Sage Eugenie: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10073. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a short call on the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill and explain why the Green Party opposes this bill following on from my colleague Holly Walker. We oppose the bill because it fails to provide for affordable housing and because it removes community consultation and local decision-making on new subdivision development. It is another example that this Government does not trust local government. It is not about a partnership with local government. It is about centralised decision-making.This is the same Government that in Opposition made such a fuss talking about nanny State when the former Labour Government sought to introduce energy-efficiency standards for lightbulbs. Nannies care about the people whom they are responsible for. This Government is the dictator State. It does not trust local councils and local communities to think for themselves and to do the land-use planning that they want to meet their needs. This bill is breathtaking in the powers that it gives to housing Minister Nick Smith to override plans to get rid of prohibited activity status and to override consent processes.Now that the Minister is no longer the Minister of Local Government or the Minister for the Environment where he could meddle directly with local authorities and the Resource Management Act he is doing it by the back door. This bill gives him major scope to meddle both with sensible and strategic decision-making by local councils on where the urban limits should be and to trample all over that concept so that it can benefit National’s property developer mates and give them a very easy ride through the resource consent processes for their property development and their new subdivisions on the fringes of our cities.This bill is not a solution to the housing affordability crisis. It is about trapping families in ghettos on the fringes of Auckland and potentially in other cities. Simply extending the urban limits to provide cheap housing will provide windfall profits for those people who have land banked on the edge of the cities but it potentially traps families in those urban fringes. That is because those areas on the outskirts of the cities often do not have public transport because this Government has refused to invest in public transport. They rely on cars. When petrol prices increase it means transport is unaffordable. There are often no job opportunities in those fringe areas so they cannot work locally. They do not have the amenities either. People are forced to commute long distances and it is not affordable. The types of houses that are built there are often large because land is cheaper rather than being compact energy efficient and affordable.Investing in this policy is about investing in ghettos—marginalising people. It is not about providing more affordable housing. We want compact and livable cities where people can connect with good public transport. That means more brownfield development and more medium density small dwellings centred around existing community amenities. It means good public transport close to where people work. That is a much better model for helping the first-home buyer to get a foot on the property ladder rather than this bill.This is another attack on the Resource Management Act. It is because the Government wants a much more permissive approach to planning. The bill provides for the Minister to be able to override prohibited activities. It provides for these special housing area applications not to be notified unless there is an affected neighbouring landowner. What we will see is the community not being involved in new subdivisions. When that happens there is poor planning. We have suburbs in Christchurch new subdivisions where the streets are not large enough to allow buses to go through. Thatis because the developer prevailed. They did not think about the wider community needs. In the same way the Minister goes in to push through new subdivisions without these being properly planned and without them being in the context of the urban limits where we are trying to reduce sprawl and councils are trying to do that. Instead it is about freeing up land to create ghettos for people on the margins of the cities who do not have good access to transport or good job opportunities. It is not about providing affordable housing.