Goff Phil: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): We are meeting here as the House of Representatives at 3.36 on a Friday afternoon under urgency. A member of the public might assume we had matters before us of great consequence requiring our urgent attention—legislation that perhaps reflects the vision and the big ideas of a Government determined to tackle the major challenges of our time. But what are we doing? We are looking at a bill that is called the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill. And what are the big issues that require us to be here under urgency on a Friday afternoon? Well the first one is the repeal of cheque duties—the repeal of cheque duties.Grant Robertson: Transformational.Hon PHIL GOFF: You know that is going to be so transformational that it is estimated it will save New Zealanders on average 35c a year. The big challenge in this is how to pay them the 5c because we do not have them any more. And then we have two other areas that are major challenges facing this country—one is climate change and the other is the housing crisis which dominates much of the discussion particularlyin Auckland and in Christchurch. But neither of the other two measures the other two parts of this bill does anything that has any meaningful consequence in tackling those crises.I want to focus on Part 3 of the bill which deals with housing. You know I am a free trader. That is my record as a Cabinet Minister as a Minister of Trade. I do not mind the removal of tariffs. This bill does not actually do the removal of tariffs; that is apparently done in some other measure. It will not have much effect. We do not have tariffs against Australia. We do not have them against China. They are our two biggest trading partners. We do not even have them against the ASEAN members including Thailand. But we do have something called anti-dumping levies.Anti-dumping levies are not against free trade. What they are against is allowing a country to subsidise its exports below the cost it would sell those products at in its own country maybe even below the cost of manufacturing them and send them to another country. The reason we have anti-dumping levies is to stop other countries unfairly dumping their materials in our country in a way that is not about competition and is about not having a level playing field. I wonder where the Government’s principles are in removing anti-dumping levies because surely as a country that believes in free trade we also believe in fair trade that should set a level playing field. This bill undermines the concept of a level playing field and I do not think that is an appropriate measure.The big claim made on this is that it will save $3500 in the cost of building a new home. Where are the figures to substantiate that Minister Foss? There are no figures to substantiate that. You have plucked that figure from the air. How do you even know whether a building company is going to pass on to the consumer any savings that might be made? There is no guarantee of that.What is so bad about this legislation is that it pretends to find a solution to a serious problem when that solution does nothing at all to help the average New Zealander the first-home buyer or the lower-income household to achieve that dream of owning their own home. If it were $3500 being saved that would be half the amount of house price rises in my city and your city of Auckland last month. That is what the saving would be—half the $6000 inflation in house prices Minister that occurred in Auckland last month. Is it any wonder that our first-home buyers have given up hope of being able to save to get into their first home? Does this bill help those people? Not at all. Most first-home buyers as you know actually buy existing homes not new homes so it would not have any impact anyway. If the saving was what the Government claims it would be less than the cost the people would be paying on conveyancing and a fraction of the amount they would be paying to the real estate agent in commission.You see the problem in my electorate is that median house prices since this National Government has been in office have gone up by 40 percent to $700000. Paul Goldsmith came from my electorate. He knows that it is a working-class electorate—a working-class electorate where the median house price is now $700000. My kids could not afford to buy in that area even though they are tradesmen on good incomes. That is a problem. Does this bill solve that problem? Not at all.What does this bill do about the problem of speculation on house prices? Every young first-home buyer who is out there in the market trying to buy a home on the savings they can make by working hard is faced with competition from speculators. Some of them are New Zealand speculators who can claim the costs of the mortgage off their profits. That is tax deductible. It is not for the home buyer; not for the first home - buying couple who desperately want to own a home of their own. Then there are the speculators from overseas. I want those people on the other side of the Chamber who say that it is all about racism to explain to this Committee why it is that first-home buyers in New Zealand should be competing with people who are not New Zealandcitizens are not New Zealand residents and do not intend to ever come and live here but want to make a profit in a country that has no capital gains tax.John Hayes was with me and others when we were in China. China is one of the countries that are interested in buying. It is not the only one and it does not matter whether they are Chinese or Americans or British or whatever. What we discovered in China was this phenomenon where speculators were buying up apartments relying on an income from the capital gain and not even tenanting their apartments. There were hundreds of thousands of empty apartments because the attitude there is to buy the apartment not worry about renting it out wait to farm the capital gain and leave the house empty.How does that solve our housing crisis? Why is it that we do not do things to stop the foreign speculator on the other end of the telephone outbidding the young couple desperate to own their own home? Why is there nothing about that in this Budget? I would not mind being here on a Friday afternoon if we were doing something worthwhile to help those hundreds of thousands of young New Zealanders who will never realise the Kiwi dream of being home owners and are bound to remain tenants in their own country because this Government will not act.Then we have got a Treasury warning in this Budget document that says we are getting so much immigration at the moment—38000 well above what was predicted. They are all coming to Auckland and that also will push up the price of houses. I am not anti-immigration at all. I have an electorate full of people who are migrants. Many of the people who are migrants in my electorate are also desperate to buy their own homes but what they do not want is a level of migration coming through that is well in excess of our ability to supply the houses. Where are the measures in this legislation that will help those New Zealanders—my Indian constituents my Chinese constituents my Pasifika constituents and my European constituents—to get homeownership? There is nothing there.What else does Treasury tell us? It tells us that at the moment a person will spend 49 percent of the average full-time wage on an 80 percent mortgage on the average home. It is 49 percent at the moment. It sounds pretty grim does it not? But what does Treasury say also? In 5 years’ time they will be paying 63 percent of their wage and if they are in Auckland it will be 86 percent of their wage. No wonder more than half of all Aucklanders are caught in a trap of paying high rents and never being able to get their own homes.What does this Government do? It says it will remove anti-dumping on plasterboard and nails. What a Government of vision this is! What a Government that understands the needs of the people! Why do these Government members not understand it? Half of them have their own investment properties. They do not understand what it is like for the people trying to buy. They are not even interested in the people trying to buy. Well I am standing up here speaking out for those young New Zealanders to whom I want to give a chance to do the same thing that I did when I was in my early 20s—buy my own home work on my own home live in my own home and have that chance for the future.