van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Like a lot of the Government's work on infrastructure that was a very brief and half-hearted attempt. But nevertheless I'll take a call here on the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Bill second reading as it's come back from select committee.Now they get a bit touchy about infrastructure over there because they know that they haven't met the expectations of the public and indeed the expectations they probably set for themselves if we're honest. But the reality is that infrastructure is absolutely fundamental. We have to get it right we have to do better and actually over a period of time—a few decades—we haven't had the depth of pipeline the confidence for the construction sector that is necessary to really start streamlining that work and getting the efficiencies that can be achieved from having that more consistent pipeline.So this is good; we support it—Mr Bishop I think made that quite clear. But the reality is that there are a number of facets within here that are absolutely vital and I really just want to pick up on the point that Mr Bishop made as well around the interwoven nature of the different development aspects. Housing of course is reliant on having good infrastructure and that's roads waste-water connectivity a whole range of different aspects and we need to link all of those up. So this Infrastructure Funding and Financing Bill helps to do that.Now we had started working on the framework of this actually and it's something that I do with my four-year-old daughter as well. You sort of trace you put dots on a piece of paper and then they come along and join it and you congratulate them on doing a great job and I think that's what the Government has done here. We've put the dots out for them they've joined it up they can be really chuffed with what they've achieved but it just makes sense and we were heading in that direction in the first place.So we have a pretty ambitious plan for infrastructure and we heard that just on Friday from Judith Collins announcing a massive plan of works: $31 billion over 10 years across a range of different areas and in particular in the upper North Island. So that has real benefits and when I look at my electorate of the Waikato it's set to benefit significantly from the increased potential that the investment in infrastructure under that package will deliver through jobs growth greater social opportunities and improving the wellbeing I suppose of the broader Waikato community. So we're really excited about those projects in the Waikato—expressway projects but also looking further down the track at linking those into Auckland and further north and across to the Bay of Plenty as well. So this bill presents opportunities in that space as well.When we look at how the local authorities will fit in with what's being planned in a broad visionary infrastructure pipeline like the National Party announced just the other day there is a need—it provides the ability for some of the territorial authorities to then start thinking about their longer-term plan and how they fit in with that. An example would be the Waikato District Council largely within my electorate and that district covers quite a large area—it sort of skirts around the eastern side of Hamilton City to Tamahere at the southern end and then goes right up to the Bombay Hills at the top and the difference between those communities is significant. What they're experiencing in the Waikato—and in a number of other areas but specifically in this case they are experiencing high growth in those northern communities: Pōkeno Tuakau Te Kauwhata. All those areas that need significant investment in infrastructure—and Mr Bishop touched on it as well—around the current model that effectively requires existing ratepayers to fund that infrastructure investment to then bring in additional ratepayers and homes over time.Now there's an element of fairness within that and ratepayers will readily raise that as a concern for local councils. I hear regularly from councillors and mayors around their difficulty in trying to juggle that particular requirement. So communities like Tamahere who aren't seeing the same growth that's being experienced at the top end are still having through their rates to fund some of that infrastructure. This bill provides a new model to help facilitate some of that growth over a period of time so the establishment of the special purpose vehicles (SPVs) will enable that particular project to get off the ground. So that's creating a vehicle to implement—to carry out the construction of that project then handing it over to the particular territorial authority at the end of it. That's really what we're trying to achieve here is taking away the complexities of managing around existing debt levels on local council balance sheets and enabling them to still invest in infrastructure that's needed in the areas—so this does that.There are a couple of areas through the select committee process that we tweaked to improve. One of those I just wanted to touch on was around the eligible costs—what could or couldn't be considered eligible costs. Land acquisition hadn't been part of that but actually a fundamental part of any infrastructure project is having the underlying land on which to begin your construction. So that now will be considered an eligible cost under this bill which is appropriate and the other aspect was then around transitioning that. These SPVs are only ever a tool for the development the construction phase of a particular project and then the intent is that it is handed over at the end. That needs to happen promptly. There's no need for these SPVs to continue on over time and so there were some questions around how you deal with excess levy that may build up through that period of levy being sourced by the local bodies for that particular project and then indeed potentially having a surplus levy at the end or actually having uncollected levies as the case may be. So what we did through the select committee was to actually tweak that slightly to allow for the more rapid wind up of the SPV by assigning any uncollected or postponed levies back to the territorial authorities so that they can effectively then continue—as they would with outstanding rates as well—to look at avenues to collect those that are required.So those couple of changes were just a few that I thought were relevant to note in this but broadly it's getting the plan in place to provide a bit more long-term planning for territorial authorities for central government for ambitious plans like we announced last week—$31 billion infrastructure plan. This will enable those territorial authorities to work in amongst that so that regions like the Waikato Auckland Northland and the Bay of Plenty can prosper. So we commend it to the House.