Walker Holly: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12785. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am pleased to stand once again in opposition to the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. The Green Party and the Mana party were in fact the only parties to vote against the bill at its first reading. We are proud to continue to oppose it and are pleased to see that other parties are now joining us in that opposition.There are two key concerns at the heart of our opposition to this bill. The first is that it will not do anything to increase the supply of affordable housing. That is a fairly fundamental point when the principal stated purpose of the bill is to increase the supply of affordable housing. I will shortly go into some detail in my contribution about exactly why this bill does nothing to increase the supply of affordable housing.The second key concern at the heart of our opposition to this bill is that we are profoundly uncomfortable with the provisions that override the autonomy of territorial authorities and that limit consultation and appeal rights under the Resource Management Act although that is entirely consistent with this Government’s anti-democratic attitude on a number of fronts particularly its dismissive attitude towards local government. Indeed it is entirely consistent with its continued attack on environmental protections under the Resource Management Act so we should not be surprised. But we have serious concerns about those provisions and they are the other key reason why we are opposing this legislation. I will take each of those concerns in turn.First of all on the question of whether the bill will actually do anything to improve housing affordability we have heard some contributions on this topic already from Phil Heatley and Jacinda Ardern. There is no doubt that we do need legislation to improve housing affordability.Hon Simon Bridges: She just called you Phil Heatley.Phil Twyford: You called me Heatley.HOLLY WALKER: Phil Twyford—my apologies Mr Twyford. Ha ha! They both have a history of housing but one perhaps understands the issues better than the other. There is no doubt that we need legislation to improve the affordability of housing when the average house price in Auckland is over $700000—that is the average house price. And when it takes 70 percent of the average income in Auckland to service the mortgage on the lowest-quartile house we have a crisis and we need legislation to do something about it.It is not just in Auckland because the national average house price is around $400000 and that is unaffordable for many New Zealanders. There is also a particular crisis in Christchurch as a result of a lack of supply of housing because of the earthquake. It is a nationwide crisis so we need to do something about it.The Minister of Housing said in his speech that this bill was “a core part of the Government’s work to improve housing affordability.” Therefore you would imagine that a core criterion of anything in the bill would perhaps be that it would actually do something to improve housing affordability but unfortunately that is not the case. Actually it is not even what the Minister wanted to do. I had a look through the Budget papers about the housing measures that were introduced in the Budget including the measures in this bill. Actually up until quite recently before the Budget—quite soon before the Budget—the Minister wanted to establish an urban development agency which perhaps would have been quite an interesting and novel way of looking at the issue of housing affordability. But obviously he could not get it across the line for some reason so instead we got this bill patched together at the last minute. That was very apparent in the rushed way in which the bill was brought to the House and in the substantive amendments that were required at the Social Services Committee.The essential problem with this bill is that it defines the problem as the supply of affordable housing but it sets out a solution that is designed to address something different and that is land supply. The two are not the same thing. In fact they are very different. Numerous submitters pointed out to the select committee that with the possible exception of Auckland where the housing accord has already been negotiated the regions of New Zealand that display high rates of housing unaffordability do not in fact have a problem with land supply. So the measures in this bill to create special housing areas and to fast track consent processes will actually do nothing to address the issue of housing affordability in those other regions of New Zealand because the problem in those places is not land supply. So it is a land supply solution to a housing affordability problem and it will not solve the problem.That was a consistent message that was given to the select committee from council submitters as well as property developers and individual submitters. Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga spoke before and he said that land supply was the single biggest issue that we need to address when it comes to housing affordability. Well in fact the Property Council which consists of property developers came in front of the select committee and said that in its view it was at most—at most—half the problem. So this bill is not well designed to tackle the problem that we actually have.Secondly it was widely acknowledged by submitters that even if the special housing areas created by this bill facilitated faster building and property development the houses that were built as a result of that would be unlikely to be in the affordable category because there is no requirement that a certain percentage of those houses are affordable. The Minister said: “Oh yes there is because it’s in the Auckland Housing Accord.” Well it is in the Auckland Housing Accord only because the Auckland Council demanded that it be there. The Government would not have put it there if it was up to the Government. It has not included a provision in this legislation for otherhousing accords that might be developed in other parts of the country. So it is thanks only to the temerity of the Auckland Council that we have that provision there.Again even the Property Council acknowledged to the select committee that it did not expect that the bill would actually result in the provision of any more affordable houses. As my colleague Jacinda Ardern has said the Minister was asked about this when he appeared before the committee for the estimates hearing for Vote Housing. He basically acknowledged that that was the case. He said that it would be OK because wealthy people would move out of their smaller more affordable houses and move into the larger new homes and leave those houses free for other people to move into—trickle-down housing as Ms Ardern has said. That is a flawed assumption and it is a very indirect way to go about trying to tackle the problem of the lack of supply of affordable housing for a bill that is supposed to address that problem directly.What we should be debating in this House is much more direct legislation that tackles the problem of affordable housing head-on and we in the Green Party have got some ideas about how we might do this. For example we would tackle the housing affordability crisis with a direct programme of Government-built homes coupled with a progressive ownership scheme—effectively a rent-to-buy scheme so that families can move into those homes and pay a basic weekly rent to cover the cost of the investment to the Government and anything they pay in addition to that goes towards purchasing equity in that house. That is a way—a genuine way—to both increase the supply of affordable housing and help first-time buyers into homes without the need to qualify for a traditional bank mortgage and without the need for a deposit. That is a real solution to housing affordability but it is not what we are debating in this bill.We would also do this in combination with a suite of other measures that tackle housing affordability such as introducing a comprehensive capital gains tax that would exempt the family home and restricting non-citizens and non - permanent residents from purchasing residential property. As well as that we would address the problems of the rental market which are significant through having a warrant of fitness for rental properties and more secure tenure for renters. But sadly that is not the legislation we are debating today.Finally I want to address the issue of overriding local democracy which is the second major concern we have with this bill. There was overwhelming concern from submitters including but not just from territorial authorities—from a number of other organisational and individual submitters as well—about the override provision that would allow the Government to establish special housing areas to appoint commissioners and to grant consents in those special housing areas without the cooperation of the relevant territorial authority.We see this as an unacceptable curtailment of local democracy. It is entirely consistent with the dismissive attitude that this Government takes towards local democracy. It is quite literally dismissive in some cases such as the Environment Canterbury councillors who were actually dismissed by the Government. It will be impossible for councils to negotiate housing accords in good faith with the Government when they know that if they disagree with anything that the Government puts on the table or if they push back against any of the terms that the Government is demanding then central government can just go over their heads and establish this special housing area in the way that it wants to do it anyway. It puts councils at an incredible disadvantage in those negotiations and it means that good-faith negotiations essentially will not exist.The disputes resolution process in clause 11(2)(ca) that has been included by the Social Services Committee which was referred to by Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga earlier is actually optional. It has absolutely no teeth and so it will do nothing to redress thisincredible power imbalance. As well as that as I mentioned earlier in relation to local democracy all of the protections under the Resource Management Act that we would expect to see applying in this situation will not apply under this legislation and that is a major curtailment of local democracy as well. So for those reasons we are very proud to stand in opposition to this bill.