Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Well it's quite a day isn't it? Very significant particularly in relation to dealing with one of the most significant issues facing New Zealand. The issue around housing it permeates so many people's lives and the inability now of our younger generation to even have the desire to actually want to buy a house given the increasing cost of it and how they are becoming increasingly out of reach for most young New Zealanders. It is not only a financial issue; it is actually becoming a social issue. I think this bill is one of the steps—it is not going to do everything by any means but I think it is perhaps giving a bit of hope to our younger people and particularly people that are renting at the moment with young children also who we don't want to see moving from school to school as David Seymour alluded to before because I think that social transitional cost is just immense—on communities and on people. And how that is reflected and felt by many families at a personal level is one of the things that just makes this—we have to try and deal with this housing issue.One of the things with building houses at the moment is the arcane planning rules and also it often depends on the people that you have to deal with in council. And probably unlike Mr Seymour actually I have been involved in doing residential developments and they are difficult. They are difficult because honestly sometimes it will depend on how people interpret the rules there is no consistency in many cases across councils—I've worked across councils—and that lack of certainty is one of the key drivers of making it more difficult for people to build houses in New Zealand. And that of course is leading to—not always but significantly contributing to the lack of new houses that people want to take the risks and do the development particularly at a time when building costs are going up rapidly.So I think this bill is good in the sense that first of all it recognises that property owners have the right to build. That's a pretty good fundamental principle. I know my colleague Nicola Willis talked about this in her address but the right to build is an important imperative in New Zealand. It also has got to come with rules and responsibilities. But I think that should be the opening premise. Often when you sit down with council staff in consenting operations there is almost a view on why you shouldn't build this particular building that you might be proposing. What we've got to do is turn that premise around and say Why should it not happen?" and that the right to build is the right approach. And of course that starts to deal with the supply issues that we've talked about before. It also allows councils to deal more quickly with greenfields.So I think if we're looking to expand the number of houses in New Zealand there are two key strategies. One is intensification which this will certainly provide for and one is the issue of greenfield sites. Under this one of the key parts of it is allowing councils to permit greenfield developments to take place and to accelerate that under the new intensification streamlined planning rules which basically will bring forward that process for zoning new land greenfields land into areas that can be built. And obviously there will be grey areas also that have already been built on that might be redeveloped. I think those are the key strategies and so that is a fantastic part of this bill.The other one is just this adopting the medium-density residential standards. And obviously as Nicola Willis talked about there are quite specific rules around that. There are actually things like natural hazards there are open spaces there are heritage zones and I think all those ones are important facets that a council can have regard for if it is going to permit much more intense area to occur in certain areas so if there are overwhelming reasons why intensification shouldn't take place there are areas in the Act—well if it does get passed—that will allow councils to show some reasonable sort of approach to that rather than just allowing every development to take place in a certain area. But also there are the rules around the actual building standards. You still need to require to get a building consent even if you no longer need the resource consent under the arrangement—but there is still a requirement for building consent. So that means that the building needs to be built—or the proper standards or the design aspects to it all those sort of things to make sure we don't end up just building a whole lot of poor-quality buildings that lead to issues over the long term.I think one of the big issues is around the infrastructure and Mr Seymour raised this and I think that is correct. When we proposed this bill we talked about giving councils $50000 per additional dwellings—so if you did an apartment dwelling of 20 properties that would mean a million bucks that would go to the council as a contribution towards meeting the infrastructure cost of that. It was directly tailored to incentivising councils to issue consents but also to support them financially in terms of meeting those infrastructure costs. I think that is probably a very good mechanism because it is directly related to the building activity as opposed to something around the ACT payback.But I was fascinated by the member for Epsom and also the leader of ACT I didn't quite know in which capacity he was talking this afternoon. I think in reflection he was talking as the MP for Epsom because his overriding fears about what this would mean for the leafy suburbs of Epsom I think was the key driver towards his opposition to this piece of legislation. Although I suspect he is slightly miffed that he wasn't part of the group. But the issue he raises about needing more control around building and all that sort of thing I did find slightly troubling given where ACT sit and previously had made it very clear that they are a party of free enterprise and minimal regulation. So maybe when we get to the second reading Mr Seymour we'll get more clarity on your position but it was slightly confusing.Hey but I think this is a very important thing. I think we need to recognise there are two separate issues. There is an issue of "need" and there is an issue of "want". The issue of need is that we need houses for our younger people to be able to afford to be able to move into and to be able to acquire. We also have this issue of want. Many people don't want things to happen near them. I think the most important thing is this issue of meeting the need of people who are renting at the moment whether they are young or people with young families who want to get into a house who have the desire to get into a house but can't see that opportunity. So I think that is really really important.There are other aspects as I said earlier. I think we need to look at how the building industry is working and some of the supply issues with that also the availability of staff and actually the building regulations themselves probably need an overhaul. But as I said at the outset I think this is a very good start in terms of dealing with the most significant issue which is one of supply—how can we provide more or make it easy for people to actually build houses? This is what this piece of legislation is about and I think it should be supported and it is well worth taking to the select committee."