Tremain Chris: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Tremain Chris: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18481] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill and to address specifically the amendments being made to the Local Government Act 2002 in clause 42. This clause amends the Local Government Act and I will tell those people who are listening out there to this debate what it does. Clause 7A “Affordable housing policy” which is to be inserted in schedule 10 of that Act by clause 42 states: “A long-term council community plan must [now] contain a summary of the local authority’s affordable housing policy if it has adopted one under the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2007.” 
Government is about providing leadership and about providing the tools to achieve certain goals in that leadership. Clearly the leadership that we are trying to achieve here is to provide and increase the supply of affordable housing. I am guessing that the aim of inserting clause 7A is to help achieve that goal. I have some questions for the Minister in that regard. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Maryan Street how many councils indicated to us in their submissions that they will be looking to include a piece on affordable housing policy in their long-term council community plan. 
Jacqui Dean 
: How many? None. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: None. So here we are introducing legislation with the aim of increasing the supply of affordable housing by introducing a clause into Part 2 of this legislation and changing the amendments to the Local Government Act and taking up Parliament’s time to do something that will not achieve the goal that we set out to do. So I ask the Minister a second question. Did we do any analysis of the cost to local councils of doing an affordable housing policy? 
Phil Heatley 
: No but Local Government New Zealand did. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: Did it? And what was the cost there? 
Phil Heatley 
: It blew out in the case of most council’s plans. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: OK. I have another question for the Minister in relation to this long-term council community plan policy. If a council already has affordable housing within its boundaries—as the Napier City Council does—but does not intend to expand its affordable housing will it now have to include a piece in its long-term council community plan about how it manages that affordable housing? That is an interesting question. And I ask the Minister this: in doing this legislation in the analysis—in the projections that have been done for the cost of implementing this legislation—how many affordable houses are proposed by local governments around New Zealand? Were there indications from those who submitted that they would be going down the track? Maybe there were 150 in Auckland or 60 in Taranaki? I have another question for the Minister in regard to the long-term council community plan and the analysis that was done. How many families will benefit from this? 
The point I make—and I will finish on this—is that Government is about leadership. Yes there is a problem in this country about affordable housing and we have gone through this legislation with the aim of doing something to improve the lot of people by providing affordable housing. But the clear fact is that there are very few if any local governments that will actually do anything about the amendment that we are proposing to the Local Government Act 2002. They will do nothing. This is a complete waste of time. Thank you.