Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm delighted to rise to speak on this bipartisan—for National and Labour—bill that we have in front of us today. I want to start by talking a little bit about my childhood which was in a villa and I'm wearing a villa necklace today. A villa is a beautiful thing that I was pleased to grow up in except of course it was Dunedin and there was no insulation so there was a little bit of bronchitis there. But over time my parents have done up that villa. It is now insulated there are heat pumps and it's a lovely place to be and if Dunedin was a tier 1 authority or if this villa was in Auckland there'd be no need for that villa to be torn down and replaced with these buildings. But it is an option for that villa owner to develop that land in the future. As the Minister said this is enabling legislation"—it doesn't require that sort of thing. Also as the Minister said this is important climate legislation because in fact when we can all live close to public transport modes where we have very good active transport that is a good thing for climate. So what this bill does is two things—two prongs and we've heard about it from both the previous speakers to some degree—and both avenues really use zoning as a tool. So the first thing is that it's speeding up the implementation of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development—the NPSUD it's referred to—and so that is to increase growth and densification. Then it's doing the second thing which is inserting these new medium-density residential standards. There are some caveats—as the previous speaker just spoke to—about those medium-density residential standards and they are called qualifications in the bill. They include things like open space designations and heritage orders. Now these medium-density residential standards are found in new Schedule 3B in Schedule 2 of the bill and as the previous member said that's a very good part of the bill to go and look at if people are interested in what this legislation is really enabling. So what will happen is that if you can comply with those standards that are in Schedule 3B then your activity will be permitted which means no resource consent is needed. If they don't comply then it's a restricted discretionary activity which means a resource consent is needed but the discretion of the consenting authority is restricted to that matter that's not being met. So some of the things in Schedule 3B include a maximum height of 11 metres—so that's the three storeys—a 2.5-metre front yard 50 percent building coverage and 60 percent impervious surfaces along with a number of other factors as well. Now these medium-density residential standards are only applying to tier 1 local authorities so those are the councils of our biggest cities. They do not include—relevant to my part of the world—Dunedin or Queenstown. These are both tier 2 authorities as is already set out in the existing NPSUD. However should a tier 2 authority—and these are set out in the bill—have an acute housing need then they can talk with the Minister and the Minister can make regulations to make them part of the system. So there's a streamlined planning process and we've heard about that. There are no rights of appeal and the Minister can make final decisions if there's a difference of opinion between the independent hearings panel and the council. As the deputy chair of the Environment Committee I'm very pleased that this bill is coming to us and we will pay very careful attention to it. We look forward to the submissions and I commend this bill to the House."