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

Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 13 to 16 and Schedules 1 to 3, amendments to schedules and new schedules. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We’ve previously covered off the intention of the intensified, streamlined planning process earlier this morning, and what’s clear is that local government has struggled in some of the tier 1 cities to identify land where intensification is suitable, negotiate that with communities through existing planning provisions under the Resource Management Act (RMA), and then deliver back to those communities a plan which sets out where it is suitable to build to intensify.

Some councils—like Auckland and like Hamilton, for example—have been through extensive processes where they’ve taken many factors into account, and the Auckland Unitary Plan is a classic example of where many different competing and conflicting values and objectives are consulted on widely—and I’ll come back to that—consulted on widely: the communities, those affected, whether they be businesses, whether they be professionals, people who have direct experience in subdivision, in establishing the infrastructure needed to service land, whether they be urban design professionals, architects.

I’m still at a loss to understand how, as an engineer who’s come to Parliament, I find myself here today having to stand up for the rights of architects to design good homes. I thought all of those discussions had been had. I thought that there were already well understood urban design principles about outlook, sunlight, outdoor space, and access to amenities, and that we shouldn’t need to be re-litigating those in the schedules in Part 2, and we certainly shouldn’t be, essentially, carrying out urban design exercises, either in primary legislation by a select committee or the committee of the whole House. Parliament’s job should never be to carry out urban design exercises. But that is what the schedules, essentially, provide for, with the design criteria for the medium-density residential standard. And the way that that design criteria, the way that the standard, is delivered is through the intensified, streamlined planning process.

Quite a few councils and developers—those people who actually use the RMA—and their planning professionals, the consultants who help them navigate their way through legislation, through planning law, pointed out that, actually, it would be helpful to have a streamlined planning process for a whole range of things. We know that Kāinga Ora operates a streamlined planning process, except it doesn’t seem they want to do that for the private sector. We know that there’s a fast-track consenting process for COVID-19 projects, some of which may or may not be related to COVID-19 and may or may not actually deliver homes or jobs or anything else either. But this process here actually sets out how councils and hearings panels are supposed to carry out their work.

It would be fair to say that without offering a similar process to the private sector developers who are bringing on tens of thousands of homes, some of them, like the Templeton Group, pointed out that they’ve got a billion dollars’ worth of work in the pipeline. They pointed out that any delays to the process they use under the Resource Management Act typically cost about a million dollars a year. That’s the overhead just to have the project sitting, waiting to get into the Environment Court, waiting for a decision. They said that some of their projects have spent seven to eight years going through the planning process, going to appeal, and then going to various courts, including the High Court and above, to seek direction, essentially, to have decisions made about very basic elements of town planning—where houses, where buildings, where streets should go. And what they’re asking for is to have the same rights that every other council will have, which is to have access to the intensified, streamlined planning process. In fact, any streamlined planning process that enables them to seek consents under the Resource Management Act or subsequent—[Bell rung] Thank you, Madam Chair.

So the question is: will the Government consider actually allowing private developers to have access to the same process; if not, is it because the Minister and the Labour Party and the National Party, that crafted this bill, actually believe that all solutions, when it comes to housing intensity, actually sit with Government or local government? Because most New Zealanders would actually believe that Government is the problem when it comes to getting things built. Its regulations, its red tape—it’s how difficult it is to get consent, even for things like desperately needed waste-water system upgrades in places like Queenstown, on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, where it’s been so difficult to install a waste-water pumping station that the council’s had to go and apply for consent to continue wastewater discharges into that lake, because it’s too hard to get consent to build the waste-water treatment stations that they want to. So they’re in breach of consents. So an intensified, streamlined planning process is a good idea in principle, but limiting it only to local councils and to plans made specifically to implement the medium-density residential standard seems not just short-sighted but lacking in aspiration for a wholesale and complete reform of the planning process.

We’ve heard recently in select committee that that may well be the intention of the Minister’s other legislation, the Natural and Built Environments Bill and maybe a strategic planning Act. We often hear these things referred to. They are some kind of Promised Land of planning and environmental management and urban development, and, yet, despite the fact that the Promised Land is, you know, not too far away, and while we’re all paddling our waka, they’re spending hundreds and hundreds of hours in select committee collecting thousands of submissions on that particular piece of legislation, intending to reform planning and enable housing and save the environment and save a whole lot of other things at the same time. This bill was being crafted in secret over months and months and months, while the select committee sat reviewing another piece of resource management legislation.

Many of the same questions that developers brought, councils even brought, and planning professionals brought to the committee asked the same question: why can the private sector not have access to a fast-track development process? Why are they subject to objections from organisations like Greenpeace, for example, and others who are given standing to object against what, essentially, are developments that deliver homes and communities and infrastructure to the people of New Zealand?

So some of these fundamental issues about who has standing, who should be allowed to object, are not addressed in terms of the fundamental problems with the RMA. The ability to consent infrastructure to actually service the land that this upzoning provided for by the medium-density residential standard—those matters are not dealt with. There was an opportunity to actually reform the RMA on the run, while more stuff is done down the track, like the Natural and Built Environments Bill. The ACT Party and other parties, developers, and submitters have all said that they want an opportunity to contribute, but there was no opportunity for consultation on this piece of legislation. There may have been a lot more easy wins in terms of intensified, streamlined planning processes than actually have been delivered to the House in this bill, and that comes back to the secrecy element, the fact that it was, essentially, cooked up over a number of months without the knowledge of the development community, the planning community, all of those professional engineers and architects and ecologists, geotechnical specialists who could have given advice to the Government and to officials on what a good short-term reform measure looked like. They weren’t consulted. So now we have an intensified, streamlined planning process which only gives these rights to councils.

So what I’m asking the Minister is to please explain: why is this not being extended to the private sector? Why was consultation on this process not carried out with the private sector, and councils for that matter? And what is his plan to actually speed up planning to get more houses built?

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a lot of questions raised in that contribution, and I’ll try to address them. Can I thank the member Simon Court for the opening few sentences of that contribution, where he said to the committee that councils in our largest-growing cities have often found it hard to zone for intensity. And that’s a simple truth; it’s a self-evident truth, actually. And it’s not the only reason why we’ve got such high land price inflation, but it is a contributing factor to it.

This bill applies to the tier 1 councils—there’s five of them—and if there’s the occasional tier 2 council that needs it, we can bring them in, and tier 3 councils can also try and volunteer in if they want to, and some have said they want to.

The tier 1 councils are Auckland, Greater Hamilton, Greater Tauranga, Greater Wellington, and Greater Christchurch. In total, the territorial authorities that cover those areas, there’s 12 of them, and when it came to bringing this to the attention of each of those territorial authorities, the Hon Megan Woods as housing Minister, and I as environment Minister, split it in two and phoned six of the mayors each. We then touched based with each other after we’d done it. Both of us had four mayors who were very, very positive about this, because they recognise they need help to break through in what they need to do for their citizens, and these mayors want to do the right things for their citizens. They want them to have housing choices; they don’t want rents to go too high, they don’t want house prices to go to high, and they know, to use the language of the leader of the ACT Party, that it is actually the marginal cost of new supply that drives price. It is the marginal cost of the new house, including its land and its building, that drives the cost, obviously, of the new house, but it also drives the market for second-hand houses.

Therefore, the increment to supply that you can bring about by enabling the land that’s already within a city to be used more intensively—really, the efficiency that you have from land use and infrastructure use drives through to the marginal cost of the new supply which drives through to the price of all housing. These mayors get that; they got that. And so four out of the six that I phoned were very, very positive, one was neutral, and one was a bit anti. And the experience of Minister Woods was the same. She had four that were effusive, really, one was sitting on the fence, and there was one that wasn’t so keen.

In respect of some of the other issues that were raised, this isn’t the sole answer to the housing crisis, and there are other things in responding to the housing crisis that are going well. Housebuilding in Auckland has doubled from 10,000 in 2017 to 19,000 this year. It’s close to a doubling of housing, and it’s very interesting that more than two-thirds of those new houses are actually these new style of houses where they’re, effectively, semi-detached or attached three-storey houses. So that gives us confidence that we’re on the right track.

In respect of the private plan changes point: planning rules, by and large, in respect of zoning rules, are the primary preserve of councils. That’s what they’re elected to do, which is a point that has been made by, amongst others, the ACT Party in this debate. So we think it is appropriate that they’re the people to whom this is primarily delivered through. But, of course, the zoning rules that they allow in these cities apply for the benefit of all of the private developers, and the vast majority of development enabled by those changes to the planning rules will be by those private developers.

In respect of the process delays that Simon Court mentioned in terms of how long it can take a plan to proceed at the moment, I agree that that is unacceptable. This will actually assist in that, because we’re actually going to permit three-storey types of dwellings as a building type through virtually all of these cities. There are some exceptions that we’ve previously talked about.

In terms of the process, actually, you couldn’t do it any faster than we’re actually legislating it for this, but it does show the tension between some of the traditional processes which take too long. In the face of a crisis, you do have to act quickly, and we think this is appropriate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, in the whole intensification, streamlined planning process, one of the recommendations of the select committee, which has been picked up in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), is that the scope of intensification planning instruments be broadened to enable provision of papa kāinga and recognising that promoting papa kāinga housing is an objective of the Government. But it’s still on a different basis from the infill development, which becomes a permitted activity as of right through this bill. So there is Supplementary Order Paper 111, in the name of Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, proposing to have papa kāinga activity as a controlled activity in a Māori purpose zone, residential zone, settlement zone, or any other zone on each site which is wholly or partly Māori customary land, Māori freehold land, or general land owned by Māori.

So the planning system and plan provisions and council’s failure to adequately provide and encourage papa kāinga has been a significant barrier to its development. So could the Minister provide some comment on, given that the SOP doesn’t go as far as enabling papa kāinga in the same way that it does enabling three-storey three unit infill development, what sort of guidance will be being provided by the Ministry for the Environment to our councils as to how they will go about enabling provision of papa kāinga?

The other issue is the comments that Simon Court made in terms of the select committee finding itself dealing with the detail of urban design around things like outlook, space, and building height to boundary recession planes and the like. There has been quite a lot of concern that the standard that was recommended by the majority of the committee for outlook, for example, which affects interaction with neighbours—it’s 4 metres between dwellings, whereas the Auckland Unitary Plan provides for a 6-metre outlook standard. Hobsonville, which is widely promoted by many as epitomising very good medium-density development, has a 6-metre outlook standard. What is the proposal of Government if any of these detailed standards, which the select committee and the Government and National have arrived at, are found to be wanting? What is the process to change them? And given the significant expertise which the urban design community, architects, planners, and others contributed to the select committee process, what is going to be the Government’s processes for developing the urban design guidelines to assist councils in terms of both the National Policy Statement for Urban Development and the medium-density residential standards (MDRS)? But, fundamentally, what is the processes for changing things that in the detail of the new Schedule 3A, we may have got wrong?

Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of questions there, and if I omit any and the member takes another call, I’d be happy to address them. In respect of papa kāinga, thank you for the amendments that came through from the select committee, which we are adopting. Papa kāinga on land that is within these new zoned areas, of course, gets the benefit of the change of zonings. If there is other land that is outside of urban zones on which papa kāinga is to be to be built, then councils can include similar provisions in their plans for that.

In respect of the issues as to style, we shouldn’t, I don’t think, in Parliament prescribe design guidelines as if we want to be the architect—and we’re not. We’re not. That’s the error in the way in which it was put by Simon Court, because we’re not. We’re actually just permitting a certain density of housing to be built. How that’s designed, whether people want to build it like that, that’s up to them and if they have an architect, their architect. We’re not prescribing how that is done. That said, there has been a request that was made clear through select committee that some design guidance would be useful for both councils and developers. So, in response to that, Ministry for the Environment, in consultation with planners from councils, will try and provide some non-statutory design guidance. We are concerned that if we were to leap to design standards that were of statutory effect, that we would actually be putting ourselves in the position of being the designer, and we don’t want to do that. That said, there is probably a case for some design guidance to be developed in consultation with the planners who are dealing with these issues around the country—not just the planners; also the urban design groups and civil society groups who have an interest.

In addition to that, urban design guides do have a more prominent role in a lot of overseas jurisdictions where they are dealing with intensification or have been dealing with it for longer than New Zealand has been, and so we’re willing to consider that issue again through the replacement of the RMA, the Natural and Built Environments Act. We are wary of going too far, too early, in respect of those design guides because we fear that they could be misused to effectively undermine the intent, which is to enable—not require but enable—intensification.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I think we’ve just seen one of the problems with this whole exercise of attempting to do urban planning on every suburban street of New Zealand from this Parliament. The Minister just said, “Well, I don’t think it would be right for Parliament to try and do urban design from here.”, and he’s absolutely right. So he actually does understand and accept the problem, but, equally, by putting a zone prescription on every residential section in the country—and I say “every” because, according to the Minister, all the tier 2 cities, as he calls them, are going to be jumping up and down and wanting to have this. We shall see—we’re going to actually have a terrible, terrible problem here. And it’s this: this statute is going to put into law a medium-density residential standard that, effectively, says you can have a three-storey building a metre from your boundary, with no urban design standards, with a floor to ceiling window on the third floor looking into your kid’s bedroom and there’s nothing you can do about it. Of course, the Minister might say, “Oh, but it’s laissez-faire. Everyone should support that.” Well, actually, here’s the thing: if you think hard about public policy, then you understand that the role of Government as a regulator is to address market failures.

Here’s another thought: market failures are not when a market outcome is something you don’t like; specifically, it is when the game theory outcome of people participating in a market is not Pareto optimal. This is just basic 101 stuff.

People who believe in markets and free society often come to the conclusion that, in some of those circumstances, it’s actually worthwhile having a regulation. And one of those is urban design standards: things like overlooking, things like overshadowing. Often, the balance and the cost-benefit analysis of whether you need a certain level of intervention and regulation is specific to the place, to the characteristics of the location, to people and community, and to the provision of infrastructure in that place. Those are all the reasons why you might want to have urban design standards. That’s why, for example, in Auckland, we have the Auckland Design Manual to stop two people doing what is best for them but getting an outcome that is actually worse for everyone. That’s the simple basis for having regulations. It can actually increase overall welfare.

This statute, which puts in place this medium-density residential standard, denies that opportunity to communities, and that is why it actually reduces people’s overall welfare. Now, the Minister would like to say that “Oh no, no, it’s OK. We’ve got 150 pages of analysis.”, but I asked him in the previous stage: where is the analysis that defines the problem with housing supply as being one of zoning capacity? And he couldn’t do it. All he could say was: “In general, it will be more efficient if people live closer together.”, and “In general, it’s going to be good to have more zone space.” He couldn’t answer the question: where’s the analysis that it’s actually going to work in Auckland, in Hamilton, in cities in New Zealand as we stand right now thinking at the margin? So what he’s left with is an increase in zoning capacity that may not be serviced, but, if it is, it is going to lower people’s overall welfare because of the kinds of market failures, tragedy of the commons, development that goes on side by side where people actually lower each other’s quality of life.

Now, ACT has thought a bit about this, and, in particular, we have read the analysis that this bill was based on by Sense Partners and PricewaterhouseCoopers and we understand how it works, and that’s what we’ve been explaining throughout this committee. The Minister is either wilfully ignoring it or hasn’t read it, because what that analysis said is that when, in 2016, the Auckland Unitary Plan introduced the mixed housing urban and mixed housing suburban zones, there was a proportionate increase in floor area ratio in areas that were denser. He’s extrapolated that’s going to keep happening here. But what’s interesting is that they didn’t model the medium-density residential standard. That’s never been modelled. What they did model was mixed housing urban and that’s what they based their projections on. They also modelled mixed housing suburban, and what that analysis says—if we just accept for a moment that there isn’t actually a binding constraint of infrastructure and that, actually, there is going to be a linear extrapolation of the amount of homes they get built, allowing for proximity to city centre and a few other variables they used—is that, actually, you don’t get much less additional homes by using mixed housing suburban. That is a zone that is widely used in Auckland. It allows two homes. It allows a 3-metre high and 45-degree setback. It’s one that is familiar to the planners and the processes there.

We think, if the Government wanted to rely on the modelling it’s got—and I’ve given all the reasons why they shouldn’t rely on that modelling, because there’s a non-sequitur that because you added more zoning capacity and that gave you more homes, at one point in time that will always be true; at other points of time, it’s simply illogical. But if we just accept that for a moment, because, clearly, it’s going to be difficult to move the Government on it, then why not use a familiar zone that is going to have less effect on other people’s welfare? That, according to their own modelling, shows we’ll get almost the same amount of increased housing. Now, that’s got to be a good deal. You know, they could achieve some of their goal, they could get more housing, they could make it more acceptable to people who will be upset about this when they get no design standards, three storeys a metre from their boundary; floor-to-ceiling window on the third floor, looking in on their kid’s bedroom—people will be upset about that. They could avoid that outcome and get more housing. Now, that’s got to be a good deal.

Thankfully, my ever-diligent colleague Simon Court has produced a fairly detailed Supplementary Order Paper. There are amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 107 that would replace the medium-density residential standard that these guys have provided, with a standard that, basically, replicates the mixed-housing suburban (MHS) zone in Auckland. So, in Auckland, it would mean that all areas that are single-family home, for example, would be upgraded to MHS. MHS areas would stay the same, areas that are mixed housing urban would stay the same, areas in town centres will stay the same, terrace housing and apartment building areas—they would all stay the same. But the net effect would be to upgrade single-family homes to mixed-housing suburban, and, you know, the Government’s modelling shows that would actually give the increase of housing that they want, or very close to it, notwithstanding the other constraints in the supply chain, and it would be familiar, and it would be a lot more acceptable to people who will otherwise object. The Government should think about that. The National Party should think about that.

You know, it’s interesting, they say, “Oh, David Seymour, he just stands up for his constituents.”, but keep saying that, by the way, you know, like, every time you guys accuse me of standing up for my constituents, they hear it, and it’s helpful. So thank you. Please keep saying it. And people outside the electorate I currently represent, they hear it too. So, you know, the more you guys say that, I do appreciate it, and I hope you’ll keep saying it.

But this amendment would increase the outlook spaces—that is the zones outside primary windows, such as the primary bedroom window. It would increase the outlook space outside secondary bedroom windows to be like the mixed housing suburban zone that is so familiar to us in Auckland. It would allow urban design consideration so that we don’t end up with the kind of unfortunate circumstances where two neighbours do what they view is in their own best interest, but they end up in conflict and they both end up worse off than they could have otherwise been.

I say all this because, you know, the Minister likes to talk about me and my political philosophy; I don’t think he understands it that well. We’re engaged in making good public policy, of having the role of Government restricted in a principled way to make people’s lives better, to regulate genuine market failures, and to spend tax on things that are public goods that can’t otherwise be produced—although that’s not really relevant here. We are wary of market imperfections about network effects of infrastructure. These are all the things that you have to do when you do public policy as a big kid. But, unfortunately, the Government hasn’t left any time, because they want to rush this through Christmas.

At the heart of this bill, it is pretty simple. We’re not requiring people to build three storeys, but we’re letting them. We think that Auckland and our other large centres need that in order to house people affordably. The ACT Party obviously disagrees with that, and they’re free to disagree—similar points were made in the earlier part. But that’s why we won’t be agreeing to the Supplementary Order Paper that would, effectively, render this bill ineffective by reducing substantially—

💬 David Seymour: The Government’s modelling says it would be effective.

Well, according to the advice that I’ve got, adopting a—3-metre or a 4-metre?—

💬 David Seymour: Has he read it? Has he read anything?

—a 3-metre boundary—of course I’ve read it. The 3-metre, 45-degree recession plane would reduce the housing outcome by 31 percent.

Thank you. The Green Party won’t be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) either, because it is the mixed housing suburban rather than the urban one, and so it goes completely against getting more intensification. But in Part 2, Schedule 2, which inserts a new Schedule 3B, it amends the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020. I would be interested if the Minister, as Minister for the Environment, as someone who has always recognised that the economy depends on the environment—why the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPSUD) primary objective one is about well-functioning urban environments that enable all people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural wellbeing, and their health and safety now and into the future, and there is no mention of environmental wellbeing. For healthy cities where people have clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, space to exercise, get the mental wellbeing from being out in nature, what is the Minister’s response to Supplementary Order Paper 114, which seeks to insert in objective one of the National Policy Statement (NPS) on Urban Development a reference to environmental wellbeing as well as social and economic wellbeing.

New Schedule 3B, in the Minister’s SOP, inserts a number of other policies into the NPS on Urban Development. What the Green Party is concerned about is that there is only passing reference to nature in the existing NPSUD. It was something we brought up last June when it was being developed, and so we’re seeking through this Supplementary Order Paper a new policy that encourages an increase in urban tree cover, both through the retention of existing trees and also ensuring that there’s easy public access to natural areas as well as open space.

The only reference at the moment in the NPS is to having good accessibility for all people to natural spaces. There’s nothing about encouraging nature within the urban environment, and yet sustainable development is all about integrating nature, not exceeding nature’s capacity. So, if we are not to have cities that are just hard surfaces and expanses of concrete, is the Minister considering any future amendments to the National Policy Statement for Urban Development to better recognise nature? First question.

Then the other issue is there’s another Supplementary Order Paper in my name, SOP 109, which is all about development bonuses for developers if they meet certain site factors, and they relate to things like water-sensitive design, an ability to have solar panels on roofs, and encouraging more energy-efficient buildings, which, of course, will help our housing stock reduce energy use and contribute to reduction of emissions. Development bonuses aren’t something that the bill encourages. And yet the Government, through Kāinga Ora, has an urban design statement, which is the simple guide to urban design and development that Housing New Zealand put out. It’s got a lot of principles in there about environmental design, about encouraging good stormwater management, making the best use of existing natural environments, three waters management, sustainable use of resources—things like energy-efficient design.

We have heard from officials that things like that are best done through the building code. We know that the building code is inadequate. This bill, with the standards for medium density in Schedule 3, makes a number of provisions about building envelopes and the like. What proposals does the Minister have to use both the Resource Management Act and to encourage his colleagues around the Building Act to really improve our standards if, as my other SOPs have failed, I suspect this one will as well? But it’s the principle of ensuring that our building stock is more efficient, that it doesn’t increase stormwater runoff. We had a lot of submissions to select committee about increased stormwater flows and houses having to have increased capacity with tanks to avoid or to mitigate the peak flows. We are doing nothing through this bill to really encourage sustainable design. We are encouraging more intensification, but not well-designed houses in terms of energy efficiency, minimising water runoff, and ensuring that there’s an increased capacity for things like solar.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the member’s right that we won’t be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper. And the member addressed one of the reasons why in her own contribution. We think that the system would get very gummed up if we, effectively, imposed the building code or Building Act issues relating to the quality of building materials into the planning code. If you want more energy-efficient building materials as a required minimum, there were arguments for that through the building code, but we don’t think that we should be imposing it through this legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is a place for codifying establishing standards. The ACT Party believes that, for example, New Zealand should adopt the building material standards from countries that have complementary conditions, like Canada and Japan and California, for example, when it comes to rainfall and seismic. There is a place to codify the effects on the environment of development and activities.

The Infrastructure Commission, in their submission to another resource management bill, the Natural and Built Environments Bill—they proposed that rather than developers, contractors, and infrastructure operators having to get consents for everything—that if the effects were well understood, because we do this stuff every day, then rather than obtaining consents, those matters could be codified. But they also pointed out that requires extensive consultation, to make sure that the unintended or perverse consequences from hastily thought-out pieces of legislation don’t end up causing a whole lot of a fix down the track that impose cost on business and actually reduce the overall welfare of the communities that pieces of legislation are proposing to help. And that’s why the medium-density residential standard (MDRS), like many things this Government has promoted, is well-intentioned but ultimately doomed to fail. It won’t deliver the 100,000 homes, just like another policy announced by a recent Labour-led Government also failed to deliver 100,000 homes.

I want to talk a little bit about the medium-density residential standard. The ACT Party does not intend that we take on the role of urban designers or architects. It’s actually the Government that’s forced us to adopt that role, because by including the medium-density residential standard in primary legislation, that’s the field on which we are forced to engage. So our proposal to instead replace it with what the PricewaterhouseCoopers - Sense Partners cost-benefit analysis demonstrates will be just about as good, the Auckland Unitary Plan mixed housing suburban standard. People say, “Oh, but that’s only two storeys, and what we want is three storeys and three houses on a lot.” Well, Urban Auckland provided a fantastic submission where they show quite clearly that on a typical section in Auckland, 800-odd square metres, you can put three homes. You can achieve a couple of fantastic two-storey, great lifestyle apartment or terrace units, 82 square metres each, and a standalone two-storey home with a separate garage, 173 square metres. That’s a very large home by any standard, and that’s under the mixed housing suburban standard.

So what that demonstrates, actually, is that the medium-density residential standard—it’s not just unnecessary, it’s not just complex, it doesn’t just introduce a whole lot of unnecessary impacts on people’s lifestyle and wellbeing and ultimate welfare. It doesn’t have to force the stripping of all the vegetation and trees, as my colleague and the Environment Committee chair, the Hon Eugenie Sage, pointed out. The mixed housing suburban standard actually allows the retention of significant green spaces and trees and outdoor living, sunlight, views that the medium density residential standard does not.

So that’s why ACT advocates to incorporate, essentially, the Auckland Unitary Plan mixed housing suburban standard in the Schedule 1, to replace the MDRS. And while the ACT Party can’t support blanket tree protection, we do recognise that there are significant environmental benefits from having a certain amount of permeable surfaces, landscaped areas. These things all add to the wellbeing of the people who live in these homes and communities. That is why, as a recovering civil engineer, I’ve had to take on the role of urban designer advocate for architects, and that’s not a role I ever expected, or, in fact, any member of Parliament should have to, but that is what the Minister for the Environment is asking from us through this bill. And that is why ACT is advocating very strongly for the mixed housing suburban standards to replace the Government’s standard.

I repeat: the reason why we won’t be adopting that is it would, effectively, frustrate the purpose of the bill substantially by reducing the number of building opportunities by more than 30 percent. We think that that would not be as good an outcome.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I think that’s a very interesting answer that’s well worth getting some more detail from the Minister, if, indeed, he can provide it. We always hold out hope.

The Minister has said that introducing the mixed housing suburban standard in lieu of the medium-density residential standard would reduce the anticipated yield of housing by—of additional housing that is—by 31 percent. So, you know, I’m no mathematical expert, but that seems to me that the mixed housing suburban proposal that Simon Court’s put up, as amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 107, would actually increase housing by 69 percent, that’s 69 percent additional housing, if we get that right. Now, of course, he might argue that not all of the extra housing we expect will come from this bill. I guess another way he might put it is that he’s going to get 69 percent of what he’s promised. Then you ask “Well, what he’s promised is actually just a modelled outcome that made an assumption that increasing zoning intensity would yield more floor area ratio at the same rate that the upzoning of the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP) yielded in 2016.”, which, as we’ve said many times, and the Minister’s never answered, is a highly questionable assumption.

Now, I just wonder if the Minister—why he wouldn’t be happy with 69 percent increase if it also was more acceptable to neighbours, to councils, more familiar, would actually lead to higher quality urban environments of the type that the Green members referred to? The Hobsonville Point development has some similar features to what this amendment produces, such as the 6-metre outlook space outside principle windows. So why wouldn’t the Minister want that?

Here’s the next question for him: what sort of analysis is he relying on when he says that it would only be 69 percent as good as mixed housing urban? What’s he relying on there? It’s just purely the extrapolation from what happened in the AUP. It’s got nothing to do with what might happen in the present time. So if he can explain that, then he can explain what cost-benefit analysis he’s done with other costs, such as shading of neighbours, overlooking of neighbours, and the undermining of urban design standards that are actually part of the Government’s own policies—and part of Kāinga Ora’s policies, for another thing.

Can he explain how the Government chose between the mixed housing urban standard at one level and the mixed housing suburban standard at another level? Because they modelled the increase in housing from both of them, so can he explain why he believes that the costs of going to mixed housing urban instead of mixed housing suburban would be greater? And if he can explain why the mixed housing urban zone would be better on a full cost-benefit analysis than the mixed housing suburban zone on a full cost-benefit analysis, then, perhaps, he could explain why he didn’t use the mixed housing urban zone? Because if he can explain that, then, I guess, the answer is, actually, we should amend the bill not to use the medium-density residential zone but the mixed housing urban.

But, first, he’s got to explain 31 percent less than what? Is he saying that the mixed housing suburb, it’ll be 31 percent less than mixed housing urban or less than medium-density residential standards? Once he’s explained which one it is, what other cost-benefit analysis is he relying on? Just say that, actually, the mixed housing suburban wouldn’t give greater overall benefits, including extra housing and better urban amenity for people that want to live in these houses he’d like to see built.

The urban Auckland modelling that the member relies on used a site size of 843 square metres. The sites that are predominant in Auckland are, of course, much smaller than that, on average. The analysis that was done in the bill, as was presented to the select committee, was based on site sizes of 412 square metres. The additional analysis that the select committee then requested was what would be the effect on the housing provided as modelled when it went into select committee compared with a change to those height-to-boundary rules, but still in respect of a 412 square metre site, and that analysis was that if the height-to-boundary rules changed to 3 metres and a 45-degree recession plane, there would be a substantial unwinding of the intention of this, which is to enable the sort of intensification that is already occurring in some parts of cities, some parts of Wellington, some parts of Auckland, but is unable to occur because the choices of landowners are hobbled by restrictive planning rules that do not allow those densities to be built in those areas.

I think the language that the National Party uses in respect of this is quite fair, and I’m surprised that I haven’t heard any of this from the ACT Party. They say that, at one level, this bill is giving choice to landowners to develop their properties to three storeys, with smaller housing units in order to sometimes accommodate an ageing parent or someone who’s disabled or just because they want to cut off the back of their section and get a bit of money in retirement whilst enabling someone else to build a house there and live in it. It’s not a radical bill; it’s an effective bill to address the housing crisis by increasing the opportunities to build houses that have a smaller footprint and a smaller land cost. No one’s forced to build them, we’re just enabling it.

I move, That the question be now put.

I’m tempted, but I’ll go with Simon Court, thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to come to another matter. We’re actually circling back to the provisions relating to partly completed proposed plans. So while we understand that the Minister is not prepared to move on the medium-density residential standards, even though it appears that there is no updated cost-benefit analysis for the claims that he has made today, that was asked for at the Environment Committee this week—and we still haven’t seen the analysis, although the results of the analysis have been reported in the media as being only a reduction of 3 to 4 percent from the Government’s initial proposal of a 6-metre high wall. Now it’s a 4-metre high wall, 1 metre from the boundary.

But there is another matter, which we’ve covered to some extent, but which is still important and needs to be exposed, and that is that for private plan changes. We’re talking about developers like the Templeton Group, which have, through one of the companies they acquired—Todd Property—developed Stonefields in Auckland, a former quarry site, into one of the most exquisite master-planned developments, a combination of apartment living, terraced housing, and single homes. It’s a balance of intensification of lifestyles and opportunities for people to—at the time that the development was first offered, off the plans—buy affordable homes, close to transportation networks, close to amenities. That’s a site that was at one point tasked with being Auckland’s future regional landfill in the 1990s that instead was repurposed to an extremely high-quality master-planned development.

So it shows you that if we trust the private sector to actually deliver homes and communities, they will deliver much better outcomes than a regional landfill in an old quarry pit. They will deliver some of the best master-planned developments anywhere in the world.

The evidence from that group, the Templeton Group, from the Adare Co. in Hamilton, from Beachlands South consortium—which also includes the New Zealand Superannuation Fund as a large part of the consortium, an organisation which, while it can’t speak for itself because it is, essentially, not able to because it’s a Government entity. But what they have asked for is for their private plan change proposals, which set out the most exquisite community developments: intensity, apartments, terraced housing around retail and community centres, and, of course, single homes around the margins. As they pointed out, those single homes actually—the single-home zones, which, essentially, comply with the standards of the mixed housing suburban, they’re quite large homes and additional dwellings on these properties, they fit in with the natural environment in those parts of these master-planned sites, which are more sensitive, which are closer to streams and waterways, closer to existing remnant bush areas, for example, where the developers and iwi and their ecology advisers all agree it would be highly inappropriate to locate buildings at the scale and size that the medium-density residential standard proposes.

That is why I have today tabled a further Supplementary Order Paper proposing to replace Part 4 in Schedule 3 with a new Part 4. If the Minister intends that local councils should be forced to include the medium-density residential standard in their plan changes, well, what private developers are asking for, particularly those ones who have delivered the most exquisite, high-quality, and desirable developments New Zealand’s ever seen in the past 30 years, who have a pipeline of $8 billion worth of work, some of them, and billions of dollars’ worth of others—what they are asking for is just a blanket exemption. They’ve said the years and years of investment in technical investigations, in ecology reports, finding out when the bats come and go from the remnant bush on their development sites—they don’t want all of that to be wasted when they have to redesign and remodel their developments to accept these three-storey, three-unit boxes on what are currently designed for single-home sites.

The planning consultants who spoke to the committee also pointed out that when they’re designing these developments, what they’re designed for, the infrastructure accommodates much higher intensity and density at the centre, around the town centres, along transport corridors—kind of sounds like urban planning to me. That’s what they do, and they do it really well. They’ve said that the pipes are much larger. The waste-water pump stations are more frequent and have to be larger. The stormwater detention ponds and all those other environmental mitigations are designed for density at the centre and low density at the margins of these developments, because that’s what good urban design practice has evolved into over the past 50 or so years since World War II, since New Zealanders returning from World War II had the opportunity to buy a piece of quarter-acre paradise. Then those New Zealanders and the new Zealanders moved to cities like Auckland in the 1990s, who wanted to live in more dense communities subdivided existing eighth of acres or quarter acres and put an extra house or a couple of houses on the back.

Actually, all of that can be delivered in a far more planned and high-quality way through accepting that there is a good urban design set of principles and that the master planners delivering projects like at Peacocke in Hamilton East, the Adare Co., and the Beachland South developers in Beachlands Maraetai, where they propose that their high intensity, their higher densities are much closer to the ferry terminal, to public transport, and to nearby schools. They don’t consider it’s appropriate to have much higher densities much further from the town centres. They understood, having studied urban design and planning for decades, that, actually, you want to build up closer to where you’ve got social services, community services, transportation, and where your bulk infrastructure is located. The reason they’re asking for an exemption is not just because they’re confident that they can do it better than the Government, which, by any analysis, whether it’s a cost-benefit analysis that we haven’t seen yet or that they could—what they’re asking for is an exemption to be allowed to continue to proceed with the high-quality developments that are in train.

As I pointed out earlier this morning, it takes a long time and a significant cost and investment of resources and technical expertise even to get to the pre-lodgment stage with private plan changes. What people outside this House might know as a change of zoning right from, say, rural land or a bit of rural and a bit of residential: combine all of those titles and land types into one larger block of land, design a new community around the existing environment, the remnant bush, the streams and waterways that are there, and actually deliver some of the best quality of life that New Zealanders everywhere would aspire to. This bill would extinguish those developments—actually extinguish them. This is from a Government which keeps talking about wellbeing and which has all kinds of wellbeing measures, although we never actually see the measurement. They don’t actually want to report any of that wellbeing. But we know they believe in wellbeing, or they certainly did once.

That is why the ACT Party proposes in this Supplementary Order Paper labelled A—and it’s on the Table. It’s very simple. It says that if the Minister wants to impose this flawed medium-density residential standard on local councils, well, that’s up to him to negotiate. But what the ACT Party is seeking is, actually, just completely exempt private plan changes, master-planned developments—the private sector—from this flawed approach to urban planning and design. New Zealanders do aspire to live in high-quality homes in wonderful communities where their wellbeing is put first. So does the ACT Party.

We’re not extinguishing one development—not one. So the member need not be concerned about that.

In respect of master-planned developments, we’re not requiring them to be built in any particular way. They can build them however they want, you know, subject to the existing rules that councils apply. All this legislation does is enable the underlying zoning to enable densification.

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 106 be agreed to.

Simon Court’s amendments to Schedule 1, new Schedule 3A, Part 2, clause 11(1), and replacing clauses 14 and 15, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 107 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that Simon Court’s remaining amendments to Schedule 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 107 be agreed to.

The Hon Eugenie Sage’s amendments to Schedule 1, new Schedule 3A, Part 2, clauses 10(1) and 11(1) set out on Supplementary Order Paper 108 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that the Hon Eugenie Sage’s remaining amendments to Schedule 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 108 be agreed to.

The Hon Eugenie Sage’s amendments to Schedule 1, new Schedule 3A, Part 2, clauses 10(1) and (2) set out on Supplementary Order Paper 109 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that the Hon Eugenie Sage’s remaining amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 109 be agreed to.

The question is that Dr Elizabeth Kerekere’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Eugenie Sage’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 113 be agreed to.

The question is that Schedule 1, as amended, stand part.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 106 be agreed to.

The Hon Eugenie Sage’s amendment to new Schedule 3B, Policy 3, in Schedule 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 110 is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that the Hon Eugenie Sage’s remaining amendments to Schedule 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 110 be agreed to.

The question is that Schedule 2, as amended, stand part.

The question is that Simon Court’s amendment to Supplementary Order Paper 106 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 117 be agreed to.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 3 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 106 be agreed to.

The question is that Schedule 3, as amended, stand part.