Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. This Government was elected to do two things in particular: one was to fix housing; and two it claimed was to bring a kinder more conciliatory style of politics to New Zealand. Those are noble goals that I don't think anyone would disagree with. Everybody thought that there was a problem with housing—and there still is. Nobody thought that politics needed to be nastier. The problem is not with their intentions; as is often the case the problem with this Government is their outcomes.You only have to look at the hard numbers. Since this Government was elected the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand's median house price has gone from $525000 to $780000—that is a 49 percent increase in just over four years under this Government. Nothing that they've done—KiwiBuild Resource Management Act reform social housing rental tenancy changes—none of it has worked. Rents have gone up $130 a week over the same period. They are still failing today. The only reason we don't hear about people in cars in garages under this Government is because they've put a whole lot of people into motels with no support no backup no networks and it is a horrible place to be.The problem is that this Government's announcement fails at its second task. Not only will the announcements on housing this week be ineffective at fixing the housing problem—like the other policies—but they are also the most nasty and divisive policies. We heard it from the Minister of Finance in question time this afternoon. He said You have to pick a side." And hasn't this Government made people pick sides? They've said they are tilting towards first-home buyers meaning that they are attacking the speculators—so they call them but it turns out that many of those people are just property investors.Now let me give you an example. Somebody who kept their first home to rent it out was slowly paying off the mortgage and hopes to keep it as a nest egg for their kids. Well they are now going to be hit with the capital gains tax. It is not going to help anyone but it is going to punish that family. And it is also going to punish that family to take away mortgage interest deductibility. Let's say the house is worth a million dollars—not much more than the median—and they've got a half-a-million-dollar mortgage. Well they are now going to have to pay an extra $5000 a year of tax because they no longer get the interest deducted. Now you can do the figures. Does anyone really think that they are not going to have to put the rent up $100 on their tenants? Five-thousand dollars a year 52 weeks that's a $100 rent increase per week to pay tax to the Government on rental property. That's what it means. And this is why the Government's policy fails at kindness and fails at fixing housing.You see those renters—well it's bad enough the Government's hurting them—they are also prospective first-home buyers trying to save a deposit. And they are a hundred bucks a week worse off because they've got to pay more tax to the Government through their landlord under this policy.This Government is failing to fix housing and it is pitting New Zealanders against each other because it doesn't understand that ultimately we are all one. People who move out from their parents' place become renters save up to become first-home buyers pay off their mortgage maybe buy another property and invest it and become landlords. It is as a show recently coming to Auckland tells us "The Circle of Life". And the Government is pitting one against each other and that is a shame.Imagine a different story where actually a Government came into power with a plan to properly reform resource consenting not just talk about it for four years as this Government has; to properly fund infrastructure with 30-year partnerships between the Crown and councils not just have a fund for a few billion dollars as this Government did; and to fix building consents so that people can get permission to build things faster than they can actually build them because at the moment it takes longer to get permission. That would be uniting New Zealanders behind good ideas of building new homes. But sadly we have a divisive failure. What a shame. Thank you Mr Speaker."