KEY POINTS:
The Government does not know how much land it has available in Auckland for affordable housing.
Its preliminary list of sites - which it stresses is probably not accurate - includes Auckland University, Ports of Auckland and the Auckland Zoo.
National's housing spokesman, Phil Heatley, claimed the list showed Labour was raising first-home buyers' hopes before doing any spadework.
"They have made these big bold promises about using public land, but ... haven't done any of the necessary work and haven't spoken to any of the land-owning bodies, let alone neighbouring residents of targeted parks and reserves.
"When they finally do the work, the land options are going to simply shrink up and fade away along with their empty solutions."
In reply to his query about what land was available for affordable housing, Housing Minister Maryan Street said the accuracy of the data "may not be a complete dataset, because they were based upon the limited information available at the time".
Mr Heatley said the response was "woeful" and the list included the Auckland Zoo, Auckland City Council libraries, University of Auckland, Auckland Regional Holdings (owner of Ports of Auckland), NZ Historic Places Trust land and Crown Lands (which includes Government House).
But a spokeswoman for Ms Street said: "The Government has no intention whatsoever of using Auckland Zoo for a housing development and if Phil Heatley is suggesting this, he's simply making a monkey of himself ...
"The review's purpose is to do a stocktake so we have an up-to-date picture of public land use and whether any public land might be available for housing ventures.
"We don't have all that information yet and neither does Mr Heatley."
