O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): Nothing in the Government's projected expenditure on housing gives us any confidence at all that after 9 long years this Government has even begun to solve the nation's housing crisis. It has done little more than window dressing in many areas and one of those is the $1 billion provision to assist local government with infrastructure. It sounds like a lot of money and it actually is a lot of money but in relation to the size of the problem it is nothing more than a drop in the bucket.As is referred to in the Social Services Committee's report many councils have actually reached their debt limits and are unable to take advantage of this and I wanted to read the particular portion from it. It says: Some of us are concerned that councils who need to access the fund have already reached their debt limits. The Minister assured us that he is aware of this matter. We heard that the bids are oversubscribed for the fund. The Government is considering alternative approaches for supporting housing infrastructure." So it is a half-baked policy that some councils will be able to access and some will not and there will not be enough money there anyway. So that is supposed to be one of the things that the Government is doing to solve the housing crisis. It cannot even do that properly.After 9 years in power the housing crisis has simply worsened every year because the Government has failed to address the real causes. They are (1) immigration and (2) inadequate Government investment. Those are the two fundamental problems.The Government has even blown its budget on emergency housing. It is adding another $175 million. Homelessness has doubled in the last year from a reported 428 to 898 but that is actually only the tip of the iceberg and I am absolutely sure that there are a lot more than that—people who are forced to live in cars tents and substandard accommodation in Auckland this winter especially.Turning to HomeStart there is another failed policy. HomeStart is welcome enough as far as it goes but a $102 million allocation for 2017-18 is hardly going to go very far. In the face of a problem where hundreds of thousands of young people are trying to find a home—their first home—this will cover an expected 20000 grants and the actual grants average only $5122 each. This is even less than a drop in the bucket in trying to address those issues. The Government is simply not on top of it and is not investing nearly enough in even basic programmes like HomeStart.As I have said immigration is not the only cause but it is certainly one of the causes. You cannot continue to bring in a net additional 70000 people a year year after year and not expect that that will make the housing crisis worse. Of course it does and that is exacerbated by the Government's failure to stop overseas speculators. It has not even been able to do that over 9 years. A curb on immigration and a prohibition on overseas purchases of homes is needed and that is what New Zealand First would do.The Government's house building programme has not nearly kept pace with demand. Thousands of houses a year more are needed in Auckland than the Government is capable of seeing get built. At the last housing peak in the 2004-05 year 31000 houses were consented but in the year ended 2012 that had dropped by half to 14500 and it is not increasing much above that right now. So the Government has only fiddled where in fact bold measures have been required. Not nearly enough houses are being built or consented in New Zealand especially in Auckland. And what has the Government done? It has sought simply to blame local government.The truth is that the Government is not investing enough. It is not investing enough in the purchasing of housing land or in developing housing. New Zealand First would ensure that that happened. The Government is not investing nearly enough in supporting infrastructure—I have covered that $1 billion; it sounds like a lot but it is not. It is not doing nearly enough to assist people to purchase their home and it is not doing nearly enough as far as social housing is concerned. A 37 percent increase in applications shows the size of the demand and that is a demand that is not being even nearly met by the Government or its provisions in this Budget going forward."