Court Simon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. The ACT Party had a number of questions on behalf of submitters that were raised in the committee stage and they primarily related to how the bill was going to give effect to the objectives that ACT shares with the Government and with the National Party which has jointly sponsored the bill—that is in order to actually deliver the number of houses somewhere between 48000 and a 100000-odd homes; and we've heard the Labour Party promise 100000 homes on a campaign husting before. But in order to actually deliver them what were the problems the bill tried to solve and was the bill in the way it was written actually going to solve them? Was it going to make it easier to build more homes? Was it going to get rid of some of the red tape? Was the bill actually going to simplify the planning processes for private developers and homeowners who might want to subdivide a property that has an existing family home on it and build another one on the back? Was it actually going to make it easier? Our initial analysis carried out in the few days after the announcement indicated that the bill would actually make it harder to deliver more homes take longer than the projects already planned and well advanced by many private developers create a parallel consenting regime in addition to the Resource Management Act (RMA) consenting regime which still developers must go through for all kinds of matters in addition to actually the shape of the house and also introduced a new medium density residential standard that was an urban design standard for buildings in residential areas that had never been proposed or tested or consulted on. The problem with actually proposing and developing legislation in secret is that you never actually get to test your ideas out on the people who are most affected and actually those businesses those developers who have the capability and the capacity to build more homes and to deliver more affordable better quality homes. Developers came to the committee and they made it very clear that their projects—already well-developed but of course not yet notified; no decisions taken as yet—actually were proposing to deliver in some cases 7000 homes in Hamilton East on the Peacocke subdivision area or the Beachlands South development one that actually features the New Zealand Superannuation Fund as a finance partner. They told the committee that actually this bill was going to make it much harder to deliver their projects because they would not be able to use all of the planning all of the investigation all of the technical work that they had done for their master plan developments which include a mixture of terraced housing apartments low density. They would not be able to use that information to comply with the medium density residential standards (MDRS) standard that would be painted on to their subdivisions because essentially it would increase the amount of infrastructure required the size of the pipes and the size of the pump stations by up to three times. They told the committee If you want to build more homes could you please give us an exemption for our high quality master plan developments delivering modern communities? Could you please give us an exemption for that—or at least if you must bring us into the scheme could we be allowed to proceed with our developments without having to go through the RMA? Could we use a fast-tracked planning process?" And given the number of fast-track planning and consenting processes that this Government has proposed over the past few years whether it's the fast-track consenting for COVID19 special projects or whether it's fast tracking for New Zealand Upgrade projects this bill actually doesn't give the private sector the opportunity to fast track. It reserves all of those rights to Government and to councils and many councils also are seeking exemptions or significant modifications as well. Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you for the question from Simon Court. The point in respect of a large master plan development for example was raised at select committee and that's been reported to me. The recommendation of the select committee which the Government has adopted is that effectively those master-planned areas will get the benefit of the intensification rules that will flow through. So that is achieved if they've got a plan in process by way of a variation to their plan change. But of course they don't have to build to the intensity; they're just allowed to. This is an enabling bill not a requiring bill."