Woods MeganRESOURCE MANAGEMENT (ENABLING HOUSING SUPPLY AND OTHER MATTERS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: I present a legislative statement on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I move That the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 2 December 2021 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193 195 and 196.New Zealand's housing crisis has not just cropped up in the last few years. It has been developing in our country over decades. New Zealand has simply not built enough homes in the right places to meet the needs of New Zealanders. This makes our housing increasingly unaffordable. Our Government firmly believes every New Zealander deserves to live in a warm dry and secure home. This bill deals with one of the barriers to boosting housing supply: overly restrictive council planning laws. Rules that have stopped density in our cities have outright banned them or have required lengthy and costly haggling with council in order to make them happen. We don't for one moment think that this is a magic solution to all our housing woes in New Zealand but we know that this is one piece of the puzzle that we need to put in place if we are to address our housing crisis.New Zealand's housing shortage is being made worse in our largest cities by the limits on the number and types of houses that can be built. They can be confusing and they can be arbitrary causing expensive delays as people struggle to meet the expectation of individual council consent offices. We can't just keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results. We can't just keep doing what we have been doing for decades and expect that the housing crisis will solve itself. This bill makes one of the changes that we need in this country to get more houses built.Evidence from here in New Zealand and overseas shows removing these rules results in more affordable houses being built. For example a 2017 report by Superu and Sense Partners further found land use regulations contribute between 15 and 56 percent to the cost of housing in our cities. We need to do what many other countries have successfully done to deliver more housing supply and to cut the red tape to allow more density and affordable housing options.Working across this Chamber working with the National Party on this bill delivered stable enduring policy on housing density. This gives homeowners councils developers and investors certainty around enduring planning rules and laws. Last year our Government took a step to address these overly restrictive planning rules by introducing the National Policy Statement on Urban Development known affectionately in some circles as the NPSUD. The NPSUD is a powerful tool in getting more houses built faster. It enables greater housing intensification in our cities and directs councils to better plan for future growth.Housing intensification is important because it fosters more housing variety in areas with access to jobs transport and community facilities. It also makes the best use of existing infrastructure amenities and services like public transport and bolsters the efficiency case in more investment in this critically needed infrastructure. It also helps to address climate change through changing transport modes to meet our emissions targets. Cost benefit analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers on the NPSUD intensification policies found that 72000 additional houses can be expected by 2043 in the tier 1 urban areas of Auckland in Greater Hamilton Tauranga Wellington and Christchurch. PricewaterhouseCoopers now considers this to be a conservative estimate.It will be in 2024 when the impacts of the NPSUD really start to be felt but we need to do more now so that we can get more houses built faster. This is why this bill tackles two things: process and density. The intensified streamlined planning process creates a new process to cut through red tape and speed up the NPSUD implementation. The tier 1 councils will be required to use this process so new rules and policies allowing for intensification are in their plans by August 2023 at least a year earlier than under the current timelines. The new process is based on the Resource Management Act's existing streamlined planning process and key features include having a standardised set of process steps using an independent panel to ensure a transparent and efficient submissions and hearing process and removing all appeal rights other than judicial review. Primary decision-making sits with the council with the Minister for the Environment settling any disagreements between it and the panel. We've made sure the new process supports Māori participation and engagement. Councils must consult with iwi authorities before publicly notifying their planned changes and all decisions must be consistent with relevant iwi and Māori participation legislation or joint management agreements.Secondly the bill enables more medium-density housing across our main city. Tier 1 councils will need to change their planning rules so most of their current and future residential areas are zoned for medium-density housing. This allows more town houses and units to be built but importantly it does not require it. This is enabling legislation that will give people in our cities more choice. The bill does this by introducing medium-density residential standards that provide a minimum level of development in these areas. What this means is people can as of right build up to three homes of up to three stories on up to 50 percent of most sites without the need for a resource consent. Currently most council planning rules may only allow for one home of up to two stories.A wider range of housing types will be supported including additional units for extended family living and those popular with first-home buyers as well as bigger and higher homes than under current plans. It also reduces the need to get a resource consent when building extending or renovating a home making it quicker cheaper and simpler for people to do work on their own home. The standards work together as a package. They are designed to be truly enabling of medium-density housing and the recession plane standard as a good example of this. The bill states buildings must not project beyond a 60-degree recession plane measured from a point 6 metres vertically above ground level along all boundaries. This has been done to ensure three stories can be built on a variety of site sizes something that has not always been possible in existing medium-density zones.Additionally this bill also makes changes to the NPSUD to clarify some intensification requirements and to reduce the workload of councils. The NPSUD is very directive about the need for a minimum of six storeys in areas walkable from rapid transit and city metropolitan centres. These are often the areas where housing density has the most benefit and we get the most value out of infrastructure investment. What is trickier for councils and what we heard in feedback from councils is the requirement to assess demand and accessibility across all of their urban areas and then up-zone accordingly. No one has policy 3D and in the bill this would provide odd results such as enabling six storeys in high demand but relatively inaccessible areas. So to make it easier for council the bill removes the demand assessment criteria.So there is no silver bullet to solve the housing crisis that has been so many decades in the making and it will take time to fix it but these changes complement other pieces of the puzzle. Other initiatives our Government has under way to address the housing crisis including a $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund $460 million—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.