Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I appreciate the chance to take a call on new Part 4 of this legislation which is yet another amendment from my colleague Phil Twyford that has the aim of putting some provisions into this legislation to make housing affordable. This is a reasonably simple amendment. It contains a number of clauses and amendments to the Income Tax Act of 2007. What it does is it amends a number of sections in the Income Tax Act text from 2" to "5". This may not seem like a large measure but it is a very important measure. The reason why the amendment is from 2 years to 5 years throughout all the clauses in this amendment that Phil Twyford has put up is that that is a period of time that actually may make an impact.When the original legislation that Mr Twyford's amendment is seeking to amend was put through under Budget urgency it was done so in haste. It was yet another band-aid - type approach to housing that we have become accustomed to seeing from this Government. What the Government did have at the time however was Treasury advice that in order for the brightline test to actually make a difference and do something in terms of cracking down on speculation it did need to be for a period of at least 5 years. This is not something that the Government listened to. Instead of making the real kinds of changes that may do something about making housing more affordable and cracking down on housing speculation as could have been the outcome of what the Government did it went for the half measure—well the quarter measure as my colleague beside me Kris Faafoi may say.Kris Faafoi: A measure.Dr MEGAN WOODS: A measure—I will leave it at that Mr Faafoi. The Government did not go and put in place a provision that may have made a real impact. Instead we had this. If you have a look at the advice that the Government did have at the time—and my colleague Grant Robertson spoke about this in his earlier contribution. At the time that this was put through—Hon Member: Consistent.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Nothing if not consistent is Mr Robertson—that you have been speaking about this for a period of time. It was not just Treasury that slammed the idea of making this provision only 2 years; actually a number of tax and legal experts did at the time as well. It is reading through this that has led my colleague Mr Twyford to put up this amendment—to actually bring into this piece of legislation which we are in the Chamber to debate some provisions that would mean that the brightline test would crack down on speculation would do something around making housing more affordable and would do that.If you look at the modelling that Treasury did back in 2010 which is really the only modelling that we could find that could be used you can see the very minuscule impact that the Government's decision to limit this to 2 years was actually going to have on the problem. Based on that 2010 modelling John Key and this Government's brightline test were likely to impact a maximum of only 1000 of the nearly 80000 house sales each year and raise just over $18 million. This is just window dressing. This is a Government pretending that it is doing something about what is clearly a crisis in this country and that is housing affordability. It had the opportunity to do something real it had the opportunity to do something substantive but is that an opportunity that this Government chose to take? Unfortunately it is not.Instead what it has taken is this amendment from my colleague Phil Twyford which goes through these provisions of the Income Act and makes that change from 2 years to 5 years. It is a significant set of amendments that will mean that the brightline test may actually do what it should have done in the first place—that is crack down on speculation. Cracking down on speculation—actually doing something to address the problem—would actually cut to the core of addressing the real issue that we have to address and that is housing affordability. Nothing in the bill that the Government has bought to this House addresses the issue of housing affordability. It has taken amendments from this side of the House—"