Twyford Phil: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10451. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Talofa lava lau afioga Mr Speaker. E muamua ‘ona ou fa’aali atu. ‘O le vaiaso taua lenei. ‘O le vaiaso ‘e fa’ataua ai le gagana Samoa. ‘O le gagana Samoa ‘ua gagana ‘e le to’atele i totonu ‘o Aukilani. ‘Ou te fa’atalofa atu i la’u pule’aga i Te Atatū. ‘Ma tagata Samoa ‘uma i Nu’u Sila. ‘O le gagana Samoa ‘o se ‘auro ‘e fa’ataua aua le fa’alelei atili mo tupulaga i tausaga i luma. ‘E tatau ‘i le malo ‘ona pasia ni tulafono ‘e mafai ai ‘ona fa’amalosia nei fa’amoemoe. Fa’amanuia mai le Atua i le Palemene atoa. Fa’afetai lava lau Afioga Mr Speaker. Soifua.[Greetings Mr Speaker. First I must inform you this is an important week. It is the week we celebrate the Samoan language. The Samoan language is spoken by many people especially in Auckland. I greet my constituents in Te Atatū and all the Samoan people throughout New Zealand. The Samoan language is a treasure we must nurture for generations into the future. Let the Government enact laws so that these intentions can be materialised. Blessings to the whole Parliament. Thank you Mr Speaker. Blessings.]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Malo.PHIL TWYFORD: Soifua.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Fa‘afetai lava.PHIL TWYFORD: It is Samoan Language Week. Samoan is the third most spoken language in our nation. I believe that it is a treasure that we should nurture and safeguard for future generations.I am going to talk about housing in this Budget debate. This afternoon David Parker made a comment that I thought was a typically shrewd observation. He said that the announcements that the Government made around housing in the Budget were typical John Key: big enough to get a headline but not big enough to make any impact on the problem—not big enough to make a difference. I think it is absolutely plain for anybody in New Zealand today to see that we have a housing crisis particularly in certain centres like Auckland Christchurch the Bay of Plenty Queenstown and Nelson where housing affordability is at its worst. But we also have a housing stock as a nation that is so inadequate and so substandard that it is causing too many of our children to die preventable deaths from rheumatic fever from asthma and from meningococcal disease.The housing market has failed. It is in a terrible state. The consequence of that is that we have seen plummeting rates of homeownership. We used to have only a couple of decades ago one of the highest rates of homeownership in this country and we were proud of that as a nation. Homeownership is dropping rapidly and it has fallen from 75 percent across the country down to 65 percent only in the last decade. For people under 40 it has dropped down to percentages in the high 30s.There are all sorts of consequences. It is not just homeownership and the fact that a whole generation of New Zealanders today is locked out of the housing market. The dysfunction in the housing market has terrible knock-on effects for people all the way down the chain. So people who two decades ago would reasonably have expected to own their own homes are now renting. People who were renters have now been pushed to the bottom of the market and are often living in substandard private rental accommodation. There is such an inadequate number of Housing New Zealand social housing units available that people who would normally have expected to get a State house are now often homeless and are living in sleepouts in Skyline garages and—I see it every day in west Auckland—in caravan parks. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a housing crisis for our nation.The Government made two big announcements in the Budget and one of them was around the reform of social housing. Only National would spend weeks talking up the fact that its Budget was going to put people into affordable housing and then announce that one of the centrepieces of its Budget announcement was to boot out 3000 State house tenants and in the worst housing affordability crisis in living memory—in living memory. The housing shortage and affordability crisis has never been this bad yet National’s great policy centrepiece in this Budget is to boot out 3000 State house tenants. Only the National Party would do that.The Hon Nick Smith the Minister of Housing announced that the income-related rental subsidy which is currently used by Housing New Zealand is going to betransferred across to the community housing sector. Along with that he announced his plan to transfer a number of State houses to community housing non-government organisations. On the face of it it is probably not a bad idea. But in the context of the worst housing crisis in living memory in the context of terrible shortages what this Government is doing—transferring the subsidy across to the community housing sector and introducing reviewable tenancies which will create tremendous insecurity among State house tenants—is everything but the obvious thing and that is to build more State houses.I know that the National Party does not like Housing New Zealand. It has never liked it. The National Party and its predecessors have not been comfortable with the idea of State-provided social housing since the days of Richard Seddon let alone through the 1930s 1940s and 1950s. In the 1990s the National Government sold off 13000 State houses. Well it is at it again. It is at it again. It is running down Housing New Zealand. It is transferring its assets and many of its functions and powers away from the organisation. Nick Smith wants Housing New Zealand to be simply another tenancy manager competing with the community housing sector to provide this service. National is up to its old tricks. It is offloading what is a fundamental responsibility of the State and that is to provide quality income-related social housing rentals for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. All that it is doing is shuffling the deckchairs around on theTitanic. It is doing everything but the obvious thing and that is to build more social housing.The second big announcement that John Key made in the Budget was the so-called Auckland Housing Accord. There is to be legislation that would provide a legal framework for the Housing Accord that the Government has negotiated with Auckland Council and a framework that would allow the Government to do this with councils all around the country. On the face of it it is an attempt to tackle the extreme housing unaffordability problems that Auckland faces. But the problem as was made absolutely clear in question time today when David Shearer was questioning the Prime Minister is that this Government has no way of guaranteeing that a single affordable house will be built as a result of its policy. The Government has nothing to say. The Prime Minister was completely unable to give the House any kind of explanation or reassurance that any affordable houses would be built as a result of its policy. All the so-called accord does is cherry-pick a couple of aspects of the Auckland Unitary Plan—that is it brings in a supply of greenfield land into the land supply more quickly than it otherwise would have done and it fast tracks the Resource Management Act consenting for affordable housing.Those are two of a whole long list of things that are at the root of the housing affordability crisis. The Government wants us to believe that tinkering with the Resource Management Act will solve the crisis. Well it will not. It just will not cut the mustard. And it is very clear that just bringing in some more greenfield land into the system will likely result in the construction of more houses that will sell for three-quarters of a million dollars on the fringes of the city. That is not what is needed. It will not put a single Kiwi family into affordable homes.The one thing that the Government needs to do is pick up a hammer and build some affordable housing. We have a shortage. There is a supply crisis. There are not enough affordable homes. The industry has seized up. It is not building affordable homes because for the builders and the developers there is no margin in it for them. What the Government needs to do is roll up its sleeves and build affordable housing as the Labour Party will do when in Government from the end of next year with our KiwiBuild policy. We will build 10000 modern affordable starter homes every year for a decade and while we are doing that we will drive down the costs. We will use thescale of KiwiBuild to drive productivity improvements to do deals with suppliers to reform the building and construction industry to drive down the costs of the construction of new homes and to provide a lasting solution.This Government in its housing announcements basically created a charade. Nick Smith’s job as the Minister of Housing has been to convey a sense of activity that he is doing something but the Government is doing everything but what it needs to do and that is pick up a hammer and actually build some affordable houses. Thank you.