Rental properties and cheaper houses in Labour's sights

Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Auckland today, David Shearer said: “If you're a young person today, you look at the cost of houses and you despair."

He blamed high house prices for the number of young people moving to Australia.

Shearer said Labour would put 100,000 families into their first home, with a 10-year building programme of entry-level houses, called KiwiBuild.

“At the peak of last decade, about 30,000 new homes were built a year. Now it’s less than half that. These are the missing rungs on the housing ladder. And it shows what an active and responsible government can do to help,” he said.