Dean JacquiPart 2 Other amendmentsHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Madam Chair. Part 2 of this Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill concerns some other matters apart from the four well-beings so mindful that I've got a number of colleagues who are very keen to speak on aspects of Part 2 I'm going to confine my comments to development contributions. Again this is a revision. This is a going back to where we were before essentially around how local authorities can charge for development levies. So once again development levies will be able to be levied on developers for infrastructure such as libraries swimming pools museums and the like.The amendments that were made in our time confined the number of activities or infrastructure that developers could be levied. So we're really again going back to what was before: not a lot of policy not a lot of policy development in there. In fact can I suggest maybe just a quick sharp little conversation good tick that one off get that one on the Order Paper we can get it into the House and show that we're doing things. But actually it's really just going back.The sad thing about this particular aspect in Part 2 of the bill is that it might seem on the surface that being able to charge developers those people who put time and effort and take the risk—it's a business decision obviously.Stuart Smith: Put their capital up.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Yeah they put their capital up. They often highly leverage themselves—they're like any other business. They take the punt and put up land and sometimes land and building packages. With the reinstatement of the ability for local authorities to charge development contributions for other things like a swimming pool over here and a library over here and perhaps a portion of the museum rather than spreading the burden of what needs to be collected by way of rates and contributions for that development and indeed for funding other activities of council what it really does is increase the cost and the price of the section and the home because the only thing that the developer can do when faced with a development levy on their parcel of 10 sections or 20 or 100 or whatever it is—they build that cost like they build every other cost into the price of that section. So what does that do? It's obvious. The cost of housing increases.So in this bill that Labour have so very quickly brought out in an effort to be seen to be doing something the effect of what they are doing is to increase the cost of housing on New Zealanders. I do question a couple of things. Did they think about that? Did they consider that adding cost directly on to developers could only go in one place or two—two. Developers could stop putting their heart and soul into their business which is developing properties and maybe you know house and land packages. They could either stop doing it—where does that get us?—or they could build the price of that into their property and land prices and their product.Well if one is looking for a way to enable New Zealanders to get into their own homes can I suggest that this is not it—this is not it. I defy any member I defy the Minister in the chair Nanaia Mahuta to get up in this House and convince anyone in New Zealand who cares to listen that loading cost directly on to a developer is going to do anything else except load the cost then of course on to the purchaser of that land and/or land and housing package. Further I invite the Minister and any member of the Government to justify the loading of costs on to homebuyers in New Zealand when they have spent so much time—so much time—putting the cost of housing as such a strong political issue for themselves. Once again we see a policy that absolutely flies in the face of what they say. So what we have here yet again is say something and do another.""