National's finance spokesperson Nicola Willis says she wants housing to become more affordable, but her Labour counterpart, Grant Robertson, retorts that her party's policies would do the opposite.
The house-price-to-income multiple measures the ratio between the median house price and median annual household income. A median multiple of 3 or less is widely considered to be affordable, a definition Willis and Robertson agreed on.
The current ratio of median house price to annual household income is about 7. In 2017, that was 6.
"They promised to solve the housing crisis. They demonstrably failed," Willis said of the Labour Government's record.
She said she wanted the ratio to be "tracking down".
Willis wouldn't say what her target median multiple was, but said she wanted the income to be "targeted to be much lower than it is now."
Robertson pushed back, saying he was "proud" there had been more than 200,000 houses consented. He said the Labour Government had added more than 13,000 new public homes since 2017, including more than 11,000 new builds.
"The circumstances we've been in over the past few years have been enormously challenging."
Willis said the state housing list had ballooned under Labour.
Robertson said it was because "we actually count people".
"We don't construct a list and then put some people off it to make sure the list looks better," he said, accusing the previous National Government of making it difficult for people to get onto the housing list in the first place.
Willis responded: "You've got no evidence to back that up. That is misinformation."
Robertson continued: "It doesn't matter Jack. It's all about building houses and they [National] didn't. They sold them."
He said National's election promise to restore interest deductibility for landlords and returning the brightline test to two years would "drive first home buyers out of the market".
Willis said a functioning rental market was important to stop people from ending up on the social housing waiting list because their rents were increasing dramatically.
She said National's rental policy would mean landlords "pause and think, 'actually, if this interest deductibility is restored, I won't have to increase rents as much'".
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