7. Question No. 7—Housing and Urban DevelopmentHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban DevelopmentQuestion No. 7—Housing and Urban Development7. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he remain committed to all of the housing and urban development policies outlined in the Speech from the Throne?Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes. This Government has ended the State house sell-off; taken the lead in building more State and KiwiBuild homes directly building more homes than any Government since the 1970s; started work on our Urban Growth Agenda and removing Auckland's Rural Urban Boundary; announced the details of the Housing and Urban Development Authority; cracked down on speculators; banned overseas buyers from buying existing homes; passed the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill; consulted publicly on modernising the tenancy laws; and in line with our confidence and supply agreement with the Greens started work on rent-to-own and progressive homeownership schemes.Hon Judith Collins: Why has the Government not yet removed the Auckland Rural Urban Boundary as it stated it would in the Speech from the Throne?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because it's important to get these things right. We've done two important things that are about building the platform for removing the urban growth boundary. The first is putting in place new ways of funding and financing the infrastructure that our towns and cities need because at the moment Auckland Council is using restrictive provisions in the Auckland Unitary Plan to protect its financial position because it has no ability to borrow more to pay for the infrastructure needed for new urban growth. That is why we are putting in place new ways of financing infrastructure. We've also made significant progress in loosening up the rules and providing support for quality intensification so that Auckland can grow up. If we were to remove the urban growth boundary first you would simply destroy the market for quality intensification.Hon Judith Collins: When will the Government free up density controls by improving the resource management system as it stated it would in the Speech from the Throne?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We've made considerable progress developing instruments of national direction under the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will—and I've been working with environment Minister David Parker on this. We'll have more to say on it shortly but the national direction under the RMA will clearly proscribe and prescribe the content of district plans to encourage quality intensification.Hon Judith Collins: When are we going to see land freed from restrictive rules that stop the city growing up and out?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: This year.Hon Judith Collins: What planning rule changes does he require from the Government to remove the urban growth boundary he has said creates artificial scarcity of land and pushes up the price of sections?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The urban growth boundary and the restrictive land use rules which go with it are indeed one of the prime causes of the absurdly expensive urban land in our country's biggest city. What we're doing is replacing the urban growth boundary with a more expansive approach to spatial planning that will protect areas of special value invest in transport infrastructure and allow the city to grow. We are going to implement these changes over the coming year and a half—something that that party in Government talked about loosely as RMA reform but did nothing over nine years; nothing.