Urban Development Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Urban Development: I move, That the Urban Development Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.

Recently, this House established Kāinga Ora, a new Crown agency with two core roles: being a world-class public housing landlord, and leading and coordinating urban development projects. It will be a powerful delivery entity capable of integrated urban development that provides a mix of public, affordable, and open-market housing. This bill, the Urban Development Bill, provides Kāinga Ora the tools it needs to undertake large-scale developments at scale and pace to transform our urban areas, build public and affordable housing, and create sustainable, inclusive, and thriving communities.

Traditionally, New Zealand cities and towns have grown by turning neighbouring rural land into suburban housing in a largely ad hoc manner. What New Zealand has not traditionally done well is plan for our growth over 30 years. Through our Urban Growth Agenda, the Government is currently working with high-growth councils to prepare 30-year spatial plans that plan for urban growth and align the transport, three waters, and amenity infrastructure required to create sustainable and thriving cities. A core part of planning for growth is to have a permissive planning regime that enables high-quality intensification around fast and frequent public transport infrastructure, and we need our cities to grow both up and out. The draft National Policy Statement on Urban Development will direct council to allow our cities to grow up and out and remove some of the more restrictive planning rules that cause high land prices.

This second-generation urban development is common overseas as cities age and grow and new pressures emerge, but it is relatively new to New Zealand. Quality intensification that creates beautiful and well-designed cities is crucial to the future of all of our cities. This could involve repurposed large blocks of industrial or underutilised land, like that recently acquired at Unitec, Hobsonville Point, or Britomart in Auckland, or intensifying low-density suburbs, like what we see in Roskill or Tāmaki. This brownfield and greyfield development is often too difficult and risky for developers and the private sector to do on their own. There are multiple landowners, each with their own interests. There is often significant investment required to upgrade poor-quality, ageing, or at-capacity infrastructure so that it can service a new, larger population. Resource Management Act plans often restrict greater density, or the process to change them is slow, uncertain, or cumbersome.

This bill will enable Kāinga Ora to undertake a special type of complex, transformational development called specified development projects, or SDPs, either by itself or in partnership with iwi, local government, or the private sector. It would also be able to have access to a tool kit of development powers when undertaking SDPs, and these include a streamlined and cut-through resource management planning and consenting process; powers to build and change infrastructure such as roads, three waters, and public transport; the ability to levy or charge local residents to fund infrastructure and development activities; and the ability to reconfigure reserves and create new parks and the important public infrastructure that makes a suburb a community. It would also be able to have access to land acquisition powers when undertaking any urban development, whether that project is a specified development project or more generally part of the Government build programme.

Woven between and underpinning the various powers in the bill, there are a few core ideas. These are public and affordable housing that are at the heart of our urban development agenda. They are places where generations of young families have come to get a start in life and to put down roots in their community. We’re strengthening this promise. We believe Government should be an enabler of urban development to partner with the private sector, local government, or iwi to build, rather than crowd out or replace the private sector. My message to developers is that we want to help you grow. We understand your constraints. We want to work together with you on the solutions. We want to implement good urban design and develop well-connected communities with great transport connections, vibrant town centres, community infrastructure, and affordable homes. Mana whenua are at the heart of these developments as developers, as builders, housing providers, and partners.

Creating an urban development authority (UDA) has been considered in New Zealand for some time. In their final term, the Clark Labour Government created a sustainable urban development unit, prepared Cabinet papers, and released a discussion document. Since then, the Productivity Commission has published three reports highlighting the need for an urban development authority to address New Zealand’s housing supply and urban development issues. In 2017, as the national housing crisis became most acute, the previous National Government also released a discussion document on establishing a UDA.

This bill delivers on this work. It has been a long time coming, and the policy work is complex. This complexity means I’m very much looking forward to the select committee process. There is a lot of experience out there. Developers have tried to do these developments and know all too well the roadblocks. Local authorities know the importance of consultation and the pitfalls that may slow things down. The Government itself has learnt a lot from when it first started thinking about urban development in Glen Innes throughout the successful Hobsonville development.

The bill makes a number of policy judgments. I’m looking forward to the submissions on how we can further streamline the process while protecting the importance we have placed on community engagement and partnership. Have we got the process right? What should this agency’s priorities be? How can we ensure high-quality design maintains the importance of public housing, not just for the next three years but across the generations? There’s a wealth of experience we’re drawing on in drafting this bill, and there is a wealth of experience that will help us refine and improve it.

I want to finish by outlining what success will look like once these projects are up and running. Our challenge is to enable quality intensification and to build well-connected communities that make housing more affordable. There is generational reset of the way Government works with the private sector and communities to build our towns and cities. The Government is an enabler, working with local councils, partnering with the private sector, integrating infrastructure development and transport, planning with the construction of homes, implementing good urban design, building community infrastructure, putting the aspirations of Māori at the heart of our urban form, building and providing affordable housing, helping young Kiwi families into homeownership, and ensuring every New Zealander has a decent place to call home. This bill is a big part of our plan to achieve those goals. For this reason, I commend the bill to the House.

Before I call the Hon Judith Collins and put the question, I am going to reissue my reminder. I’m slightly more understanding in this circumstance of a Minister reading a speech because the Minister appeared to be a late fill-in for another Minister, but I do want to reiterate that speeches on readings of bills must not be read.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I enjoyed that speech from the Hon Jenny Salesa. I note that she recorded that the former National Government put some policy work out and proposals out on urban development authority. She could also have mentioned that the specified development project process, or the SDP process, looks remarkably like the special housing areas—the SHAs—that worked pretty well, particularly in Auckland, that I could see. So it looks like there are no new ideas. It’s more of the ideas that either National tried and unfortunately did not get the support of the then Opposition—

💬 SPEAKER: Oh, I apologise—I apologise. We’ve gone into the dinner break. I will interrupt the member now.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, before the dinner break, we were debating the first reading of the Urban Development Bill. The Hon Judith Collins has the call, and she has nine minutes and 19 seconds remaining.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I may or may not use all of that. We’ll just see—wait and see.

Anyway, I think when we broke for dinner, I was discussing how the bill contains something called a specified development project process, which is to streamline processes for complex urban development projects. It reminded me instantly of special housing areas—the SHAs—which as I recall the then Opposition, now the Government, was deeply opposed to.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Oh!

Oh no! Andrew Bayly, MP for Hunua, has just let out a shout of derision that it’s taken the Government at least two years to work out that they should have been supporting the SHAs.

We also are very aware of the fact that there is a recognition of aspirations of Māori in housing and urban development as potential development partners, which, generally, I think is a good thing. I think also, though, that it is useful to say that when I look at the housing that many Māori live in all around the country in provincial New Zealand, the parties in Government, when they were in Opposition, had an opportunity to support Te Ture Whenua Maori Bill, which our former colleague, the Hon Chris Finlayson, promoted, along with Te Ururoa Flavell. But it seemed for political reasons that that did not get supported across Parliament, which is a real shame, because it would have given Māori a far better opportunity to deal with land issues of their own without having to have this sort of body that’s in the bill come in to try and help out.

One of the things that I see when I read through the bill is that it works very much on the basis that the Government can deliver on large-scale development. Well, I think some Governments can deliver on large-scale development. Having heard the Hon Jenny Salesa refer to the Hobsonville Land Co. (HLC), I thought that was pretty interesting—it sounds like one of ours. Also, she could’ve mentioned the Tāmaki redevelopment project, which was one of ours, where we had to make sure that people were housed before they were shifted out of existing but rundown State houses. That has been continued by the current Government under the HLC, or Hobson Land Co., banner.

So we have some areas where we can agree, but I think what the people of New Zealand will be seeing is that with this National Party in Opposition, where we can see opportunities to support legislation, even if we think it needs a lot of work, and where there are some issues, we will try to support it because we think that’s the right thing to do. We don’t want to start playing the sorts of games that saw the Hon Phil Twyford and the Hon David Parker campaigning against the sort of urban development that we were doing in Government.

I note that Kāinga Ora—which is really Housing New Zealand in drag, basically—will have—oh, I should say in sequins. Kāinga Ora will have land acquisition transfer powers when undertaking any urban development, so that is actually a taking of people’s property rights, by the sound of it. I’m not quite sure how people are going to be compensated for that if that’s going to be compensation such as under the Public Works Act, and I’m sure we’re going to tease out some of the details and whether or not that’s going to be a legitimate compensation if land had been bought or retained by private ownership because of a wish to and, certainly, an understanding of an uplift in land values. I think we need to test that out a bit more.

One of the things is I think that the land is going to have to be disposed of under the bill, if it goes through, without it being required to be offered back to the former owner if certain housing or urban renewal works have not been completed on the land. That is quite different from the Public Works Act. Some of us will remember and recall the issue of the Raglan golf course issue, which brought to bear the issues around the compulsory taking of land for defence purposes that occurred during, before, and after World War II. Thankfully, I was not actually alive at that time, but I think it is important to remember that by not returning the land to the iwi whose land had been taken, that actually meant that it created a tremendous grievance. Those of you who recall it will know that Eva Rickard came to prominence at that time as a leader of her people. So I think it’s really unfair for Kāinga Ora to be able to take land, not use it for the purposes for which it has been taken, and then not sell it back, or dispose of it back. So I think that’s something that we’re going to actually have to look at quite a lot in select committee.

When I look at this bill, too, I think it’s great to think that a Government can do all these things, except I say to the House that if you think that this Government can do that, I give you KiwiBuild. See, that was a Government plan that was going to build 100,000 houses in 10 years, and so far they’ve been able to buy off developers, I think, from average, it’s now 290, as opposed to 100,000, or even 1,000 or even—yeah, even 1,000. I mean, it’s really not a great record, and it’s taken the Government two years to work out that the Resource Management Act needs to be changed. It’s actually referred to in here that there’s going to have to be some changes made.

But I think one of the things that gets me with this bill is that—and the National Party is supporting the Urban Development Bill, for the first reading anyway—a lot of development is not necessarily large-scale development. Yes, we do need to have large-scale development, and that’s very important. If we can speed up the processes and cut all the costs—so much the cost of it—and the unnecessary hand-wringing that goes on every time anyone tries to do anything on their own property these days, then that could be a very good thing, and that’s why we would be supporting it. But there’s nothing that I can see in this bill for people who might be small developers. This bill seems to imply or state that a developer who has land and wants to do a development would have to go to the Kāinga Ora people and ask them if they can be part of their Kāinga Ora scheme, which seems to me all a bit messy, really. It’s starting to look awfully like the Provincial Growth Fund—like you wonder who it is you’re supposed to be convincing, and whether or not it’s going to be feasible. I mean, who are these people making these decisions? How much property development experience do they have? What do they know about it?

I heard the Minister before talking all about the Unitec development, which was supposed to put in 5,000 new homes. Well, how many have been built? Well, that would be none. And what’s the big issue there? Is it transport? Not so much—it is really, but it’s not so much. The big issue there is that the land itself and the area it is does not have separation of sewerage and stormwater. So 5,000 families doing what families do and it all going out in to the Waitematā Harbour is not a good thing, and this Government seems to think that having the Kāinga Ora people do it will suddenly change that. I think someone’s going to have to pay for that separation, and I don’t see anything in here that says it’s going to happen.

So these are not easy answers, but we will support the bill to the first reading. I really look forward to the submissions on this bill in the select committee. I think that we, in Opposition, will have lots of really interesting questions, and I’m looking forward to some answers that make more sense than the KiwiBuild debacle that we’ve just had two years of. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

That was a poor speech from Judith Collins. But this is a great bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

💬 Matt Doocey: A bit like his career—short and sharp.

Very. I wanted to return to that topic that my colleague the Hon Judith Collins was just mentioning. I just can’t understand why it’s taken all this time to be talking about this bill, when you’ve got that dog-tucker, that hoax, that flop of KiwiBuild that just has not done anything, yet here was a bill that we were promoting when we were in Government. In fact, we even sent it to the Productivity Commission to have a bit of a look at, and they came back and said, “Yes, we should be doing this. We should be establishing an urban development authority.”, and we were all ready to do it. All this was laid out for this Government when it came into power, and it’s taken them until December 2019 to actually get to a point where we can stand up and start talking about it.

I just find it remarkable for a Government that talked about a year of delivery and here we are in the last month of the year, and yet it’s still at a stage where we’re just starting to talk about this first reading. Normally, a bill like this takes about six months to go through, so it’ll be just before we go to the polls and they’ll be able to say, “Yes, we put in the legislation, but we haven’t done anything else.”

Of course, urban development authorities (UDAs) have a lot of success around the world, and that’s why we promoted them. You know, we’ve seen the impact of them in places like Melbourne, London, Sydney, and Tokyo—a whole stack of places—where they’ve been used to, basically, take areas of cities that have gone into degradation, that are unusable, and that are often at a stage where they are rundown. This is where a UDA can come in, can start looking at the whole area—normally, they’re quite large areas—look at the master-planning of them, and not just about how they’re going to build houses but how they’re going to do streets, how they’re going to do all the associated community infrastructure, and how they’re going to pull it together to make a community. That is where they worked really successfully overseas.

It’s another way to actually help how we’re going to build more houses in New Zealand, and, of course, that’s the bit that we find so worrying. Just returning to that topic, we left a pipeline of 27,000 homes when we left office, and—

💬 Dan Bidois: That’s a good pipeline.

—it was a superb pipeline—yet here we are, at this juncture, at just over two years, and, as I’ve said before and as Judith Collins mentioned before, we have hardly made any progress in creating new houses in New Zealand.

This urban development authority does have wide-ranging powers. For instance, it has the ability to override, add to, or suspend provisions of the Resource Management Act (RMA) plans or policy statements in the development plan that applies to the project area. So that’s a pretty strong power to actually cut across RMA processes and also, effectively, unitary plan processes of cities. It also has the ability to act as a consent authority. That’s interesting, because already this group that we’re talking about here that’s going to be formed has been out nicking—and I use that word; it’s paying a lot more than Auckland Council can afford—to acquire or to get the best of the consenting officers out of Auckland Council to come into this entity. I think that’s wrong, because that is just purely robbing the Auckland Council of its best staff and paying them more to come across to be able to do this work. Why shouldn’t they be left at Auckland Council? This is a type of entity that should be training its own and adding to the sum total of building consent officers in New Zealand, not taking them from another council and trying to fast track its own arrangements.

It’s also got the ability to use funding tools for infrastructure—and that’s part of it; you know, sewerage, and we talked about roading and all that sort of stuff—levy targeted rates and development contributions, build and change infrastructure, and reconfigure reserves. Those are all wide-ranging powers, and they are necessary, but they’ve got to be implemented and used wisely if you’re going to create this. Of course, the success of these types of entities is in having people who are very experienced in doing these types of development and who have wonderful and well-honed commercial skills, because, essentially, the value is created in the master plan, and if you muck that up, that’s where these things can turn pear-shaped.

I just think the thing about this is that this deals with one element of trying to help with new building, but the issue is a much more central issue. The Hon Jenny Salesa, who introduced this bill, should be much more focused on fixing up the existing building construction rules around more people moving into the area, fixing up the rules around allowing better products, allowing better planning, and all that sort of stuff, because that’s what needs to be fixed up, and not just trying to create this new entity and resource it much more superiorly than other people and developers in the country are given access to. I think that is wrong. They should be dealing with the central issue of the broken system that has been around for a while, and Minister Twyford hasn’t done anything about it in two years’ time.

It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First on this Urban Development Bill, as we look to enable Kāinga Ora to lead some of these large, master-planned developments where we can turn some of these brownfield and greyfield sites into much-needed housing. One of the great handicaps that we’ve come into in this Government is a housing crisis, and we’ve needed to take some pretty bold steps and try some things. Some things have worked better than others, obviously, but we need almost a Think Big - type arrangement. It’s almost the second coming of Muldoon, this sort of stuff, with cutting through some process and getting on with building some houses.

A lot of the root cause of a lot of our social ills is the fact that we haven’t got enough good houses, affordable houses. It’s the absolute foundation stone of our society. So we need to bring some measures in. Of course, the Productivity Commission has done number of reports. It’s identified our having an urban development authority like this as a key plank to ramping up our housing.

Of course, we’ve got a record number of consents and building going on out there at the moment, which is great, but we’ve got so much catch-up to do. So there’s some 30-year planning going on here—long overdue—and it’s a wee bit galling to sit back and listen to this “woulda, shoulda, coulda” over there. We’re actually getting on and doing it and getting these big, master-plan developments up where you’re looking at things like the three waters and transport hubs and looking at the whole package as we look to futureproof our cities.

There are a lot of powers in this, so the select committee will have some work to do—the power to levy local residents, for example. Councils will be very interested, and I’m sure they will be submitting on this through Local Government New Zealand. So New Zealand First will be looking forward to seeing how that all plays out, but this is a great enabler for the Government to get on and continue to fix our housing crisis. Thank you.

It’s a great privilege to be able to speak in the first reading of the Urban Development Bill. I was waiting for the member Mark Patterson to break out his Rob Muldoon voice there. I would have loved to have heard a bit of that on a Tuesday night—but for another time.

We’re here today to discuss a very important issue, and that is the urban development authorities. This bill, basically, provides a framework for these authorities so that we can build houses. After two years of this Government and two years of non-delivery in this area, it seems they are finally wanting to get a move on in their year of delivery.

This bill is a bill that we’ll be supporting. It is a bill that is a long time waiting for this House, and, essentially, it’s an omnibus bill that provides the Crown—or Kāinga Ora, which is, essentially, Housing New Zealand. It’s been renamed Kāinga Ora. It, basically, enables Kāinga Ora to look at designated zones throughout the country and treat those as development areas and then fast track their processes for building homes. So that is something I think is really important.

Of course, to address housing in New Zealand, there is really only one way to address housing, and that is to build more houses. The thing that I am interested in is that we’ve actually got a bill here that is developing a workaround on current legislation. That actually exemplifies the need to look at the existing regulations—in particular, the Resource Management Act (RMA)—and to speed up that process. This bill, in itself—all this is doing is actually working around the current rules that we have because they’re so onerous and cumbersome, and these housing developments need to get a move on in that support.

So the National Party supports this bill. We support this bill because, ultimately, we want to see more houses built in this country. We do have some reservations, though, and we’ll be discussing those in the select committee process.

But I want to talk about what National was doing under the previous Government in this area, because I think National has got a proud record in this area. We established the Hobsonville Land Co. They were helping Housing New Zealand to provide more homes more easily through these designated housing areas. You can look no further than my own electorate, my fantastic electorate of Northcote, where we had the Northcote redevelopment project, which is still going on now. I’m very grateful that this Government hasn’t abolished that project.

This project is essentially going to put 1,500 new homes on to the housing market. Of those, 500 will be Housing New Zealand, or what we’re calling now Kāinga Ora; 500 will be what we were calling at the time income-related, and Phil Twyford has gone and called those KiwiBuild; and then the final 500 will be sold at private-market value. So this is, in fact, a perfect example of these designated areas where these urban development authorities can work to speed up the regulations and speed up the consenting processes, the building consents, and the resource consents—the dealing with the bureaucracy of local government and central government—and I think that that is a proud record that we stand on here with respect to that.

Let’s face it: KiwiBuild has been a fail—am I right?

💬 Hon Members: That’s right.

That’s right. KiwiBuild has been an absolute failure, and we need to look at other ways to actually speed up the development process for homes. This bill, through the urban development authorities, will, in fact, achieve that. But I think we do need to revisit the RMA, because this bill is based on workarounds to the RMA, and we’ve already committed, on this side of the House, to tackle that problem head-on. We’ve heard a bit of rhetoric and platitudes from the other side but no firm commitments. You know, we’re getting on and doing the policy work in Opposition because we know that the issue of building of houses in New Zealand is an important issue, and National takes this issue very seriously. So we commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I’m pleased to speak in support of the Urban Development Bill from a Green Party perspective.

It is interesting that the National Party, on the one hand, say they are supporting this bill, and then they are grumbling about it. The National Party doesn’t recognise that it had nine years in Government to do something about housing, but instead it failed to recognise that we had a crisis, and that’s what we have inherited. It doesn’t recognise that it was under this Government and the legislation that was passed by Parliament—the Kāinga Ora–Homes and Communities Bill—where we wound back the ability of the Government to sell off State housing, which was what the former National Government was doing, compounding the housing crisis.

National speakers don’t recognise, either, that they had nine years to deal with an urban development authority—to establish one. What we got was a discussion paper from the Hon Dr Nick Smith which had very strong powers in it and which didn’t have many of the protections for good process and community involvement that this bill has. That is why it has taken two years here, because there has been a lot of work by the Government in thinking carefully through how we expedite housing and how we get effective urban development which integrates with public transport to provide livable communities. That is why there’s the detail in this quite thick bill about how we go about doing that.

The previous speakers from National have talked about special housing areas. They totally fail to realise that the way in which special housing areas were able to be established without any opportunity for community input have created the situation that we have in places like Ihumātao, where there wasn’t an opportunity for the community to have a say on whether there should be that sort of housing development.

So this bill is a significant piece of legislation. It gives Kāinga Ora the power to act as a single-point developer. It does include the powers of compulsory acquisition of land, but unlike the Hon Judith Collins’ suggesting that private property rights would be overridden, the provisions that apply in the Public Works Act which require compensation if there is compulsory acquisition—those sort of provisions will continue to apply, so there will be compensation.

It does establish a bespoke planning and consenting process. That enables some of the more cumbersome issues with the Resource Management Act (RMA) to be worked around. Yes, it is a separate piece of legislation. It is not just a workaround, because, as Mr Bidois didn’t recognise, this Government is engaged in a big reform of the RMA. There’s been legislation to fix up the problems that National created by shutting out the opportunity for the public to make submissions in a lot of areas, and there is a panel that is actually looking at much more comprehensive reform. But this bill, with its bespoke planning process, where a special development project is established, with that going through an Order in Council process, and then there being an independent hearing panel, which is set up to look at public submissions and then make a recommendation back to the Minister—that enables public input.

The bill has a number of protections, including for Māori land, including for reserves, so that if any reserve land is to be included in a special development project area, then the consent of the Minister of Conservation is required. It also provides for local authorities to be involved. It provides for engagement with Māori to ensure that their aspirations for urban development are recognised. So it is creating a good process, which will enable houses to be built and liveable cities to become more dense in terms of housing settlement, and for that to be integrated with transport to ensure that there is good amenity provided, as well, through a streamlined process through this independent panel being able to make recommendations to the Minister.

We do have areas where there are multiple landowners, and that’s why the streamlined process is important: the ability to bring those landholdings together through the ability to use compulsory acquisition powers; the ability to steer development in the round so that where infrastructure like three waters needs to be upgraded, that can be done; and the ability to levy homeowners who buy into that development to actually meet those infrastructure costs, rather than not doing that investment and infrastructure because there’s no funding to pay for it. So it does allow the quite complex, and the quite transformational development that we need in our cities and towns. It is a solidly worked through piece of legislation. I look forward to the submission process to improve it, but the Green Party supports the bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. We do, on this side of the House, see the value in the approach that the Government’s taking with this particular Urban Development Bill, but we have reservations. So if Eugenie Sage, the previous speaker, wonders why we support—and then I think she used the term “grumpy”. We’re grumpy because that’s exactly our role—to make sure that we interrogate all matters of every piece of legislation. There are some aspects where we will be grumpy about it, and rightly so, because we need to make sure we get this right. So we’ve got a baseline position of sending this to a select committee, making sure that we understand exactly what the tool kit of powers is that is being given over to Kāinga Ora, and then we will enjoy seeing how different submissions and different stakeholders and groups come to the process and outline their positive comments and also where they see challenges.

Now, on the challenges there are four reservations that I’ll just quickly highlight. Some of them are coming from initial responses from stakeholders. Some of them are probably more from our side of the tracks, but none the less they’ll be four areas we would like to see and interrogate in the select committee process.

The first is that the process for establishing an SDP, which is a specified development project, is lengthy. So we want assurances, and then to look around for how that could be actually streamlined further. It’s one thing to agree on these SPVs—the special purpose vehicles—being created, but it’s another to actually take a long time to get it created. The other is that private developers could be consulted more, or, actually, at all, during the initial assessment stage to get that industry buy-in. That’s another issue that could be looked at and interrogated more. The third would be looking at how it bypasses smaller developers. If we’re really looking at a comprehensive response to housing in New Zealand, where and how could smaller developers be included?

Then the other would be—and I think the Government should stump up with this—is this really just a way of avoiding Resource Management Act (RMA) reform? Where is the evidence around RMA reform in a considered approach to that, because we know there’s not one answer. It’s not just about this particular bill. There’s also RMA reform sorely needed, and we’d love to see the Government’s time line on that.

We’re supporting this bill through to the next stage. Thank you, Mr Speaker. If the aim is for certainty, simplicity, and for a coordinated approach, then we do need to see some other answers.

This is a split call.

Kia ora, e Te Mana Whakawā. He pire tino mīharo tēnei, kua tautoko au i tēnei pire ki Te Whare. Kia ora.

[Greetings Mr Speaker. This is a marvellous bill; I support this bill to the House. Thank you.]

Tim van de Molen—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I find it’s quite an interesting change in direction that the Government’s taking with their approach to legislation tonight—merely contributing a manner of a few seconds per call. It’s quite a change from the tack they’ve taken over the last wee while, where they’ve been filibustering consistently their own legislation with clearly no pipeline of work ahead of them. But now, I guess, with Christmas in sight, they’ve stuffed the Order Paper, or Christmas stocking, as it may be, with enough bills to tide them over in the hope that the officials will do the rest of the work in January while they’re all on holiday.

So here we are on this Urban Development Bill, at first reading—Kāinga Ora. In principle, it’s not a bad idea, and it actually makes up for the fact that the Government came riding in on their high horse, claiming to be about to solve the housing crisis. They’d build 100,000 homes and KiwiBuild would be the saviour for all and sundry, and away we’d go—sunshine, lollipops, and unicorns. But, in reality, it’s proved to be much more difficult than they’d anticipated. I suppose after nine years in the wilderness, they’ve kind of lost touch with how to do these things, and when they actually got the opportunity, they found there were many complex elements that were beyond what they had anticipated initially. So, consequently, we’ve seen KiwiBuild fail miserably.

Now, we’re seeing the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, which was actually a significant piece of work that does need to be done. In Opposition, the National Party is working hard on that and we will have a comprehensive solution or proposal for that. But what we’re seeing this time from the Government now is that they have realised there does need to be some change to the RMA, but, actually, they have set up another working group, kicked the can down the road, and then they don’t have to deal with it before the election.

So this is a temporary option to try and demonstrate that they are doing something, but, actually, it’s not much. However, the bones of it are not bad. So, on that basis, we are prepared to support it at its first reading to get it to select committee, to try and kick it into a better shape, and to help this Government out, yet again, with their failed legislation pipeline.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity just to take a very short call following on from Tim van de Molen, the person who basically used a lot of words to say that they agree with what we’re doing. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Oh, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I remember a time when this Government used to come to the House and speak positively about their bills. They would come down, Minister after Minister, and speak for 10-minute calls and fill up the House for hours on end, and now they’ve run out of steam. They’ve given up. They’re not even confident enough to come down and back their own bills. And the gall to have Mark Patterson stand up there tonight and say “Oh yeah, we need to free up land.”! It’s like Back to the Future, because this Government actually had a proven formula and it was called the rebuild after the Canterbury earthquakes, because what we learnt in the Greater Christchurch region was that if you free up land, it increases supply, which equals demand.

The issue is not about building the houses, because they learnt that—that failed socialist experiment called KiwiBuild. Now, we took Simon Bridges into a development in my electorate where we had private builders building next to KiwiBuild a four double-bedroom, internal garage, high-spec house. They were selling cheaper than KiwiBuild.

This is what that party does in Opposition. The failure of a Labour Government is that when they’re in Opposition, their only catchcry is “Get us in Government and we’ll solve it.” They don’t know how to and they have no plan, but all they say is “Get us in Government.” Then you have Phil Twyford, the housing Minister, who turns up and says, “Well, if it was that easy, the last Government would have done it.” Well, that’s exactly the point—that’s why we said it was not easy.

It was a complex issue, but they made it a big issue. They said housing was their No. 1 one issue, and here we are, two years in, and we’re at the first reading of the Urban Development Bill. They’re so confident of their own bill, that they have been drafting for two long years, and they turn up and speak for five or 10 seconds as their contribution.

They are learning. This Government is a social experiment that is failing, and the real people that are going to be affected by this are hard-working New Zealanders.

In fact, they had the formula. They knew from Canterbury—from the experience there—that the housing affordability issue was not to do with the cost of housing; it was to do with the cost of land. Here we finally have it, the “Back to the Future Bill”, that finally acknowledges that that was the issue. It’s taken two years—two years—in the year of delivery. They can get meat plastics banned before they can do anything about housing affordability. This Government is a failed socialist experiment.

Kia ora, e Te Mana Whakawā. This is socialism in action and it is our own indigenous socialism and it’s the best kind. I won’t take long because it doesn’t take long to sing the praises of this Government because they are so obvious.

There are only five things I want to say. At last we’ve got a Government who will bring all of infrastructure together and won’t make a piecemeal approach. We’ll put transport, housing, infrastructure, and waste water all together because that’s what we need to do. Secondly, this is genuine streamlining through special development areas and specified development projects that we can really get on with and make a real difference for ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders. Thirdly, there will be real community consultation here, real engagement, and not just engagement with vested interests, but with communities on the ground. Fourthly—and really importantly—there will be genuine protection of Māori interests, Māori engagement, and special protection of Māori customary land so that we can ensure that Māori can meet their aspirations in respect of housing needs. Lastly, there is the ability to acquire land and put it to best use so it isn’t speculated on and land-banked—for the people; not for land bankers and speculators.

This bill is an outstanding achievement for this Government. I commend it to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.