Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I'm quite surprised actually that the National Party is supporting this bill because I thought that they had a little bit more of a sophisticated understanding of the problem around housing and also what the solutions will entail and I think the speech by the previous member Simon Watts has highlighted actually that they have taken a position without possibly knowing the contents of the bill or really understanding what it is that they're supporting.My main message to the member is: congratulations for having the bill drawn but there are no silver bullets for housing. This bill attempts to be a silver bullet and it simply isn't tenable. It's $1.3 billion worth of taxpayer money that is not going to help solve what is a complex problem and where significant progress is already being made. The member Brooke van Velden talked about incentivising and I agree that there does need to be the correct incentives. Whether it's the councils that need to be incentivised is a really interesting proposition and I wonder if the politics is playing into that in terms of appealing to councils at a time when some of them may be feeling uncertainty around water infrastructure and this could be a bit of a political ploy because actually the ingredients for a comprehensive solution to the housing problem involve having enough land which has been a decades-long issue having a resource consent system that works and is pragmatic and is timely having adequate infrastructure and also a tax regime that actually provides the incentives as well in terms of allowing enough supply of houses. And that's certainly something this Government has addressed. So the previous member did raise some issues himself actually around why this bill won't work. One of them as he said is that it wasn't targeted. It's also impractical and it doesn't have decent outcomes; in fact it's got quite poor outcomes. One of the reasons that it is not targeted is it's just not geographically nuanced. The housing scenario around New Zealand—there are different factors for different areas and it's OK to say Let's incentivise councils." but actually what will happen with the market is that developers and councils who want to take advantage of this will go to where the upfront costs are cheaper and that is going to disadvantage small councils. So yes as my colleague Shanan Halbert said it's going to be great for Auckland. It's not perhaps going to be great for places in the South and the communities that I serve down in Taieri.It's also impractical and as Shanan Halbert said it's not necessarily all going to be spent on infrastructure. There's nothing in the bill that says that the money collected will go into infrastructure and that's a real problem. The poor outcomes as well—it's hugely expensive and really if we look at what is already happening the progress that we are making is more cost-effective than this $1.3 billion of expense and that is through the direct investment that this Government is making through the Housing Acceleration Fund of $3.8 billion but also the systems reform and that is comprehensive reform around water infrastructure around transport around resource management and around the build-to-rent incentives. That is why this Government has embarked on such a comprehensive suite of reforms because we know that there are no silver bullets. Actually what is needed are incentives; it is access; it is the supply side around land; it is around the demand side which is providing the changes to the tax system including the reduction of the tax deductibility interest deductibility but also then carving out exemptions so that there is incentivisation around building to rent. That is exactly what this Government has done.The Minister of Finance has always talked in this House about having a number of different levers that are required to deal with the housing crisis. We have seen those come into play. We are looking at statistics at the moment which show that house prices have dropped significantly and that is good for first-home buyers. That is taking the heat out of the market. That's what we want to see. A silver bullet approach like the one being offered by the member while it may seem very attractive in a superficial level simply isn't going to cut it.So as I said at the beginning I'm surprised that National is supporting it. I thought that they may have interrogated the bill before them more thoroughly. On this side of the House we certainly won't be supporting this bill—I don't commend it."