Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
Infrastructure Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12844] 
Infrastructure Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 22 July. 
Part 4 Amendments relating to affordable housing ( 
continued 
)  
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 When the Committee was last debating Part 4 the Minister for Infrastructure was making a number of comments that I believe members on this side of the Chamber want to address. The Minister in his comments on affordable housing in New Zealand and what the solutions might be showed the very problem that we have with this Government not taking the issue of affordable housing seriously. The Minister in the chair when he stood on his feet when we debated this simply engaged in a vitriolic attack on members on this side of the Chamber. 
Simon Bridges 
: That was Pete Hodgson just now; what a disgrace! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Not once did he talk about affordable housing I say to Mr Bridges. 
Simon Bridges 
: What an absolute disgrace from Pete Hodgson. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It is funny is it not? Simon Bridges over there did not care about the personal attacks coming from his own side of the Chamber but when this Opposition asks a question to a transparent and responsible Government suddenly Mr Bridges is outraged. Well I think he might like to take a long hard look in the mirror because the Opposition does require transparency and does require accountability— 
Simon Bridges 
: I will and I like what I see. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —I say to Mr Bridges. When we come back to Part 4— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Let us just have a little more decorum. This is the first speech of the afternoon of the House in Committee. There will be opportunities for members who want to make a point to take a call. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I advise Mr Bridges that he might want to scream at me from his own chair if he is going to barrack across the Chamber like that. 
The issue of affordable housing is incredibly important. The Minister in the chair took a call towards the end of the last debate that showed the very problems New Zealanders are having with this Government in terms of whether it is taking the issue seriously. As I was saying all he was interested in doing was piling vitriol on members of this side of the Chamber for daring to suggest firstly that the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act should not have been hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill; and secondly that it should have gone to a select committee so that we could have had a discussion about how perhaps the legislation could be improved. I do not think that Labour did everything right in the area of affordable housing; there was a lot more that we could have done and there was a lot more that we wanted to do and we would have been very supportive of this legislation going back to the select committee in order for it to try to work on it. 
This type of approach to affordable housing and the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act that is being repealed in Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill works very well overseas. Yes the economy in New Zealand has changed and yes this type of mechanism works better in the type of situation that we had a few years ago when we had high levels of development activity and difficulty in finding the available land to do that but we will one day get back into that situation. I will tell the Committee what we are doing. Let me be clear: this was not a requirement on local authorities. They did not have to use this if they did not want to. It was another tool in the tool box if you like to deal with affordable housing. Again as I said it was a tool that we would have been happy to see go back to the select committee for further work if that is what the Government felt should be done but it was not compulsory. Because the economy has changed and because development activity has changed the Government has now said that it will holus bolus throw it away and get rid of it. 
When we go back into a situation of high development activity councils will wish that they had this mechanism to use. It will take us for ever to get it through Parliament even with this Government’s approach to hurrying legislation through without sending it to a select committee. It still takes time. We will be in a situation again of trying to pass legislation when there was no reason why it could not have been left in place and that is why one of the amendments in my name is to remove Part 4 from this bill. It should not have been there in the first place. It should not have been hidden away in this bill. But more important there is no reason why it could not stay in the legislation. 
Let us be honest: local authorities have to be part of the solution when it comes to affordable housing because they are absolutely integral in the supply of land. If we look at Maori land we see that it is zoned rurally and it is very difficult for Maori to be able to get the kind of development on it that they want. Local authorities have to be part of the solution. We cannot do it without them. Providing mechanisms like this allows them the flexibility and more than that the certainty to know that they cannot be legally challenged when they do this. They will know that they cannot be taken to court by developers who say that the local authorities do not have the powers to require the developers to provide affordable housing to pay a levy that gets put towards affordable housing or to provide a certain number of houses for affordable housing. Retaining this mechanism would provide the legal certainty that yes they do have the power to be able to do that and that they would be able to then go forward knowing that they are not putting their ratepayers at some kind of risk of being taken to court and being challenged by developers who have very deep pockets and who do not want to see this kind of affordable housing become part of their developments. 
I do not know who has got to the Government on this issue. I do not who has been in its ear. I do not know which big donators that go through the trusts of National members said to them that they do not like it and they do not want to have to provide for this mechanism and that they are worried that they will have to reduce the overall profit that they make on their developments. But the fact is that it does not matter which local authority we talk to; it will tell us that affordable housing is an enormous issue. From the smallest council like Opotiki District Council up to the biggest councils like Auckland City Council Christchurch City Council and Wellington City Council councils will tell us that affordable housing is a major issue. They know that they will be pivotal in any Government response to addressing affordable housing. Yet here we are in Part 4 of this legislation taking away one of those tools. Could that tool be made better? Possibly—probably. We would be willing to work with the Government to go back to the select committee to find out what we could do to allay any of the concerns. 
I notice that when I go through the Housing New Zealand Corporation report that we were given at the select committee which outlines the reasons why this was done the word “may” was used a lot but the word “will” was not. The report said: “It may do this.” “It may do that.” and “We do not know.” Clearly even the officials were not certain that it was going to have the negative outcomes that the Government seems so certain it will have. So a lot more work could have been done in this area. It is tragic that at a time when housing affordability continues to be one of the biggest issues in the country we are here repealing affordable housing legislation. We should put that on top of the fact that we have lost shared equity. We had a 2-year pilot where 20 months of the 24 months of that pilot were under this National Government and what did it do? National told Housing New Zealand Corporation to stop promoting it. Then the Government complained about the low level of uptake and used that as an excuse to ditch the entire programme altogether despite the fact that shared equity like legislation that empowers local authorities is an integral part of the housing affordability mix in every single other country around the world. It has worked. 
In the United States ironically this kind of stuff is considered par for the course in many states. If there is a big development like a shopping mall it is seen as just a natural requirement that the developer will be made to for example provide workers’ housing to provide the infrastructure around that workers’ housing and to provide affordable housing. The citizens who live in those areas think that it is absolutely fair that if someone is going to use the land and a lot of public resources the developers should put something back in as well. We do not want to get to the situation where no one wants to develop but that has not happened in other countries where this type of legislation has been used. Of course developers are going to say that they do not want this mechanism. They will not want to do anything like this that might impinge on the bottom line. Of course they will say that. I absolutely expect it and it is absolutely their right to say it but a Government has to take a more critical approach than the one that we have seen here. I noticed that the Minister of Housing is always saying that no one took it up. Well I look at the advice from his own department Housing New Zealand Corporation. It says that since the Act was enacted in 2002 there has not been an opportunity for territorial authorities to implement it. The reason that the Government had not implemented it was not that it did not like it; it was that it was gotten rid of so quickly after the election. The Government had made it clear that it would be going after the election. The Government did not implement it because it was not going to be there any more. 
This is like that shared equity argument all over again: do not tell anyone that it exists and then act surprised when no one takes it up. It is the same thing here. The Government tells people that the mechanism is going and then says that the reason it is going is that no one is using it. The Minister’s own officials told him that the reason people were not using it was that they did not have the opportunity. The fact still remains that this kind of approach is used everywhere in the world. Could we have done it better? Maybe. I ask the Minster whether he should we have sent it back to a select committee. Yes. Should it have been hidden away in the Infrastructure Bill? Absolutely not. I commend the select committee clerk and all the select committee staff for the work they did in trying to make sure that people knew this was happening. They made sure they got in touch with as many people as possible. We were on a quick report-back time. It was hidden in the Infrastructure Bill. 
Housing affordability is becoming more and more of an issue. I strongly believe we would have had a larger number of submitters on this bill if they had had the opportunity to know about it. 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
:  
I support what my colleague Moana Mackey has just said in respect of this bill the Infrastructure Bill. Labour remains opposed to the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act under Part 4 of this bill. 
It is appropriate that I speak on this bill today because on Monday night in Waitakere we held a public meeting on housing. It was a big coincidence given the spotlight on housing in Waitakere this week. Things that came up at the meeting that are pertinent to this bill were the crisis that is occurring in housing and that not only do people not have access to appropriate social housing but there is no access to affordable housing as well. Both of those things were the big themes that were heard at the public meeting held on Monday night. 
It makes absolutely no sense first and foremost that the repeal of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was placed in the Infrastructure Bill. As my colleague said previously it is almost like an attempt to hide it away so that no one would know what was going on. 
Most New Zealanders still agree that owning a house is a big part of being a Kiwi as is being able to raise children in the same place in a community where they can access the same sports clubs go to the same schools and grow up alongside the same children. But what we now see because of a lack of affordable housing is that many of those children are in transient families. They move around from one suburb one town or one city to another as their parents struggle to find not only employment but also adequate affordable housing for their children. 
It makes sense that local authorities play a part in providing affordable housing and play a part in the provision of social housing for their communities because they are at the coal-face in respect of the needs of their communities and they know what is required. The Government keeps saying over and over again that it is not for central government to dictate what happens nationally. However the Government is taking away the rights of local authorities to have a say on social housing and affordable housing in their communities. Members on this side of the Chamber think that a slight contradiction is occurring at the moment in respect of this legislation. 
The problem with repealing the Act is that members on that side of the Chamber have been trying to tell people that it was almost like it was compulsory for the councils to provide social housing and affordable housing but that was merely an option in the Act which local authorities could take up if they saw the need for it to occur. If we repeal this part of the legislation we will take away that option. Instead the developers will have every right in the world to develop property purely because of their bottom line their profits with no recognition of the social needs that may be required in communities. Members on this side are incredibly concerned about that. 
A couple of things came up at the public meeting on Monday night that are pertinent to this bill. One is the ageing population and how much trouble this country will be in if elderly people do not own their homes and we do not have social housing or affordable housing in place. Down the track our younger generation will have to ensure that elderly people are adequately housed. Why would we not do something now to ensure that we are putting the structures in place to make sure that we can look after the elderly in the long term? It makes sense to do that. It is common sense but unfortunately members on that side of the Chamber do not seem to know what common sense is. We are concerned. 
There are a number of other things that I know my colleagues wish to discuss in respect of this bill. Labour has put forward two typescript amendments for which I thank Labour’s spokesperson on housing Moana Mackey. One typescript amendment provides for the protection of affordable housing by removing the proposed changes from the bill. By doing that the Government will ensure that our local authorities will still have a say in what goes on in respect of putting the necessary infrastructure in place for affordable housing and social housing. 
In respect of the other typescript amendment that my colleague Moana Mackey who is Labour’s spokesperson on housing has put up Labour is disappointed that the Government has decided to remove the prohibition of the restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. This is something else that needs to be discussed in detail. It is about protection. It is about ensuring that our councils have a say on where our social housing goes. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
I rise to speak to the Infrastructure Bill and to Part 4 in particular. This part would repeal the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008. I want to back up a little bit. This legislation had my name on it as the Minister of Housing at the time. I ask the Government to reconsider the inclusion of the repeal of this Act in the Infrastructure Bill. 
The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 was enacted as a deliberate and constructive method of addressing a problem that had become endemic and that was the lack of affordable housing across New Zealand. The lack of affordable housing along with other influencing factors had led to an extraordinary surge in the price of houses between 2000 and 2007. Between those years we saw the average cost of houses in New Zealand increase by 80 percent. This was part of the problem that has led to banks irresponsibly lending to people who would not normally have any way of repaying such loans and that has led to the escalation of private debt in New Zealand. However banks continued to lend to people as land prices and house prices escalated during those 7 years. 
The Labour Government knew that something had to be done about this situation if ever we were to have another generation of New Zealanders who could get their feet on the bottom rung of the housing ladder and so have the kind of security that all of us aspire to have for ourselves and our families—that is the ownership of our own homes. That ownership of our own homes is very fundamental to New Zealanders’ views of ourselves and to the kind of lifestyle and the quality of life that we generally wish to uphold and improve on for ourselves. However affordable housing was escalating out of the reach of first-home buyers so the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was one method—not the only one—that the Labour Government brought in in order to alleviate this problem. 
The Government we have now has done nothing to address the lack of affordable housing nothing to address the inability of families on low and middle incomes to get the kind of independence and security that they can get by owning their own house. This Government is in fact working in the opposite direction and the repeal of this legislation is part of that reverse direction. 
When I was putting forward the legislation I went to a number of developers. I went to the big developers—those who are responsible for large residential housing developments and construction. I asked them what was wrong with this bill and what their objection to it was. They said that they made more money out of building one McMansion than they did out of building 10 affordable houses. They said that there was no economy of scale for them in building 10 affordable houses and that they could make a fortune out of building one or two McMansions in Botany Downs rather than providing affordable housing in South Auckland. I asked them to explained to me how that worked. They went through it and said: “Well you do this much for plumbing and electrical wiring. You add these kinds of overheads in if you make it two storeys.” On they went and explained it to me. 
About 8 months later when the bottom was falling out of the building and construction industry those very same people were coming and knocking on my door and saying: “Minister have we got a deal for you. We can build 10 affordable houses.” Suddenly they saw the building and construction opportunities drying up before their eyes. If anybody was able to provide some leverage to enhance building and construction it was the Government because building on Crown land was one of the few options that the building and construction industry had left available to it. And this Government calls this legislation the Infrastructure Bill! 
If the Government were serious about infrastructure if it were even halfway serious about creating jobs it would look at the leverage that the Crown has in all its Crown landholdings—such as the land in Hobsonville—and it would start to release that land for the building of affordable houses. Not only would the Government then create jobs and stimulate apprenticeships because apprentices would have somewhere to go but also it would provide through that mechanism the means for new families young families on low and middle incomes to get into the housing market. This Government continues to pull up the ladder behind it. There are people in that Government who have benefited in the past from Government assistance to housing and now the Government continues to pull up the ladder. 
Please forgive me if I am raising my voice but this really riles me. There is nothing more fundamental in this country than the right to shelter and the ability to have and own one’s own home has forever been part of the Kiwi dream. This Infrastructure Bill might as well be called the “Destruction of the Kiwi Dream Bill”. This is a nonsense. If this Government goes around the country one more time saying: “Look what we’re doing in infrastructure.” then I want every other New Zealander to ask: “How does that work in housing again?”. Mr Joyce thinks that he is improving infrastructure by rolling out roads. I suggest that he would do better by improving public transport. But what is happening in the building of houses? 
Even this very small measure this optional measure this provision that local and territorial authorities were not obliged to take up but could benefit from taking up is being taken away. Not only has this Government on 1 July axed the shared equity scheme—which was a way that the Government could assist low and middle income earners into their first home by providing some capital investment which over time a family could buy the Government out of—but also it now wants to take away even a provision that was optional and that local authorities could use to good advantage in order to encourage residential housing developments in their areas. Local authorities could do that through the provisions of this affordable housing legislation. But no far from encouraging infrastructure this Government is depleting infrastructure. It is denying jobs it is denying skills training and it is denying people the opportunity to buy their own house their first house and to get on to the bottom rung of the homeownership ladder which allows people to improve their prospects lever themselves out of minimal wages and improve their standard of living. This measure is an injurious provision to put into this legislation. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I am proud to take a call on Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill. The Committee can see by the passion of the Opposition that we feel incredibly strongly about the mechanism that the Government is employing today in this Committee stage in bringing this housing measure through by stealth. It is absolutely being done by stealth. The Government is sticking it into an Infrastructure Bill that deals in Parts 1 2 and 3 with roads motorways rail corridors and the New Zealand Railways Corporation. Then we find that Part 4 is about housing. When we are look at what is in it for New Zealanders we should be seeing something about the Kiwi dream of affordable housing. But by stealth this part repeals the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act. Labour will definitely be voting against Part 4 of this bill. 
What we are really sad about is that when we were previously in Government the Opposition spokesperson on housing at the time Phil Heatley continually railed against us saying we were doing nothing about affordable housing for New Zealanders even though we were addressing that issue. Here today we have legislation that sits on the books as enabling legislation for local authorities and by stealth it is being repealed. 
Moana Mackey 
: It’s not compulsory. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: It is not compulsory; we did not say it was something that every territorial authority across the land had to do. We said that legislation was one mechanism that might be useful in some districts. 
If I recall the situation correctly Queenstown mayor Clive Geddes said there was an amazing tourism boom going on there—at that time under Labour—and Queenstown did not have accommodation for service workers. Service workers were staying in buses tents and camping grounds. Mayor Clive Geddes said that was an embarrassment and Queenstown was a community that understood that people who worked in the service sector needed to have a decent place to live. He said those people needed to be given a start in getting their own homes; otherwise they would have to be railed or bussed into Queenstown to work in the tourism boom that was going on. That request came from the mayor of a local authority who had a sense of decency and of pride about his community and today purely out of political pique a fantastic enabling tool for local authorities is simply being repealed. I think all Government members should hang their heads in shame today because we have not seen anything else that gives Kiwis the chance to have a decent start in life or that gives families a sense of pride about having a home—a place that is warm and secure for their families. 
My husband and I started with a Housing Corporation loan. We did not get enough money together to get a deposit and without some assistance from the Government with the right incentive we would never have had our first home when our children were little. We thank the Government of the time for that. When Maryan Street was the Minister of Housing she looked at what we could do and at the tools that we could put in place as a Government to encourage people to get into their first homes. 
I put it on the record that the Human Rights Commission says affordable housing is a critical component of having an adequate standard of living and it regrets this mechanism to repeal that Act today especially without there being anything else to replace it. Age Concern has registered its “disapproval about what appears to be a process of ‘repeal by stealth’.” That is becoming the modus operandi of this Government. If the Government does not want there to be a lot of exposure of something it does it by stealth in this way. This is definitely a mechanism that the Government hopes people will not notice. The National Council of Women of Aotearoa is concerned that a really laudable section on restrictive covenants is being watered down in the revisions to the Property Law Act made in this bill. These are organisations with sensible fair approaches to life and in their opinions about what people deserve when they live and participate as workers in New Zealand. Affordable housing is the first rung of the ladder and as Maryan Street said the Government has lifted it up. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. Tena koutou katoa. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the Labour Party’s call for a review of Part 4 of the Infrastructure Bill. We are supporting the bill but we are really disturbed at this attack on affordable housing. It is absolutely essential that we do something about the housing crisis in this country at every opportunity. This is a retrogressive part of what would otherwise be a reasonable bill. 
I agree with previous speakers who said that infrastructure which is a wonderful word must be about something as basic as a roof over one’s head. We are very deeply concerned about the repeal of an optional mechanism for local authorities that could have been a real incentive for change. Some local authorities have taken housing seriously in the past and some of them really have not. We need to encourage and facilitate through legislation that kind of change. 
I lived on the East Coast Tai Rawhiti for 8 years before I moved to Hauraki. I and a former member of this House Sue Bradford who everyone knows was very concerned about poverty visited a number of housing activists in communities such as Tokomaru Bay and other places on the East Coast. These organisations and individuals who were trying to help their people into housing were blocked by poverty and lack of opportunity for housing because the mechanisms were so difficult for people to get through. When we have a mechanism that would have improved that situation the last thing we should do is block it in this Chamber. The local government in that region was not well known for its commitment to addressing poverty or its recognition of housing as part of its responsibility and it needed encouragement and leadership from this House to make sure it stopped being a barrier and started being a facilitator. The kinds of housing instruments discussed in the Chamber today could have been encouragement for places like Tai Rawhiti. 
Sue and I went into homes that were unfixable; one housed a family of a single mother with seven children and no running water. The mother could not get the Rural Housing Programme to fix her house because it was so far gone that it was unfixable. Yet she had no opportunity to get the money to get a new house. For all the rhetoric about fixing up rural homes etc. or getting into new housing it was just not working for these people. There was no way. We started building a process to change that—programmes like shared equity—and it is really disturbing to see that it will be ignored. We were very keen to see change and we will be voting against this. 
If one cannot get into housing one cannot get to first base. I think that in other countries it is really easy to talk about long-term leases and rentals because they have the infrastructure for long-term leases and rentals. It is OK if one does not own a house. But in Aotearoa New Zealand one is really unfortunate if one cannot get past that first base. If members have family members living in places like Auckland as I do who are young and poor they will know that there is absolutely no way that they can even consider getting past first base. 
We need to be listening to the community housing activists not just the developers. The community housing activists in this country—the third sector on housing—have strategies ideas and mechanisms that we need to listen to so that we can break some of the bottlenecks around Maori housing housing for young families and housing for beneficiaries. At the moment those people are in crisis. We do not need to block them in this way. It is very disappointing. Cynicism develops when one sees a bill about infrastructure that is actually about blocking in part some of the most positive mechanisms to help break the bottleneck. 
When I was young I lived in a very old house that needed a lot doing to it but I was able to get a family benefit change which allowed me to get into housing. I was able to build my life and my family’s life from that base. But I know that nowadays lots and lots of people because times are a lot harder and property is a lot more expensive will never get that opportunity. Plus there are those who have student loans and debt before they reach even the age of 25 that I could not have even dreamt of when I was a young broke person. We have to think about the conditions that the next generation faces in terms of housing. It is not good enough to just wring our hands and allow legislation to go through that undermines these mechanisms just because it is convenient for whatever reason. 
I know that there is good local authority effort on housing in this country but I also know that there is a lot of complacency. If one goes to other places like London one sees that housing is vital. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I will try not to raise my voice quite so much this time but members should not let a lack of volume or intensity make them think I do not feel strongly about this issue. I will take a moment to explain how the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008 was to work because I think people are overlooking that and I wonder whether anybody on the Government benches actually knows how that legislation was to work and what it was to do. 
The whole point of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act was to provide local authorities with the ability should they so choose—it was not mandatory—to require developers to set aside a portion of any residential housing development say 10 percent for affordable housing. So if a developer was about to build 200 houses the local authority could say that 10 percent of those houses needed to be affordable within an affordable purchase range for that area. This was to be done by the local authority. It would have been compulsory for the developer to adhere to that provision. As a result out of 200 residential properties being built 20 would have been available for purchase by low and modest-income families. That is not such a big ask. 
My colleague Steve Chadwick referred to Queenstown as one of the areas where this was seen as a very desirable thing. I spent some considerable time with the mayor councillors and staff of the Queenstown Lakes District Council talking about affordable housing. There they were with a grand plan to make Queenstown a tourism Mecca not just in the winter months when it is but also in the summer months when people do not automatically think of Queenstown as a tourist destination but head for the beach. 
In order to make Queenstown a year-round tourist attraction what were needed were some employees who could work in the service and tourism industries that would serve that town and that district. In order to get those people in there needed to be affordable housing because the housing in Queenstown cost so much that people in low-wage service occupations did not have a hope in Hades of renting or buying a residential property. 
Along with purchase prices there are ratchet rents. As purchase prices go up so do rents. Council rates go up and landlords require more rent to cover the rates increases that are on the rateable value of the land. As that increases so rents increase. So Queenstown Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Nelson where I live were the top five most expensive cities and towns in which to buy a house in New Zealand. Property prices were the most expensive in those five areas of New Zealand and they still are. Tauranga is beginning to catch up; I think it might be No. 6 now. But certainly those five areas remain the most expensive areas in which to buy a house. So the provision that was made available to local authorities in respect of affordable housing was another tool in their tool kit. It went alongside the waiving of development levies—they could waive development levies in order to get these properties built—and could have provided housing for workers who were needed for the kind of growth that was being anticipated in Queenstown. 
The same is true of Nelson. I spent time with the mayor and councillors of Nelson and with the mayor of Tasman District. The areas adjoin—the boundary goes down the middle of Champion Road in Nelson—so they are affected by similar movements: industrial growth population development and so on. In Richmond in the Nelson electorate there are great hopes and plans for industry development for value to be added to the wonderful primary produce that happens in the Richmond Nelson and Tasman areas. With industrial growth come jobs with jobs come workers and with workers come their families. If the mayor of Tasman District Council wants the industrial growth that the council was planning for and is continuing to plan for in the Lower Queen Street part of Richmond then affordable housing suddenly becomes critical. The rents in the Nelson area including Richmond are exorbitant and they make it very difficult for young families to live. 
So all of this was part of a plan and it is as clear as day that in the repeal of this modest provision—which as the Minister of Housing I never claimed would fix the affordable housing problem; it was one mechanism for addressing it—the Government is exposed again as having no plan for economic growth; no plan to assist families into their first homes; no plan to increase jobs; and no plan to upskill young people introduce them to trades and develop the skills that could have been encouraged by rescuing the building and construction industry through a method of this kind. 
The whole purpose of being in Government is to use the leverage of the Government for the advantage of citizens. That is the whole purpose of being in Government. If this Government cannot see that purpose and if the only citizens it is interested in advantaging are that narrow elite of its mates who donate to the National Party then let us see it for what it is. Let us see this ignorant bill for what it is. 
The Minister of Housing has had no ideas about how to address housing affordability. I suspect he must be masquerading as an idiot because surely we cannot have a Cabinet Minister who is an idiot. This man Phil Heatley masquerades as an idiot. Everything he has done diminishes the opportunities for New Zealand families to own their own homes and diminishes the opportunities for investment in the building and construction industry which could generate jobs encourage apprenticeships and train up and provide a future for young people. 
Every turn this Minister of Housing takes leads us in exactly the opposite direction negating opportunities stifling job creation and limiting possibilities. That is something a Government should never do—never do. That is what the Government is doing with the repeal of this provision which is optional. I toyed with the idea of it being mandatory but it is only optional and it is a travesty for this Government to repeal it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The first amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to omit Part 4 is out of order as being a direct negative under Speakers’ ruling 111/4. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 54 be agreed to: 
to amend section 277A(1) by omitting “a principal” and substituting “one”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 52 
New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 4 be agreed to. 
Ayes 67 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 3; United Future 1. 
Noes 52 
New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Part 4 agreed to. 
Schedule agreed to.  
Clauses 1 and 2 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand and take a call. Labour will be supporting this Infrastructure Bill. We were disappointed though that we were not able to appeal to the Government’s sense of social responsibility when it came to Part 4. But we support the bill as it comes. 
I think that members may consider some alternative titles appropriate for this legislation. Now that we have had the debate on the different parts of the Infrastructure Bill and we have seen its layout it would be timely to rename it the “Infrastructure (Housing Is Not Infrastructure) Bill”. Clearly this Government does not think that housing is infrastructure. We are being told that the purpose of this legislation is to support infrastructure development and to align the needs of the different utility operators. In fact in the Chamber today Mr Gerry Brownlee stood up and told us that we did not even need the Infrastructure Bill at all. He did not think that it needed to be progressed rapidly because he thought he was doing such a fabulous job on infrastructure. I point out to the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister for Infrastructure that his “Holiday Highway” which will help him get to his holiday home will not address the issues of housing in New Zealand so I think that it is only right that this bill is renamed the “Infrastructure (Housing Is Not Infrastructure) Bill”. 
If we look at Australia we see that exactly the opposite is happening. Australians see housing as an integral part of any infrastructure package. Australia managed to keep itself out of recession. One of the things it did was invest heavily in social housing and it is continuing to do so. If we want to keep looking at the areas where the gap between New Zealand and Australia is widening under this National Government then a commitment to social and affordable housing has to be one of the biggest areas. 
Perhaps another name for this bill could be the “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Maori Party Government Does Not Care About Affordable Housing Any More) Bill”. It was clear in the debate today on Part 4 when no one from the Government stood up to defend its decision to repeal the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act that affordable housing is off the agenda for this Government. All we have seen since those members came into Government is a lot of theatrics. We have seen a lot of song and dance on the other side of the Chamber from the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley. If pantomime could build houses then housing supply would not be a problem in New Zealand. But unfortunately pantomime cannot build houses and this Government has shown no commitment to doing so. 
What has this Government done? It has got rid of the shared-equity pilot. That scheme is an integral part of any affordable housing policy everywhere else in the world but it has gone. There was a 2-year pilot; 20 months of that 24-month pilot were under this National Government. What did it do? It told the Housing New Zealand Corporation to stop promoting it. Then at the end of the 2-year pilot the Government said that it would not continue funding it because there was a really low uptake. Well there was a really low uptake because no one knew that it existed. 
That raises another question: what is the point of spending money on a pilot that no one knows about? It would be a huge waste of money. I will tell members the answer to that question: it was so the Government could claim that it was doing something about affordable housing and could claim that it was taking shared equity as an option seriously when we know that it was not. We were just very lucky that an honest Housing New Zealand Corporation staff member came out and said that staff had been told to stop promoting the pilot. Guess what! That staff member probably had to apologise to the housing Minister Phil Heatley. It was just like the Housing New Zealand Corporation staff who went to the Local Government and Environment Committee on the Resource Management Act reforms and said that the reforms would do nothing for affordable housing. Those staff members were dragged in and had to apologise to Phil Heatley for being honest to the select committee. 
I come to my second point which is that we could also call this the “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Maori Party Government Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill”. I did not speak on this matter in the debate on Part 4 because I ran out of speaking slots but I will bring members’ attention now to the advice we had from officials on this part of the legislation. It was pointed out that the Government had announced a two-phase review of the Resource Management Act and had said that faced with the Resource Management Act it might consider a range of options for land supply but that it would do nothing to address affordable housing. Affordable housing measures were not considered as part of the Resource Management Act’s two-phase review. So when Government members get up and say that they will fix the problems of affordable housing—firstly by tax cuts and secondly by Resource Management Act reforms—they are not telling the public that housing affordability is playing no part in those Resource Management Act reforms. 
The second part of this “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Maori Party Government Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill” is the tax cuts. The Minister of Housing Phil Heatley said that tax cuts are National’s No. 1 policy for affordable housing. Let us investigate that a little bit further. Someone on the minimum wage is getting $3 a week in tax cuts—$3 a week. The Minister of Finance tells us that that will compensate for increases in GST but he does not mention that people on the minimum wage spend pretty much all of their income on things that attract GST so the measure is very regressive. They will be even more impacted on. That $3 a week is also meant to cover off the costs of rising inflation and any rent increases and apparently it will also fix housing affordability. New Zealand families would have to be pretty good at budgeting to spread $3 a week as far as that. It just is not going to happen. 
Once again we come back to the central point of this “Infrastructure (National - ACT - Maori Party Thinks Tax Cuts and RMA Reform Will Fix Everything) Bill”. It will not fix everything. Every single piece of international evidence tells us that we need a mix of policies to address housing inaffordability because a whole range of different things cause housing unaffordability. Land supply is one. Regulatory reform to ensure that it is cheaper and easier to build homes is another. There is a whole range of things including wages and incomes. They are incredibly important when it comes to housing unaffordability. No one is claiming that there is a silver bullet but allowing territorial authorities to require that developments that happen in their own patch include a component of affordable housing or social housing is an important part. 
My next suggestion is around the area of restrictive covenants. Another name for this bill could be the “Infrastructure (National Thinks It Is OK for Restrictive Covenants to Exist for Affordable Housing) Bill”. This was cloak-and-dagger stuff. The Minister went out and said the Government would get rid of that power for local authorities but it would keep the provision on restrictive covenants because it agrees that they are wrong. He said he would just transfer it to another piece of legislation. We thought that was fair enough and at least there was a silver lining to this cloud. However National members did not tell us that they had changed the wording of what they were transferring. The original wording in the existing Act deals with covenants on land and these covenants affect all future landowners. It is an agreement between landowners. There are covenants that say there cannot be educational health social or any of that kind of housing in those areas. National members did not say that they were removing housing affordability from that provision. We said in the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act that there could not be these restrictive covenants for social housing or for affordable housing. National took out the provision regarding affordable housing. They think that it is OK to have covenants against affordable housing. 
Secondly we said in that Act that if any purpose of a restrictive covenant was to stop social or affordable housing then it was illegal. We said it could be any purpose because we were told by the Human Rights Commission that it had seen cases where developers were saying that the primary purpose of a covenant was amenity value but that it also had an unintended consequence of stopping for example disabled access being added to the property. We closed that loophole in the law at the Local Government and Environment Committee and we said that if any purpose was to stop the building of social or affordable housing then the covenant could not happen. 
So this Government—and it did not tell people it was doing this—said that it was going to go back to the “principal purpose”. It created a huge loophole just like it did with the 90-day bill. It thinks that as long as it does not tell people that it is discriminating against disabled people elderly people or poor people it can do that. It is exactly like the Government’s rhetoric and its theories on the 90-day bill—that is as long as people do not say that the reason they are firing someone is that person’s ethnicity or gender it is OK. It is the same with restrictive covenants. As long as we do not tell people that the reason the covenant is in place is to stop disability housing mental health housing social housing or affordable housing and as long as some other principal reason is made up such as that the developer wants all the houses to look a certain way or whatever reason might be given—such as amenity value or that it is to get the sun in certain ways; we have heard of a whole lot of reasons through the Human Rights Commission—then it is OK and we will be able to stop social and affordable housing from going in. A huge loophole is being opened up. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
The Committee divided the bill into the Utilities Access Bill the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill and the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper152. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted.