English Bill: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
English Bill: Infrastructure Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5838] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister for Infrastructure) 
: 
 I move  
That the Infrastructure Bill be now read a first time. 
 It is my intention to move at the appropriate time that the Infrastructure Bill be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for consideration but note that the committee may wish to ask the Social Services Committee under Standing Order 283(1) for its opinion on Part 4 which includes amendments relating to affordable housing and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 13 November 2009 and that the committee has authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington region during a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 187 189 and 190(1)(b) and (c). 
The Infrastructure Bill progresses a suite of amendments across several Acts to facilitate infrastructure development by removing unnecessary barriers and improving the consistency of regulatory arrangements. The Infrastructure Bill is an omnibus bill of four parts covering three areas. Parts 1 and 2 improve the arrangements for managing access by utility operators such as electricity gas telecommunications and water operators to road and rail corridors. Current arrangements are inconsistent across utilities which creates inefficiencies uncertainty and disputes. This leads to delays and to higher costs for operators for local authorities and for the New Zealand Transport Agency. Part 3 amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act 1981 to remove some of the statutory restrictions that negatively affect the running of the Railways Corporation’s business and to bring the entity’s governance arrangements more in line with equivalent provisions in the Crown Entities Act 2004. All of this is relevant to the operation of KiwiRail. Part 4 repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 while retaining an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing. 
In Part 1 the bill establishes a framework for a national code of practice that governs how utility operators and corridor managers coordinate their activities. To enable industry participants to develop and take ownership of the code the bill allows anyone to prepare a code but the code must meet certain requirements before it can be approved by the Minister of Transport. The code must have broad agreement between stakeholders include the method by which any statutory criteria are to be applied and must include operational and dispute resolution processes. A code approved by the Minister under this legislation will be deemed a regulation. It will impose an obligation to comply on all utility operators and corridor managers unless parties otherwise agree. This obligation is backed by the ability of the court to order compliance with the code and to impose a fine if that court order is not complied with. There is no requirement to have a code in force. However if there is no code suitable for approval and the Minister identifies a need for one he or she may make regulations in place of a code. 
Part 2 of the bill amends the Telecommunications Act 2001 the Electricity Act 1992 the Gas Act 1992 and the Local Government Act 1974. This is to provide for consistent provisions across the Acts around reasonable conditions of access to the corridors allocation of costs when utility operators are required to move assets and time periods for notification and response. The Crown has a particular interest in the passage of this bill as it contemplates the roll-out of broadband around the country. Amendments to the Railways Act 2005 and the Government Roading Powers Act 1989 provide time frames for responding to requests for access to rail corridors and motorways and require corridor managers to publish the criteria on which they will base their decisions to grant access. This will hopefully overcome what one would describe as a patchy performance across the country by those who look after our rail and road corridors. 
The Railways Corporation is a Government agency that manages New Zealand’s rail infrastructure and almost all rail services. Many of the provisions of the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act are outdated because it was written when the Railways Corporation was a Government department and the major reforms of the State Sector Act had yet to occur. This of course has become topical since the Crown purchased KiwiRail and fitted it back into the Railways Corporation structure. While KiwiRail was in private ownership these provisions of the legislation obviously did not apply to its operation. But now many of the provisions of the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act are anomalous when compared with the equivalent arrangements in the State-Owned Enterprises Act and the Crown Entities Act. Part 3 of the bill amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act to bring those provisions in line with equivalent provisions in the Crown Entities Act. The changes proposed in the bill include normalising the appointment and dismissal of directors changing to a simple majority the number of directors who can call a meeting establishing the power to appoint a deputy chairperson and streamlining arrangements for changes to the Railways Corporation’s capital—probably the most important of the changes suggested. The bill also removes a requirement to annually provide the Minister with a programme of capital works removes the limit on how much the Railways Corporation can expend in 1 year and permits the Railways Corporation to effect insurance cover for or give an indemnity to a director or employee. 
Part 4 repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 while retaining an amended prohibition on restrictive covenants affecting social housing. The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was intended to provide local authorities with regulatory tools to address problems of housing affordability. However the Act has been viewed as a potential impairment to increasing the housing supply. In fact it was a very misguided regulation passed by the previous Government that was consistent with its usual interfering and nitpicking way of doing business. 
For instance local authorities are rightly concerned that the Act is complex costly and overly prescriptive. Developers have pointed out that the Act is probably counter-productive and likely to reduce rather than increase the supply of affordable housing whatever that is. I might say that it did not really define affordable housing. The associated processes create regulatory barriers that contradict the initiatives of this Government to reduce regulatory barriers and compliance costs. Recent evidence demonstrates that the regulatory powers are in fact inadequate in increasing the supply of affordable housing. Moves to encourage the building of new housing need to ensure that regulatory and other costs are contained and that opportunities for development are enhanced. It seems pretty obvious: we should write some rules that make it easier to build housing not harder. In addition the supply of residential land using existing planning systems through rezoning could result in an increase in the housing supply which would make housing more affordable. 
Section 30 of the Act currently addresses growing concern at the use of covenants to exclude social housing. These covenants unfairly discriminate against some of our most vulnerable people: older people children and people who require assisted living. Restrictive covenants against social housing in one area lead to concentrations of social housing in another. To address the growing obstacle of restrictive covenants a modified version of the prohibition relating to certain restrictive covenants will be included as an amendment to the Property Law Act 2007. 
This legislation deals with a number of issues relating to enhancing infrastructure investment in our transport and rail corridors enabling better operation of the rail infrastructure of this country and taking a step in the direction of cleaning up the regulatory mess that is preventing the development of affordable housing. I commend the bill to the House.