Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. Was it not fascinating to listen to the last minute of the speech by the member who just resumed her seat Marama Davidson when she actually got on to addressing the bill instead of being a bundle of self-righteous fury with nothing constructive to add no solutions and no real understanding of what is being debated by other members? What I would like to address is the fact that these housing markets that we have in New Zealand are dysfunctional. The number of houses built in Auckland in the past decade is 20 percent fewer than in the 1990s despite very strong price signals that the supply of housing in Auckland needed to rise. That is a dysfunctional market. Unfortunately over a long period of time—8 years now—this Government has done what the Government before it did: nothing substantial to change the dynamics of that market. These special housing areas I am sorry to say are an island of fantasy in a sea of dysfunctional markets. They symbolise a belief that the Government can somehow wish away the dynamics that have led to dysfunction in our housing markets in a few small areas and suspend all of the things that it has not fixed anywhere else. Of course if the Government was serious there would be serious Resource Management Act reforms serious reform of the laws around building and land use planning and a serious consideration of the fiscal incentives that councils have. At the moment councils get most of the cost of development while central government gets most of the revenue. So it is not surprising that councils are unwilling to do or allow a great deal of building in their jurisdictions or that we have a shortage of supply—an inelastic supply—of housing rising prices and all of the social economic and financial problems that that creates. It is with some regret that we sit under urgency supporting this bill which is really tacking on this—should we say—an island of fantasy in a sea of dysfunctional housing markets tonight in order that we can carry on with the few projects that have actually succeeded. This is not to mention the various perverse incentives that have come out of the special housing areas to date. Part 2 is considerably more concerning. If Part 1 is merely not very effective then Part 2 of this bill both in terms of property rights and in terms of procedure should be of great concern to New Zealanders. What it says is that this Government or any future Government—and colleagues sometimes that is one thing we need to think about—can take land acquired perhaps under the Public Works Act for one purpose and then develop housing on it and dispose of it without any of the normal safeguards of right of first refusal to the original owner. I am a bit surprised that the Labour Party and the Green Party and New Zealand First are opposed to that; generally speaking they want the Government to be developing housing through any means necessary. Oddly enough it is the National Government—from the party of free enterprise occasionally—which appears to be proposing that the Government be able to ride roughshod over normal property rights in order to build low-cost housing. It is a topsy-turvy world but I think one thing that is going to be very clear is that the Committee stage of this debate or of this compressed reading is going to be very very interesting. I am looking forward to seeing what Supplementary Order Papers are sitting on the Table that might ameliorate the difficulties we have as a House with aggregating New Zealanders' property rights in due process under the Public Works Act in a single night of urgency particularly when members on my immediate left think hard about what that might mean in the hands of future Governments. I am not quite sure where that Committee stage is going to land but it is somewhere that members need to focus their attention very carefully because to start aggregating safeguards of New Zealanders' property rights in the middle of the night under urgency is not the way that the ACT Party believes we should be doing things in this House. So with those comments I will resume my seat supporting this bill in its second reading but I think there is the potential for things to evolve a little bit as the night goes on. Thank you.