Hughes Gareth: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 03 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:12951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I am happy to take a call tonight on this infrastructure legislation which is mostly common sense. I will talk about a couple of loves of mine: rugby and the Rugby World Cup. In less than 500 days the Rugby World Cup kicks off and it will be the biggest event that New Zealand has ever hosted. In terms of infrastructure it is an opportunity lost. It was a good chance for us to take advantage of and leverage from our natural assets to build our prosperity. It is a big deal because the Rugby World Cup is part of the Government’s five infrastructure priorities. I will touch on the legislation a little bit talk about housing and finish off with the Rugby World Cup. 
The Greens voted for the Infrastructure Bill in its first and second readings because on the whole it was mostly common sense. We supported it and we are glad the Minister for Infrastructure has split that bill into four parts because as I said in my second reading speech one of those parts is not like the others and that is the part on housing affordability. 
We are glad that Part 4 has now become the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill and tonight we will be opposing it. Part 1 now the Utilities Access Bill creates a framework through a consistent national code for access by utility operators to transport corridors. Part 2 now the Infrastructure (Amendments Relating to Utilities Access) Bill harmonises the notice provisions across all the Acts and requires territorial local authorities to pay for any amenity improvements when utilities are moved or upgraded. Part 3 now the New Zealand Railways Corporation Amendment Bill is common sense. It cleans up the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act and harmonises its management provisions with those in other State-owned enterprise legislation. 
I will touch briefly on Part 4 the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act Repeal Bill. We voted for the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act in the House originally and I am glad to say that we will be opposing its repeal tonight. The Greens support the retention of clauses prohibiting restrictive covenants that aim to exclude social housing. However we are disappointed that the Government has decided to water down these provisions and remove the prohibition of restrictive covenants that aim to exclude affordable housing. As Moana Mackey said it is all right to discriminate as long as we say we are not discriminating. 
Housing affordability is a major issue in New Zealand with close to one in three New Zealanders spending 30 percent or more of their disposable income on housing. A few years back in 2007 Russel Norman said in the House that a number of fundamental factors were driving the housing affordability crisis in this country amongst which were foreign buyers perverse tax laws poor planning for Auckland’s growth and lack of supply of cheaper housing to rent and buy. But it seems this Government’s main initiative in this area is slashing the State housing budget growing the State house waiting list and selling State houses. This Government has failed to take decisive action and introduce a capital gains tax—but not on the family home—to help make housing more affordable. This Government is repealing the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act but is not proposing anything to help with the housing affordability crisis. 
Members will be aware that as well as being concerned about housing affordability the Greens are also concerned about the appallingly cold and damp rental properties in New Zealand. Of the 1.5 million homes in New Zealand more than 460000 are rentals. These are generally the coldest and the least efficient of New Zealand’s housing stock. The rentals are cold old uninsulated damp and mouldy and they are expensive to rent. They are expensive to heat and more than one-quarter of Kiwis spend more than 10 percent of their weekly income on heating. At the moment tenants—be they students grandparents or the poor—are suffering the heating costs the housing costs and the costs in general of our substandard housing. When we look at one of our biggest natural assets our homes we see that we must act. We have to get them up to a minimum warm healthy standard. 
In my second reading speech on the Infrastructure Bill I looked at the folly of kicking to touch $10.7 billion of our nation’s wealth on the roads of national significance. But tonight I will look at another of the infrastructure priorities for this Government—the Rugby World Cup. Imagine what it will be like. An estimated 60000 to 85000 visitors are expected to fly to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup. They will arrive at Auckland Airport and look for the trains but there will not be any. Visitors will have to pile on to Auckland’s notoriously crowded motorways in minivans or taxis and they will experience what the congestion is like. 
Hopping off in downtown Auckland they will find there is no inner-city rail loop and they will discover that all of our transport systems are heavily car-reliant with hardly any public transport in towns and none in the smaller centres. Visitors noticing all the roadworks going on will figure out pretty fast what this Government’s infrastructure priority is. We heard Labour and National members before comparing who spent more on roads and motorways. Visitors will find new roads and motorways are being built in Auckland and Wellington. They will ask about trains but they will find that one tiny train line still serves the whole of Auckland and it still in 2011 runs on dirty old diesel power. 
Visitors will arrive in New Zealand to find that we are undergoing the fastest rate of native vegetation loss since colonial times. They will find that our rivers are unswimmable that we are considering converting dirty old lignite coal to fertiliser thanks to rampant dairy expansion and that our levels of greenhouse gas emissions are more than 25 percent above our levels in 1990. Whether visitors stay in hotels motels or rented holiday homes they are likely to be confronted—as our renters are—with cold damp accommodation. They will find that houses are probably uninsulated there is no such thing as double glazing and there are only a few solar hot water heaters around. Visitors will find that the light bulbs are mostly the old-fashioned wasteful incandescent ones which the Government phased out the phase-out of. 
Across the country visitors will find that every day 780 people are missing a game of rugby or missing a day of school or work as a result of being sick from their housing or they will find that 50 people a day are sick in hospital as a result of our housing. Visitors will feel stunned and cheated by the marketing slogan when they find that their expectation of a clean green New Zealand is shattered. That will have big ramifications for our economy. 
The Rugby World Cup could show up New Zealand as an international environmental embarrassment to an increasingly environmentally conscious global public. However it could show New Zealanders the urgent need for a raft of cost-effective job-producing green infrastructural investments. Looking to the past we see that we could have risen to the challenge and electrified Auckland’s rail network in time for the Rugby World Cup. We could have started a central business district rail loop in Auckland and we could have started the process to get a rail line to the Auckland Airport. We could have invested in our transport infrastructure so that people could get around faster more comfortably and with less oil and with more options and more jobs for Kiwis. We could have marketed ourselves with 100 percent green electricity production and other low-carbon solutions not just hollow ambitions like the New Zealand Energy Strategy. We could have had a green stadium at Mount Eden which would have made a great Rugby World Cup legacy. 
With less than 500 days until the Rugby World Cup we have missed the boat. We have missed the chance to invest wisely in sustainable future-proof infrastructure. Looking to the future we need to make sure the ball is not dropped on our “clean green” brand. Overfishing dirty dairying GE animals and the damming of the last of the wild rivers all move New Zealand closer to the “clean green” brand sin bin. This is especially important considering that the brand is already on the agenda of the likes of  
The Economist 
 the  
New York Times 
 and the  
Guardian 
. The worst outcome on waking up the day after the Rugby World Cup final would be a mess to clean up and nothing to show for the party. Kia ora.