Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): There's a number of questions that have built up and I'll just seek to address a few of those. First of all the question was asked from Te Paati Māori around the number of social houses that will be constructed this year. Given the numbers that we have happy to give an update on that. This financial year to date the net number—and it's really important that we understand the difference between the net and the gross number here. There's been 721 additional public houses added to the system. Now within that one of things and why I say it's so important to understand the interplay of the net and the gross number here—that net number of 721 if we look at the Kāinga Ora (KO) builds it's been 546 new builds that have been added by Kāinga Ora this financial year. There's been four new leases. There's been 122 buy-ins. There's been 16 leases that have expired so that comes off the total. But of course in order to maintain the momentum in our public housing programme there's also been demolitions.So we report our numbers as the net number so that actually nets out to Kāinga Ora only adding 106 houses this year but we can see within that that there's actually been 546 new builds but because we don't want to overplay the hand and report the gross number to try and make ourselves look better we report the net number. So net there have been 721 new public houses added but I think it's really important to understand there's also been 711 transitional housing places in addition to the public housing places that have already been delivered this year. There's a further 2560 KO houses that are currently under construction that have been begun or are in the pipeline. The CHPs—community housing providers—have a further 382 houses that are currently under construction and then there's a further 1129 transitional houses that are currently under construction. In terms of the total number we deliver this year I'm currently working that through with both Kāinga Ora and the CHPs. Of course our building programmes are bedevilled by the same headwinds that all of the construction sector in New Zealand is facing. This is a financial year particularly where a lot of our house building programme is taking place in Auckland where there was a substantial period of lockdown and the impact that that lost time will have on the overall delivery numbers. What we're seeing across the industry is probably three to six months as the window of delay for a number of construction projects but we're working through in a very systematic and a very detailed way with the Kāinga Ora board and management team around what those delivery numbers realistically look like for this year. But we do imagine we'll see a shortfall in delivery this year. It's inevitable and it will be like that across the construction sector. I was asked by the spokesperson for the National Party what the KiwiBuild targets are. Well they're as many as we can as fast as we can as we stated when we reset the programme. To ask what the target is I think shows a lack of understanding of the potential of KiwiBuild. The answer is we do not know the extent of the counter-cyclical measures that we'll need to put in place to deal with the headwinds that we're about to face. There will be developments where KiwiBuild is a lifeline that keeps the development able to be delivered and I think that to put arbitrary targets in place does us no service if we are going to set a target. What I can reassure that member is that it will be substantially more than the 100 houses over nine years that the National Government delivered in affordable housing when they were in Government through their special housing areas. I'm happy to give that reassurance and stand by it. The National Party spokesperson also asked whether or not we would be introducing growth incentives for councils. The answer is absolutely. It's called the $1 million contestable Infrastructure Acceleration Fund of whom the 35 successful to negotiation were notified yesterday. That's a billion dollars in infrastructure that we have not seen the likes of in New Zealand in generations. It's not since the 1970s you could argue that you've seen central government investment in infrastructure like this. But not only are we incentivising; we're also requiring it. We're a Government that put in place the National Policy Statement on Urban Development where we say to councils How many houses are you going to need for your population growth and where are they going to go and we're going to put some requirements in place for you to have it?" Nine years in Government the National Party did nothing to address these issues around growth and I'm very pleased to say that in Government we've been able to address it. If what the member is referring to and what I've seen some parties in this House talk about is an inducement to councils a flat fee of say $50000 to put in place to say to councils "For every house that you consent we'll give you $50000."—we examined this a few years ago to think about whether or not this was the way to do it but we found that there are a number of failings with this approach. First up the funding comes too late. For enabling infrastructure you need the investment up front. You don't pay it on a piecemeal individualised basis like an incentive programme like that would suggest. It also fails to recognise the variability of infrastructure costs by saying there'd be a flat fee that would be applied.I know in some of the large-scale projects and the investments through shovel-ready that we've put through we've had substantially less than $50000 per property when you do an area-wide approach to this in terms of the infrastructure investment that is required in brownfield setting. Also the other problem with this is $50000 flat fails to appreciate the difference in infrastructure costs between brownfields and greenfields investment. Of course we're a Government that is serious about meeting our climate targets and ensuring that we're building climate-resilient cities and brownfields development is inherently more expensive on the surface—and I emphasise "on the surface"—than greenfields development. You have to address existing infrastructure and sometimes you have to buy up houses and bowl them. So this is expensive infrastructure investment.So a crude tool like just paying an untargeted flat fee is certainly not what we're investigating. Instead we've gone for a far more nuanced approach that actually looks to address the area-wide issues that we have and that will finally see the investment in infrastructure that we need in this country."