Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to respond to a number of the points that have been made by the last few speakers starting with Dr Deborah Russell who very interestingly asks the extent to which this bill has been influenced by Te Waihanga Bill—the infrastructure commission bill that we were debating earlier this afternoon—and also the work that's being done in amending the Public Finance Act to incorporate this governance approach to putting wellbeing at the heart of our work.So there's no question actually that there has been a lot of joined-up thinking in relation to infrastructure and housing. I think that these two moves—(1) to establish the Infrastructure Commission to lift the level of the performance of Government and the private sector together in the way that we plan invest and build the infrastructure that our country needs and (2) this bill establishing a new delivery agency for the built environment to build the Government's housing programme and also to undertake large-scale and complex urban development projects.These are two really groundbreaking institution-building efforts. Without a doubt we recognise that infrastructure plays a critical role in the building and the growth of our towns and cities first in the sense that unless we include and plan for and invest in the infrastructure that strong communities need—good transport connections environmental protection the three waters civic amenities access to jobs—then we're not actually doing justice to the aspirations and the needs of future generations. But secondly unless we can build more infrastructure particularly transport and the three waters that will allow towns and cities to grow we'll never see the expansion in the housing supply that we desperately need. I could name a dozen different developments around the country today that are held up because we're struggling to fund and finance the transport infrastructure whether it's roads or rail or whatever that allows those communities to go ahead both in greenfields locations and in brownfields locations. So joining up infrastructure planning with expansion of the housing supply is absolutely critical so there are very strong connections between those two. The member also cited the clause in the bill about the current and future wellbeing of New Zealanders—that the housing and urban development system should be geared to the current and future wellbeing. I think that's a really really important sentence in this bill. First it acknowledges that there is a housing and urban development system. It is not just a random collection of some developers building houses here and the Government doing some State housing over there; it's actually one complex system that is highly integrated and we have to recognise it in that way. The other thing is that we're locating this entire effort around wellbeing—the wellbeing of our families communities and future generations—and that is the purpose of what we're trying to do.That links very nicely to Liz Craig's question before where she asked about the extent to which the operating principle set out in clause 14 in Part 1 of the bill—and asked really what is the connection between those operating principles and the Government policy statement? Well the operating principles are specifically for public housing. They are this Government's charter for public housing for the 21st century. They're a rejection of the idea that the Government should just sell off public housing and get someone else to do it. They are an assertion of the idea that public housing is a core role of Government and that we should do it in certain ways—you know supporting tenants to be well connected to their communities" "to lead lives with dignity and the greatest degree of independence possible" "to sustain tenancies". This goes to the heart of this Government's philosophy about public housing and those values about wellbeing about manaakitanga about kaitiakitanga they will be reflected they will be front and centre in the Government policy statement because that's how we will be communicating the values and what we stand for. I want to go back to Stuart Nash's comment. He pointed out that the bill repeals the Housing Corporation Act 1974. That 1974 Act in fact as the member said was a merger of State Advances Corporation with the existing housing organisation that created what we knew as housing corp for many many years. I think it's fair to say that this bill is a kind of a generational change much like that bill was back then and it reflects our generation's view that public housing State housing and community housing has to be fully integrated and at the heart of everything we do to build new communities and new towns. So it's our expectation through Kāinga Ora and this will be communicated through the Government policy statement that every time the Government is involved in building new communities—whether it's Drury in South Auckland whether it's Tauriko West in the Bay of Plenty whether it's the Unitec development in Mount Albert whether it's Porirua East in the Wellington region—State and community housing public housing should be fully integrated always into new developments. We don't believe that State housing is just welfare housing of last resort and it should be concentrated in ghettos in the poorest part of town furthest away from the jobs and the amenities. That is not our philosophy.As well as repealing the Housing Corporation Act 1974 we're doing some other I think quite exciting things with this bill. We are abolishing the provisions that the former National Government passed to facilitate the mass sell-off of State housing. That is very significant. Any future Government that comes in and wants to sell off large quantities of State housing as the former Government did then they will have to change the law explicitly to allow that because this bill takes away those provisions."