Robertson Grant: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10075. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): It was interesting to hear Nick Smith talk about the record on housing affordability of the previous Labour Government when housing prices have gone up 36 percent since his Government came into office.Hon David Parker: In a recession.GRANT ROBERTSON: As David Parker says in a recession housing prices have gone up 36 percent in Auckland under this Government. So Nick Smith wants to lecture the House about housing affordability. The fact is that in this bill which has been referred for a truncated select committee process there is very little that ensures housing affordability at all. The Government has to take it into consideration—yet again another part of this Budget where things are being considered rather than being done. The housing plans may include affordable housing. This bill if it were to do what was needed in affordable housing may need to be rushed through this House. If there were something in this that we could all see was addressing the range of issues that are required to get affordable housing in New Zealand maybe there would be a justification for pushing it through. But this deals with only one aspect of that.It is disturbing to be standing here again only a few days after I last spoke in a referral motion debate where the National Government once again decided that the select committee process on a bill should be truncated in the way that it is. We are down now to a 2-month consideration of this bill. I simply do not believe that that length of time will be sufficient to allow the scrutiny that this bill needs. Dr Smith obviously missed a lot of the speeches from Labour members because he clearly did not understand that our agreement to send this bill to a select committee had reservations attached to it. Those reservations are what need to be explored in a proper select committee process.The regulatory impact statement on this bill indicates why there are issues with such a truncated process. It talks about the fact that the development of the option the Government has put forward under Budget secrecy rules has meant that options have not been consulted on with stakeholders and affected parties outside of Parliament. That is what the regulatory impact statement is telling us—it is saying to this House that because of the way the Government has gone about developing this proposal it has not talked to anybody about it. It has not talked to local government which is critically involved in whether or not this can work and whether or not it is actually possible for there to be specified housing areas. We heard from Nick Smith that he thought it would be a partnership between central and local government. Well local government has not even been consulted up to this point and now it is going to be faced with a truncated select committee process where its ability to actually influence the bill where its ability to raise some of the issues that we are concerned about—about whether or not these housing areas will actually work—will be limited by this referral motion.Once again the National Government has brought a bill to this House having mucked around on this issue for months and months and having ignored the pleas of the Labour Party of Auckland Council and of others to actually get on with helping Auckland to address its housing crisis. For 5 years it has sat on its hands on the issue of housing and it comes to the House today and says: “You’ve only got 2 months. It’s got to go straight through.” Well that is once again this National Government treating this House with disrespect with contempt for the processes of democracy and with contempt for the select committee process.New Zealanders all around the world who are interested in politics and who write about politics talk about the importance of our select committee process. It is quite unique in the world and it is vitally important to this House’s processes. We do not have a second Chamber. We have only one Chamber.Hon David Parker: This is it.GRANT ROBERTSON: This is it. We have to have a robust select committee process in order to give legitimacy and credibility to the work we do here. Law commissioner John Burrows said in 1990 that select committees are “a crucial bastionof democracy in our legislative process.” Every time National brings a truncated motion to this House without good justification although John Burrows says select committees are a crucial bastion of our democracy National says: “We don’t care about that.”Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: What would Len Brown say?GRANT ROBERTSON: Sam Lotu-Iiga interjects as he wanders around the House saying “What would Len Brown say?”. I will tell you what Len Brown would say Mr Lotu-Iiga. He would say: “Where was National for the last 5 years when there was a housing crisis in Auckland? What was National doing then? Sitting on its hands doing nothing to resolve the housing affordability crisis having the Prime Minister deny that there even was a housing affordability crisis.” That is what Len Brown would be saying and he would be saying: “I want to see a process where people can have their say.” because that is what we should have in this process.Whenever there is a truncated select committee process I am concerned about the way in which the public will be able to make submissions. This is a bill on which people will have strong views. It does make significant change to the Resource Management Act. It places significant obligations on local councils to work with central government on whether or not there will be special housing areas and it does give significant power to the Minister of Housing where there cannot be agreement on those areas. Those are significantly increased powers and there will be a range of submitters who will want to submit on that—not only local government. The New Zealand Law Society which will often make submissions on these bills when they are making such significant changes to law will be forced into a rushed process as well.Hon David Parker: EDS.GRANT ROBERTSON: There are also environmental NGOs as my colleague David Parker says such as the Environmental Defence Society and others who have provided—Hon Maurice Williamson: Oh those luminaries.GRANT ROBERTSON: Maurice Williamson is not a fan of the Environmental Defence Society. He had better talk to Nick Smith. Nick Smith does like the Environmental Defence Society. We know that and it should be given a chance to have its submission on this bill. Maurice Williamson should be given his chance to have a submission on this bill. The putative Mayor of Auckland Maurice Williamson would want to have a submission on this bill to make sure that he can have a say about what is happening with housing affordability in Auckland. But Maurice Williamson’s opportunity to actually have a say on this bill will be severely limited by this truncated select committee process.I just want to return to the regulatory impact statement in terms of the reasons why a longer process is needed. I have mentioned already the fact that it is noted there that there has been no external consultation whatsoever. It also says that there is insufficient information on land supply restrictions across local authorities in New Zealand. So the select committee is going to need to research that. It is going to need to say what the extent of the problem is elsewhere in New Zealand and whether the things that are in this bill stack up. Are they required? We know quite a lot about what is happening in Auckland around the impact of land supply but we do not have that information about the rest of New Zealand. Although this bill is driven by the fact that the Auckland Council has finally managed to convince the Government to act and support it in its Auckland Unitary Plan it actually applies to the whole of New Zealand. That means that we do need more time at the select committee to be able to get information about what the impact of land restrictions is on other local authority jurisdictions.The regulatory impact statement also says that at the moment there is insufficient detail on the specific operations of how this option will work. We do not actually knowwhat the impact of this will be on the behaviours of landowners or on the commercial decisions of property developers. We need the time at the select committee to be able to analyse whether or not this is the right option and whether or not this is the way this should go. One of the interesting points that the regulatory impact statement makes is that there is insufficient information on the provision of the infrastructure that will actually be required to support the kinds of developments that are being proposed in this bill. That is because the National Government has only just caught up with the idea that it needs to do something about housing affordability. It has put up a bill in front of this House that goes only to some small extent of addressing that. It ignores all the other measures that it would be possible for the Government to put in place and puts up a bill that maybe might consider doing something about housing affordability. It does that in a truncated select committee process that simply will not give New Zealanders the opportunity to have a say. It will not give this legislation legitimacy.Legitimacy in our parliamentary system in New Zealand comes from a proper select committee process. We are not going to see that proper select committee process under the motion that the Minister of Housing has just moved. A report-back date of 26 July is simply not enough time. In the system in this House 6 months is what it should be 4 months is what it often is and 2 months is simply not enough. This Government needs to understand that the people of New Zealand deserve to have a say. Labour had supported this bill to the select committee but we do not support this referral motion. This referral motion is wrong. It is a continuation of this Government’s anti-democratic approach when it comes to lawmaking and particularly when it comes to the role of local government. I urge members in the House to vote against this referral motion so that New Zealanders can have a proper say on this and so that we can actually explore real options for housing affordability rather than this weak limp response from National.