Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. This bill is flawed. Treasury has been reported on commenting that they have not formed a view on whether a 10-year brightline test is preferable to the status quo and even rated it worse than the status quo in their advice. The Prime Minister made the point the package attempts to balance supply and demand issues. We're debating the brightline test of which this element is one part of the Government's package. The brightline test is an exercise in jealousy in bitterness in an intergenerational conflict between those who have assets and homes and those as we heard from other members who wish for their generation to have access to homes at reasonable prices. But it will not solve that problem. It will only make it worse. Underlying the issue where I live in Auckland we understand that there is sufficient land zoned for 100000 homes today the constraint being infrastructure. We've heard today about a package which allocates $3.8 billion to infrastructure. We don't know what that time is because we haven't had a chance to have a look at that closely. But if that was over 10 years that's about $380 million a year. That's what Auckland Council already spends on stormwater alone. It's a drop in the bucket. In fact it's a drop in the ocean because the infrastructure deficit as advised by officials to the Minister of Local Government and to the media is $110 billion over 30 years not $3.8 billion or whatever the number is that has been allocated today. So a brightline test will not do anything to address the fundamental issue of availability of land of supply and therefore only serves to exacerbate the existing problems. When the brightline test was proposed under a previous Government ACT did not support it. ACT's leader David Seymour described it as a capital gains tax by stealth. What we've seen over the past few years with the brightline test extended to five years and the incredible increase in property values since then combined with other measures that the Government's had a hand in boosting the money supply and the availability of credit is that these measures have not contributed to control prices or limit price growth in any way. The extension of the brightline test today through this bill to 10 years merely vindicates ACT's original position that it's a capital gains tax by stealth. It will have no effect whatsoever on house prices. It won't help another Kiwi into a new home or a second-hand home or even a hut. Now on the weekend I watched a movie with my son: Jack and the Beanstalk. While I was listening to some of the other speakers and to the Minister and indeed to the Minister of Finance's description of this brightline test today it reminded me of a scene from Jack and the Beanstalk with a magic bean. It's like a magic bean: you plant it and it will solve all your problems. I actually wonder if the Government believes that this is some kind of magic bean this brightline test. Will it solve the housing crisis this brightline test—this magic bean? Or will it simply blow up just like when the giant swallowed the magic bean and it grew inside of him and took over everything but in the end the giant didn't succeed. This Government won't succeed with the brightline test. The fundamental issue with the reforms that we've heard announced today and this brightline test is that it doesn't address the needs of people—those New Zealanders who might find at a certain stage of their life they want a smaller home they want another home for growing families or new families families joining together. These are all things that require flexibility in ownership models and they require flexibility in the regulation around these kind of things. What would be awful to see is as people grew older and reached the end of their working lives feeling they were stuck in a home that they couldn't leave for fear of incurring an awful tax imposition at the end of their working lives when they simply seek to move to a smaller home and potentially even make better use of their land by subdividing for example. So there are many many hooks and crooks in this bill which haven't been explained and I would like the Minister to explain exactly how the brightline test will avoid some of those pernicious risks like trapping people in homes when they're ready to move on. Thank you Minister.