Twyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12779. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū):In a week when the National Government showered $40 million on that tiny group of New Zealanders who plan to invest in Meridian Energy things continue to go downhill badly for young Kiwi first-home buyers. The price of housing has gone up even more. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand reports that Auckland house prices went up 14 percent in the last 12 months. The announcement by the Reserve Bank of loan-to-value ratio limits on mortgage lending without any kind of exemption for first-home buyers is a kick in the guts for first-home buyers because that Government on that side of the House mishandled its negotiations with the Reserve Bank and failed to agree to an exemption for first-home buyers. And now the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill in the House today for its second reading the centrepiece of the Government’s housing policy is a timid flawed badly thought through bill that will surely fail to meet its objectives.We have in this National Government a Government that will not think twice about bailing out the insurance companies about bailing out South Canterbury Finance. It is a Government that at the drop of a hat will rewrite this country’s laws at the behest ofWarner Bros of Skycity of Anadarko. It is a Government that will shower taxpayer largesse on RioTinto on investors in its botched privatisation of our country’s energy companies. It will do all that but it will not pull its finger out to do something serious for first-home buyers. The public knows it the media know it the Government is floundering around and Nick Smith is the Minister who has been delegated to give the appearance of doing something about the country’s housing crisis. Well people see through it. This bill—this timid flawed bit of draft legislation—is all the Government has and it simply will not cut the mustard.What is our attitude on the Labour benches to this bill? Well frankly we are underwhelmed by it. There is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of special housing areas. There is nothing wrong with the idea of fast-tracked consenting. We have a housing affordability crisis. It requires bold extraordinary measures but this falls a long way short of what is required. It would be nice if the Government approached the housing crisis with boldness and with a determination to tackle the fundamental intractable complex array of problems that underlie the housing affordability crisis but this bill is all the Government has and frankly it amounts to tinkering. That is all it is.Hon Dr Nick Smith: KiwiSaver. Welcome Home Loans.PHIL TWYFORD: KiwiSaver and Welcome Home Loans. I am really glad the Minister of Housing mentioned those—I am really glad he mentioned those. TheNew Zealand Heralddevoted an entire editorial to describing that Minister’s announcement on KiwiSaver and Welcome Home Loans as insipid as it is ill-directed. That is what the country’s biggest newspaper had to say about Nick Smith’s latest housing policy announcement.The weird irony of this whole bill is that it is the centrepiece of the Government’s response to the housing crisis but the Government would not even have to be wasting the House’s time with this bill if it had not made some serious errors of judgment earlier.The bill quite rightly sets out to bring in new greenfields land into Auckland. There is no problem with that. It attempts to fast track consenting to speed up the construction of houses. Fine. There is no problem with that. But if Nick Smith had not changed the law in 2009 to prevent new plans having legal weight from notification the Government would never have had to do this. If the National Government had acceded to Auckland Council’s request to fast track the Auckland Unitary Plan and allow it to have legal weight upon notification it would never have had to bring this bill to the House which simply cherry-picks some aspects of the unitary plan. If it had allowed the unitary plan to be fast tracked that would have been much better because it has a raft of other housing affordability measures that would have been much more useful than this bill.There is no doubt—and I want to put to rest any suggestion by the Minister of Housing in his last speech—that this party does not accept that land supply is a problem in Auckland. It is clearly not a problem in Tauranga and other regional centres that suffer extreme housing unaffordability. But for the sake of this argument let us be very clear and put it on the record that there is no doubt—the data makes it crystal clear—that constraints on land supply in Auckland and the failure to intensify is behind an increase in the price of land that has flowed on to the price of housing. But land supply is only one factor in the housing crisis and the National Party has a fixation with it. Its idea is that if it can just bring in extra greenfields land then that will solve the problem. That is the intellectual flaw underlying this bill. The price of housing is determined by an interaction between the supply and the demand for land.This Government refuses—refuses—to consider a capital gains tax that would crack down on land speculation and residential property speculation and take the steam out ofthe speculative pressures that are driving up house prices in Auckland. The Government refuses to consider the idea of putting limits on offshore speculators that see overseas property speculators outbidding Kiwi first-home buyers at Auckland property auctions. It refuses to stand beside first-home buyers. The National Party backs property speculators every time.The Government is doing nothing substantial about tackling the extreme low productivity that we have in the construction industry. The lack of scale and the lack of competition are entrenched problems that mean that the construction and building industry in this country has some of the lowest productivity in the OECD and the Government only has weasel words to say about that. It has a dinosaur mentality reflected in this bill that says that the problems causing housing unaffordability are planning laws and regulations. Its only response is to say: “Let us deregulate. Let us get rid of planning rules.” But simply bringing in some extra greenfields land in itself a perfectly sensible idea will not given the complex and intractable forces that are making Auckland housing prices so prohibitively expensive for Kiwi first-home buyers result in any more affordable housing.One submitter after another—including the Todd Property Group the Property Council the Salvation Army Auckland Council Tauranga City Council and Waikato District Council—came to the Social Services Committee and said that this bill on its own will not result in the building of any more affordable housing. All of those submitters highly credible and involved submitters came to the select committee and said that this bill will not result in one more affordable house being built.The premise of this bill is that if you open up more greenfields land and allow property developers to build some new houses no matter what the cost of those houses somehow that will reduce the cost of housing in Auckland. That is fairy-tale economics that Nick Smith is engaging in. The premise of this bill is that if you build some more houses no matter how expensive they are on the fringes of Auckland then that will make houses in Auckland more affordable. Well Minister that is a fairy tale and it is a lie that underlies this bill.I want to comment briefly on the override clauses in this bill that are undemocratic. They are unnecessary. They make a mockery of the fact that this bill is called the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. How can a council in good faith negotiate an accord with central government when it knows sitting across the table from the Government that this bill gives the Government the power to do whatever it wants no matter what the council says or believes? It is a mockery. It is undemocratic. It should not be in this bill.Finally I want to note that this bill weakens the protections of certain parts of our country including the Waitakere Ranges which currently are protected by the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act which gives that Act primacy over other local or district plans. This bill dilutes those protections requiring decision makers to have only regard to those objectives in the bill. That is a substantial dilution of the protection that those special areas currently have and I think that is a real shame. This bill is insipid and ill-directed just like theNew Zealand Heraldsaid about Nick Smith’s other housing policies. It is timid poorly thought through and it will not meet its objectives.