O'Rourke Denis: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Taxation (KiwiSaver HomeStart and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2525. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): With this rather pathetic bill National is doing just little things just for show—things that do not go far enough to do any real good. In fact this bill will go nowhere close to solving the housing crisis—and there is a housing crisis despite what the Prime Minister tries to tell people. There is a housing crisis simply because first-home buyers have no hope in this country of being able to buy a new home unless they have a rich uncle or some other source of finance that most people actually cannot access.National members opposite have tried to say that New Zealand First opposes Resource Management Act reform. Well they cannot have listened to speeches given by New Zealand First members. We have never opposed Resource Management Act reform. In fact I myself have given speeches in this House saying that the Resource Management Act does need reform especially as far as processes go. We acknowledge that it takes far too long and costs far too much money and that there are other barriers to sensible development in this country and we do want to see sensible—sensible—practical housing for New Zealanders. We do not want to see the Resource Management Act amended as far as sections 5 6 and 7 go. We have definitely got problems there and we will be talking about that when those Resource Management Act reforms come up for debate. But never let it be said that New Zealand First opposes sensible Resource Management Act reform for the purpose of assisting the provision of homes for New Zealanders.This bill does recognise that first-home buyers cannot find the finance needed for a home these days. It is the one good thing it does do: it recognises a problem. What it does not do is actually do much about it. Simply giving people access to their own savings is a very low-level attempt to assist. They need much much more help than that. This is a derisory method of assisting first-home buyers to buy a new home. It is only allowing access to their own money and that is hardly ever likely to make the difference between a young couple getting the money they need for a deposit for a new home or not—hardly ever going to make the difference. For a few it might do—a very few. Worse still even those who do make use of this facility will have to do so at the expense of their own retirement savings and that is a very very bad idea. And it actually should not be necessary for people to have to dip into those savings if the Government had the wit to put forward policies and facilities for people to be able to afford to buy a new home and that fundamentally means raising a deposit and getting a reasonable bank loan.If this Government was serious about assisting first-home buyers it would provide a fund to do just that or it would adopt the New Zealand First policy to assist first-home buyers to purchase a section for a new home on easy terms by paying back a loan for a section over 25 years at very concessionary interest rates and other policies that we have to support those objectives as well. The Government should just take a look at our policy do that and then it would be doing something sensible—something this bill does not get close to because this Government is simply too mean or is in fact too uninterested in the realities of the issue to do that. In fact it is a bit like throwing a thimbleful of water at a bonfire. That is about the magnitude and worth of this particular bill.Looking at the bill the levels set out for the purchase of new homes in Auckland are just too low. The assumption is about purchasing homes around the half-million-dollar mark when new homes at at least the $600000 mark—and probably much closer to $800000—is the reality of the situation. The Minister of Building and Housing obviously did not know that because I heard him speak and he talked about this bill providing sufficient assistance for people to be able to purchase a home of $550000. Well it will not. It will not get there; it will not be enough. In fact this Minister is nothing more than a master of spin. He builds facades a bit like Juan Perón—building facades for people to look at but there is actually nothing behind them. This Minister is a little bit like that. Builders and property developers these days are more interested in building premium homes where they get a much better return not in building homes that ordinary people can afford.So what does the Government really think it is doing to achieve anything with this bill? It will achieve something for very few people—very few—when there are literally hundreds of thousands of young couples in this country looking for much more assistance than that. This Government is simply not trying hard enough. Furthermore the rate of increase in house price inflation is still much higher than the rise in people’s household incomes. Homes are getting further and further away for those people every day and the Government is really not doing much about it except to tell people they can use their retirement savings. Well that really is not enough—not enough to make any real difference. It does not address the real issues of assisting first-home buyers to obtain the finance they need.Another problem is that there is growing unease that actually the Auckland housing market is a bubble and a dangerously growing bubble fuelled to a significant degree by immigration numbers—a 30000 increase in Auckland alone in the last year. Do not tell me that does not make any difference; everyone with half a brain knows that it does. It makes a big difference.Beyond immigration there is speculative foreign investment in the local market which adds further fuel to the fire. The Government is not doing anything about that either. At some time that bubble is likely to pop with potentially huge damage to Kiwi families and massive social problems to follow. Where does it leave people whose retirement money could have been growing exponentially over that time but who have instead diverted it to housing? It leaves them in a position where their retirement savings are going to be degraded and they should not have to do that. They should be able to save for their retirement and afford to buy a home in this country. We can do that other parties seem to know how to do that but National clearly does not have the wit to do anything about it.This is short-term band-aid thinking. It is a bill that is unobjectionable and New Zealand First will vote for it but we know as the people out there know that a lot more than this bill needs to be done about the housing crisis—a very real housing crisis—in this country. In fact this bill is probably actually fuelling fires is probably actually counter-productive and will certainly damage retirement savings. It is really a bill that is hardly worth having at all. It is doing next to nothing but it is some possible help for a very few so New Zealand First will vote for it on that basis. But we expect a lot better and so do the young people of this country.