Labour’s use of urgency a hypocritical u-turn

Labour’s use of urgency to debate far-reaching housing legislation is a hypocritical turnaround, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Just yesterday Labour claimed it was unconstitutional to debate housing legislation under urgency, yet they now propose far-reaching legislation under the same state of urgency. This makes a mockery of their former outrage," says Mr Seymour.

“Labour’s amendments would extend the bright line test into a capital gains tax, restrict foreign home buyers, and have the Government build 10,000 houses a year. Parliament has debated these things endlessly already – Labour is now just using urgency to grandstand.

“Under a state building programme, the Government would face the same problems of constrained land supply and red tape faced by private developers. Costs caused by these issues would just be transferred from homebuyers to the taxpayer.

“Funnelling housing investment from overseas into new-builds would only serve to inflate the price of new homes, and as wider market prices are determined by the price of new homes, there would be no improvement in overall affordability.

“As for a capital gains tax, we know it’s failed to prevent bubbles where it’s been tried overseas, like Sydney, London, and the US.

“Labour’s grandstanding housing amendments will do nothing but waste Parliament’s time. The House’s time would be far better used on something like RMA reform.”

ENDS

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