UPDATED 12.04pm: John Key has gone on the attack over house prices.
Labour's Phil Twyford wants a State of Emergency declared over our housing crisis, claiming the Government is not taking the matter seriously.
But the Prime Minister wants to know when a shortage becomes a crisis.
VIDEO: Watch the full interview with John Key here
Key told Mike Hosking nationally house prices increased 102 per cent over the nine years Helen Clark was Prime Minister.
He said under National they have gone up 43 per cent.
"Auckland house prices, under them and under us, broadly in percentage terms, went up the same. So if it's a national state of emergency now, and a crisis now, why wasn't it when Helen was Prime Minister?"
The Prime Minister told Mike Hosking the main issue remains supply, and the fact that we need more houses.
He said other policies Labour want to instigate here haven't worked overseas.
"When people say the simple stuff, okay, put on a stamp duty, put on a capital gains tax, Sydney has all of those things, and it still doesn't work."
Key added that to buy a house in Auckland requires nine times the average income, in comparison, Sydney is 12.
Yesterday, Twyford said agencies providing social care are warning that New Zealand now faces the worst level of homelessness in living memory.
Twyford labelled it a "social crisis" that needed urgent action, to have 40,000 New Zealanders living rough in utterly unacceptable conditions and the Government needed to take full responsibility.
The figure included people living in campgrounds and entire families squashed into a single room of a shared house, he said.
"I don't really care how they do it, they could tie a cruise ship up at the ports of Auckland, they could build pod houses, convert warehouses - that's why they're paid the big money to work these things out."
In Auckland the average house price is tipped to pass $1 million when QV releases it next house price index figures next month. Spiralling housing costs are forcing people into substandard and overcrowded housing, with many others forced to live rough or in cars.
Twyford said it was time the Government stopped acting like a possum in the headlights and demonstrated the urgency the problem demanded.
National was in denial about the housing crisis and even trying to challenge its own official figures on the matter, he said.
"The National Government seems to think that if you're a pensioner living in a campground because you can't find any affordable rental housing that you've got a home. This just beggars belief.
"Put a roof over the heads of these people."
Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett says Twyford isn't using his brain and is making statements without thinking about what they really mean.
Meanwhile, a public policy expert said political party grandstanding is holding back solutions to the housing crisis.
Massey University's Associate Professor Grant Duncan said everyone knows there is a crisis, and arguing over the detail is getting in the way of progress.
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