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Brooke van Velden
ACT Deputy Leader and Housing spokesperson
The Olympics have finished but Jacinda Ardern’s Government is still breaking records.
Between July 2020 and July 2021, the median price of a house increased by 25.2 per cent to a record $826,000, according to the latest data from REINZ.
Grant Robertson’s tax grab hasn’t helped and month-on-month prices are rising, locking more and more Kiwis out of home ownership.
At Budget 2021, Treasury predicted a slowdown in house price inflation, but that hasn’t happened. Jacinda Ardern is repeating Treasury’s claim. The Government is in La La Land.
Treasury and Labour are relying on fantasy forecasts. In the real world, the Government’s housing policies aren’t working.
Labour was elected to fix housing because National failed. Now they have failed as well. The real problem is not just that young New Zealanders cannot afford homes, the whole Kiwi dream no longer works.
ACT has put forward a package that would solve the underlying problem in housing: the shortage of urban land. We need new ways to fund and build infrastructure, new coordination between central and local government, new rules for consenting land, and new ways of accessing building materials.
We have proposed a GST-sharing scheme, we’d remove barriers to finance for build-to-rent schemes and we’d introduce a Public-Private Partnership Agency – the Nation-Building Agency (NBA).
Every Government says it’ll fix housing. None have, but this Government is the worst. Faced with one of the biggest crises in a generation, the Government’s proposed changes to the RMA risk creating a regulatory nightmare rather than being a silver bullet for development. The proposal focuses on central planning and its first priority is to honour the Treaty. That won’t get things built.
The Government should be asking ‘how do we create an environment for investment and development?’ Instead, this Government has targeted Mum and Dad landlords and investors with new housing taxes. By failing to ask the right question, it has failed to deliver on the very thing New Zealand needs it to – meaningful change so New Zealanders can build more homes.
ACT is the only party that offers real solutions to the housing crisis. We are listening to New Zealanders.
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