Hipkins Chris: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I want to pick up where Moana Mackey left off and talk a little bit about some State houses in my electorate. This National Government came into office and it completely destroyed the community atPōmare. It came into office and it decided that there was antisocial behaviour atPōmare so it threw everyone out. It then closed up those houses. It boarded them all up. Then once they had been boarded up of course they got vandalised because they were left empty. Once they had been vandalised what did National do? Well it demolished them. Did it then rebuild any new houses on that empty land? No it did not. It said: “Oh we haven’t got any money to build any new houses on this land. We were quite happy to demolish the houses that were there.” So it went ahead and demolished the houses. The land now sits empty and now National is trying to hock it off—now it is trying to hock it off.I am watching that repeating now all throughout the Hutt Valley because all throughout the Hutt Valley we have boarded-up State houses. The Government has used the excuse of earthquake risk to board up a whole lot of State houses in many cases where the risk is only a very minor one. It might be that they have a chimney that needs to be rebuilt or some minor piece of capital work that needs to be done in order to make the house tenantable. What they have done instead is board up the whole thing. Of course those houses will be vandalised because if you leave a whole lot of empty houses boarded up they will be vandalised and then the Government will turn round and say: “Oh gosh these houses are now no longer habitable. We’re going to demolish them.” And then it will turn round and say: “We’ve got this empty land but we haven’t got any money to build any new houses on it so we’d better hock that off as well.”Then of course we are going to find ourselves in the position that we were in at the end of the 1990s when the National Government had been in power for 6 years and suddenly the number of State houses we had in New Zealand dramatically declined. National is quite happy to board them up to demolish them and to hock off the land but it is not prepared to invest in building more State houses which is what we actually need in New Zealand.I am very very proud of the moves that the Labour Party has been making under the leadership of David Shearer to actually deal with many of the big housing challenges that we have in this country. We have a major problem with housing affordability. People desperately want to get on to the homeownership ladder and they cannot. David Shearer and the Labour Party absolutely recognise that and we are absolutely committed to doing something about it. We will build 10000 affordable houses every year over 10 years. That is going to make an enormous difference for all of those New Zealand families who will get into homeownership mostly for the first time. That will be huge. It means that the dream of homeownership is not just for those who come from means or who have high-paying jobs. It is for everyday New Zealanders who go out there work hard and want to be able to buy their first home. We think that is a dream that every New Zealander should be able to realise so we will build 100000 new affordable houses over 10 years to make sure that New Zealanders can achieve that dream.David Shearer announced over the weekend that we will also restrict the purchase of existing New Zealand houses by overseas speculators. There has been this hysteria that we have heard from the National Government about this—from the same NationalGovernment that of course brought us the legislation about boat people and all of the other Draconian things that it has been doing in the immigration area. Suddenly it is hugely concerned about overseas speculators being able to buy New Zealand houses. Overseas speculators are not the people who want to move here and buy a house and create a life here. They are not going to be covered by that policy because if they are coming to New Zealand they have got to be resident in New Zealand and they will be able to buy a house in New Zealand. No one is saying that they will not be able to. What we are saying is that people living overseas who have no interest in living here no interest in contributing to the New Zealand economy and New Zealand society should not be able to make massive profits by buying up the available houses pushing them out of reach of New Zealand families who want to buy them charging them rent and then expatriating the profits from doing so offshore. That is fundamentally wrong.What we are saying is we acknowledge that so we are going to place some sensible restrictions on who can buy existing houses. If people overseas want to invest in the property market in New Zealand they can build more houses—they can build more houses—and that will leave New Zealand better off because it will increase the number of houses that we have. We have a housing shortage in New Zealand. That is something that this Government is not willing to acknowledge. In my electorate in the Hutt Valley area we have waiting lists of people trying to get into State housing. We have so many families jammed into houses because they cannot afford to buy their own house. We have a housing supply problem in New Zealand but the National Government keeps turning away from it. National is quite happy to pick holes in every solution that is being offered by the Labour Party—every solution that is being offered by the Labour Party—and it cannot come up with any solutions itself.It is going to commission another report.Vote agreed to.