Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Just before I go into the merits of this bill, I really can’t ignore the attempt by the ACT Party to once again turn their back on their traditional viewpoint that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is part of the problem for the housing crisis. I find it incredible that they’ve turned their back upon that long history of their party and instead backed the interests of the Epsom electorate of their leader, and I think the National Party has actually wedged the ACT Party on this particular issue, because, actually, the ACT Party have got absolutely no credibility when it comes to the Resource Management Act and housing.

This Government is committed to ensuring that we offer more choice to Kiwis so that they can have a warm, dry, safe place to call home. This is especially important for our younger generation, our low-income and most vulnerable populations—disproportionately Māori—and our elderly, who increasingly are struggling to find affordable places to live in our largest cities.

The Government has worked across the Chamber with the National Party to develop this bill, and I believe it signals a stable and enduring policy for this very important aspect of housing policy. Now, there’ll be a lot of disagreement over other areas of housing policy, and there’s no grand accord being reached in respect of these issues. But in respect of this issue, across the two main parties of this Parliament representing the vast majority of the votes in this country, we now have agreement.

This bill allows for a greater supply of more affordable homes, predominantly three-storey townhouses and units. It will allow existing homeowners to renovate their properties more easily, it will better enable papa kāinga, and provide more options for renters, and yet the ACT Party opposes it. This will better meet the diverse physical and social needs of our communities, and yet the ACT Party opposes it. As countless overseas examples show us, denser rather than sprawling urban areas are essential to well-functioning, livable cities—up, not out—and yet the ACT Party opposes it. People living closer to their workplaces and the services they need will be served by this bill. It enables land infrastructure and associated investment to be used more productively and efficiently, and yet the ACT Party opposes it. We know from the cost-benefit analysis attached to the report—

💬 Simon Court: Six-year-old data—six-year-old data.

Well, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to know that infrastructure is more efficiently provided in a dense city than it is in a sprawling city, and the Infrastructure Commission nailed it when they came to the select committee and said that it is people being housed that cause infrastructure cost; not the shape of the city, predominantly.

We know that this will not only reduce the encroachment of the city ever further outwards, protecting the natural environment and the productive horticultural land that we rely upon for food production. We also know that within city, it will free up land for shared spaces because we’ll be using the other land more efficiently—things like parks. It’ll also enable lower-carbon lifestyles as it’s easier for people to get to their jobs, to their businesses, and to essential community services, and yet the ACT Party opposes it—and they’re still carping on the other side as if their position is in one iota justifiable, which it is not. This is going to bring new housing in existing neighbourhoods. It’ll help link people into their existing services and networks, and help them stay connected with their friends and family. It’ll bring vibrancy and new economic opportunities as we regenerate our urban areas for more inclusive cities as we grow.

At its core, the bill does two things. It accelerates the existing National Policy Statement (NPS) on Urban Development, and, secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it enhances the level of intensification that the NPS on Urban Development enjoins, and it also means that those opportunities will be spread across the city, including to Epsom, which is probably why the ACT Party opposes it.

Can I thank the chair of the committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage, and all the members of the Environment Committee for their consideration of the bill. They did a lot of work. Can I acknowledge those that took the time to make a submission: 966 in writing; 183 by video conference.

The committee has proposed several constructive amendments to the bill, which I welcome, and this will help ensure that it meets the needs of people who live in these cities. The recommendations will be reflected in a Supplementary Order Paper that’s already been provided to the select committee, and it’s already been published on the Ministry for the Environment website. It’s going through a final scrub at the Parliamentary Counsel Office before the formal version is tabled in the House.

I want to briefly outline the bill’s key provisions and the changes that are proposed. An intensification streamlined planning process modelled on the streamlined planning process introduced by the previous National Government is being used to make it faster and easier for councils to implement the national policy statement on urban development and these new medium-density residential standards (MDRS). It sets a series of steps out, and this process will require the 14 councils who, collectively, are the tier 1 urban areas—these are Auckland, Greater Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch—and it’ll bring forward the existing NPS on Urban Development by a year. It’ll also apply to tier 2 councils experiencing housing supply issues, and we’re expecting some of them, because there’s a lot of councils that really like this—they’re going to be lining up, saying, “Pick us as well.”, because they want to do the right thing by their people, even though the ACT Party opposes it. They acknowledge the acute housing need in their areas.

In addition, the committee has recommended that tier 3 councils can also request the Minister for the Environment to involve themselves. Also, the committee recommends that before the Minister for the Environment makes that decision, he—

💬 Simon Court: It’s you—it’s you.

That’s right—it’s me at the moment. It won’t always be me, you’ll be pleased to know. The committee has recommended consultation with the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti.

Tier 1 councils and any others that are included will have up until August 2022 to notify their intensification planning instruments. There are then processes set out in the bill that say that after notification, the proposed plan changes go to an independent hearing panel, which is appointed to hear public submissions on the council’s planning instrument, and then make recommendations back to the councils. Where there are disputes—[Member’s cellphone makes “boing, boing” sound]—they’re settled by the Minister for the Environment.

💬 Simon Court: That’s right—that’s what it sounds like when it hits the wall.

I think that was another commentary on the ACT Party, actually.

Having considered the submissions, the committee made some other recommendations. They’ve recommended that we broaden the scope of the streamlined planning process that’s being used so that they can make consequential changes that are complementary to the MDRS and the NPS urban de-intensification policies. They want us to clarify that existing plan provisions which are not inconsistent with the bill will continue to have effect. They make it clear that only specified standards in the new medium-density residential standard will have immediate effect, and other rules like updating financial contributions will be subject to some further consultation requirements.

In respect of the main other changes: as to the standards, populations of less than 5,000 people are being excluded, so the likes of Akaroa and other small townships and offshore islands aren’t included because they’re not as appropriate for this intensification. Also, there were submissions on some more standards, with one for glazing: a minimum of 20 percent will be required for street frontage of the dwellings. It has to be glazed to improve street safety and appearance.

A minimum of 20 percent of the site will be needed to be planted or grassed—this will also encourage existing trees to be protected—and the outdoor spaces can be grouped so that units can group their outdoor spaces to create a shared, larger outdoor space. There’s a slight change to front setbacks: they’re reduced so as to leave more land at the back, where most of the shared space or individual space will be, and the height to boundary is recommended to be changed. At four metres at the boundary, with a 60-degree recession plane, it, effectively, means that for every metre in, you go 2 metres up. That results in a net loss of intensification of only 4 percent, but it has a better outcome in respect of shading or sun.

The building height and coverage standards remain unchanged. There’s a recommendation from the committee that we include schools so that they can take advantage of these provisions without occupying all of their fields.

I recommend this bill to the House and I look forward to hearing other contributions.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

National continues to support this bill. We do so because, quite simply, this bill will do more to enable desperately needed new houses in this country than any other policy initiative initiated by this Labour-led Government.

We note, on our side of the House, that the bill that we will pass in this House must be very much improved from the legislation that was brought to the select committee, and we acknowledge the select committee process, which has brought about recommendations for more than 50 pages of amendments to improve this bill. I’m going to discuss those improvements in this contribution, but before I do so, I want to take the minds of the members in this House back to 2017, and I want you to recall the debates that were had then about what was termed at the time by one Jacinda Ardern as a housing crisis. I recall those debates, because I remember Bill English saying that, actually, until we addressed the restrictive land-use regulation that has burdened this country for so long—until we addressed that—we would continue to prevent housing supply. At that time, while National was putting forward ideas for reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA) that we now debate in this House today, it was Jacinda Ardern who said, “No, no. The solution is 100,000 KiwiBuild homes.”

Well, here we are, four years later, and the 100,000 KiwiBuild homes never eventuated, nor will they ever. Then there was the promise to tax overseas speculators, and that didn’t solve the housing crisis, either. Then we’ve had the punitive measures against landlords to change the ring-fencing of losses, to change interest deductibility rules, and to extend brightline tests, and that hasn’t helped, either. So we are the National Party and we have come to help, and this bill is a result of our desire to help this Government make the underlying reforms which are required to enable housing supply.

Let me turn to the select committee process because that has been, I think, an exemplar of how Parliament can work together to make legislation better. We had hundreds of submissions from experts, from local authorities, from residents’ associations—from people impacted by this bill. We gave those submissions detailed consideration. The select committee considering this bill has meet for more than 56 hours, and we have done so because we want this legislation to work as well as possible. I want to thank the submitters, whose observations and whose expertise will make sure that this bill can be much more enduring into the future. Their thoughts and their concerns have been addressed in a number of amendments which are in the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has discussed.

At its heart, this bill will support the supply of new dwellings. It creates greater rights to build for those with sections in our major urban areas and it will reduce the red tape, the cost, and the complexity that is too often associated with the resource consent process.

There are some key areas that have been changed as a result of our deliberations. This first is around design standards. We had many submitters come to the committee and say, “Yes to more housing, yes to more density in our urban areas, but let’s do it well.”

Across the committee, I think there was widespread agreement that we can do density well and we should do density well, and in order to service that goal, the committee are recommending some key changes: the introduction of landscaping requirements so that 20 percent of a section must be landscaped with new development, the introduction of glazing requirements so that houses facing the street have to have some windows, amending the proposed standards around outlook and outdoor living space requirements to enhance the livability and amenity of this denser housing, and—critically—a reduction in height in relation to boundary of new dwellings from what had been proposed in the original bill at 6 metres down to 4 metres. That is a pragmatic decision by the committee to make that recommendation. It recognises those who had concern about loss of sunlight and loss of amenity, but it does so in a way that will still allow more dwellings to be added much more easily than they can be today. I note also in relation to design standards that the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development have said that they will immediately begin developing a national medium-density design guide in consultation with local government and stakeholders to ensure that as we build more housing in our urban centres, we do so well.

The second area that the select committee focused on was ensuring that councils have the discretion to exclude those areas which are not suited to density of the sort proposed in the medium-density residential zone. Now, this is achieved in the bill via what are termed qualifying matters. These qualifying matters are really important for giving councils flexibility to manage development in certain areas where density may not be a good idea. So it’s for matters of national importance such as the natural character of the coastal environment, wetlands, lakes, and rivers, protection of outstanding natural features, landscapes, and historic heritage, management of significant risks from natural hazards, the requirement for the safe and efficient operation of infrastructure, and scope to identify other qualifying matters.

In the select committee process some submitters queried whether or not these qualifying matters would be able to be used in practice because of the information requirements required and the effort and resources needed. So what the amendments the committee has recommended propose is that councils don’t need to provide significant additional evidence to justify inclusion of specified qualifying matters. Instead, they can use that evaluation information that has been created through previous planning processes. I think that that is a critical clarification to have made. So, in practice, that would mean that where, for example, a council has previously identified a ponding area or an identified flood-flow path, then they can take the evidence of that and say, “That’s why we’re not having density here.”

A third issue that the select committee has addressed is around infrastructure, and I want to start by saying something really simple on this—because it has gone over the heads of some—which is this: the actual increased demand for infrastructure results from population increase. Nothing in this bill in and of itself will mean population increase. What this bill will potentially do is shift the pattern of development and the number of dwellings. In fact, in an ideal world, what this bill could result in is less overcrowded houses and more dwellings, which wouldn’t actually increase infrastructure demand. But we have added some additional provisions. One is to allow councils to amend their district-wide planning provisions for things like stormwater management, fencing, earthworks, and infrastructure, and allowing them to use those district-wide provisions to set standards for those matters and allowing local councils to recalibrate how they use financial contribution tools.

Finally, another critical area of study for the select committee was around the transitional provisions for private plan changes that are being facilitated in order to allow greenfields development. Now, here in the National Party, we believe there is still a huge amount of scope in New Zealand for greenfields housing development. We say yes to density. We also say yes to greenfields development. So it has been important to us that this bill not stall private plan changes that are under way, and, in fact, it was the intent of the majority of the committee that at best, this bill could actually accelerate those sorts of plan changes. So there have been changes to the transitional provisions in this bill to clarify that that is the case, and we note that some plan change applicants may, in fact, see this bill as an opportunity to increase the number of dwellings within their proposal.

This is a bill which will make a difference, not just next year or the year after; this is a bill that will allow for more responsive housing supply in New Zealand for generations to come. It is appropriate that the select committee have studied the details carefully and have made a number of very thoughtful amendments. National is proud to support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to be speaking on the second reading of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. As we’ve heard from the previous speakers, we do have a housing shortage in New Zealand and in our bigger cities, and the best place to put people is in centres close to jobs. However, very often those centres close to the jobs are zoned for a single house, and this bill will change that in many different places.

Before going into that, though, I want to thank the chair of the committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage. She is a Green Party member, and we’re talking a lot about a bipartisan accord here from across the House, and that is with Labour and National. Not everything that has been agreed to by National and Labour is agreed to by the Greens, and you see that in the report from the select committee, but I really want to thank her for her incredible and constructive chairing in getting us through what was a lot of work in a very short time frame.

As you’ve heard, we’ve heard from a lot of submitters. We heard from them on a Saturday. We had 183 oral submissions and almost 32 hours of hearings. As we’ve been hearing, this is bipartisan, but the members in the committee—I must admit to perhaps being the most vocal—have asked a lot of questions of advisers and of submitters because we really did want to do our best to bring back as good a bill as we possibly could. So we had 24 hours of private consideration within the select committee.

So what this bill does—and I think it’s important. Often in the media, we’re talking about this really in relation to those medium-density residential standards that will apply to residential zones in these tier 1 cities, and we’ve heard from the previous speaker about what they do and some suggested changes to those. But what it also does is it increases the speed at which the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) will be implemented for these councils. That is a very important urban planning tool because it really allows for a lot of densification intensification around those centre areas.

How it does this, and this is something that we worked a lot on in the select committee, is that there’s an intensification planning instrument—an IPI—and this instrument is what the councils will develop to implement both the NPS-UD and also the medium-density residential standards. The NPS-UD won’t always apply to a residential zone, but where it does apply to a residential zone, then the medium-density residential standards will be the underlying density zoning, and we’ve improved that link in our recommendations throughout the select committee report.

We’ve also improved the link to the plans that already exist and the different planning provisions that might relate to things that we’re calling related provisions—the things like fences and earthworks and hazards. As the previous speaker, Nicola Willis, also said, there are a lot of qualifying matters that can be brought across from plans as well. So there’ll be a lot of clarification in the Supplementary Order Paper that Minister Parker referred to, and that is now available online.

We also extended that IPI to including provision for papa kāinga provisions, and already in the bill as introduced was the financial contributions aspect of that. In the select committee as well, as the previous speaker just said, we were working very hard on the transitional provisions because we heard from a lot of councils and developers that the way the bill was introduced might actually set back some good work that’s being done to allow more intensification. We didn’t want to do that, so there are lots of amendments around those transitional provisions. Another change is to that definition of “residential zone” so that it’s not going to apply to offshore islands or small townships like Oxford or Akaroa.

This bill—often people say it’s going to lead to slum housing. Issues of the quality of a building are in the Building Act and the building code, not in the Resource Management Act, so I want to say that.

I look forward to the committee stage of this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in the second reading of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to endorse the previous speakers on both sides of the House so far in this debate for their informed and articulate contributions to this second reading debate, because this is something of significance in terms of a bipartisan approach to solving the housing dilemma that has been confronting our country now for far too many years and, if we are not careful as parliamentarians, it will continue to confront us and future generations for years to come.

So, on this side of the House, we are supporting this legislation because, simply, this is, effectively, National Party policy and it’s the sort of thing that we have campaigned on now for several elections. Indeed, as we go through this second reading, it’s worth recalling and considering what the select committee heard, and the submission that was made by a lot of submitters was that the primary problem has been red tape and a confused, expensive, and convoluted Resource Management Act process that has made the ability to intensify housing in our urban centres extremely difficult. It’s made it expensive and time-consuming, and so, largely, the result of that has been that any development that has occurred has been, essentially, the preserve of the large professional developers.

What this bill seeks to do is actually unlock the potential for intensification literally in people’s backyards, and that’s a good thing. It’s good because what it means is that for property owners, they are going to be able to release the capital asset and equity in their property, and in terms of intensifying and building maybe a granny flat or a further dwelling on the backyard of their property, this legislation is going to make that doable. It’s going to make it easier, it’s going to make it quicker, and they’re going to be able to reap the rewards of that investment equity returned to them while, at the same time, increasing the density of dwellings in our major urban centres.

We heard a number of submitters who provided us with terrific examples of quality, intensive, domestic housing developments in other cities around the world. In fact, some of the most famous and livable cities in the world have exactly the type of dwelling that this bill envisages being built in our tier 1 council areas, and some tier 2 ones if they want it.

The legislation will even provide for other councils, if they want to make application, to participate in the mechanisms that this legislation provides as well. That too is a good thing, because what this bill is all about is—the key is in the name—enabling houses to be built: enabling housing supply and other matters. So the other matters include qualifying matters—the sorts of things that councils and residents in the leafy suburbs want to protect. They want to protect the amenity value. They want to protect historic areas within the area that provide character, and those things are important. So this piece of legislation provides that.

We heard from a very large number of submitters in a short period of time, and they included some 966 submissions—so, nearly a thousand—and more than a thousand documents presented to the select committee in a short period of time. We spent a lot of hours on Zoom meetings and sometimes, as the deputy chair of the Environment Committee said, even on a Saturday. But that was because we wanted to hear from each and every submitter that wanted to participate, and I want to join with the deputy chair of the committee in congratulating the chair of the committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for the manner and style that she chaired this committee with. Now, it’s not often that you’ll hear me praising a Green Party member in this Chamber, but I have to say that she did an outstanding job under sometimes quite time-constrained challenges. She did a very, very good job, and so I give her credit for that.

Giving property owners the right to build is a fundamental National Party principle, because we on this side of the House believe in private property rights, and it’s been fascinating to see some parties that we thought believed in private property rights actually dancing on the head of a pin and trying to find every possible reason not to support this legislation. It’s been a very edifying, eye-opening example of, I guess, parish pump politics at its not necessarily best, and others will probably speak about that. Certainly, commentators have noticed the academic gymnastics being performed by one party in this House as they try to justify their position in opposition to building houses and to solving and providing enduring cross-party legislation that will give certainty not only to property owners but to councils, to developers, and to the people who are building and investing in infrastructure around our urban centres. They need to know that the two major parties in this Parliament support and back this legislation, and that gives them certainty. It gives them certainty of investment, certainty of planning, and certainty around the future of what they want to do on their property, in their neighbourhood, in their towns, and in their cities.

So, on this side of the House, we wanted to thank the submitters, who provided an enormous range of quality submissions, very well-thought-out and very well presented. The bill has come back from select committee as a significantly improved piece of legislation to the one that was debated in this House at first reading, and that’s how it should work in this Parliament. So, on this side of the House, we support the second reading, and we will do so through to the third reading.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the call. This has been a labour of love, actually, working on Saturdays and listening to submitters present. I echo the thoughts of everybody else here who’s talked about the depth of experience that came forward in those submissions. Yes, this is a truncated process, and, yes, this is a quick time frame, but, actually, the people who really care about this space, they fronted up. They wanted some time in front of the committee and we gave them their time and we asked them questions, and we made sure that we took all of those recommendations and we put it into this report. So I’m proud to stand here and talk about this report and the various measures that we’ve taken as a committee to make sure that we’re navigating through a really decent piece of legislation.

Māori are at the sharp end of the housing insecurity spectrum, and it’s for this reason and with that lens that I’ve participated in this. I look to my own hometown of Rotorua and I see the complete housing supply that we don’t have, the real need to be able to build more houses, and the real need to be able to also build in an appropriate cultural way too. I want to expand on that just a little bit, because our planning laws here in New Zealand, they’re like everything else that was built in this country: they’re from a very colonial paradigm. If we look back to how Māori used to live, actually it was many to a section. That was called a papa kāinga, and, actually, we saw less and less of those in all of the big State housing projects that have been built in the past. It was one family, one home. But that was, indeed, a time and place back in New Zealand’s history where we thought a little bit differently.

I’d like to think that we’re a little bit more educated and a little bit more intelligent now, and what this bill does is it actually opens up the opportunity for multigenerational living. That’s what this does, and I use my own example. Back home, I live upstairs; I’ve got my mum and dad living downstairs. Our son gets to hang out with his nan and his koro regularly. On a daily basis, he gets to go and check in with them.

I’m a big fan of intergenerational living in the same space. When I go back home and I talk to our whānau Māori and they say, “We need more houses. How can we make sure that I’ve got my nan and my koro living with me and my moko over here who needs a house as well. How do we make sure that we do that on our land?” What this bill is going to do is it’s going to open it up for those whānau that are in our tier 1 councils—so our big cities—all around the country, but it’s also opening the door to some tier 2 and tier 3 councils that choose to go through the process as well.

We had a really strong submission from the Rotorua Lakes Council, who sat next to the Te Arawa Lakes Trust, who sat next to Te Tatau o Te Arawa partnership board, and together they said, “We are facing such an acute housing shortage in this city that, yes, we really, really want to be included in these changes. This is going to be great for big cities but it’s also going to be great for our city too because we know what the sharp end of the housing insecurity spectrum looks like. We know what homelessness looks like. We’re rich in land, but we need a bit of help with the planning laws to be able to enable housing that is culturally appropriate and able to have whānau living in the same space.”

I’m not going to talk too long on this. Suffice to say that we did put a lot of effort into this, and I want to again echo the bipartisan nature of doing this. It’s a problem for the whole country. Housing is still the number one issue—housing and COVID-19. But housing is still one of those top issues that we face as a country all around Aotearoa. So this bill can’t come too soon, and for that reason I absolutely commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I’m pleased to speak on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The provisions in this bill will influence what sorts of homes people live in and the shape, texture, and pattern of urban neighbourhoods for decades. It’s a very important bill.

The Green Party is supporting the bill because we strongly support intensification of housing development and urban renewal. It can help us tackle our housing crisis. It can avoid urban sprawl and the loss of productive growing land. It can help reduce transport emissions and protect the climate. So the question is not whether to intensify; it’s how to do it well.

There was wide support for the intent of the bill in submissions, for that intention of improving housing choice and affordability and encouraging intensification in our cities to ensure that everyone has a warm, dry place to call home. There’s also widespread recognition in the submissions that we need to shift away from the single-housing typology to a much more diverse mix of housing types: apartments, terrace houses, flats, and several-storey units. But there were significant concerns with the medium-density residential standards and the way the bill cuts across the efforts of councils to implement the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. So I’d like to talk about some of the improvements through what was a very constructive and collaborative select committee process—and I thank members for their kind comments—and also highlight some areas where the Green Party thinks further changes are needed and where we will be tabling our Supplementary Order Papers at the committee stage.

So, first of all, some comments about the whole process. It’s very challenging to compress a normal six-month process for a bill into six weeks, especially with Tāmaki-makau-rau in the middle of an alert level 3 lockdown. Fast law is much less likely to be good law, because of the reduced time for the public to consider it, to consider any unanticipated consequences and any implementation issues. There’s been no consideration here, for example, on who will benefit from the uplift in land values that goes with increased development rights, and this was why we supported the ACT motion to remit the bill back to the select committee to allow further time to consider it. It was troubling that there was no prior engagement with local authorities, iwi and hapū, and stakeholders before the bill was introduced.

The regulatory impact statement was finished in May 2021, but there was seemingly a cone of silence around the bill. I don’t know whether that was driven by Ministers or by agencies, but where you fail to have engagement with key stakeholders, there’s often poor problem definition and a limited range of potential responses.

The Green Party’s got a really strong commitment to local democracy and appropriate decision-making.

We need a much more active and engaged partnership between central government and local government, and iwi and hapū in terms of the way our cities and towns develop, the way infrastructure develops, the investment in that, and public transport—all these things that shape our urban environments. That partnership between central government and local government was missing from the bill, and it is the poorer for that.

Councils presented their submissions very professionally, but I did detect quite considerable frustration about the lack of consultation and about how their knowledge and expertise about their communities and their places had not been recognised in the drafting of the bill, and their concerns too about the way in which allowing pepper-pot infill development right across virtually all residential zones in our largest cities cut across their work to actively implement the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. We had councils involved in Future Proof Waikato—Hamilton City Council, Tainui, Waipā and Waikato district councils—all saying that they’ve been really working with central government agencies like Waka Kotahi to plan future transport development, and this bill just sliced across that.

Despite having only three weeks to make submissions, I, like others, acknowledge the huge expertise and effort that councils, the urban design community, iwi, community organisations, individual renters, residents’ associations, and many others went to to make more than a thousand submissions, and there were 183 that appeared before us in hearings. Public submissions and select committee consideration always improves legislation, and it certainly did with this bill. But, despite that, the bill still has gaps. There are still potentially implementation issues, and because it has these medium-density residential standards, and these are the sort of detail that one would expect normally in the national planning standards or in regulations—the national environmental standards—the Green Party recommends that new Schedule 3A be taken out of the bill and gazetted as regulations so that if there are issues that arise, they can be more easily amended than primary legislation can through this House.

The bill should be welcomed by those who consider that existing plan policies and rules prevent innovation in housing form and the construction of more intensive flats, units, terraced houses, and apartments. It will succeed if it leads to more of those sorts of housing options, which provide a good daily living environment for their inhabitants, are close to public transport routes, are close to services such as shops and schools, and make our suburbs more interesting places to live. It will fail if its permissive approach to infill development blights neighbourhoods with poorly designed apartments and units which provide their inhabitants with cramped living spaces and damp living conditions, overwhelm their neighbours, and replace trees with expanses of concrete. Housing developers can design and build houses faster; it’ll be the question of whether, with no need for a resource consent, they do that and focus on maximising their commercial return, or they respect residents and neighbourhoods and provide really good quality buildings.

So the Green Party acknowledges the many changes that have been made through select committee, and other speakers have noted those—the increase in outdoor space, the increase in outlook, the requirement that buildings interact more with the street through the requirement for 20 percent of the frontage to be windows—but we are doing urban density with urgency, with the bill being passed, potentially, before Christmas. We are not doing anything to protect nature in our cities with any urgency. There has already been wholesale loss of urban trees in centres like Auckland, continuing with the loss of a century-old pōhutukawa just last week in Khyber Pass. This bill does nothing to protect urban trees. We have a 20 percent site being required to be landscaped in grass or plants. The Green Party would like to see that increased to 35 percent to provide a stronger incentive to retain urban trees, because all suburbs should be leafy suburbs and should have the benefits that trees provide in terms of shade, reducing the urban heat island effect, taking up stormwater and helping reduce peak stormwater flows, and improving air quality and buffering from noise.

We also need some other changes to the density standards. This bill is all about allowing infill development of three buildings of up to three stories as a permitted activity with no need for a resource consent right across residential zones. But, as someone who emailed me yesterday said, there are several thousand lots in Grey Lynn, for example, where some hope this bill will have some impact: “Almost all those sections are long skinny rectangles, exactly 40 feet or 12.2 metres wide. They are not suitable for three-storey development lot by lot.”

We need incentives in this bill to encourage developers to amalgamate single lots so that we can have larger-scale perimeter block development which allows areas to be set aside for green space, which has the buildings interacting much more with the street, and which provides the high quality of urban density that we see in many cities in Europe. But the bill doesn’t provide the standards to encourage developers to amalgamate the lots to do that, and the Green Party has a Supplementary Order Paper that will do that.

One of the other major issues is in relation to private plan changes. Yes, the medium-density residential standards will apply as an underlying zoning, but we believe there needs to be a requirement for an upzoning to be of this medium density so that we don’t get the cookie cutter, single-storey suburban sprawl that we’re seeing in Christchurch, in areas like Prebbleton, Lincoln, and Rolleston, with those private plan changes that don’t promote more dense living. So that is a major failing in the bill and one, again, that we would like to see National and Labour consider in our SOP. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s true that there is a problem with housing, and ACT is pleased to see that it’s acknowledged it is a supply issue. We need to get this right. There is a problem with housing affordability. It’s an intergenerational issue of fairness, opportunity, and overall welfare of people who cannot afford to buy a home. But this bill won’t solve these problems. As Minister Parker described when he spoke on the second reading, what he didn’t realise is that it’s actually possible to have better planning laws and still oppose this bill, which does nothing to improve planning laws and actually get more houses built.

We believe a bipartisan approach to solving issues is not a bad thing. But it would have been helpful, hearing that there was a regulatory impact statement back in May, to have actually taken that to the people who build houses and who develop land, and to the local government people, who could tell you about all the faults that they brought to the select committee and told us about over five days—in an awfully compressed period—when many of those people were working under level 3 lockdown conditions at homes with children at home and trying to manage businesses under those awful lockdown conditions.

Now, submitters were able to laser in on the problems with this bill, because they are glaringly obvious to practitioners and people who actually develop and build homes. They pointed out that poorly crafted deals hatched in secret between political rivals which lead to rushed law changes may have missed something, particularly when they’re brought to the House and pushed through under urgency. That is not the kind of lawmaking which is enduring and will actually fix housing supply.

Councils and developers actually pointed to issues like a lack of infrastructure that allows them to intensify in existing town centres close to the community services, where we understand more people should be living because that’s where it’s good to live. But the infrastructure is missing.

Hamilton, that relatively young city—a city of the future, even—actually lacks capacity for infrastructure in the older parts of the city, where they want to build up, but are severely constrained. They estimated $4 billion just to meet the intensification requirements for the existing National Policy Statement on Urban Development. But this Government has given them $320 million through the Housing Acceleration Fund. That’s less than a tenth of what they need to actually deliver the homes that could be built right now in Hamilton, so the Government appears to have its priorities wrong. That’s why ACT believes we actually need to reform infrastructure funding and financing in order to unlock land for housing. That is something we’ve campaigned on for years.

The submitters who came to the Environment Committee told us the same thing over and over again. We heard examples. We heard a Grey Lynn artist, of all people, bring up infrastructure in Grey Lynn as the reason why more homes couldn’t be built. She pointed to a project to separate hundred-year-old sewerage and stormwater as the reason why you couldn’t build more houses in Grey Lynn. That project’s 10 years overdue, and everybody who lives there knows you can’t swim anywhere around there because of the sewage overflows. So zoning to add thousands more potential homes is a complete waste of time, and it’s terrible for the environment.

We heard a developer tell us that if they want to put up the first five houses in the street and there’s a pipe big enough, they can connect, and all they pay is the standard development contribution. The guy who comes along with the next five is told “Sorry, there’s no more capacity. But if you upgrade the entire network in the street and maybe a bit further, and you spend a couple of million bucks doing it, we’ll let you build your five houses.” Well, guess how much that adds to the cost of a new dwelling? In some cases—not $85,000, like Auckland Council is asking for—hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Developers pointed out that their master plans already allow for mixed-use, higher-density apartments and terraces with an average density of around 40 homes per hectare. That’s very, very high by international standards. This bill means years of infrastructure planning and environmental and geotechnical investigations goes in the bin, because, by applying the medium-density residential standard to those developments, all of their infrastructure design, all of their planning, and all of their environmental discharge modelling goes in the bin and they can’t use it.

Hamish Anderson, from Adare group—he’s a guy who’s in charge of a 7,000 home development at Peacocke in the east of Hamilton. He estimated that this bill will delay, even if they go ahead and redesign, do all that stuff that this bill will allow them to do—and I see members opposite who sat on the committee with me shaking their heads, still in denial. Hamish Anderson said that this bill, through redesign, would cause a delay of 36 months and add up to $4 million for a development that’s literally months away from proceeding. Nigel McKenna, from the Templeton Group, formerly Todd Property, with $8 billion worth of projects in the pipeline, and Bill Loutit, from the Beachlands South consortium—which actually includes the Government’s own New Zealand Superannuation Fund as a major funder—told us exactly the same thing. Delay, delay; cost, cost—houses won’t be built any faster. In fact, this bill risks extinguishing development projects altogether.

The other thing they told us was that this bill appears to have been designed by planners for planners in central government, because the developers—all they want is access to fast-tracking, the same so-called privileges that the Government is according itself and these tier 1 councils, but these exclude private developers. They’ll be stuck with the existing Resource Management Act (RMA) processes, which can take years to progress plan changes.

They also pointed out something that is so perverse and confounding I had to ask a number of them to please repeat it, and that was that there’ll still be an RMA process that they have to go through. They’re going to have to go through two planning processes. Auckland Council said they’re going to have to set up a whole new department to run this new planning process in parallel to the RMA process they still have to go through. If Minister Parker thinks that supporting this bill will actually get more houses built and reduce red tape, well, unfortunately, Mr Parker, that’s not what’s going to happen.

Now, ACT asked the committee for more time to consider submissions and work to improve the bill. We want to make planning laws better so we can get more houses built. The National Party and the Labour Party voted down our motion. ACT asked the committee to please write to the Business Committee and seek to have infrastructure funding added to the bill and have the bill expanded to become and omnibus bill, but both the National Party and the Labour Party voted down ACT’s motion. Today, ACT proposed a motion to send the bill back to select committee for a full hearing because we do want to work to reduce red tape to get the bill right. The Government and the National Party voted that down, but we do appreciate the support from the Green Party for this proposal.

It’s clear that in this bill and the amendments, the urban design features are being negotiated away between the Government and the National Party. We know this because we can read about it almost hour by hour in the mainstream media, as the horse-trading about whether it is 6 metres or 5 metres or 4 metres in height to boundary, and all of these things are literally being negotiated in the media. Now, that’s not how good laws are made in a democracy. That’s not how enduring laws are made which actually solve really complex problems. As a civil engineer who came to Parliament to solve difficult problems, to find ways to change laws to get things built faster, to deliver infrastructure more affordably, and to reduce barriers to get stuff built, I was shocked. I am shocked. So were the submitters, so were the people who do want to get more stuff built—they were shocked.

Now, ACT has proposed a number of policies over the years, and it turns out many of the submitters to committee agree with us. We had Urban Auckland propose 50 percent GST sharing between central government and councils. We heard that—the Infrastructure Commission—private sector investment in the form of public-private partnerships would be very, very helpful to get more large-scale infrastructure built to free up the capacity for more housing. We heard that fast-tracked planning and consenting processes should be available not just to councils and Government departments like Kāinga Ora but to the private sector too.

ACT opposes this bill in its current form, but we do want to work to improve it. That’s our offer. Parliament needs to deliver a better—

The member’s time has expired.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to take a call. Even though there’s still a chance that the ACT Party could see some reason and an opportunity to cut some red tape, it seems as though that’s not going to be the case this evening.

I want to add to the chorus of thanks that has already been expressed by members of the House this evening, particularly to my colleagues on the Environment Committee for the bipartisanship approach to what is obviously a significant issue. But I also want to commend our chair, the Hon Eugenie Sage, who I think actually exudes much patience and fairness to all—even Mr Court as a member of the committee. Where perhaps others may have terminated the leeway a little bit earlier than our chair did, she certainly indicated some patience there.

But I also want to acknowledge the staff, because while members this evening have identified that we have spent some time dealing with this particular bill, I know that the staff from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, from the Ministry for the Environment, from Parliamentary Counsel Office, and also our select committee secretariat, alongside others, have spent more time than we have around this issue. So I want to acknowledge their significant contribution and support as well, alongside the submissions that we received from many, many people.

This bill will enable an increase in medium-density housing, and I’m pleased, actually, that it will provide an increase in that particular space, but more so in the area of affordability and variety in suburbs, particularly in our main urban areas. The select committee did consider a number of factors and made a number of recommendations, and I’m delighted to hear from the Minister this evening that he welcomes the hard work but also those suggestions as well. When I look at the medium-density residential standards and what they will provide, yes, they provide an opportunity in this bill to apply to tier 1 councils in our large urban areas but also to tier 2 councils and tier 3 councils if the Minister, upon application, is satisfied that there is an acute housing need. Obviously, there’s a process that needs to go alongside that.

So when I step back and think of the work that the select committee have done and look at what is in the report and in the bill and what is to come, this really is an enabling piece of legislation because it does cut red tape but it also will provide opportunities for many individuals and whānau in circumstances where currently they are constrained by restrictive council planning rules and approaches. These changes do not disadvantage councils who are already in a process that is seeking to modify, in a good way, medium-density, so having no disadvantage in that particular sphere or area is really important as well.

Finally, I want to touch on the urban design aspects, particularly around the minimum requirements for outdoor space. We’ve heard this evening that the select committee is recommending a minimum area for ground units of 20 square metres, but what I think is really helpful is the suggestion from the select committee that, actually, in some areas it is appropriate to have a communal approach to that, and to ensure that there is an opportunity for good urban design and form but also place-making, livability, and vitality so that people can actually come together.

So this does speed up the introduction of intensification policies as a result of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and that’s a good thing. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call.

I never thought I’d come to the House and hear the ACT Party passionately pleading for more rules to be inflicted on people in New Zealand. I’ve normally got quite a bit of time for Mr Court. I think he’s a very intelligent man who makes great contributions. But, man, oh man, where did that speech come from? Here we have a bill that is going to allow a whole lot more flexibility for people who want to use some of their surplus land or use a section that might be cleared for that purpose to create more houses for New Zealanders who desperately need them.

Look, I’ve heard all the talk from a lot of people who have said to me, “Well, what about all these boxes that have been built in Christchurch?” I’ve got to say to Eugenie Sage, go and have a look at the rules inflicted on the city by the regional council, because that’s what’s being built at the moment under the current rules. We have a city council there, of course, that has had its head in the sand literally for decades, not wanting to create more space for people to develop sections, and I think it’s got to a point after four years of absolute neglect from the Labour Party that we’ve had to come to this situation. So while there is certainly a bipartisan aspect to this bill, no one should think that it’s a willing party on all sides coming to the table.

So I’m very pleased that Nicola Willis has been able to negotiate some very reasonable changes in this bill. I understand a 50-point Supplementary Order Paper is coming that will make a difference to boundary offsets, will make a difference to height, will make a difference to the outdoor living space, and will encourage a better sort of garden-type arrangement inside these areas.

I’ve got to say, just on that score, in our city of Christchurch, we’ve got a council-owned organisation called Orion who run around the city with more chainsaws than you can shake a stick at, although why you’d ever shake a stick in front of a chainsaw is beyond me. They’re cutting down trees left, right, and centre for fear that the powerlines are going to get affected. So we’ve got a whole lot of things that go on from councils that just indicate a general level of incompetence and a general level of eye off the ball.

Earlier in the debate, the Hon David Parker made the extraordinary statement that the brightline test has done a wonderful job in containing house prices in this country. Well, let’s have a look at it. In the last 12 months, the average house price in New Zealand’s gone up by $150,000. So if someone in here, or anywhere in New Zealand, bought a house 12 months ago and sold it today, there’s $150,000 over and above the price they paid 12 months ago. They pay out their brightline tax and walk away with $100,000 profit. It’s great business, if you can get it, and the fact of the matter is that that is tax chasing a price.

Then you look at the tax content inside a brand new house. For a start, if it’s $700,000, there’s about $120,000 worth of GST and there’s profit tax on every input that goes into that house, as well as the PAYE for everyone who puts the thing together, so the Government does exceptionally well out of these things. It’s a massive tax take.

Then look at new subdivisions. Now, Mr Court spoke of the difficulty for one developer that’s out there and some of the extraordinary prices they have to pay to the council for the privilege of providing a rating base to the council by virtue of new titles. You look at it: the costs from local government inside that new house price is extraordinary. Add up that and the Government stuff, and it is a massive, massive part of that $700,000 to $800,000 average price, now, for a brand new, three-bedroom home somewhere in New Zealand, and not a home that might have been built in the 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, or before, on a much smaller site and in a much denser arrangement.

So what we have to recognise is that there is massive demand out there for new housing. New housing chases the price of existing housing, and unless there are these sorts of moves made that get some of those nutty planners out of the way and get councils starting to focus on what some of their core business should be, then it is absolutely essential that the Parliament takes a strong view on it. It won’t please everybody—I know that—but in the end, young people in this country have a right to live somewhere and have a right to some home ownership, and this is one way that we can ensure that they have at least a chance at that.

Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak in support of the second reading of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. When National can unite with Labour on one of the biggest challenges facing Aotearoa despite not having unity amongst themselves, it sends a very strong message that the housing crisis is something this Parliament is taking seriously. So I commend the intent of this bill, as one of the parts of the solution to housing supply, and the bipartisan nature that has come into its being.

We have seen analysis that suggests this bill leads up to 100,000 homes being built over the next eight years and prevents around $198 billion of wealth transfer to landlords and speculators, but we do have to ask what will this actually mean for the grassroots, for w’ānau on benefits, for those trying to break into the housing market, and those trying to become homeowners, because increasing housing supply is one thing, but who supplies that housing is another matter entirely. Without building more social and State houses, the best we can expect from this bill is to slow the increase in rents and lower the costs of homeownership by creating more competition for speculators and landlords. It will also make it easier for people to get into the private rental properties.

In other words, this is a capitalist solution to a problem that was caused by capitalism, and, as usual, it is the big property developers and landlords who are set to benefit the most from a crisis they created. It will do very little, if anything, to get more Māori into homeownership. So while Te Paati Māori are supporting this bill, we are supporting it as just one part of the solution. We are under no illusions that this falls far short of the holistic approach we need for housing in Aotearoa, especially for tangata w’enua.

Since 1986, the number of Māori forced to rent has increased by 88.3 percent. Seventy percent of Māori can’t afford homes and are living in rentals, one-third of Māori live in a house considered damp and/or overcrowded, Māori make up 50 percent of the waiting list for social housing, 30 percent of Māori pay rent that is over 30 percent of their weekly income, and 33 percent of Māori will shift residence every three years. At the same time, there were 191,646 unoccupied houses on census night 2018, and 38,000 of those ghost houses were in Tāmaki-makau-rau. I have said this all before, the party has said this all before, and we’ll keep on saying it until it sticks.

For the majority of w’ānau, finding an affordable house to rent, let alone a house to own, is currently completely unattainable. So while we stand in support of this bill as one small part of the package, it does not address the income inequality and systemic racism that is locking Māori out of the housing market. What is being done to address the fact that Pākehā have a net worth almost five times higher than Māori, while non-Māori have a 13 percent higher median wage; how does this help the 12,000 tangata w’enua who are homeless in their own home; and how will it see more Māori owning their homes when homeownership for Māori is at 26 percent, compared with 41 percent for non-Māori?

The Crown needs to recognise the severe disadvantage that Māori face in the housing market and immediately introduce a Māori housing package that includes targeted financial support schemes to help with deposits such as the old Māori Affairs loans in the past. They also need to address supply through building social housing.

We’ve heard a lot of positive talk about this new partnership between Labour and National, and we’d like to remind both parties that this is more of an affair than a monogamous relationship. The Crown already had a partner: it’s called tangata w’enua. All w’ānau have a right to a warm, leak-free, secure home. Every New Zealander knows there is a housing crisis. It is not just Māori who live in cars, garages, and under hedges. However, it is only when non-Māori also suffer in a housing crisis that the Government decides to do something.

For Māori, this housing crisis and all of the issues surrounding it is the most significant Treaty breach of today. It is time this Government treats it as such. This bill does not do that by any measure, but it will help renters with this done. Kia ora koutou katoa.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an honour and a privilege to make a brief contribution to debate on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the leadership of the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, and the leadership of Nicola Willis, and I congratulate the member on her new role, because it is with that leadership that we arrive here today at the second reading of this bill. I also want to acknowledge the leadership of the Environment Committee chair, the Hon Eugenie Sage, and her wisdom and her intelligence and her patience to deal with some of the members in our select committee. Of course, I want to also acknowledge the leadership of the deputy chair, Rachel Brooking, in terms of her intelligence and insights that she brings into here.

When I joined the select committee, there were only two acronyms that I really understood. There was the AUP, which was the Auckland Unitary Plan, and the RMA, the Resource Management Act. I have been schooled and my brain is still exploding. The ISPP, or the intensification streamlined planning process, requires the intensive planning instrument, or the IPI, and the NPS-UD, or the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and, of course, all those details we talked about in detail and the submitters submitted on them. One thing that I really like about what the select committee came out with is the new independent hearing panel, because the independent hearing panel must—must—have somebody on that panel who has knowledge of mātauranga Māori.

So the other word that I learnt, the new acronym, is the medium-density residential standards. I live in tier 1 Auckland City, and I’m honoured and I’m privileged to be living in a place where the Auckland Unitary Plan has designated it from being a single-house zone in Onehunga. It used to be just one house, and now it houses 42 apartments: mixed owner-occupied, KiwiBuild, and renters.

So I want to acknowledge that. Before I get to that, I want to acknowledge the officials who have helped us and that have stayed up all night working on this, but I want to go into the submitters, in terms of the young people. The young people submitted and I think, if I themed the submissions by young people, there were three themes. They said that they support this bipartisan approach and that they have hope—they have hope—to one day own a home in New Zealand and to have solutions for climate change.

Particularly, I want to acknowledge Xuzong Chen. His submission was about allowing people to live near the places that they work. He also said that students and our younger generations need to have some hope for the future.

Oscar Sims lives in tier 1 Auckland, like I do. What he said was that in terms of the AUP—in terms of that, I spoke about how I’m living in an apartment built from that plan. However, there are places in Auckland that are still the status quo. What this bill does will enable those places to remain the status quo, because Oscar Sims says that in Auckland, where I live, too little homes are built in parts of Auckland. That’s because the Auckland Unitary Plan is busy building elsewhere like Papakura and like Onehunga, but there are places in Auckland Central that are still the status quo. This bill addresses that.

Last but not least, we had a young submitter. His name is Mitchell Palmer. He’s a student at Yale University, studying in Singapore. He’s living overseas. He said that one day, he wishes to be able to buy an affordable home here, in his birth country. I commend this bill to the House. Malo.

Jeez, I must say, listening to the previous member, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, that I really do wish I was on the Environment Committee. It sounds like it was a remarkable place to be, and it’s always good to hear a lot of passion and energy in the House.

I rise on behalf of National to speak on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill at its second reading. National supports this bill.

I do want to acknowledge—and, as I said, I wasn’t on the select committee, but what I’ve heard from my colleagues is consistent—that Eugenie Sage, as chair, was respectful and thoughtful throughout, and I think those were the two words that have resonated on this side of the House in terms of this. This was a challenging bill under the time line in which the committee was faced, and the way in which she conducted herself in that role was well appreciated from our team. I also want to acknowledge the Hon Scott Simpson and our deputy leader, Nicola Willis, for their contribution in terms of that process. It has not often, I must say, in my short time in this House that we have been part of a process that is bipartisan, and I think that that has been acknowledged by a number of speakers here already.

I also want to acknowledge, on behalf of our team, the officials at the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their significant contribution. It’s referred to in the fact of the long hours that the select committee put into this, but I think it would be fair to say, as it often is the case with the officials that we have supporting us in our roles, that it probably would have been twice, if not three times, the amount of time that went on in the background in order to contribute to this bill, and that is appreciated as well.

There was a significant number of amendments that have, obviously, been put in following that select committee process. As the member of Parliament for North Shore, I obviously had a large number of comments and feedback in regards to this bill after the first reading. I know a number of members from my community and many communities across Auckland contributed throughout that select committee process. I think what we have seen as a result of those amendments is the select committee process doing what it’s meant to do, and that is to listen and take on board the feedback of our local communities and people from around the country: experts, iwi and hapū, developers, and those in the commercial sector, and, of course, our local government. All of that feedback has been taken on board very diligently by the select committee and, as a result, we have got nearly 50 points of amendment that will be coming through on a Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage, which is good to hear.

Look, I must say, looking at some of the feedback, there were significant concerns raised in terms of the short time frame, and we acknowledge that this was a reduced time frame from what we would normally expect in the select committee process, which probably prevented the usual scrutiny. But, as I’ve said, the committee did work very hard on that. There were 183 oral submissions and 966 submissions overall, and over 1,000 documents of correspondence that was—as was referred to—from a number of community groups and individuals.

I also want to acknowledge local government across our country in terms of their contribution to this process. Obviously, in my home city of Auckland, Auckland Council made two actual submissions as part of that process. I think their feedback was constructive and concise. It was absolutely, I know, from the committee’s perspective, taken on board, and you can see a number of the amendments that have resulted follow on from that feedback process.

The key elements that have changed we’ve talked about, but, primarily, we’ve seen changes in regards to higher design standards. I think that was something that was quite significant in the submission made by Auckland Council, in particular. There are more concessions for councils in regards to qualifying matters, the protection or exclusion of already existing heritage zones—which, obviously, is very important in my home electorate; particularly in Devonport—environmental concerns, and other factors as well. The changes also amend in regards to height to boundary and the other elements that we’ve talked around such as sunlight, etc. This also, I think, reflects that this is really trying to achieve a higher quality of outcome in terms of what we’re doing, and, again, that reflects some of the feedback made by submitters and, in particular, Auckland Council. Lastly, around the district plan changes, that’s the fourth element in which we’ve seen some significant amendments within this bill, and it is something that will carry us forward.

A significant proportion of the feedback that I had was from young people within my community of the North Shore. These are young people who are struggling to afford to buy their first home, they are struggling to find a home to rent, and they are hopeful in terms of being able to participate in the homeownership process, as have many generations before them, but the reality is that this is a significant challenge. It’s a significant challenge that has faced our country for a period of time, and I think while there is no silver bullet in terms of solutions, the ability for both sides of this House to work together to put in place actions that will make and support this process and support the futures of our young people in particular is, I think, a good thing.

There was a recent survey undertaken in terms of the New Zealand Issues Monitor in October. It referred to the fact that over half of Kiwis in this country rank housing affordability as the No. 1 issue that they face. Sixty percent of those people were women, and I think that also acknowledges the importance of this process and that it is the No. 1 issue for people who live in Auckland.

I think that is pretty much what I wanted to leave and cover off this evening. Again, thank you very much to the select committee for your contribution. I’m looking forward to seeing this bill proceed through this House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it is a real pleasure to be the last speaker on this bill, the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

We did have a very busy select committee period, but I do want to add my voice to everyone who has spoken before me in regards to acknowledging the chairperson, the Hon Eugenie Sage, who was very diligent. I swear she read everything twice—and with over 966 submissions, I think that’s pretty amazing—and she kept a very calm demeanour. It’s quite an exhausting pace that we set, so I want to acknowledge the chairperson for her good work.

I also want to recognise Nicola Willis, who during the sitting of the select committee was elected as deputy leader of the National Party. I want to acknowledge that you continued to do this work while also busily doing other things, obviously.

My Ministers, both the Hon David Parker and the Hon Megan Woods—I want to acknowledge them for their work together to bring this bill together. We know that there is a significant issue in this country. The homelessness issue and the housing crisis that we have has happened over generations. We know that each and every party that has come here today has probably had part of the responsibility of not solving that problem, and so that’s why I’m very delighted that today we have pretty much, pretty much—almost—

💬 Tangi Utikere: Still a chance.

Still a chance. Everyone is in agreement that this is something that needs to happen.

I spoke to my husband, actually, who is a builder. In part of when I was talking about the bill after the first reading, I explained to him what was going to be happening, and he said, “Boy, that will absolutely shift things. It will absolutely shift things.”

Papa kāinga, it will enable the brownfields developments, and it will enable people to put that granny flat on the back of their house for their mum or dad or even their children, and some of these things are about solutions. The—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Well said.

—way that we—thank you—particularly want to see things go is to ensure that there are people in houses and that there are people in communities that have good, warm, dry places. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill and the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill.