National campaigning on housing supply

National is looking to make housing a main plank of next year’s election policy, with promises to help more people into their own homes.

Friday, August 10th 2007, 12:02PM

by Rob Hosking

Housing policy was a large part of party leader John Key’s speech to the recent annual conference. It is not since the 1970s that National has highlighted its housing policy in that way.

The party is looking more at the supply side of the issue.

“Difficulties with the Resource Management Act, and disagreements between various arms of local government, too often slow the release of land,” Key said in his speech.

“This drives up its price and the cost of its development. Any changes we make to streamline and speed up the process of zoning or land release will require developers to build on that land within a reasonable timeframe. This will prevent the land-banking that is currently choking off the supply of land.”

The party would also change the Building Act with a view to cutting the compliance costs, and put greater emphasis on using commercial pressures, rather than regulation, to drive quality.

It was this aspect of the policy that led Prime Minister Helen Clark to deride National’s policies as likely to produce leaky homes and urban sprawl.

The other part of National’s policy – which harks back to the party’s successful “property owning democracy” policies of the 1950s – is a promise to allow Housing New Zealand tenants to buy the houses they live in.

However that would not lead to a drop in the number of state houses, Key says.

“We will reinvest the proceeds straight back into replacement houses for those desperately needy families on the waiting list.”

The Green party has also attacked the policy, saying it would mean a lower standard of housing and more urban sprawl. The Greens advocate a capital gains tax on housing and that only New Zealand citizens be allowed to buy land.

Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.

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