Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Mr Speaker. As I take a call in support of the Prime Minister's statement and in opposition to the amendment to the associated motion from the Opposition it's quite pleasing to me as I've listened to a number of contributions that there is widespread recognition that as a country we have done very very well with what is the greatest challenge that we are currently facing which is COVID. I think it's been an outstanding response from New Zealanders that has enabled that. Yes it's been coordinated by the Government but notwithstanding the protests from a very small proportion of our population that we see outside there has been a unified response from the people of New Zealand that has enabled us to overcome the pandemic in the way that we have until now.We are now into the third year of the pandemic and because of vaccination rates—and really only because of vaccination rates—we can now approach Omicron in a way that we couldn't previously. It is with some confidence that we approach the challenge of the Omicron wave that is building in our country. I think that New Zealanders nervous though they are about Omicron can take heart from the fact that the plan that the Government has adhered to with the support of New Zealanders has enabled us to have the best result in the OECD for two years in a row and those are of course the two years that we have data for during the pandemic. We've had the lowest hospitalisation rate the lowest rate of confirmed cases and the lowest death rate and it's no coincidence—that didn't happen by itself. It happened because of New Zealanders pulling together and doing the sensible things that we have done as a country. Yes some of them have been hard. It's been hard for people who have been separated from their loved ones and the business consequences for some businesses have been very difficult. But with support from the Government through wage support schemes and by doing this in as compassionate a way as possible we have got through and what an amazing result in the last year to have had 10 million doses of the vaccine taken up by New Zealanders.I also know from my dealings with people that there is an enormous gratefulness on the part of the New Zealand population that for two years in a row we have had a relatively normal summer and we've needed it. People have needed a break from the consequences of COVID and we've managed to deliver one. I think that's a fantastic thing that we should be celebrating as a country and I know the vast majority of New Zealanders do. Over Christmas of course we had to wind back slightly the relaxation of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). I know that the Opposition was running a petition before Christmas saying End MIQ now" which has since been changed to "End MIQ" because they've realised that they were on the wrong side of that one given that if we had reopened to Australia as was originally planned we would not have had the largely COVID-free summer that we have had. We're one of the only countries in the world that beat Delta. We didn't completely stamp it out but we bent the line down and we haven't been overrun with Delta deaths in the way that other countries have.In the meantime of course the other business of Government goes on and I haven't got time to talk through in any detail the huge range of policy that we've got improving the country and the new deliveries that we're doing across health education and climate. I note that the last contributions from the Green Party noted the importance of climate. Well we actually have a Green climate Minister and this year there's going to be a focus on climate mitigation in the Budget. In respect of child poverty I do note—and I didn't see this mentioned by the last speaker from the Greens—that all nine indicators of child poverty we've got progress on. The Prime Minister said that in question time today and that's something we're immensely proud of.In respect of health of course we've got the work that the Hon Andrew Little is leading to do away with health boards and to have a unified system. But in addition to that we're rolling out new hospitals and mental health infrastructure in contrast to the last two years of the National Government's Budgets where there was no contribution to capital spending for health in the last two Budgets. Hon Michael Woodhouse: That is just not true.Hon DAVID PARKER: That is true. There is some background capital expenditure but in terms of contribution to capital spending from the Budget—Hon Michael Woodhouse: That is not true either.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well you can ask a question in the House on that Mr Woodhouse because we've heard the Minister of Finance contrasting the contributions to capital spending from the health sector. Remember those hospitals that were so poorly maintained that they had sewage running down the walls? Remember that fact that there were very few new hospitals being built in the country? Remember the complaints about mental health inadequacies of spending that followed the reality that the last National Government removed the ring-fencing of mental health funding? Health boards that were under pressure took the money that was meant to be applied to mental health and applied it to other areas and as a consequence we inherited the mental health problems that we have. In education we reformed trades training in the polytechnic sector in a way that it really is working. We've got 100000 extra people in trades training. One of the reasons why we're coming out of this post-COVID recession so much better than the last Government achieved in respect of the global financial crisis is that instead of cutting back on spending on training we increased it and therefore we're training the workforce that we need to for example build houses.In my own responsibilities having in recent years reformed the freshwater management in New Zealand the big push this three-year term is to reform with the Natural and Built Environments Bill. We're already in the meantime reforming the Resource Management Act through its repeal and replacement with the Natural and Built Environments Act implementing the Randerson report which the Hon Tony Randerson QC chaired during the last term of Government. But in addition to that of course we're already adding to housing supply through the likes of the up-zoning legislation that we passed last year with the assistance of the National Party and I thank the Hon Judith Collins in particular for that. I think that is something that history will thank the honourable member for.In respect of the other big crisis that we inherited on housing I do want to take the last 2½ minutes to just list the huge array of efforts we have that are behind the near doubling of the number of houses that are being built in Auckland. There's a danger in this sort of speech of listing all of the things that have led to an outcome and then not leaving enough time for the outcome. In Auckland from memory the number of houses that was being built annually when we came into office was 10000 whereas we've got that up to 19000 in the last year which is an over 90 percent increase in the number of homes being built. New Zealand - wide the number of houses being built has increased to around 44000 to 47000 a year—47000 last year and 44000 predicted for this year and if last year is anything to go by we'll probably beat those estimates as well.There's been an enormously complex range of levers pulled to achieve that. We've had the $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund to help councils build the infrastructure needed to enable houses to be built. We established the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. We've developed our urban growth agenda to deal with land supply. We've established Kāinga Ora. We've passed the Urban Development Act and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act and we have the National Policy Statement on Urban Development which we tweaked last year with the help of the National Party. We passed the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act. That has consented more than 3400 residential units in the 2021 year. We've established the Progressive Home Ownership Fund. We've changed the tax system. I know that the National Party hate this but we actually have changed the tax signal in a country where we've got a very distorted tax signal around the housing market. We've done something to actually preference first-home buyers over investors and it's working. Hon Michael Woodhouse: How's that going? Hon DAVID PARKER: It's working really well. It's working really well. We directed housing investment into the building of new homes rather than bidding up the prices of existing homes and we see that in the way in which house price inflation is rapidly going down in Auckland. House price inflation has been rocketing for years in Auckland and in the last quarter it is getting closer and closer to zero in real terms inflation in the Auckland housing market and that's a consequence of all of these measures. Of course we've exempted the builders of new homes from these changes to interest deductibility in the brightline test because we want new supply. It is working. We've got a big work programme on outside of COVID and we're proud of it."