5. Question No. 5—HousingPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 5—Housing5. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of Housing: What announcements has she made about unlocking housing supply in New Zealand?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Today I announced the Government's $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund designed to jump-start housing developments and increase housing supply across the country. This will fund infrastructure on land we own and in areas where councils can demonstrate both housing need and a willingness for momentum to increase new housing. We recognise that for too long housing demand has outstripped supply and as a result we have seen house price increases of a magnitude that keeps homes out of reach of first-home buyers.Paul Eagle: How does this package differ from previous packages introduced to address the housing supply challenge?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: This is the first time since the 1970s that funding of this scale for supporting infrastructure like roads to go to homes and water to taps has been so closely linked with land with the goal of bringing on new housing at pace. We are also supporting Kāinga Ora to borrow $2 billion extra to build a land acquisition programme which leverages its scale to increase the pace of housing developments coming online. These measures will reduce the impact of land banking that has held back housing developments in the past and ensure a sustained pipeline of new housing.Paul Eagle: How will this package unlock housing supply by supporting infrastructure investment?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We've listened to local government and developers who have said that Government investment in infrastructure is the single most important contribution central government can make to increase housing supply. We know that some large projects have lost momentum because there was no certainty that the costs of infrastructure could or would be met. In green lighting developments that could otherwise sit empty we are accelerating the unlocking of land by providing infrastructure for houses to be built on top of and enabling developments of a larger-scale size than we have previously seen.Nicola Willis: How many if any additional houses will be built in the next 12 months as a direct result of the Housing Acceleration Fund announced today?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I realise that it's only been a few hours since the release of the package and the member is probably still working her way through the detail of that package but what I can tell that member is that in terms of the timing of the fund we will be making investments in the second part of this year. Some of it will go into our large-scale projects. What the modelling that is clearly in the papers—and I'm sure the member will get to it—shows in our large-scale projects we're looking at 18000 Government-enabled houses with 11000 market-enabled. That doesn't count the other projects that will be brought on between the contestable fund. So we will see more houses brought on in our large-scale projects. In terms of the things coming through council-funded contestable funds we aren't likely to see them within the next 12 months but possibly within the next 18.Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Can the Minister highlight how this housing policy announcement will increase supply in housing to low-income whānau those on waiting lists for social housing and Māori?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: There is a number of questions in there; I'll start with the last piece about how this will increase the supply of housing for Māori. One of the things that we have made sure that this fund is orientated towards is not only iwi development but also the ability to fund infrastructure for building on papakāinga and whenua Māori land because we know that there are huge opportunities for increasing supply on that land and have made sure that we have orientated towards that. One of the features of the fund is also $50 million that sits within the land for housing account which actually allows for non-market outcomes which will allow us to push through affordability not only for homeownership but for rental accommodation as well.