Bennett David; Dean JacquiHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Any council worth its salt will be very much against this bill. What is the point of having a district council in New Zealand now? This bill puts everything to regional councils around spatial planning. They've taken away three waters from the local councils—taken away water—now they're taking away planning. Planning will now be done at a regional level. What's the point of having a council? Are they going to be doing parks pools and playgrounds? That's all they're going to have. That's all the council will have left to do. It won't be doing planning of housing it won't be doing planning of infrastructure and it won't be doing its water resources. They've taken away one-third in the three waters; they're taking away basically another two-thirds now. They're leaving them with bugger all. Every council should be standing up against this bill because it takes away the ability to have independence in commercial decision-making.Now my colleague Stuart Smith made a very good point before when he talked about Marlborough and how nobody thought it was actually going to be the great capital it was until somebody actually put that investment in there. Well I want to give you another example and that is Tauranga port. There was a decision made around the ports for New Zealand 30 years ago and guess where Tauranga port was in that decision! At the bottom. Nobody foresaw that Tauranga port would be the primary port for New Zealand. Thirty years ago—that's what they're talking about. A 30-years-ago decision by some Minister that could be a Green or Labour Minister that's against any commercial sensibility in their bones could decide that Tauranga port should get no investment for 30 years and that we all go and put it into Timaru port or we all go put it into Northport or we all go put it into Auckland port because that's what New Zealand decided 30 years ago in its port strategy. Nobody foresaw Tauranga and look what happens now: Tauranga's the only commercial port in New Zealand. It owns one or two other ports throughout New Zealand and it is the gateway for New Zealand produce. Tauranga City has boomed as a result. If we had central government planning that would not happen.I want to give you the tale of two towns and this is very dear to me because this is in the Waikato. So we've got Cambridge and Te Awamutu. Te Awamutu actually had a four-lane road from Hamilton to Te Awamutu and that came out of the 1980s and that was there and National built that actually. And then what happened was Waikato District Council decided it was going to allow subdivision of land and it allowed 5- and 10-hectare plots of land to be subdivided. Take that 10 years forward you had Tamahere/Mātangi. Then they opened that up to 1 or 2 hectares. Tamahere/Mātangi became some of the most valuable land in the country; the most valuable houses in the Waikato are there and it meant that Cambridge and Hamilton were linked. Cambridge is now double the population in the future of Te Awamutu. Cambridge will be a city soon and because that subdivision happened on one side of the Waipā boundary where Waikato was Cambridge boomed. On the other side of the Waipā boundary where there was no subdivision Te Awamutu did not boom and Te Awamutu had the infrastructure in the first place. That shows central government planning—in this case regional planning—can fail. The success is actually through the market.If we look at this plan Sleepyhead would not be going to Ōhinewai. Now I can name you Ministers here that have gone to that actual proposal and said What a great thing it is for the Waikato seeing the Northern Corridor growing." Sleepyhead would not happen under the regional plan because the regional council actually opposed Sleepyhead. It opposed the development there. It said it shouldn't happen and under the plan that these Ministers are putting forward that would not happen but they're very happy to go out there in election year and say "Look at this 2000-house development major industrial development north of Hamilton. Isn't it great to see?" Well it would not happen under this plan because the regions would have power and the regions would make the wrong decisions.If you look at Hamilton for example the great city it is it actually needs Waikato and Waipā and Cambridge to actually be competing against it opening up land. If it didn't open up land in those other two places Hamilton would not be forced to open up land and we would not have the growth we've had. Competition has actually delivered more in the Waikato than any spatial planning will ever do. We've got this thing called Future Proof that was set up to do exactly this. It's a dog. Everybody knows it's a dog. Councillors sit around talk about it for days have lovely cups of tea sausage rolls spend a lot of money and do nothing. Nothing actually comes out of it. It's when you've got businesses that invest like Sleepyhead that actually make things happen and then they go buy the cups of tea and the sausage rolls so that those councillors can improve it. That's basically what happens. That's what will happen under this plan.Now I haven't gone on to some of the other issues around the participation of different groups and that but we will do that in the committee stage. But I would say this: the ACT Party was quite right in saying that infrastructure actually is a big part of growth but they're wrong in the sense of wanting communities to determine that. Business is a better determiner. Where we want to grow will come through infrastructure and business development. There is nothing wrong with New Zealand farmland being made into houses. There is nothing wrong with using our best land to build our best cities.There is going to be a huge development between Hamilton Tauranga and Auckland in the next 30 years—that whole area will boom. There is nothing wrong with using that land for housing. And where are we going to house the people? They're not going to Taumarunui and they're not going to Invercargill—unfortunately Penny. They are going to be between Hamilton Auckland and Tauranga. That is New Zealand's best land and there's nothing wrong with having another million people in that area. That is the future of this country. The market will make that happen. The Government's job is to provide the infrastructure for the market to allow that to happen.Spatial planning will not allow that to happen. I can tell you what's going to happen in spatial planning because the Waikato Regional Council which would be the ones making this plan are dominated by some Hamilton councillors that traditionally have a left-wing view of the world. They don't believe in growth; they don't believe in that. They actually think that what we've got is enough the world can't get better. We can get better. We can grow. We need to grow. It is the success of this country in growth. That's what we need—not some councils determining the spatial planning not some Minister determining the spatial planning but the market determining our spatial planning based on the infrastructure that we have. Government's job is to provide the infrastructure; it's not to provide the decision making. And—Anna Lorck: That's what we're doing Mr Bennett.Hon DAVID BENNETT: —no it's not—if we look at what they're doing they're saying the Minister will determine through the regional spatial plans.Any council out there should be damn scared of this bill. It basically takes away what they had left to do and takes it away now.Hon Member: It doesn't.Hon DAVID BENNETT: The second thing—no it does because it's only the regions that do it; it's not the councils and we need competition between councils. We need the Waipās and the Waikatos to fight it out. That's how we get growth. That's how we get what we need. We do not need central planning; we need a market delivery system that's based on strong infrastructure that comes from our Governments of the day. That's what we need to do.Now the Labour Party are getting very upset because this is one of their babies that they thought there was going to be no problem around and the backbenchers were told by the Ministers "This'll solve some of your issues." The reality is as people understand it more they'll come back to those backbenchers and say "This is another dog you're putting forward." Do you really want to do that in an election year when you're going to be under big pressure? No. We'll get these Ministers come back to the House and say "This is getting a bit hard. We'll have to just do a bit more work on it." but be aware anybody in local government: this is what they intend to do to get rid of local government. Might as well amalgamate them all now. It's all right in Auckland to say the spatial planning works on a regional scale. You might as well not have Waipā and Waikato District Councils. What's the point of them? They're gone.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired.Angie Warren-Clark: And thank goodness for that. Madam Speaker—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! If the member wishes to take a call she will make a call to the Speaker. I don't need any extra comments thank you."