Twyford PhilDEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTDebate resumed from 13 February.Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): The Prime Minister began her speech on Tuesday by reflecting what a privilege it is to serve in this place. She said we're here to make life better for people to serve New Zealanders. I'm proud of the leadership of this Government and as the Prime Minister said on Tuesday—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Could we just have a bit of respect for the speaker and a bit of quiet. The Hon Phil Twyford you can continue.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: As the Prime Minister said on Tuesday Governments have choices: they can govern and manage the shop or they can choose to lead. After nine years of drift and neglect and managing the shop we now have a Government that chooses to lead.We're leading on housing. When you look back on last year I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved in housing. We've built over 1100 extra State houses. We stopped the National Party's mass sell-off of State houses. We've built 1100 extra State houses since we've been in office 1900 more families are now in public housing and consent data shows that Government agencies are now building more housing than at any time since 1978.Last year for the first time in a number of years wages grew faster than house prices. Last year first-home buyers became the largest group of homebuyers for the first time since 2006. Last year there were record numbers of building consents. We banned letting fees we started investing in making all Housing New Zealand homes warm and dry and we fronted up to Housing New Zealand's poor treatment of vulnerable families and the misuse of the methamphetamine standard. Under this Government Housing New Zealand is a very different organisation and we're going to enshrine their new social objectives in legislation to make sure that their focus is on continuing to be the compassionate landlord they've become. Housing New Zealand under our Government is a public housing landlord looking after some of the most vulnerable citizens of this country. It is not an opportunity for Ministers to try and look tough or build a brand by stigmatising State house tenants.Of course we've built 62 KiwiBuild homes 4000 KiwiBuild homes have been contracted and we've started a number of large-scale development projects with over 20000 State KiwiBuild and market homes to be built in them. That's in the first six months of the programme.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I just remind the Minister that the Standing Orders are quite clear that you don't read speeches. A very experienced member of Parliament should be able to do it without notes.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. We have been upfront about the difficulties that we faced building additional KiwiBuild affordable homes in the first six months of the programme but we knew it was always going to be tough. This Government is doing something in affordable homeownership that no Government has attempted since the 1970s. We are working directly with the market to get builders building affordable homes that the market simply hasn't produced. We are changing things. We are a Government of reform and after nine years of a Government that denied there was even a housing crisis that sold off public housing by the thousands and that took billions of dollars out of public housing in the middle of a housing crisis we now have a Government that is committed to building more houses and that is what we are doing.This year we return undeterred by the challenges and absolutely committed to ensuring that every New Zealander has a warm dry and secure home. This year we'll keep on building public housing. In this financial year we've made 867 extra public housing places available already and we're well on track to meet the target of 1600 which is the yearly target that we've committed to for public housing. That will mean more than 3000 extra families in public housing instead of languishing in garages and overcrowded substandard housing which is what we saw under the former Government.Our build programme and the private sector are both crippled by the constraints that we inherited from nine years of inaction by the former Government: high land prices in our major cities high costs of building infrastructure an overly restrictive planning system and a shortage of construction workers. These are all constraints which hold back our plans and that's why we have a detailed and comprehensive plan to address all of those obstacles. Our Urban Growth Agenda is far-reaching and ambitious. It's designed to tackle the fundamentals of restricted land supply to find new ways of financing the infrastructure that our towns and cities need if they're to grow. And this year we will continue to reform the planning rules to support quality built environments incentivising quality intensification in our larger cities and bringing urban land prices down. Later on this year we'll bring to the Parliament legislation to reform infrastructure funding and financing which is currently a massive roadblock to urban expansion.Yesterday the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development announced new leadership for both the KiwiBuild unit and the new Housing and Urban Development Authority that we are setting up. I'm pleased to say that Sir Brian Roche one of our most distinguished corporate leaders in New Zealand has taken on the job of chairing the transition to the new Housing and Urban Development Authority. Helen O'Sullivan formerly the chief executive at Ockham one of our most successful residential developers has taken on the job of being the head of KiwiBuild Commercial. She's joined by Brad Ward the deputy chief executive of the ministry who will be responsible for KiwiBuild and large-scale projects. These appointments demonstrate that we are not cooling our heels; we are moving ahead with establishing the capability to implement our reform agenda and fix the housing crisis.This year we will also implement the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act standards. By passing that legislation in the first couple of weeks of this Government we signalled our intent to drag residential rental housing stock into the 21st century. The Healthy Homes Guarantee Act standards will ensure that it will be mandatory for all rental properties to be insulated; to have a fixed modern affordable heating source; and to have requirements for ventilation draft stopping and drainage as we have signalled. These homes—the cold damp homes that are so predominant in the rental sector—cause significant respiratory and cardiovascular conditions such as asthma and pneumonia toxic reactions allergies and other infections that can have lifelong repercussions. We cannot continue to accept this in the 21st century and our Government will not accept it.This year we will also introduce legislation to make life better for renters and to modernise the Residential Tenancies Act. It will improve the security and stability of tenure which is such a harsh force in the lives of the one-third of New Zealanders who rent. It wasn't uncommon during the peak of the last real estate cycle for renters to be moved on out of their homes every few months or even every year because the law affords them so little security of tenure.We're also leading on transport and climate change. The Prime Minister talked about how we need to transition to a clean green decarbonised economy and our transport plan is critical to achieving that. We're investing nearly $4 billion over the current three-year period in rapid transit throughout the country to ease congestion in our cities and get people out of single-occupant vehicles into public transport walking and cycling and mobility as a service including things like Lime scooters. Throughout New Zealand more and more commuters will be able to leave their car at home because of our investment in public transport and walking and cycling. Our Government is getting our cities moving after a decade of inaction worsening congestion and a blowout in the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. In Auckland we're building important infrastructure like the Eastern Busway and light rail from the city centre to Māngere.We're also investing record amounts in regional roads and the spending on regional roads in the regions is $600 million more under our Government in this three-year period than it was under the former National Government over the last three years who starved the regions of investment in their roads so they could put 40 percent of the entire transport budget into a handful of gold-plated expressways that carry 4 percent—4 percent—of vehicle journeys.Brett Hudson: Why don't you just build something? Just build something—come on.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: If that member cares about spending on roads in the regions he should support our transport policy not his.