Sage Eugenie: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13179. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Even though the Minister of Housing thundered from the chair that the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill is going to be the solution to housing affordability this bill is not that at all. It is all about the Government being seen to be doing something about our housing affordability crisis. It is a bill to get media headlines but it is not about tackling the substantive issue in a comprehensive policy way that is based on good evidence. That has been obvious by the fact of the very short time that was allowed for submissions and because it is a very short-term measure.Clause 19 of the bill I think it is provides that the Order in Council that establishes special housing areas will be revoked 3 years after the bill becomes an Act and receives the Royal assent. That shows that the Government is not interested in working with local authorities to develop a solution that endures. It is more interested in just the short-term hit that this bill will provide by freeing up the process and making it easier for urban sprawl by allowing property developers to get consent for applications that are outside urban limits. That is because the Government sees the problem of housing affordability largely as one of land supply and says that that is the major influence on house prices. The Government is all about providing a charter for property developers through this bill and also through the changes that it is making or is proposing to make to the Resource Management Act where it will reverse the presumption on subdivision by permitting it unless a plan specifically provides otherwise.It is a complex set of factors that influence housing affordability. It is not just land supply; it is about building materials. It is about the cost of finance which the Minister did refer to. It is about the cost of insurance. If we were really looking a comprehensive package we would have measures that address that—things like a capital gains tax on homes other than the family home to make it much less attractive to have residential homes as an investment. We would have things like shared equity schemes. We would have the Government working with councils—working on a genuine accord—rather than what this bill provides.The Wellington City Council for example had a very detailed submission and it set out the other factors that apply to housing affordability. It is things like geography and employment patterns and how they influence the price of houses. That is why because you have got a lot of high-paying jobs in the centre of Wellington you get house prices in central Wellington that are over $500000 whereas ones in Porirua are around $370000. It is issues like that and the cost of building materials that influence affordability not just land supply.This bill also will not work because of thestandover tactics that the Minister proposes to employ through the special housing areas and his override powers. Local Government New Zealand said on behalf of all of the councils in New Zealand that it wanted to work with central government to address the issue of housing affordability but the override provisions cut across that whole spirit of partnership. They cut across any genuine accord because they take the power away from councils to make decisions about new development and to control the pace and the location of residential development and they give that power to the Minister. The override provisions mean that there is not a good-faith basis for working on housing affordability because if the Minister cannot negotiate an agreement with the relevant district or regional council he can then designate a special housing area.Then we have the chief executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment making decisions about where development will occur. What capacity what authority and what experience does a central government agency—the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—have to do this rather than councils?If the Minister was genuinely interested in partnership then these override provisions would have been removed from the bill. Again the Wellington City Council said that it would not enter into any negotiations on a Wellington housing accord unless those powers of ministerial intervention were removed. It is those powers that cut right across the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act whereas decisions on how and where residential development should occur should be made by territorial local authorities.My colleague Denis O’Rourke called the bill a panic measure and we certainly agree. If you look at what is happening where councils are doing good planning—and again at Wellington where the council changed the Wellington City plan in 2009—