Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I first became Green Party co-leader in mid-2009. In 2010 in my second major speech I announced the Green Party commitment to a capital gains tax excluding the family home. It came after reviewing work that had first been started by Rod Donald actually when he was here. Even in those early days the Greens were looking at the best kind of tax regime to both help provide income to the country as a whole—to build a fair tax system on which all New Zealanders could rely—and help manage speculation in the housing market. When Rod Donald proposed a capital gains tax it was for those reasons. When I proposed it in 2010 it was for those reasons. And here we are again having an opportunity to put in place a more comprehensive version of the capital gains tax than is currently in law—because of course the brightline test is essentially a capital gains tax but National does not want to say it. We all know why that is.Jacinda Ardern: Shh!METIRIA TUREI: Yes—shh! Do not tell anybody! It is also why it is unfortunately so weak.So the Green Party is very pleased to support this provision which will extend the brightline test—capital gains tax—to 5 years from 2 years. This is critical. It is a critical tool in the cooling of the housing market. We all know that we have to use every possible tool available to us to deal with the housing crisis. We also know that a capital gains tax will have a different kind of effect over time once properly introduced. A proper one—a good one—will provide an almost instantaneous cooling of the growth in house prices in the housing market in the short term. That is a good thing. That then helps provide more fertile ground for some of the other tax changes that need to come into place to have a longer-term effect. On top of that you are also building more homes like we discussed in proposed new Part 3 of this bill around the 10000 homes a year—also building more homes and bringing them online. So there is a whole range of steps that need to be taken of which a proper capital gains tax—excluding the family home—is a critical part. I am very pleased to have an opportunity to discuss it again and perhaps even to improve the brightline capital gains tax" test that is in the current law.This is critical when we see the data that is coming out about speculation in the housing market. Investors make up around 45 percent of house sales nationwide. There is a little bit of flexibility in that number from month to month but none the less investors are a significant part of the market across the country. In Auckland about 50 percent of the housing market are investors and they are driving ordinary people who are just moving from house to house as a natural part of transitions in their lives and first-home buyers out of the housing market. In the 1980s and in the 1990s the proportion of investors was never this high and the reason why it is so high today is that we have a tax system that provides huge opportunities to investors by taking those opportunities away from ordinary New Zealand families. So we have an obligation in Government and in Parliament to manage our tax laws effectively so that they provide a fairer approach—so that we get the right benefit in the right places. That is what good governance is all about.We know that mortgage lending is now well over $200 billion. That is the highest it has been since May of 2008. Those of us who were around in May of 2008 know that that was just before the global financial crisis hit. We have not had a rate of borrowing for mortgages in this country as high as this since just before the global financial crisis. We cannot continue to allow investors and speculators to dominate the housing market not only locking out other homeowners and young families but actually putting the entire economy at risk. More and more economists are saying that the speculation in the housing market is putting the entire economy at risk—not just those in the housing market—so we need to keep looking at reviewing and making changes to tax law and regulation to make sure we have got the settings right to promote the best possible housing opportunities for everyone. That does include to some extent—"