Mackey Moana: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12949. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 Unfortunately it seems to be my lot in life to follow on from David Bennett in this House. I think it is the most extraordinary thing for a member of the National Government to stand up and say that it is very committed to rail and that Labour never was. I ask who bought back the lines who bought back KiwiRail and who put money into the rebuilding of lines like the Gisborne to Napier rail line. Who now wants to turn it into a cycleway? It is Mr Bennett’s Government. I am going to say something nice about the Hon David Carter before he has to go to his next important meeting and that is that David Bennett could take some lessons from David Carter on how to run a select committee. For all the hassles that we give Mr Carter the fact is that he was a very very good select committee chair. I think that the member David Bennett who is the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee could perhaps learn a few things from Mr Carter in that regard. 
I want to talk about what was Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill and is now the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. The repeal of this Act was hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill and it should not have been. The repeal of affordable housing legislation has no place in an infrastructure bill. If the Government wanted to repeal it it should have put it up in its own right as a repeal bill allowed New Zealanders to know what was happening and allowed them to submit on it. It did not do that. I think that that is a shame. I thank the clerk of the committee and all the select committee staff for all of the work they did to try to ensure that everyone who might be interested in the repeal of this legislation had the opportunity to comment. But I have no doubt that there would be many other people out there who would also have enjoyed the opportunity to comment had they known to look in an infrastructure bill that was working towards bringing together the operations of utility operators for the repeal of affordable housing legislation. It is reasonable to think that they would have enjoyed that opportunity. 
The second thing I want to say is that this just backs up the fact that when it comes to affordable housing in New Zealand this Government has no plan—no plan at all. When the Minister of Housing gave his speech he said that affordable housing was improving so it was not as much of an issue as previously. Well in the latest statistics housing affordability at the very best estimate is back to where it was in July 2008. In July 2008 the Hon Phil Heatley said that it was a disaster and it was a catastrophic event that needed to be addressed. The fact that we have gone back to that point which National used to think was terrible apparently now means that we do not have to do anything about affordable housing. I think that that is a dreadful contradiction in the position of this National Government. We need a mix of tools for affordable housing because there is no one reason why housing is unaffordable. There are many many different reasons so the responses will also be many and varied. This power was one of those tools that I believe would have been useful. As I have said time and time again Labour would have supported this legislation going back to a select committee to be looked at again if the Government thought that it could be improved on. We would have absolutely supported that. 
The 2005 New Zealand Housing Strategy acknowledged that territorial authorities could have more regulatory powers because they do everywhere else in the world. The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act intended to allow territorial authorities to require developers to include affordable housing in their developments or to contribute money land or houses or a mix of those to affordable housing. In return territorial authorities could have provided incentives. They could have offset some of the costs if they wanted to they could have reduced development contributions or they could have had rates remissions rates postponements or any other kind of financial assistance. It would have been up to the local authorities to determine how they actioned that. A territorial authority could have put together a housing affordability policy so that it was clear to developers what was expected from them in that region. It has to be said that some local authorities had specifically asked for this kind of regulation-making power; that is why the legislation was drafted and passed into law. 
At the same time it needs to be acknowledged that some of the local authorities were concerned that they would not have the expertise or the resources—absolutely. Part of the process is discovering where those gaps are. Local government will always be part of the solution for housing affordability. We cannot do it without it. It is actually impossible for central government to do this without a partnership with local government because it controls the zoning of land and a lot of the supply issues. We have to do it together because it is important that we find out where those gaps are. In saying that we made sure that it was not compulsory. This was something that local authorities could use if they wanted to; some had said they were interested and others had said they were not. It would have been very interesting to see who took it up and who did not. It would have gone a long way towards addressing those gaps as we said before. 
It was important that we started to get our local authorities thinking about housing affordability in conjunction with the work that central government was doing as well. Members should remember that the kinds of regulation-making powers that we gave local authorities are very common overseas. In fact in some places it is expected that if for example someone wants to do a large commercial development—say a shopping mall; this is common in some of the states in America—they require that workers’ housing be built and that the infrastructure around workers’ housing be built. In many communities and many countries around the world it is just naturally assumed that it is fair that developers contribute something back to the local community through the regulation-making powers of the territorial authority. 
We were told that one of the reasons the Act was going to be repealed was that it was developed during a time of significant development activity and now that activity is not there we do not need it any more. Once again that just shows us that the Government has no economic plan. Apparently we do not need powers for local authorities to use during times of high development activity probably because the Government does not think we are going to have times of high development activity any more. There is no economic plan. There is no plan for regional New Zealand and there is no plan for our big cities. 
The fact is that Labour is not quite as pessimistic as the Government. We have a plan and we will be putting that plan out there at the next election. Part of that plan is that we want to see development going on in areas that are appropriate. We want to see affordable housing as part of that plan. We see housing as infrastructure. The fact that this Act is being repealed shows that this Government does not think housing is infrastructure. If we look across the Tasman to Australia—the Government used to be obsessed with doing that but it does not like the comparison now—we see that Australia sees housing as core infrastructure. A huge part of its stimulus package which is still ongoing is social and affordable housing. It is residential housing for its citizens. That is the kind of thing that this Government should be looking at. In Auckland we are thousands and thousands of houses short every single year. In Manurewa for example for every 14 families who move to Manurewa one house is being built. That is not sustainable yet this Government is doing absolutely nothing about it except repealing legislation that is designed to assist local authorities and getting rid of programmes like shared equity which is an absolutely integral part of the affordable housing mix in just about every other country around the world. 
We have no plan for affordable housing under this National-led Government. Its affordable housing plan was tax cuts and reform of the Resource Management Act. Do members know what officials told us about the Resource Management Act reforms during the select committee process? They said that the reforms will not address affordable housing. Affordable housing is not even part of the mix of the Resource Management Act reforms. In the tax cuts that this Government gave someone on the minimum wage gets $3 a week—$3 a week. That is meant to compensate for inflation GST increases rent increases cost of living increases and apparently affordable housing. I do not know how good this Government thinks low-income people are at budgeting. They are pretty good but they cannot stretch $3 a week as far as that. The tax cut that the members over there gave themselves could probably go a long way towards affordable housing but for the average Kiwi family it absolutely will not. 
I finish by speaking on restrictive covenants. The Minister of Infrastructure tried to make out that there were no changes in this area. That is actually not true. Significant changes were made in the area of restrictive covenants. The one I want to single out is that if a covenant restricts social housing it now has to be the primary purpose of the covenant for that to be illegal whereas under the Labour Government we said that if any purpose of the covenant was to restrict social housing then it was illegal. This Government has taken that out and it has opened up a huge loophole. It is like its 90-day law: as long as we do not say we are discriminating we can discriminate. All that someone has to do is make up a primary reason why there cannot be for example a house with disabled access a halfway house for prisoners or a home for mental health clients. As long as that person makes up a new primary purpose for that covenant it is OK. It is just like the 90-day bill: as long as we do not say we are discriminating we can discriminate. That is a real disappointment.