Home ownership is a big part of the Kiwi dream.

When people buy their first home, they don't just shake off the landlord. They make a life for themselves and their family in their neighbourhood. They play a bigger role in their community. They take a stake in the local school, local government, the economy, and New Zealand's future.

But the Kiwi dream is under threat. Fewer New Zealanders own their home than ever before. The proportion of people in Canterbury living in their own home slumped from over 71% in the 2001 census to 67% in 2006.

International surveys show that New Zealand has the second worst housing affordability problem in the world. Rising property prices, rising interest rates, and over-taxation are robbing young families of the chance to get on the property ladder.

According to the Real Estate Institute, the median price of a section in Canterbury-Westland ($170,000) in June this year was more than the median price of a home AND a section when Labour came to power in 1999 ($140,000).

And across the country, it now takes around 81% of the average take-home pay to make a standard mortgage payment for a median-priced house (based on a 25 year term and a 20% deposit). In 1999, a standard mortgage payment took just 42% of average take-home pay. That is a crippling increase.

This just isn't good enough. For eight years, Labour has watched homes become less and less affordable and done nothing about it. It has sat by as struggling young families miss out on what was, just a generation ago, the common experience of buying a first home.

National will act where Labour hasn't. A National Government will preserve and promote the home-ownership aspirations of everyday New Zealanders. We are a party founded on the principle of home ownership and we will deliver on that principle.

In short, we want to make buying a first home affordable again. And that's why, at the National Party Annual Conference, I made home-ownership the focus of my conference speech.

In that speech, I unveiled National's four-part plan on home affordability, and indicated that there are more initiatives to come. Our four-point plan is:

• Ensuring people are in a better financial position to afford a house.
• Freeing up the supply of suitable land.
• Dealing with the compliance issues that drive up building costs.
• Allowing state house tenants to buy the houses they live in.

National will make sure people are better able to afford a mortgage. We will lower personal income tax and boost after-tax pay.

We will take pressure off interest rates by increasing the capacity of our economy to grow without generating inflation. That means getting some discipline back into government spending.

For too long Labour has thrown more and more money around without taking enough care about how it is spent. We will also provide the right environment for businesses to invest, substantially improve our over-stretched infrastructure, and cut red tape – all of which will help our economy grow without growing inflation.

By taking pressure off inflation and interest rates, we will make mortgage repayments easier, and allow people to save more towards their first home.

We will pass legislation to increase the supply of suitable land for housing. Too often, the Resource Management Act and disagreements between different arms of local government slow the release of land. And too often, developers lock up land much longer than they need to. This drives up land prices and development costs.

We will amend the Building Act. There is too much red tape involved with building a house. National will also improve building quality through greater commercial accountability.

We will allow Housing NZ tenants to purchase the home they live in. We will reinvest the proceeds of any state housing sales in replacement houses for needy families on the waiting list.

We will also increase trades-training opportunities so that we have more skilled home builders. We have already announced several initiatives to get trades-training back into our schools, and these will boost apprenticeship training in the trades involved with building houses.

Under National, every young New Zealander should know that if they work hard and are disciplined about saving, they can expect to buy their own home – and live the Kiwi dream.

Logan West (left) and Mathew Bridle (right) of Ngatea Primary School (Coromandel) interview John Key about his policies for their school radio station.