Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Interesting to hear some of the points raised across the House on this Housing Infrastructure (GST-sharing) Bill. I just want to take a moment as is custom to acknowledge Brooke van Velden for the luck of the draw. But I do want to say that the reason that the Greens will be supporting this bill tonight is not because in any way shape or form it's a silver bullet for the housing crisis; I think that that would be absolutely absurd and preposterous for any of us to pretend that any single piece of legislation even the housing-enabling legislation which we passed through was by itself going to solve the housing crisis. The reason that the Greens are supporting this is because actually—similarly to the bill that was being debated just before the Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Bill—successive Governments have commissioned successive reports reviews inquiries and advice that have told them precisely the same thing which is that local government in this country does not have adequate resources to get on with the mandate that we as a Parliament have actually provided them and continued to expand. So to give some context to that I don't have the most recent figures but off the top of my head I recall from 2016—when an annoying 22-year-old candidate was running for the Auckland mayoralty—the average amount of spending that occurs at a local government level as a proportion of local and central in the OECD is approximately 30 percent at that local government level. Here in Aotearoa though it's less than half of that at 11 percent. You can see where we get to this issue of those infrastructural deficits and actually some of the issues that we're currently grappling with in Tāmaki-makaurau with the slash-and-burn budget proposals from our current administration who are pointing out that the only meaningful lever that they have at their disposal to increase their revenue is to increase rates. And that of course is a constant annual battle that local governments across this country are forced into. And of course what we've seen by virtue of the democratic deficit at that local government level—that is not enough people engaging in that process—is that time and again local governments have largely and on the whole in a trend chosen that austerity pathway. That of course has been a real problem for the infrastructural deficit that we're seeing today and that's the general premise or reason that the Greens are supporting this bill because we will support the progression of any idea any premise in this Parliament that takes us to a place in select committee where we can robustly discuss the need for more resourcing at a local government level. The fact that this is limited just to housing and obviously just to GST sharing to that respect I think needs to be expanded and I think that we should be looking at actually potentially—as has actually been proffered by other parties in this House in the past—GST sharing on the whole when we're looking at potentially all forms of goods and services and transactions that occur in certain territorial authority areas. But just while I've got the ears of the House and we're talking about housing development and the opportunity of where and how to build—and also actually the point of infrastructure—I need to use the example of Auckland because obviously it's my city it's my home but it's a perfect example of where we've done housing and infrastructure terribly for the past few decades—terribly. So terribly we're one of the largest cities in the world land mass - wise and there's been a doggedly concerted effort for some reason for the past few decades to expand out into all of it to decimate our critical soil for food resilience. Not very smart or forward-thinking there. It's not very good in terms of our carbon emissions—obviously transport has the largest emissions profile in Tāmakimakau-rau but it's also the largest growing emissions profile nationally but also for infrastructure: the more that we continue to perversely sprawl further and further out the further that people are away from job opportunities from education opportunities from their families from their communities—I know this; my old man just moved down to Cambridge because of the housing crisis—but also the more expensive it is to build that infrastructure to service those communities and provide those amenities not the least our front-line emergency services. So while we're encouraging this conversation progressing and we think that the baseline premise needs to be more revenue or resource sharing with local government because we need to empower them to get on with the mandate that we legislate for we need to bear in mind that the types of housing and the types of infrastructure that we've been building particularly in our largest city with a third of our population is just frankly daft and we can do it a lot better. The Greens commend this bill to the House.Debate interrupted.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie. The House adjourned at 10 p.m.