Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill and the Riccarton Racecourse Bill in the Committee stage. We have said in previous readings that these are two pieces of legislation that started life in quite a different form—as a local bill in one instance—and they are now coming back to this House for their Committee stage after being worked on by the Local Government and Environment Committee and are being heard as one question.I would like to acknowledge the work that the Local Government and Environment Committee did on this legislation at the select committee stage. I think a number of very good changes were made that see better pieces of legislation returned to this House. I think it was fortuitous that a number of the permanent members of the Local Government and Environment Committee at the time were in fact Canterbury-based MPs. So in addition to myself and Eugenie Sage from the Green Party we also had Matt Doocey Joanne Hayes and Nuk Korako from the National Party who heard this legislation. Of course we were ably assisted by those not fortunate enough to come from Canterbury.What this legislation does is it enables the development of housing in the area around the Riccarton Racecourse which in itself is fortunately placed in the good electorate of Wigram. It will allow for the development of housing in that area. But in this contribution at the Committee stage I want to concentrate on the Riccarton Racecourse Development Enabling Bill part of this legislation Part 2 and specifically clauses 9 10 and 11 if time permits. I may have to come back to them in a later call.Clause 9 of this bill is an important clause in this legislation in that it sets out the minimum requirements for the development scheme should it go ahead. The legislation is quite prescriptive around what the minimum requirements for the development scheme will be. There is a requirement for 180 affordable homes to be built on this development land: issued with code compliance certificates under the Building Act 2004 and to have been sold for occupation primarily as the home or residence of not more than 1 household no later than 5 years after the approval date." That clause 9(a) there actually sets a bit of a gold standard for what housing should be and unfortunately it is not what we are seeing in terms of housing in this country at the moment. We are not seeing enough affordable housing. There is a definition of "affordable housing" in this legislation which we think is at the high end of what is affordable.But also there is the issuing of code compliance certificates. If you are familiar with the number of repairs that have happened in Canterbury over the last 5½ years it is not a foregone conclusion that you will have a code of compliance for your building. But I think to be sold "for occupation primarily as the home or residence of not more than 1 household" is an important part of clause 9(a). What is being said here is that a family home should not have a number of families squashed into it. Throughout other parts of my electorate it is not uncommon to have 17 18 or 19 people living in a home that really should only be used for the purposes of housing one family. So I am very pleased to see that.I am also pleased to see that there is a bit of a protection against "ghost houses" contained in this clause 9(a) as well in that these houses do have to be occupied no later than 5 years after the approval date. These houses cannot be built and merely sit there and not be utilised with the owners thinking that they are just going to wait for the capital gains to flow in rather than provide them for what a house should be and that is: a home for people. I think it is really important to see those protections there in clause 9(a).Some of the other requirements not only of the house but also of the development itself are set out in this broader clause 9. We need fibre-optic broadband connections to be provided to all premises so that we are building in the 21st century. There is also in clause 9(c) talk around being: "capable of satisfying the relevant regional and district planning requirements including in relation to providing any infrastructure to service the development in the manner proposed by the scheme." This is very important. This development when it was first proposed was proposed to be what was going to be known as an "exemplar" project in Christchurch—an exemplar project for specific planning instruments that were put in place to allow for expedited housing development in Christchurch. Unfortunately we have only seen one of these exemplar developments take place in the city of Christchurch over this time. Not only is it the houses that matter; it is the kind of planning that we put around these housing developments that is going to be what the future of our city in Christchurch hangs on.What are the transport planning requirements that we are putting in place? I have been on record at other stages of this legislation as saying that I do have some reservations that not enough thought has been given to that vital piece of infrastructure that is provided for in clause 9(c). Not enough thought has been given. If this had been done through the instrument of an exemplar development we would have had the kind of integrated planning that will make for good urban development. That could have been possible. Anyone from Christchurch knows how congested Yaldhurst Road gets at peak time and simply putting the traffic from 600 more homes on to that road with no thought is not going to work. What we need to be doing is thinking in a progressive and long-term manner about the kinds of transport requirements for the new shape that Christchurch has grown into. We know there are large developments to the north in the Waimakariri District and also there are large developments to the west of Christchurch City but also through into the Selwyn District. We need to give some serious thought to the infrastructural requirements of how it is that we provide for those developments.The other note I would make here is that in clause 9(e)—and it is repeated in clause 10—Ngāi Tahu are given the first right of refusal on this parcel of land. This is after all land that has been protected under a reserves status and so under the terms of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 it is only right that this be offered first and foremost to the local tangata whenua who then through Ngāi Tahu Property one of their development companies have the opportunity to develop this land. The legislation is littered with enough clues that this seems to be something that Ngāi Tahu Property one of the holding companies of the Ngāi Tahu iwi is going to take up. And I think that we have seen Ngāi Tahu undertake a number of developments around Christchurch in the post-earthquake era and I know in my own electorate in Wigram that this will not be their first rodeo—that there are a number of developments that have sprung up and have some good factors to them.So Labour will be supporting this bill. I think that we do need to give some good and genuine thought to the kind of development we are doing and I think that clause 9 of this legislation offers a good guide for that."