Third Readings

I move, That the Utilities Access Bill, the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill, the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill, and the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time. These four bills formerly comprised the Infrastructure Bill, and represent a significant step forward in facilitating infrastructure.

These bills cover three areas. The first and second bills improve the arrangements for managing access by utility operators—such as electricity, gas, telecommunications, and water operators—to road and rail corridors. The current arrangements are inconsistent across utilities, which creates uncertainty, disputes, and inefficiencies. That leads to higher costs for operators and local authorities. The third bill amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act to remove some of the statutory restrictions that affect the running of the Railways Corporation’s business, and to bring the entity’s governance arrangements more in line with the Crown Entities Act. This is directly relevant to the ongoing operation of KiwiRail. The fourth bill is a repeal of the Affordable Housing Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008, retaining an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing.

The Utilities Access Bill establishes a framework for a national code of practice that governs how utility operators and corridor managers coordinate their activities. To enable industry participants to develop and take ownership of the code, the bill allows anyone to prepare a code, but the code must meet certain requirements before the responsible Minister can approve it. The code must have broad agreement between stakeholders, and must include operational and dispute resolution processes. A code approved by the Minister under this legislation will be deemed to be a regulation. The approach the bill takes is that there is no requirement for a code but if industry participants see value in having a code, one can be developed.

The Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill amends the Telecommunications Act, the Electricity Act, the Gas Act, and the Local Government Act 1974. The bill provides for consistent provisions across the Acts around reasonable conditions of access to corridors, allocation of costs when utility operators are required to move assets, and time periods for notification and response. The Government has a particular interest in the passage of this bill as it contemplates the roll-out of broadband around the country. Amendments to the Railways Act and the Government Roading Powers Act provide time frames for responding to requests for access to rail corridors and motorways, and require corridor managers to publish criteria on which they will base decisions to grant access.

The New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill brings many of the provisions of the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act in line with the Crown Entities Act. The changes proposed in the bill include normalising the appointment and dismissal of directors, changing to a simple majority the number of directors who can call a meeting, the power to appoint a deputy chairperson, and streamlining arrangements for changes to the Railways Corporation’s capital. It is probably the most important of the changes suggested, given the need for KiwiRail to access considerable capital and the Government’s commitment to provide some of it. The bill also removes the limit on how much the Railways Corporation can expend in 1 year, and permits the corporation to effect insurance cover for a director or employee. It brings the corporation’s ability to grant easements and impose conditions on the rail corridor more in line with the powers of other companies.

💬 The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill removes a potential impairment to increasing the housing supply, which we believe is a vital issue in determining housing affordability. At the same time it retains an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing. The original Act was intended to provide local authorities with regulatory tools to address problems of housing affordability. In fact, Local Government New Zealand and territorial authorities who made submissions on the bill suggested that rather than improving affordability it would increase the cost of housing in the current market. The building sector also raised concerns about increased complexities and delays as a result of the Act. That is why we are repealing it. Moves to encourage the building of new housing need to ensure that regulatory and other costs are contained and opportunities for increases in supply are enhanced. The repeal will assist in this regard. It will also be assisted by the Government’s thorough review of the Building Act and the recent change in building consent processes, which, by some estimates, will reduce the costs of a mid-priced house by around $20,000.

The bill provides for a modified version of the prohibition relating to certain restrictive covenants and that will be included as an amendment to the Property Law Act. This addresses growing concern about the use of covenants to exclude social housing when new subdivisions are set up, which unfairly discriminates against some of our most vulnerable people.

The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received submissions from a wide range of organisations interested in the Infrastructure Bill. The majority of the submissions focused on the proposed changes to arrangements for access to transport corridors. Most submissions were very supportive of the aims of what are now the first two bills. They offered constructive suggestions, and the provisions of these two bills were accordingly amended. Currently, utilities operators have no right of access to the rail corridor. The amendments to the Railways Act in this legislation recognise that the corridor is underutilised and that the current Act does not go far enough towards enabling greater use of the rail corridor by utilities.

In summary, these four bills will contribute to a smoother pathway for infrastructure development in New Zealand. They address a number of issues related to enhancing infrastructure investment, enabling better operation of rail infrastructure, and taking a step in the direction of cleaning up the regulatory tangle that has prevented the development of affordable housing.

I thank those who have been involved in developing this legislation, including the Opposition for its support and for the work that Labour began while it was in Government. I think that it recognised the same problem: in a country where the investment in infrastructure was picking up, we needed to take the opportunity to clear up some of the regulatory fog that our local bodies, our Government agencies, and our infrastructure businesses have been working in.

These bills have had constructive consideration in both the select committee and the House. Although there is cross-party support for the first three bills, I recognise that there is not cross-party support for the bill related to affordable housing. That just reflects a difference of view. Labour believes that legislating for affordable housing might work, when all the evidence pushes in the opposite direction. Housing affordability is gradually on the improve, but it will take a number of further changes in the regulatory environment to ensure that affordable housing again comes within the reach of those who are on average pay in New Zealand. I commend these four bills to the House.

The speech made by the member who has just resumed his seat, the Hon Bill English, was full of passion and vigour. It was an exciting speech from the man in charge of managing New Zealand’s economy. Bill English is a man who is determined to see a step change in the New Zealand economy, so he delivered that speech with a real rigour and vigour that I am sure had people absolutely on the edge of their seats as they listened to this Government talk about the importance it places on infrastructure.

I want to pick up on what the Minister for Infrastructure said in that the Labour Opposition will be supporting the third readings of the Utilities Access Bill, the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill, and the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill. But we will be opposing the third reading of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. We certainly give notice of that. We are in opposition to that fourth bill, and we would like the division to be put separately so that we can give our support to the Government on the first three bills but vote against the fourth bill at the appropriate time, when the question is put.

This Government is a Government without a plan. We see the lack of commitment to actually doing things as compared with the slogans, the rhetoric, and the great, uplifting speeches that took place before the election—before the more difficult work of running a country, once the rubber hits the road. We were told that infrastructure was so critical to the future of the country—and Labour agrees with that—that National would have a real focus on it. That is why it is enormously surprising to me that 22 months after the last general election we finally have, tonight, the third readings of these infrastructure bills.

Infrastructure was to be such a critical part of the Government’s step change for its economic programme. What did the Government make the Governor-General say in the Speech from the Throne? Oh, yes—that it was going to “turbocharge” the New Zealand economy. That was before the eager new backbenchers found out that there was no plan to do that. There was only ever one plan. The one plan was to make John Key the Prime Minister. That involved saying anything. It involved saying things like: “We will close the wage gap with Australia.”, and “We will have no cuts to front-line services.”—things that we see every day are not happening in New Zealand!

💬 Moana Mackey: “We won’t increase GST.”

Oh, yes: “We won’t increase GST.” None of those things were going to take place in our country, and apparently no one had anything to fear from the nice Mr Key as he, in the words of the Minister for Infrastructure, bounced from cloud to cloud. Apparently we had nothing to fear from a National Government, but it turns out there is no plan. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the fact that the Infrastructure Bill languished right through the term of this Parliament.

💬 Hon Sir Roger Douglas: What about your plan?

I am coming to that. I tell that member to stay tuned. He can send a text message to his nurse and tell his nurse not to come and collect him straight away. If he stays for a few minutes longer, he will be able to hear what Labour’s plan is. I see that the mobile van is ready to take him back to the Malvina Major Retirement Village here in Wellington, and we wish the honourable member well for the night as he goes off for his cocoa.

I simply say that 22 months after the general election, we see Mr English, that great workhorse, the man who thinks he is the Bill Birch of this National Government. I compare his ambitions for New Zealand today with what they were 20 years ago when he came to this place, when he assumed that the Prime Ministership was his for the taking—hence the bitter speech in the third readings after question time today. It was a very incisive and revealing speech about what drives Mr English. Whenever he is asked to speak about the Government and about politics, the things that come to his mind first and foremost were revealed in that particular speech. I enjoy his speeches because they are an open window into his heart on these matters.

So 22 months after the election, we get the third readings of these bills. It is a year since the first reading of the original bill—the Infrastructure Bill. The Government said that infrastructure was very important and that this legislation was necessary. In fact, Mr English congratulated himself at the end of the speech he just gave, by saying that National is not like the previous Government. It does not believe that legislation is the answer, and he said it would run a tight ship on this: the bills it brought in would be absolutely necessary.

We could be generous and accept National’s narrative on this, but I certainly do not because even on that measure Mr English has failed with this legislation as he has taken so long to do it. I think that delay has been a re-emphasis of the fact that although National said it would deliver a brighter future for New Zealand and be ambitious for New Zealand, the truth is that when the rubber hits the road this Government does not a plan to turn any of the rhetoric or slogans into daily reality in the lives of ordinary Kiwis in our country.

There is no connection between the operationalising of Government policy and the soaring—well, not really soaring, because I realise that for the Prime Minister sometimes English seems like a second language. The slogans that have been tested so thoroughly by Cosby/Textor are not always the ones that turn up on the floor of the House as policy.

I can trust the record of the previous Government. It did make a serious commitment to infrastructure. I know that this Government pays itself a huge amount of credit for its roading budget, but it needs to recall 1999, when National left office. Does Mr Bennett know how much National was spending every year on the State highway programme?

💬 David Bennett: You didn’t actually spend it, though, did you?

I am talking about the 1999 Government—it was a National Government. I am sorry to shock the member, but in our country in 1999 National led the Government. I am asking that member, as a member of that party—although not of the Government at the time—what the annual expenditure on State highways was.

💬 David Bennett: I’ll tell you next up.

He has no idea. That is all right. Every now and then I have hope that David Bennett will live up to the great promise he has in himself, but I will wait until next year. I will try again next year.

The former National Government spent $850 million a year on roading in 1999. By the time Labour left Government, that figure had more than doubled to $1.9 billion a year. There was a massive increase in road spending from 1999, when David Carter first left the ministry, exhausted after 12 months as the “Associate Minister of Food, Fibre, Biosecurity, and Border Patrol” or whatever the Jenny Shipley PC portfolio name was. How embarrassing it would be to have that on one’s business card! But he did. Then he had 9 years’ sabbatical. What we see from David Carter now is the rested, refreshed, re-energised, uplifted version. Imagine if he had not had those 9 years in Opposition to relax before the work effort that he puts in today!

We saw a doubling of the road budget during the years of the previous Labour Government. We were very much committed to that. The truth is that New Zealand’s infrastructure was about to fall over back in those days. Auckland was totally gridlocked. I see Steven Joyce, who has great tickets on himself, get up in Parliament all the time and pay tribute to the National Government for some road opening 6 months ahead of time or something or other, as if it is some miracle.

💬 Moana Mackey: For the fourth time.

Often we get the Kōpū Bridge announced for the fifth or sixth time. Actually, the length of paper associated with the press releases almost covers the entire bridge by now. The reality is that these are projects that were started by the previous Labour Government. That is a good thing, because I tell members—

💬 Hon David Carter: Yeah, right!

He says “Yeah, right!”. I ask him when Victoria Park was started.

💬 Hon David Carter: Dunno.

He does not know.

💬 Hon David Carter: What about the southern motorway?

Oh, the southern motorway. I am very happy to talk about the southern motorway.

💬 Hon David Carter: You put it off for 10 years.

No, the southern motorway is a great example of the fact that Labour had those roads in order and ready to go.

💬 Hon David Carter: Oh, yeah!

Out of the seven roads of national significance that National members say they are so proud of, six of them were Labour projects. The only one that was not a Labour project was the Pūhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway”, where they are having to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars looking after—

💬 Hon David Carter: All talk.

I ask David Carter this: how many roads were opened in the early part of the previous Labour Government’s term where all the credit belonged to National? Zero, none, zip, zilch, not a single road—not one.

I know that new National members are critical of Maurice Williamson. They ask what he really does. Maurice Williamson is hyperactive today compared with when he was the Minister of Transport in the 1990s. Nothing ever happened when Maurice Williamson was the Minister of Transport.

Our criticisms relate to the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill, and Moana Mackey will go over that in great detail. I will close by saying that the big disappointment for Labour in this legislation is rail. This Government could not be any less committed to rail. We see many different examples of its lack of commitment to rail, where it has really gone, as my colleague the Hon David W Parker would say, off the tracks. That was almost a David Letterman line, which John Key could use during question time. I guess we will have to wait until he gets back from Vanuatu for that.

In terms of rail, this Government has limited vision. All around the world as countries confront moving passengers in metropolitan centres, and moving freight across country, they are using more and more rail. This Government is not committed to doing that. The next speaker will be David Bennett, who, when in Opposition, was in favour of a passenger service from Hamilton to Auckland. Now that he is in Government, he has 101 reasons why it should not happen. Let me give him a little hint: it ain’t going to take him to the Cabinet, so he may as well stick up for his constituents and make sure that the promise he gave for rail happens. This legislation does not do enough for rail. It was 22 months in the making, and it really is time that National got on with a plan.

That speech from Labour was a load of rubbish. It was from one of the members who rate themselves so highly, Darren Hughes. He should spend more time getting his facts right than his appearance right, and then he might be in order. He said that Labour was “in order and ready to go”—“in order and ready to go”. That sums up the Labour Government when it came to transport. It did not actually fund transport. It had all of these plans, it said it was going to build these projects, but it never allocated any money for them, and it never built them. So the member was quite right when he said projects were “in order and ready to go”, because they were not funded. It was just a pie-in-the-sky promise that that member and his party made.

I remember the first term that I was here. We went to Long Swamp, that bit of road from Auckland to Hamilton, that major bit of construction. Annette King was there, cutting the ribbon. She was cutting the ribbon and saying a great Labour Government had built that road. But it was actually started under the previous National Government in 1999. Those projects were started under National. They were completed by the previous Government, but they were started by us. That member is completely incorrect in the way that he represented the facts of the past generation of infrastructure build in this country.

If members look at the future of infrastructure, they will see that the State highway network will get $10.7 billion in the next 10 years from this Government—$10.7 billion from this Government. The national grid will get $3.3 billion over the next 5 years—$3.3 billion over the next 5 years. Urban broadband will get another $1.5 billion over the next 10 years. New schools and buildings will be allocated $2.7 billion over the next 5 years. We are spending a total of $7.5 billion over 5 years. Labour members are completely incorrect when they say that we are not investing in infrastructure. We have a plan, and we have delivered on a plan. It is not “in order and ready to go”; it is hitting the road now. It is being delivered. The money has been allocated and people are seeing the delivery of those services. As David Carter said, there is the southern motorway in that great city of Christchurch. We see the great news about what is happening in Tauranga. We see the Waikato Expressway. We see the completion of the ring route in Auckland. We see a huge investment in rail that was not done by the previous Government, which pretended it was a supporter of rail. But when it actually had the chance, it did not do anything for rail. Now it is up to us to build a rail network in Auckland

Labour is a party “in order and ready to go”—contrary to all public opinion and reports in the last week. But those members are all rhetoric. They do not deliver. This legislation is part of our Government delivering infrastructure for this country. We support it being passed through the House.

Unfortunately, it seems to be my lot in life to follow on from David Bennett in this House. I think it is the most extraordinary thing for a member of the National Government to stand up and say that it is very committed to rail and that Labour never was. I ask who bought back the lines, who bought back KiwiRail, and who put money into the rebuilding of lines like the Gisborne to Napier rail line. Who now wants to turn it into a cycleway? It is Mr Bennett’s Government. I am going to say something nice about the Hon David Carter before he has to go to his next important meeting, and that is that David Bennett could take some lessons from David Carter on how to run a select committee. For all the hassles that we give Mr Carter, the fact is that he was a very, very good select committee chair. I think that the member David Bennett, who is the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, could perhaps learn a few things from Mr Carter in that regard.

I want to talk about what was Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill, and is now the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. The repeal of this Act was hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill, and it should not have been. The repeal of affordable housing legislation has no place in an infrastructure bill. If the Government wanted to repeal it, it should have put it up in its own right as a repeal bill, allowed New Zealanders to know what was happening, and allowed them to submit on it. It did not do that. I think that that is a shame. I thank the clerk of the committee and all the select committee staff for all of the work they did to try to ensure that everyone who might be interested in the repeal of this legislation had the opportunity to comment. But I have no doubt that there would be many other people out there who would also have enjoyed the opportunity to comment, had they known to look in an infrastructure bill that was working towards bringing together the operations of utility operators for the repeal of affordable housing legislation. It is reasonable to think that they would have enjoyed that opportunity.

The second thing I want to say is that this just backs up the fact that when it comes to affordable housing in New Zealand, this Government has no plan—no plan at all. When the Minister of Housing gave his speech he said that affordable housing was improving, so it was not as much of an issue as previously. Well, in the latest statistics, housing affordability at the very best estimate is back to where it was in July 2008. In July 2008 the Hon Phil Heatley said that it was a disaster, and it was a catastrophic event that needed to be addressed. The fact that we have gone back to that point, which National used to think was terrible, apparently now means that we do not have to do anything about affordable housing. I think that that is a dreadful contradiction in the position of this National Government. We need a mix of tools for affordable housing, because there is no one reason why housing is unaffordable. There are many, many different reasons, so the responses will also be many and varied. This power was one of those tools that I believe would have been useful. As I have said time and time again, Labour would have supported this legislation going back to a select committee to be looked at again if the Government thought that it could be improved on. We would have absolutely supported that.

The 2005 New Zealand Housing Strategy acknowledged that territorial authorities could have more regulatory powers, because they do everywhere else in the world. The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act intended to allow territorial authorities to require developers to include affordable housing in their developments or to contribute money, land, or houses, or a mix of those, to affordable housing. In return, territorial authorities could have provided incentives. They could have offset some of the costs if they wanted to, they could have reduced development contributions, or they could have had rates remissions, rates postponements, or any other kind of financial assistance. It would have been up to the local authorities to determine how they actioned that. A territorial authority could have put together a housing affordability policy so that it was clear to developers what was expected from them in that region. It has to be said that some local authorities had specifically asked for this kind of regulation-making power; that is why the legislation was drafted and passed into law.

At the same time it needs to be acknowledged that some of the local authorities were concerned that they would not have the expertise or the resources—absolutely. Part of the process is discovering where those gaps are. Local government will always be part of the solution for housing affordability. We cannot do it without it. It is actually impossible for central government to do this without a partnership with local government, because it controls the zoning of land and a lot of the supply issues. We have to do it together, because it is important that we find out where those gaps are. In saying that, we made sure that it was not compulsory. This was something that local authorities could use if they wanted to; some had said they were interested and others had said they were not. It would have been very interesting to see who took it up and who did not. It would have gone a long way towards addressing those gaps, as we said before.

It was important that we started to get our local authorities thinking about housing affordability in conjunction with the work that central government was doing, as well. Members should remember that the kinds of regulation-making powers that we gave local authorities are very common overseas. In fact, in some places it is expected that if, for example, someone wants to do a large commercial development—say, a shopping mall; this is common in some of the states in America—they require that workers’ housing be built, and that the infrastructure around workers’ housing be built. In many communities and many countries around the world it is just naturally assumed that it is fair that developers contribute something back to the local community through the regulation-making powers of the territorial authority.

We were told that one of the reasons the Act was going to be repealed was that it was developed during a time of significant development activity, and now that activity is not there we do not need it any more. Once again, that just shows us that the Government has no economic plan. Apparently, we do not need powers for local authorities to use during times of high development activity, probably because the Government does not think we are going to have times of high development activity any more. There is no economic plan. There is no plan for regional New Zealand, and there is no plan for our big cities.

The fact is that Labour is not quite as pessimistic as the Government. We have a plan, and we will be putting that plan out there at the next election. Part of that plan is that we want to see development going on in areas that are appropriate. We want to see affordable housing as part of that plan. We see housing as infrastructure. The fact that this Act is being repealed shows that this Government does not think housing is infrastructure. If we look across the Tasman to Australia—the Government used to be obsessed with doing that, but it does not like the comparison now—we see that Australia sees housing as core infrastructure. A huge part of its stimulus package, which is still ongoing, is social and affordable housing. It is residential housing for its citizens. That is the kind of thing that this Government should be looking at. In Auckland we are thousands and thousands of houses short every single year. In Manurewa, for example, for every 14 families who move to Manurewa, one house is being built. That is not sustainable, yet this Government is doing absolutely nothing about it except repealing legislation that is designed to assist local authorities, and getting rid of programmes like shared equity, which is an absolutely integral part of the affordable housing mix in just about every other country around the world.

We have no plan for affordable housing under this National-led Government. Its affordable housing plan was tax cuts and reform of the Resource Management Act. Do members know what officials told us about the Resource Management Act reforms during the select committee process? They said that the reforms will not address affordable housing. Affordable housing is not even part of the mix of the Resource Management Act reforms. In the tax cuts that this Government gave, someone on the minimum wage gets $3 a week—$3 a week. That is meant to compensate for inflation, GST increases, rent increases, cost of living increases, and, apparently, affordable housing. I do not know how good this Government thinks low-income people are at budgeting. They are pretty good, but they cannot stretch $3 a week as far as that. The tax cut that the members over there gave themselves could probably go a long way towards affordable housing, but for the average Kiwi family it absolutely will not.

I finish by speaking on restrictive covenants. The Minister of Infrastructure tried to make out that there were no changes in this area. That is actually not true. Significant changes were made in the area of restrictive covenants. The one I want to single out is that if a covenant restricts social housing it now has to be the primary purpose of the covenant for that to be illegal, whereas under the Labour Government we said that if any purpose of the covenant was to restrict social housing, then it was illegal. This Government has taken that out, and it has opened up a huge loophole. It is like its 90-day law: as long as we do not say we are discriminating, we can discriminate. All that someone has to do is make up a primary reason why there cannot be, for example, a house with disabled access, a halfway house for prisoners, or a home for mental health clients. As long as that person makes up a new primary purpose for that covenant, it is OK. It is just like the 90-day bill: as long as we do not say we are discriminating, we can discriminate. That is a real disappointment.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am happy to take a call tonight on this infrastructure legislation, which is mostly common sense. I will talk about a couple of loves of mine: rugby and the Rugby World Cup. In less than 500 days the Rugby World Cup kicks off, and it will be the biggest event that New Zealand has ever hosted. In terms of infrastructure it is an opportunity lost. It was a good chance for us to take advantage of, and leverage from, our natural assets to build our prosperity. It is a big deal, because the Rugby World Cup is part of the Government’s five infrastructure priorities. I will touch on the legislation a little bit, talk about housing, and finish off with the Rugby World Cup.

The Greens voted for the Infrastructure Bill in its first and second readings because, on the whole, it was mostly common sense. We supported it, and we are glad the Minister for Infrastructure has split that bill into four parts, because, as I said in my second reading speech, one of those parts is not like the others, and that is the part on housing affordability.

We are glad that Part 4 has now become the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill, and tonight we will be opposing it. Part 1, now the Utilities Access Bill, creates a framework through a consistent national code for access by utility operators to transport corridors. Part 2, now the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill, harmonises the notice provisions across all the Acts, and requires territorial local authorities to pay for any amenity improvements when utilities are moved or upgraded. Part 3, now the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill, is common sense. It cleans up the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act and harmonises its management provisions with those in other State-owned enterprise legislation.

I will touch briefly on Part 4, the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. We voted for the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act in the House originally, and I am glad to say that we will be opposing its repeal tonight. The Greens support the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude social housing. However, we are disappointed that the Government has decided to water down these provisions and remove the prohibition of restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. As Moana Mackey said, it is all right to discriminate as long as we say we are not discriminating.

Housing affordability is a major issue in New Zealand with close to one in three New Zealanders spending 30 percent or more of their disposable income on housing. A few years back, in 2007, Russel Norman said in the House that a number of fundamental factors were driving the housing affordability crisis in this country, amongst which were foreign buyers, perverse tax laws, poor planning for Auckland’s growth, and lack of supply of cheaper housing to rent and buy. But it seems this Government’s main initiative in this area is slashing the State housing budget, growing the State house waiting list, and selling State houses. This Government has failed to take decisive action and introduce a capital gains tax—but not on the family home—to help make housing more affordable. This Government is repealing the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act but is not proposing anything to help with the housing affordability crisis.

Members will be aware that as well as being concerned about housing affordability, the Greens are also concerned about the appallingly cold and damp rental properties in New Zealand. Of the 1.5 million homes in New Zealand, more than 460,000 are rentals. These are generally the coldest and the least efficient of New Zealand’s housing stock. The rentals are cold, old, uninsulated, damp, and mouldy, and they are expensive to rent. They are expensive to heat, and more than one-quarter of Kiwis spend more than 10 percent of their weekly income on heating. At the moment tenants—be they students, grandparents, or the poor—are suffering the heating costs, the housing costs, and the costs in general of our substandard housing. When we look at one of our biggest natural assets, our homes, we see that we must act. We have to get them up to a minimum warm, healthy standard.

In my second reading speech on the Infrastructure Bill I looked at the folly of kicking to touch $10.7 billion of our nation’s wealth on the roads of national significance. But tonight I will look at another of the infrastructure priorities for this Government—the Rugby World Cup. Imagine what it will be like. An estimated 60,000 to 85,000 visitors are expected to fly to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup. They will arrive at Auckland Airport and look for the trains, but there will not be any. Visitors will have to pile on to Auckland’s notoriously crowded motorways in minivans or taxis, and they will experience what the congestion is like.

Hopping off in downtown Auckland they will find there is no inner-city rail loop, and they will discover that all of our transport systems are heavily car-reliant, with hardly any public transport in towns and none in the smaller centres. Visitors noticing all the roadworks going on will figure out pretty fast what this Government’s infrastructure priority is. We heard Labour and National members before comparing who spent more on roads and motorways. Visitors will find new roads and motorways are being built in Auckland and Wellington. They will ask about trains, but they will find that one tiny train line still serves the whole of Auckland, and it still, in 2011, runs on dirty old diesel power.

Visitors will arrive in New Zealand to find that we are undergoing the fastest rate of native vegetation loss since colonial times. They will find that our rivers are unswimmable, that we are considering converting dirty old lignite coal to fertiliser, thanks to rampant dairy expansion, and that our levels of greenhouse gas emissions are more than 25 percent above our levels in 1990. Whether visitors stay in hotels, motels, or rented holiday homes, they are likely to be confronted—as our renters are—with cold, damp accommodation. They will find that houses are probably uninsulated, there is no such thing as double glazing, and there are only a few solar hot water heaters around. Visitors will find that the light bulbs are mostly the old-fashioned, wasteful incandescent ones, which the Government phased out the phase-out of.

Across the country, visitors will find that every day 780 people are missing a game of rugby, or missing a day of school or work, as a result of being sick from their housing, or they will find that 50 people a day are sick in hospital as a result of our housing. Visitors will feel stunned and cheated by the marketing slogan when they find that their expectation of a clean, green New Zealand is shattered. That will have big ramifications for our economy.

The Rugby World Cup could show up New Zealand as an international environmental embarrassment to an increasingly environmentally conscious global public. However, it could show New Zealanders the urgent need for a raft of cost-effective, job-producing, green infrastructural investments. Looking to the past, we see that we could have risen to the challenge and electrified Auckland’s rail network in time for the Rugby World Cup. We could have started a central business district rail loop in Auckland, and we could have started the process to get a rail line to the Auckland Airport. We could have invested in our transport infrastructure so that people could get around faster, more comfortably, and with less oil, and with more options and more jobs for Kiwis. We could have marketed ourselves with 100 percent green electricity production and other low-carbon solutions, not just hollow ambitions like the New Zealand Energy Strategy. We could have had a green stadium at Mount Eden, which would have made a great Rugby World Cup legacy.

With less than 500 days until the Rugby World Cup, we have missed the boat. We have missed the chance to invest wisely in sustainable, future-proof infrastructure. Looking to the future we need to make sure the ball is not dropped on our “clean, green” brand. Overfishing, dirty dairying, GE animals, and the damming of the last of the wild rivers all move New Zealand closer to the “clean, green” brand sin bin. This is especially important considering that the brand is already on the agenda of the likes of The Economist, the New York Times, and the Guardian. The worst outcome on waking up the day after the Rugby World Cup final would be a mess to clean up and nothing to show for the party. Kia ora.

I am pleased to speak to the third reading of the infrastructure legislation, which is a part of the Government’s initiative to improve infrastructure that is vital to our economic future and part of our commitment to deregulation and the removal of red tape. The legislation is omnibus, in that it comprises four bills covering three areas: changes to utilities’ access arrangements to transport corridors, changes to the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981, and the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008, with the retention of an amended restrictive covenants provision relating to social housing.

The Government is focused on growing the economy and creating jobs with better infrastructure, such as roads, broadband, rail, and electricity networks. Jobs and growth are essential if New Zealanders and New Zealand are to get ahead. The development of infrastructure is essential to lifting New Zealand’s productivity and to improving future economic growth.

This legislation effects National’s commitment to building a stronger economy that will provide growth for all New Zealanders, and to providing the social infrastructure that New Zealanders need. The Government is spending $6 billion per year on infrastructure projects. Specifically, in the most recent Budget there is a $500 million upgrade of Auckland rail, and $250 million put aside for the wider rail network and rolling stock. There is $200 million put aside for the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband, and there is $10.7 billion over 10 years put aside for State highways.

State highways account for 50 percent of road use in New Zealand; therefore, an advanced State highway system is essential to maintaining effective linkages throughout the country. The money that the Government has committed reflects how important infrastructure is to the Government’s wider economic policy programme, and to New Zealand’s longer-term economic prospects. The Government’s $10.7 billion boost to State highway funding has provided a secure funding pipeline that gives contractors the confidence to continue to invest in people and machinery, and to complete projects more quickly. High-calibre infrastructure matters because it supports productivity and economic competitiveness. An important spin-off from this commitment is the fact that in the global recession effective investment in productive infrastructure has supported many thousands of jobs around the country.

This infrastructure legislation removes unnecessary barriers to infrastructure development, and improves the consistency of regulatory arrangements. The first two bills improve arrangements for managing access by utility operators to transport corridors—roads, railways, and motorways. The first bill also establishes a framework for a national code of practice, to govern how utility operators and corridor managers will coordinate their activities. The third bill amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981 to remove some of the statutory restrictions that negatively affect the running of the New Zealand Railways Corporation’s business. The fourth bill repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008, while keeping an amended prohibition of restrictive covenants affecting social housing. Local authorities were concerned that that Act was complex, costly, and overly prescriptive. Although it was intended to provide local authorities with the regulatory tools to address the problems of housing affordability, it has been viewed as a potential impairment to increasing the housing stock supply.

The infrastructure legislation is about removing the barriers to infrastructure development, which this Government sees as critical if New Zealand is to move forward economically. I commend this legislation to the House.

Firstly, I will speak on the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. Labour remains opposed to changes to affordable housing laws. The fifth Labour Government passed the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act, which this bill seeks to repeal. The Act provided the power for councils to levy developer contributions, to provide for social and affordable housing for New Zealanders—something there is a great need for. The Act also provided for councils to use a range of incentives to facilitate those contributions. Labour accepts that the economic bubble has burst, and that, to date, those powers have not been widely used by councils, but we also have to acknowledge that officials have made it very clear that there has not been enough time for the powers to be implemented by the authorities. With all that in mind, we strongly believe that the Act could be useful in the future, and that it is typical of this short-sighted Government that it is now seeking to repeal it.

Housing affordability remains a major issue in New Zealand. Almost one in three New Zealanders is now spending at least 30 percent of their disposable income on housing, and many of us would have seen instances where the amount was actually more than one-third. That is unsustainable. As legislators, it is our role to ensure that housing is affordable and accessible for all New Zealanders, and I think it is pertinent—as Maryan Street brought up earlier in this argument—that one of the fundamental things we need to ensure that New Zealanders have access to is shelter. That was the previous Labour Government’s goal when it introduced the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. The objective was to promote the provision of affordable housing to low and moderate income households, and to encourage mixed communities in order to close the inequality gap in New Zealand. Perhaps—although I doubt it—the Government does have good intentions with this bill. Maybe it thinks that the current Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act is not working. But if that were the case, why did the Government not refer the legislation to a select committee to consider possible amendments? We have seen all too often with this Government that it does not allow legislation to go to a select committee, so that it does not even consider the possibilities. That would have been responsible governance. It would have been the action of a Government that cared about the long-term well-being of all New Zealanders, and that cared about affordable housing for the many, not the few. But this has not happened. Instead the Government has decided to repeal the Act without such consideration, meaning that the tools we have to address the issue of housing affordability in New Zealand are further limited.

Although Labour is opposed to this legislation, we support the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude social housing. Nevertheless we are disappointed because these provisions have been significantly watered down by the Government. For example, its decision to make these provisions apply only if such discrimination is the principal purpose of the covenant creates a huge loophole in the law. We also wish to see the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. Unfortunately for those New Zealanders who are spending too much of their income on housing, the Government has neglected to retain these provisions. When the Infrastructure Bill was before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee there were various submissions from concerned parties in relation to the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. I would like to focus on one in particular, from the National Council of Women. The council expressed its concern that the section on restrictive covenants no longer prohibited those who aim to exclude affordable housing. It pointed out that this change would adversely affect New Zealand women and their families. The majority of single parents are predominantly women. In addition, a large number of retired women live alone as widows. Women’s incomes are already only 88 percent of men’s. Affordable housing is already out of reach for many New Zealanders, particularly women, and repealing the Act will just make that situation worse. We consider this legislation to be a step back on the path to affordable housing for all New Zealanders and will not be supporting it.

Secondly, I would like to speak to the Utilities Access Bill. My colleagues have already covered Labour’s position on broadband accessibility today and during the first and second readings of the Infrastructure Bill. I would like to talk about broadband accessibility from my experience being based in the Waitakere electorate.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: I thought you were in New Plymouth.

I say to Mr Henare that I want to talk today about Henderson Valley School. This school is situated at the beautiful foothills of the Waitakere Ranges, about 5 kilometres from the centre of Henderson. The school has a broadband connection on an ADSL line with an average download speed of 0.1 megabits per second. In other words, it has painfully slow Internet. This means that only about six Internet users can be online at any one time. It also means that documents cannot always download, and online video clips will not play. It makes the teachers’ jobs harder, it makes the administrators’ jobs harder, and it seriously restricts the use of e-learning at the school. I have spoken at length to the principal of Henderson Valley School about this issue, and her main concern is that the students at the school are being disadvantaged by poor broadband connectivity. Although the teachers at the school continue to do a wonderful job, e-learning is a valuable part of a primary school education and no New Zealand kid should be missing out. The experience of Henderson Valley School highlights a flaw in the Government’s broadband policy. Although the Minister for Communications and Information Technology likes to talk up ultra-fast broadband, he is not coming even close to delivering on it. We just keep hearing talk but we do not see any action. All Henderson Valley School needs is a functional broadband connection, and, honestly, that should not be too much to ask.

Efficient telecommunications infrastructure is very important for economic development. This is one thing that National and Labour can both agree on. Another important aspect in broadband policy is its use as an educational tool. The days when a school could survive without computers are long gone. To give our kids the best possible start in life they need access to computers and broadband in schools. The focus needs to be on equitable access, on making sure that all kids, no matter where they go to school, have access to broadband. So although Labour will be supporting the Utilities Access Bill, I would like the Government to keep the kids of Henderson Valley School in mind when using this legislation to advance its broadband policy. Thank you.

Forty-four smoke-free days ago—I am up to 44 now—I raced along the north-western motorway, and, thankfully—

H V Ross Robertson: Raced? Are you a boy racer, Tau?

No, actually, it was in the back of an ambulance. I thought to myself, on the way to Auckland City Hospital, that, thankfully, we had a great motorway network to get me from my house to the emergency ward in quick time.

In some ways I am grateful that I live in Auckland, because we have the infrastructure there. We are going ahead at a great speed, thanks to the Hon Steven Joyce. Unfortunately, in the rural areas we still have a long way to go. The identification of roads of national significance by the Minister, Mr Joyce, say one thing to me, and it is that if we are in trouble, if we are in need of New Zealand’s health system, then we can get to where we need to go—namely, a hospital.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Which hospital did you go to?

I went to Auckland City Hospital.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Not Waitakere?

No, not Waitakere Hospital.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Oh, what happened?

I can tell Ms Sepuloni that the reason is that we do not have a 24-hour emergency department at Waitakere—not yet. At the end of the year we will. Again, that is thanks to a great Minister of Health and an excellent local member, Paula Bennett.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: But didn’t members on that side oppose that hospital in the first place?

No, no, we did not. We did not oppose it. In fact, many of us congratulated the Hon Annette King when she went ahead and built that hospital. Now, years later, we will finally get a 24-hour emergency operation. I am thankful that we have been able to step into the breach and offer those in west Auckland a 24-hour—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: It would be great if that side can achieve one thing.

It is interesting that the member pipes up. She talked about Henderson Valley. I am surprised that she even knows where Waitakere is, because she is not from there. She was going to run for election down country, but I think that seat has been taken by a “little” person—Andrew Little.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I wonder whether that member will be selected to run for Te Atatū. Will he be selected for Te Atatū or is someone else going to come along?

Now we are talking about Te Atatū. Let us talk about Te Atatū. Let us pull the pin right now and have a by-election. Let us see who is ready and willing, even with my new hardware—even with my new hardware.

Gareth Hughes from the Green Party did a disservice to New Zealand tonight. He talked about the Rugby World Cup and how our rivers are unswimmable. Well, he should ask the kids out in Te Atatū whether they like to swim in the creek. Yes, they do. They are always there on a Saturday and Sunday. One can still catch parore, one can still catch—if one is lucky—snapper, and one can still catch kahawai. He went on about light bulbs in hotels, for goodness’ sake! He talked dirty about our country. He said that we had a railway line that did not go anywhere.

For goodness’ sake, this is not Hong Kong. This is not Hong Kong. What does Gareth Hughes expect? Does he expect a fast railway from the airport to the bottom of town, or an underground system as good as Hong Kong’s? I think not. There is not enough of us in this country to pay for it. That is a fact. With what our Minister of Transport has done within his budget, we have been able to move along with our infrastructure at a great speed of knots.

Talking about infrastructure, I say how good it is to travel along the second Māngere Bridge. What used to take at least an hour from Te Atatū peninsula to the airport can now take 35 to 40 minutes, and that is in peak-hour traffic. I congratulate the Minister on bringing this legislation to the House, and I say what a privilege it was to serve on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that saw this legislation through. Thank you very much.

Although it is true that I rarely agree with a word that comes out of Tau Henare, the member who has just sat down, it is also true that I would not wish his recent health episode on him or on anybody else. But I marvel at the way in which he is able to take that life-threatening situation and weave it into any discussion of legislation that is currently before the House. There is admirable—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Let’s see if he can do it on the Legislation Bill.

I am sure that Mr Henare will find some tangential relevance to it. However, I will speak to the part of the legislation that we are looking at at the moment that repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. I will say four things about infrastructure, because this legislation originally presented itself as part of the Infrastructure Bill.

It seems to me that if this Government was even halfway towards being serious about investing in infrastructure, housing would be a prime objective for it. Housing clearly provides shelter. It provides more than that; it provides security. Where people are able to buy their own home, it provides a sense of homeownership, which gives a feeling of investment in a community. It provides security for communities, as well as for families on their own. The possibility of moving towards affordable housing is diminished by the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act.

I say this not simply because that Act was my legislation when I was the Minister of Housing but because it is one of a series of tools in the tool kit to help to address the spiralling cost of housing that we saw happen in the 2000s—particularly from 2002 to 2007. That escalation of prices, which was brought about in large part by an escalation in the value of land, caused an inflation in house prices that led people to borrow on unrealistic terms, on the basis of an inflated asset. We now see more mortgagee sales than ever before. We are still seeing housing affordability being out of the grasp of young families. We see more and more young families who would aspire to be first home owners, but who are unable to realise that dream—a dream that has been fundamental and quite central to the Kiwi dream—and we see, with the repeal of the Act, one of the tools in the tool kit for combating housing affordability problems being taken away.

More than that, if this Government was serious about infrastructure, it would realise that investment in housing has multifaceted benefits for our families, our communities, and our society. Jobs could be created if the Government was serious about tackling the problem of housing affordability.

Under the previous Labour Government we were keen to release Crown land in order to build affordable houses. If the Government retained the value of the land but people could afford to buy the house, then that was one way of getting people into homeownership, which was what we proposed in 2008. I also announced in 2008 the shared equity scheme, which allowed houses on the private market to be subsidised by the Government over a period of time. If the Government put in some money, young families, in particular, who were able to afford to make some contribution would then be able to buy out the Government’s share over time, as their circumstances improved. All of these efforts together provided a web, a tool box, of things that could help New Zealand families to achieve their dream of homeownership.

Not only would an investment in housing and in the building of houses create jobs but also it would create education and training opportunities through apprenticeships. That is another area that has been let slide by this Government. It is not focusing on job creation. It is not focusing on the kinds of skills that our young people need in order to equip themselves to participate in society—in order to equip themselves to get a job.

I will refer to some of the submissions that were made on the legislation in its original form. The Human Rights Commission stated that affordable housing was a critical component of having an adequate standard of living, and that it regretted that the Act was being repealed without anything else being put in place to replace it. Age Concern stated that it wanted to register its “disapproval of what appears to be a process of ‘repeal by stealth’ ”—burying the repeal of the Act inside an Infrastructure Bill, so that the consequences for affordable housing could be disguised or glossed over by this Government. Age Concern went on to state: “The Affordable Housing Act has been in force for just a year.”—hardly enough time to determine whether it was working—and “high housing costs relative to income are often associated with severe financial difficulty, and can leave households with insufficient income to meet other basic needs such as food, clothing, transport, medical care and education.” That is Age Concern looking, perhaps, at grandchildren who want to strike out and own their first home.

The National Council of Women stated that it was concerned that a “previously laudable section” on restrictive covenants had been “watered down” in the revisions to the Property Law Act in the bill. The Auckland Regional Public Health Service stated that it was “premature to repeal the Affordable Housing … Act until there is clear evidence that the housing market is delivering substantially increased numbers of affordable homes.” The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services said the decision to repeal the existing legislation was “based on an internal review conducted by the Housing New Zealand Corporation that has not been made public.” It said that was an “insufficient basis for repealing the whole Act”.

Those organisations are not left-wingers. They are not people on the margins of society, but they are groups who work with people who are on the margins of society. These people form the conscience of our society and this Government is choosing, in repealing this Act, to ignore that conscience. New Zealanders, particularly young families, will be worse off because of that. Thank you.

I am thankful for the opportunity to draw to a close the debate of what was formerly the Infrastructure Bill. It is very, very important legislation and we need to get it passed through this House so that the country can get on with lifting its national prosperity.

This is a debating chamber and I want to address some of the issues raised by Opposition members. I was somewhat impressed with the young Green member, Gareth Hughes, when he spoke. He may not be so impressed when he looks at his Hansard in the morning, but it seems to me that his speech was a ringing indictment of 9 years of failed Labour Government, and I give the Green member credit for recognising that. He did not express it quite that way, but I am sure that in the years to come when people look at his Hansard, they will see it for exactly what it was—a criticism of 9 years of failed Labour Government.

It is also interesting to hear three Labour list members talking about housing. We know that Labour has lost it on housing; the people of New Zealand gave up on Labour a long time ago. Working people no longer see Labour as being their natural party of representation or as having any sorts of answers at all to the issues that New Zealand faces. It was interesting to listen to list member Miss Sepuloni trying to identify with Paula Bennett country—the Henderson Valley and Waitakere. Well, I have a message for that member: “Forget it.” The Henderson Valley, like other areas of Waitakere, is Paula Bennett territory and will remain Paula Bennett territory for one very simple reason: the people there have stopped listening to Labour, just as they stopped listening to Labour in Glen Innes, which is part of my constituency of Tāmaki. They no longer listen, because they recognise that Labour no longer has solutions to their problems, and that will be demonstrated very, very clearly at the general election next year when Miss Bennett will clearly establish, maintain, and develop the dominance that she has out there in the west. It is great credit to her and a great credit to this Government.

The development of infrastructure is essential to New Zealand if we are to lift our national productivity and improve and expand on our future economic growth and long-term prosperity. When we listen to Labour members and Green members, we hear that they clearly have absolutely no interest at all in the future prosperity of New Zealand. They choose instead to cling to a few old-fashioned ideas. They are in disarray in Opposition just as they were in disarray in Government. The four bills that now make up this infrastructure legislation are essential for the future of New Zealand. Let us stop the talk, let us get down to business, and let us get this legislation passed so that New Zealand can move forward.

This debate has concluded. I understand that some parties wish to vote against the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill, so it is my intention to put that as one question, and we will take the other three bills as one question.

Utilities Access Bill, Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill, and New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill read a third time.