Seymour lashes housing policies

ACT Party leader David Seymour has told the Government to ‘‘get some guts’’ and stop tinkering with housing policy.

Giving his ‘‘State of the Nation’’ speech in Auckland on Monday, Seymour said everyone knew housing had become a problem but nothing had been done.

In the past 30 years the number of homes built per capita had halved and created an asset bubble that was a risk to New Zealand’s economy, he said.

While he did not support opposition party policies to address the issue, Seymour heavily criticised National, who he said had the power to reform, but had not.

‘‘The current Government hasn’t fixed it but, much worse, they’ve actively avoided trying to fix it with a series of paltry policies designed not to work.

‘‘They thought that rising residential property values would help them electorally.

‘‘Perhaps, given the average National MP owns 2.3 houses, they just didn’t care. In fact, it would be amazing if such a group of people put in place a set of policies that reduced the value of those assets.’’

ACT believed the real problem was a shortage of urban land on which to build, brought about by restrictive planning laws.

‘‘The Auckland region is 1.2 million acres and is forecast to have 1 million more people in the next 30 years.

‘‘Even if they all lived on quarter-acre sections with only 2.5 people per house, it would require only 10 per cent of the region.’’

The Resource Management Act needed an overhaul, with the central problem being that an urban environment was regulated like it was a natural environment, Seymour said.

Changes should prioritise supplying land and infrastructure in response to demand, including automatic triggers to release land when prices reached a given level.

Future infrastructure corridors should be allowed for and less restrictive zoning introduced, he said. He also called for greater protection for existing property owners by allowing objections

In the past 30 years the number of homes built per capita has halved and created an asset bubble that is a risk to New Zealand's economy. ACT Party leader David Seymour

from those directly affected rather than third parties.

‘‘The bottom line for ACT is that if we hold the balance of power after the next election, the Government must remove urban councils, those with more than 100,000 people, from the jurisdiction of the RMA and introduce new legislation that promotes an adequate supply of housing.’’

High building costs were also a problem and Seymour said he would like to see the process of certifying construction materials changed. One possibility was for the Government to withdraw from regulating building standards itself in exchange for requiring any builder to put up a bond equivalent to the value of the building. The bond would be valid for 25 years before a building could be handed over to a new owner.

Changes needed to be made and tinkering around the edges was not good enough, he said.

‘‘For that to happen Parliament must, as John Key liked to say, if not do: get some guts.’’

- Fairfax NZ