Chauvel Charles: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:4026] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I think the reflection that has just been made by the Hon David Cunliffe is a good one: we need to remember what this debate is about. This particular part of the Taxation (Budget Tax Measures) Bill Part 2 is about housing affordability. I see Mr Heatley is in the Chamber. I remember that back in 2007 when he was the Opposition spokesperson on housing he welcomed the fact that a select committee of this Parliament the Commerce Committee was conducting an inquiry into housing affordability in New Zealand because it is a real problem for ordinary people in this country. The reason that the mortgage diversion mechanism was originally set was to try to create yet another weapon in the armoury; it was one of the arrows to be used to deal with the problem of housing affordability in this country. 
Housing affordability is an issue that has not got any better. If members look at the  
5th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey 
 they will see that 60 severely unaffordable housing markets are listed in that survey. The 23rd most unaffordable is in Tauranga the 26th in Auckland the 30th in Christchurch the 34th in Wellington the 47th in Dunedin and the 55th equally in Hamilton and in Napier and Hastings. Members in this Chamber ought to be very concerned about any measures that diminish housing affordability and ought to be debating this issue very seriously. 
I take the point that was made by the Minister of Revenue in response to the Hon Lianne Dalziel earlier that because of the changes to the KiwiSaver scheme there is an issue about accessing the mortgage diversion scheme: it has become accessible only to a particular earning demographic. But surely that is not a reason to cut the mechanism off at the knees and do away with it completely; surely it is a reason to refer a proposal to modify the mortgage diversion scheme to a select committee have proper submissions on it and talk openly about how it can be improved so that we actually have yet another way of dealing with the serious problem of being able to afford a house in this country. Instead what do we have? We are debating under urgency this proposal to cut off the mortgage diversion scheme because of the reason that was enunciated earlier by the Minister in the chair. I make a plea to the Minister and to the Government: for goodness’ sake this is a serious social problem. Just because only 600 people are accessing the mortgage diversion scheme at the moment is not a reason to destroy it; it is a reason to look at how it could be modified to make it open to more New Zealanders so they can use the scheme properly and afford to buy a house. 
On the subject of process I note that the Minister has been the Minister of Revenue now for two terms of Parliament. Too much revenue-related legislation simply gets put through under urgency—I think the Minister would agree with that proposition. There is not enough scrutiny of revenue-related legislation. I would remind him of his own words just 2 weeks ago at the Institute of Chartered Accountants conference where he made some observations about how legislation ought to be amended in this area. He said: “The correct process”—in respect of tax legislation—“is for the select committee that is considering the bill to make recommendations to Parliament about changes it believes should be made and Parliament then decides.” Then he talked about some actions that he took in respect of the bill that was being discussed at the conference. That is the right way to do things. 
Tax legislation can be complex. This bill is not particularly complex as far as the merits of the proposal are concerned but as I said it is an important issue. Why on earth is this legislation being rushed through under urgency? Why on earth is it not getting select committee scrutiny? Why on earth are the public not having the opportunity to come along and tell a select committee some of the things that they think could be done to make the mortgage diversion scheme a better scheme to make it more broadly accessible to the public and to make it truly one of the tools that can be used to allow ordinary Kiwis to be able to buy a house and enter into house ownership—something that we have always encouraged in this country? We have not really had a proper answer to that question and I encourage the Minister to tell us why we cannot have an inquiry into this matter why the mortgage diversion scheme cannot be improved and why the Finance and Expenditure Committee—or another competent select committee—cannot consider that matter.