Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to talk about clauses 11 and 12 in Part 1. What they do is introduce a new function for councils regional councils and territorial authorities under the Resource Management Act (RMA) requiring those bodies to ensure that there is sufficient residential and business development capacity". That is clauses 11 and 12. The idea behind this is that the councils will be required to ensure that there is a pipeline of development-ready land through the medium and longer term. I think it is designed in the eyes of Minister Smith at least to ensure that there is a sufficient quantity of development-ready land to make urban land markets more competitive. But what I want to say is that this illustrates the kind of poverty of thinking behind this Minister's approach to urban land markets and reform.David Seymour: It's a famine.PHIL TWYFORD: A famine—a famine of good ideas and good policy thinking. That is right. I want to also in this contribution speak to David Parker's two amendments. Supplementary Order Paper 287 basically inserts a requirement for a national policy statement on urban growth and the second amendment is about introducing infrastructure bonds. I want to explain why these two amendments must go together and why they are a far superior alternative to the approach contained in clauses 11 and 12 in Part 1 of the bill. Clauses 11 and 12 as I said are designed to ensure that there is enough of a so-called pipeline of available development-ready land. That approach is also reflected in the Minister's National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity. But the fallacy behind the thinking is the belief that that by requiring councils to provide a pipeline of future urban land somehow that is going to increase the supply and therefore bring prices down. What we see in Auckland shows that this approach will not work and that is why when the Minister published his National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity Auckland Council—and in fact all the other high-growth councils—said "No problem. It's basically business as usual. It won't change what we do." because in the case of Auckland it is often said the council has zoned land the size of Hamilton and therefore we are fine.Hon David Parker: What did the Productivity Commission say?PHIL TWYFORD: Well it is not fine because as the Productivity Commission and other commentators have said all that does under the current policy settings is drip-feed bits of land progressively into what is a supercharged speculative urban land market and it makes no difference whatsoever to the cripplingly high urban land prices that are at the heart of the problem that we have got. The solution that is embodied in David Parker's Supplementary Order Paper 287 on a national policy statement on urban growth is to create a superabundance of development opportunities both for people to build up and also for the city to grow out in order to make room for growth. It is only by creating that superabundance of development opportunities in an urban land market like Auckland's that there is any remote possibility of actually bringing urban land prices down. What David Parker's Supplementary Order Paper would do is require Nick Smith to do something that he could have done and should have done years ago. Instead of putting the House through all of this and all the other expensive and complicated tinkering that the Minister has applied to the RMA over the years it would require him to publish a national policy statement that would direct high-growth councils to get rid of the urban growth boundary and replace it with more intensive spatial planning. That would protect areas of special value ecological and otherwise that would acquire land for future infrastructure transport and otherwise and that would set aside public open spaces for future generations and that would then allow development to take place in the growth corridors as long as—and this is the big proviso—the infrastructure costs of that new development can be fully carried by that development so that the taxpayer and ratepayer are not being asked to subsidise development in places where it might be expensive to develop like far out on the fringes. That is why the companion amendment on infrastructure bonds is necessary. We need to find ways of financing and allowing the provision of infrastructure to support new development because the current system is broken. It is not possible to get rid of the urban growth boundary and replace it with a smarter way to manage urban growth unless you crack this problem of infrastructure financing. It goes right to the heart of it because after all the urban growth boundary is a proxy for the difference between land that is serviced by infrastructure or can be serviced by infrastructure and land that cannot. I am sure David Parker was very flattered actually that David Seymour having voted against these two amendments back on 6 September—this is the Journals of the House of Representatives that I am holding up and according to the Journals of the House of Representatives those two amendments failed by one vote. A single extra vote would have meant that these two amendments that have now resurfaced as David Parker's amendments would have been passed into law on the night of Tuesday 6 September if David Seymour had voted for them. Through some strange rip in the time-space continuum those same two amendments have reappeared in the name of David Seymour on the Table of this House tonight. It is very disconcerting that this kind of thing can happen. It questions all one's assumptions about the way the universe operates. But never mind about the plagiarism of David Seymour. If he has come tonight willing to vote for David Parker's amendments to get rid of the urban growth boundary and replace it with a smarter way of delivering urban planning that protects the built environment but opens up a superabundance of development opportunities that would drive down urban land costs—something that if National Party MPs paid attention to it they would probably want to support. But this Minister who has spent the last decade blaming the RMA for expensive urban land and expensive housing for some reason does not support this policy. I do not know why. I do not know why but he does not. But Labour does. We stand for more competitive urban land markets because we know there is a better way—Hon David Parker: So does the Productivity Commission.PHIL TWYFORD: —of allowing our cities to grow. The Productivity Commission advocates—advocates—more competitive urban land markets. It wants to see better more competitive ways of financing infrastructure for development. It wants to free up the incredibly restrictive land-use rules and zoning practices that are responsible for driving up the cost of housing and the cost of land. For the life of me I cannot really understand why Nick Smith and Bill English do not support these policies. They would if implemented make a massive difference in solving the housing crisis that has given our biggest city what The Economist magazine calls the most expensive housing in the world.So I call on members tonight to support and vote for both of David Parker's amendments on infrastructure financing and requiring the Minister to publish a national policy statement on urban growth because they would fix the problem that is at the core of our failing ability to manage urban growth—particularly but not only in our country's biggest city. They would do it in a way that is much more effective than the kind of tinkering that we see in clauses 11 and 12 in Part 1 of this bill. I want to say that in spite of my having described the commissioners as right-wing supply-side dinosaurs many years ago the Productivity Commission and the work that it has done in the last few years on urban growth and urban planning is hugely impressive. It has assembled a reform agenda that will be incredibly useful for the next Labour-led Government."