OPINION: It's official: the average Auckland house price has doubled since the Key Government came to power. In December 2008, the average house cost $496,000. Now it's an astounding $992,000.

As house prices have skyrocketed, wages have stagnated. The share of the economy going to working families has fallen by an average of $50 a week under National. Auckland house prices have risen more than four times faster than incomes.

Getting together a deposit has become impossible for young families; their goal is moving away as fast as they can save. The homeownership rate of under-40s has halved in a generation. The Kiwi dream of owning your own home is slipping away.

It's clear that National has no answers. Seventy-five per cent of Kiwis say National is failing to fix the housing crisis. Meanwhile, John Key can't even bring himself to admit there is a crisis. While this Prime Minister buries his head in the sand, families are facing a lifetime of renting, and a housing bubble is building up that threatens to burst and damage the wider economy.

So, what's the solution? We've got to stabilise house prices and lift wages. There's no silver bullet; it takes a set of bold policies.

Labour's comprehensive housing plan is all about building affordable houses and cracking down on speculators, while helping the families most in need:

• Build 100,000 affordable KiwiBuild homes for families to buy

• Create an Affordable Housing Authority to fast-track development in our cities

• Remove barriers that are stopping Auckland growing up and out

• Grow the building workforce through our dole for apprenticeships policy

• Ban foreign non-resident speculators from buying existing homes

• Tax property speculators who flick houses within five years

• Require all rental homes to be warm, dry, and healthy – my Bill to do this has passed its first reading in Parliament

• Stop taking a $100m a year profit out of Housing New Zealand and build an extra 1000 state houses a year

• Help 5100 more Kiwis into emergency housing every year

Our plan will stabilise house prices and get young families into their own home.

The second step is boosting incomes. Labour will do that through our Future of Work programme. We've already announced some of the exciting policies that will grow the economy and lift wages:

• Ensure that Government bodies buy Kiwi-made whenever possible and make job creation in New Zealand one of their criteria when awarding contracts. My Bill to do this is now before Parliament

• Invest to lift economic growth in the regions through our Regional Development Fund

• Improve training by paying employers the equivalent of the dole when they take on an apprentice

• Build a high-skill workforce by making the first three years of tertiary education fees-free, which will also make it easier for young people to save a deposit for a house

• Set a target of ensuring that New Zealand has the lowest unemployment in the developed world, just as it did under the previous Labour Government

In the end, it's about taking some simple, common-sense measures to help first-home buyers and boost incomes. Above all, it's time for the Government to get off its backside and build some bloody houses.

There are simply not enough houses being built to keep up with demand. In particular, there are not enough new affordable houses. Only 9,000 houses were built in Auckland last year when it needs close to double that amount. Fewer than 500 of those new houses were affordable for the average first home buyer.

The Key Government's half-measures and token gestures haven't made a blind bit of difference. The housing shortfall just keeps getting worse. That's why Labour developed the KiwiBuild programme to partner with the private sector to build 100,000 modern, affordable houses over 10 years for families to buy.

The polls show New Zealanders back KiwiBuild because it';s the only way that we're going to get the new, affordable homes that we need. It will stabilise the housing market and give young families a fair shot at homeownership.

John Key will give you all the excuses you can stomach for his failure to stabilise house prices and boost incomes but the truth is clear: if we want to change the path we're on, we need to change the government.

We need a government that will stop making excuses and start building affordable houses.

Only Labour has the plan and the resolve to restore the Kiwi dream of owning your own home.

• Andrew Little is leader of the Labour Party.