Housing remains firmly placed as a prime election issue.
Springboarding off expected surpluses over the next four financial years of respectively $2.9 billion, $4.1 billion, $6.1 billion and $7.2 billion, Minister of Finance Steven Joyce outlined $4 billion in new capital infrastructure spending yesterday.
Kaikoura’s State Highway One gets $812 million, KiwiRail’s rolling stock and rail gets $450 million and Auckland and Wellington get $450 million and $98.4 million for their respective city rail link and commuter rail upgrades. Much of the Government’s housing policy, to address the crucial Auckland shortage and ballooning prices elsewhere around the country, were released pre-Budget last week.
That included freeing up unused Crown land for its house-building programme, with a $100 million budget, offering sections for 2700 homes, of 34,000 proposed to be built.
Up to 20% are to be used for social housing and a further 20% as affordable housing.
The Government has said during the next three years it would increase state house numbers nationally from 66,000 to 72,000. Yesterday’s $205 million revolved around social housing, targeting emergency and transitional housing for families, homelessness and support services for prisoners reintegrating.
The Property Council scored the Budget a seven out of 10 yesterday, based on "improvements" to both housing and infrastructure spending.
However, while council chief executive Connal Townsend welcomed the boost, he said the country was playing a "considerable catch-up" in funding and planning for cities.
"New Zealand simply cannot afford to get any further behind our already large housing and infrastructure deficit," Mr Connal said, pointing out that property was the country’s largest sector, equating to 13% of gross domestic product.
What Mr Townsend had wanted to see was reform of the wider planning and building systems so the property sector could be effective in addressing the housing shortfall.
Property Institute chief executive Ashley Church was scathing of the Budget, saying that by not having addressed the housing problem yesterday, the Government "either doesn’t understand the extent of the problem, or simply doesn’t care".
He had hoped for a suite of measures to incentivise private buyers to start building, rather than buying existing homes.
He said a Government "equity programme" could be designed to assist deposits or loans in the early stages of mortgages, to be repaid later.
"But there’s absolutely nothing in the Budget to achieve this either," Mr Church said.
Infrastructure
• Infrastructure total spend $4billion, encompassing aspects of transport, education, justice, health and defence sectors.
• Government spending $2.7billion over next four years on housing, including on a 10-year house-building programme.
• Expected surpluses next four financial years: $2.9 billion, $4.1 billion, $6.1 billion, $7.2 billion.
• $100 million new capital funding for Crown Land Development Programme; land for 2700 house
