is not fair and it is not right and this irresponsible National Government has done nothing about it because those are the people it represents—the people who are making a lot of money off investment property.You know under the National Government not only is it not easier to buy a first home but it is a lot easier for those property investors to buy a third or a fourth home. The numbers show this: 5 years ago 36 percent of property investors owned three or more properties. Today it is 51 percent of investors who own three or more properties. So people are able to buy houses but not everyone has access to an affordable home and that is not right and not fair.There is a whole range of policies that we need to implement to achieve affordable housing in New Zealand. One of them is social housing. It is not rocket science. The Government needs to build more State houses and everyone in the Opposition has been talking about this. We need to tax all income the same. Capital gains tax—it is fair and it is only right. Those two things alone are not going to solve the problem.Although there is a lot of talk about supply and supply is an issue in some places like Auckland the reality is that foreign capital is impacting house prices in cities all across the world and it is really ridiculous for the National Government not to acknowledge this. Basically in all of the current account deficit countries of which New Zealand is one—New Zealand Australia Canada the US the UK—they have had huge housing bubbles. In the current account surplus countries they have had flat or very slowly rising house prices. This is because a disproportionate amount of the foreign capital we attract is going into real estate which is not the productive side of the economy that we need it to go to and it is making housing less accessible for people who live here in New Zealand. It is not just foreign buyers although that is part of the issue. The reality is a lot of New Zealanders are accessing foreign capital to get mortgages to buy houses and that bids up housing prices. You can see this in a place like Vancouver which is very similar to Auckland. Suddenly it has had a big drop in house prices because it put a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers.