Salesa Jenny: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8278. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill. The purpose of this bill is to refine the massive Auckland Unitary Plan hearings process so that the panel can deliver all of its recommendations on the proposed unitary plan to Auckland Council by the statutory deadline of 22 July 2016.Labour is supporting this bill which will amongst other things drop the panel’s quorum. Clause 4 of the bill will amend the principal Act section 136(1) to reduce the quorum for a three-member panel to only two. This should provide enough flexibility to deal with the thousands of submissions on site-specific issues that Auckland Council deals with.As everyone in this House knows Auckland aims to be the most livable city in the world. Auckland is a city that is growing really fast at the moment. Consequently it faces a number of pressing issues including a serious housing crisis issue and my office in South Auckland sees the fallout from this every day.The unitary plan that is proposed by this bill is a tool that would assist Auckland to meet its economic and housing needs. It is an appropriate and balanced way to deal with this issue while protecting and enhancing what is most important to Aucklanders. The unitary plan will determine what is to be built and at which location as well as create a higher-quality and more compact Auckland.The Government still seems to have absolutely no firm idea of what to do to tackle the housing crisis in Auckland in the face of the most urgent housing need that is happening there right now. Just yesterday Simon Collins in the New Zealand Herald reported that every 3 days in Auckland at least one family is seeking housing help because they do not have any other place to live. They are homeless and they are living in cars. Many families are homeless and living in cars right now in Auckland and 50 percent of the people in those families are children. This figure he reports is likely to be an underestimate.Just last week in my electorate office in Manukau East in South Auckland our office saw three families who were homeless and living in cars and who were in desperate need of assistance. Two of these were families with young children and the other was a man in poor health and with disabilities and he has a young daughter. It is appalling that there is nowhere for these families that are living like this—living in cars in this First World country Aotearoa New Zealand—that is a permanent place for them to call their home. For mothers and especially for women with young children it seems that it is only in occasional circumstances—where they are victims of domestic violence—that these families can actually go into a house right away.Our office works on a regular basis with Housing New Zealand as well as with Work and Income. I must say that our office works quite well with them. However the highest priority that they can give a family is A20. In the whole year that I have been a local MP in Manukau East we have only given a family an A15 as the highest priority. I do not actually know what it would take for a family to get to an A20 but our office in South Auckland has not actually seen a family with a priority of A20 not even families with children who are homeless.The special housing areas have been a complete flop. We heard last week that only 102 houses have been completed even though Nick Smith had promised 39000 such homes would be built. The latest Quotable Value data in Auckland tells us that housing prices have risen by $22000 in the month after the Government announced its brightline test coming into effect. Yet again an attempt to control the speculation in housing that has been a notable failure.The average price of a house in Auckland is $918000. There are so many families in Auckland that cannot afford that in Auckland. Right now the Government needs to urgently establish effective measures to control the housing crisis in Auckland. May we recommend that a solution could be a large-scale State-backed affordable housing development as well as a ban on foreign speculators buying existing homes in Auckland. Thank you.