Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): National continues to support this bill. We do so because quite simply this bill will do more to enable desperately needed new houses in this country than any other policy initiative initiated by this Labour-led Government. We note on our side of the House that the bill that we will pass in this House must be very much improved from the legislation that was brought to the select committee and we acknowledge the select committee process which has brought about recommendations for more than 50 pages of amendments to improve this bill. I'm going to discuss those improvements in this contribution but before I do so I want to take the minds of the members in this House back to 2017 and I want you to recall the debates that were had then about what was termed at the time by one Jacinda Ardern as a housing crisis. I recall those debates because I remember Bill English saying that actually until we addressed the restrictive land-use regulation that has burdened this country for so long—until we addressed that—we would continue to prevent housing supply. At that time while National was putting forward ideas for reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA) that we now debate in this House today it was Jacinda Ardern who said No no. The solution is 100000 KiwiBuild homes." Well here we are four years later and the 100000 KiwiBuild homes never eventuated nor will they ever. Then there was the promise to tax overseas speculators and that didn't solve the housing crisis either. Then we've had the punitive measures against landlords to change the ring-fencing of losses to change interest deductibility rules and to extend brightline tests and that hasn't helped either. So we are the National Party and we have come to help and this bill is a result of our desire to help this Government make the underlying reforms which are required to enable housing supply.Let me turn to the select committee process because that has been I think an exemplar of how Parliament can work together to make legislation better. We had hundreds of submissions from experts from local authorities from residents' associations—from people impacted by this bill. We gave those submissions detailed consideration. The select committee considering this bill has meet for more than 56 hours and we have done so because we want this legislation to work as well as possible. I want to thank the submitters whose observations and whose expertise will make sure that this bill can be much more enduring into the future. Their thoughts and their concerns have been addressed in a number of amendments which are in the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has discussed.At its heart this bill will support the supply of new dwellings. It creates greater rights to build for those with sections in our major urban areas and it will reduce the red tape the cost and the complexity that is too often associated with the resource consent process. There are some key areas that have been changed as a result of our deliberations. This first is around design standards. We had many submitters come to the committee and say "Yes to more housing yes to more density in our urban areas but let's do it well." Across the committee I think there was widespread agreement that we can do density well and we should do density well and in order to service that goal the committee are recommending some key changes: the introduction of landscaping requirements so that 20 percent of a section must be landscaped with new development the introduction of glazing requirements so that houses facing the street have to have some windows amending the proposed standards around outlook and outdoor living space requirements to enhance the livability and amenity of this denser housing and—critically—a reduction in height in relation to boundary of new dwellings from what had been proposed in the original bill at 6 metres down to 4 metres. That is a pragmatic decision by the committee to make that recommendation. It recognises those who had concern about loss of sunlight and loss of amenity but it does so in a way that will still allow more dwellings to be added much more easily than they can be today. I note also in relation to design standards that the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development have said that they will immediately begin developing a national medium-density design guide in consultation with local government and stakeholders to ensure that as we build more housing in our urban centres we do so well.The second area that the select committee focused on was ensuring that councils have the discretion to exclude those areas which are not suited to density of the sort proposed in the medium-density residential zone. Now this is achieved in the bill via what are termed qualifying matters. These qualifying matters are really important for giving councils flexibility to manage development in certain areas where density may not be a good idea. So it's for matters of national importance such as the natural character of the coastal environment wetlands lakes and rivers protection of outstanding natural features landscapes and historic heritage management of significant risks from natural hazards the requirement for the safe and efficient operation of infrastructure and scope to identify other qualifying matters. In the select committee process some submitters queried whether or not these qualifying matters would be able to be used in practice because of the information requirements required and the effort and resources needed. So what the amendments the committee has recommended propose is that councils don't need to provide significant additional evidence to justify inclusion of specified qualifying matters. Instead they can use that evaluation information that has been created through previous planning processes. I think that that is a critical clarification to have made. So in practice that would mean that where for example a council has previously identified a ponding area or an identified flood-flow path then they can take the evidence of that and say "That's why we're not having density here."A third issue that the select committee has addressed is around infrastructure and I want to start by saying something really simple on this—because it has gone over the heads of some—which is this: the actual increased demand for infrastructure results from population increase. Nothing in this bill in and of itself will mean population increase. What this bill will potentially do is shift the pattern of development and the number of dwellings. In fact in an ideal world what this bill could result in is less overcrowded houses and more dwellings which wouldn't actually increase infrastructure demand. But we have added some additional provisions. One is to allow councils to amend their district-wide planning provisions for things like stormwater management fencing earthworks and infrastructure and allowing them to use those district-wide provisions to set standards for those matters and allowing local councils to recalibrate how they use financial contribution tools.Finally another critical area of study for the select committee was around the transitional provisions for private plan changes that are being facilitated in order to allow greenfields development. Now here in the National Party we believe there is still a huge amount of scope in New Zealand for greenfields housing development. We say yes to density. We also say yes to greenfields development. So it has been important to us that this bill not stall private plan changes that are under way and in fact it was the intent of the majority of the committee that at best this bill could actually accelerate those sorts of plan changes. So there have been changes to the transitional provisions in this bill to clarify that that is the case and we note that some plan change applicants may in fact see this bill as an opportunity to increase the number of dwellings within their proposal.This is a bill which will make a difference not just next year or the year after; this is a bill that will allow for more responsive housing supply in New Zealand for generations to come. It is appropriate that the select committee have studied the details carefully and have made a number of very thoughtful amendments. National is proud to support this bill."