O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): The National Government's mismanagement of housing in New Zealand is now chronic. It is not just a housing bubble in Auckland; it is a housing crisis nationwide. It is causing a firestorm of economic health and social issues throughout the country that will drag New Zealand down for decades to come. If you look at the results in Auckland alone you can see the magnitude of the problem. First of all ordinary people simply cannot find a house within their price range to buy and too few are being built. We need at least 13000 houses a year in Auckland alone but what we find is fewer than half of that are still being built per year in New Zealand. The National Government has known that for years and has done little or nothing about it. First-home buyers even if they can find a house to buy cannot afford to purchase it. They are forced into long-term rentals. That is why the term Generation Rent has been applied to them—applied for the first time in New Zealand. The problem is of course that they cannot afford to rent those properties either because of the huge rent increases that are actually driven by the increase in house prices. So they have to move down market and down market trying to find lower and lower rents so that they can afford it and to make things even worse immigration at a net 70000 a year most of whom actually go to Auckland greatly exacerbates the problem. The root cause of this is that successive Governments have failed to plan for housing needs over decades. They have never developed a genuine long-term strategy they have let the so-called market reign and most people know that in New Zealand the market will never cope alone. The Government has penny-pinched wherever possible fobbing off housing issues—especially social housing issues—on to other organisations most of which cannot cope either. The Government has always failed to integrate housing provision with resource management immigration transport and social security policy. New Zealand First says that we should be taking a long-term view and that there should be direct Government investment in the housing market; not the zero-investment policy that this Government has taken. That is contrary to the approach that needs to be taken in New Zealand. So New Zealand First calls upon the Government and all parties to support the establishment of a housing commission so that we get a non-political approach to solving New Zealand's long-term housing problems. We need to revamp New Zealand's housing market with a number of objectives and the first is residential and land homeownership affordability. That is the fundamental problem—also social housing supply security and affordability; planned Government investment in land development; and low-cost first-home purchase finance which is also something that is desperately needed in New Zealand at the present time. In addition sustainable housing objectives including energy sustainability and efficiency are also required as well as housing quality generally. We also need integration of new housing developments with sustainable transport systems. That is something that really does not happen in New Zealand anywhere and should do so—that is what is happening overseas. New Zealand First also believes that it is very important that overseas purchasers should not be able to buy residential property in New Zealand. We believe that they should be ineligible and that they should have to apply to the commission of which I spoke for a permit to buy a house in New Zealand. That should be granted only if they can demonstrate a genuine need; that should be difficult to do. We would also reduce immigration to sensible and sustainable levels which are not what we have got in New Zealand at the present time. Immigration needs to be aimed at meeting genuine skill shortages in New Zealand instead of being the open slather we now have.