Uffindell SamSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's good to be able to rise and speak in favour of the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill at the second reading. I'd just like to congratulate my colleague Rima Nakhle on her excellent speech there and I know her electorate will be very proud of that hard-working member.Up in my part of the world in Tauranga we have very good news: we now have a democratically elected council. Hooray! That is great news. I just want to give a little shout-out to Mahé Drysdale and all the other elected councillors. Well done on your election. It's been a long time coming. Democracy has been restored. It's very very good to see. There were people there coming saying We need a hybrid model we don't want to restore democracy." We said "No that is completely unacceptable". And I'd like to thank the Minister of Local Government Simeon Brown for making sure that we stuck to our values and valued democracy.I mean to put it the other way around it might be like me going to the Governor-General in a couple of years' time and saying "The previous lot was so bad let's not give democracy to the Kiwis. Let's make sure we keep National in power."—that would be completely unacceptable. And that was unacceptable and Tauranga has democracy so that is fantastic. All the best for the new council and I look forward to working closely with them.Now this Budget is a good Budget for Tauranga—it's a good Budget. We have some significant needs in Tauranga. We have a very constrained housing supply. If anyone was watching TV last week they might have seen on one of the breakfast shows—I think it was Friday morning if I remember correctly on TVNZ 1—there was a story on Tauranga. We have the highest rental prices in New Zealand. That is crazy for a city of 160000 people—that we have the highest rental prices.Tauranga isn't alone in that. It's not unique. It is happening across New Zealand where we have constrained supply and we have had councils and Governments that haven't been willing to deal with the fundamental aspect of market prices and that is the supply of housing onto the rental market. So we need to get housing right.We look at where the previous Government was where we saw homelessness up 400 percent. That is unbelievable from a Government that talked about how much they care for the poor and vulnerable. Homelessness increased four-fold—shameful very shameful. We saw rents increase $170 a week. That was very challenging very challenging for people. We saw a Government that ignored the advice of Treasury around what to do with interest rate deductions. Where did that go? They said it would increase rental prices. That's exactly what it did.In fact under the previous Government we saw one of the all-time great reverse Robin Hood moments in New Zealand's history where we saw money pouring into the market. It all went into assets which were held by wealthy people and we saw an enormous transfer of wealth—the biggest in New Zealand's history—from the poor and middle classes to wealthy New Zealanders. That is your record.Good news: we are here to fix it. And you would have seen the housing Minister Chris Bishop—we are looking to deliver new houses we are going to go for growth. This is a great thing. We're going to ask councils such as the newly elected council in Tauranga to deliver 30 years' worth of houses. They can go out; they can go up—they need to make it happen.Then we look at—we've got this big bit of land Mr Speaker. You go along Pāpāmoa into Tom Rutherford's electorate Pāpāmoa East—it's almost its own city now it's significantly big. You can drive for a long time waiting to hit the end but then you do and there's another big stretch of land called Te Tumu. Now the landowners there have been wanting to develop that—room for 6100 houses—for almost 20 years.Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Ooh fast track!SAM UFFINDELL: Someone said "fast track". Did I hear some common sense coming out from the other side of the House? I think I did. This is a momentous day. Well I don't know how that process is going to run but I would love to see Te Tumu come on board. Houses for 15000 people—wouldn't that be a good thing? That might help make Tauranga not the most expensive place to rent a house in New Zealand.Glen Bennett: Kāinga Ora—stopped that.SAM UFFINDELL: People are going to keep coming to Tauranga. You might come there too one day Mr Bennett because it's such a good—Glen Bennett: I was there last week.SAM UFFINDELL: You were there last week. It's such a good place isn't it? When you're there you can understand why people want to move there. And I can see the Speaker nodding—thank you Mr Speaker it is a fantastic place. We have been growing for a long time and we have been growing above the national average for a long time—it is a good thing. We have you know a unique value proposition. We are part of the "golden triangle". We have the port of Tauranga which—what do we do? We export—it was 44 percent of New Zealand's goods leaving out of the port of Tauranga if I'm correct on that. It is significant. Let's hope that port can keep growing as well because we need it to grow because we need to be able to drive value for all of the local businesses—iwi whānau businesses—there that are wanting to export their wonderful goods especially kiwifruit. What a good season for our kiwifruit growers. How good has that been? It is so good.But we are going for housing growth. We are going to improve the rental market. Good announcements recently from Minister Chris Penk around building and construction allowing competition in building materials and looking at things that are adding $20000 to $50000 worth of cost asking questions: is that necessary? You know what it's actually doing Mr Speaker? It's putting costs back onto consumers. It's pushing up house prices. It's very hard to buy a house at the moment.We're looking at better social housing as well. I think I heard one of the Green members earlier talking about the repealing of the Natural and Built Environment Act. What a good thing that was. We will be continuing to reform the Resource Management Act. There are some changes in process at the moment. We need to get this right and that will help deliver new houses for Tauranga.Very glad to see—I gave the Minister of Local Government a mention before for restoring democracy. Thank you Minister. He's also the Minister of Transport and boy do we have some transport challenges. But we do have a few roads of national significance in Tauranga. The Takitimu North Link stages one and two—a very busy very dangerous stretch of road. It would be fantastic to have a four lane grade-separated highway to move people—Tom Rutherford in the House as well; welcome—to the Bay of Plenty delivering people and goods around the area and to the Port. State Highway 29—I went over there I got a trip the other day from Tranzliquid Logistics in one of their tankers. They said "Come on in." They said "Make sure you bring the Minister next time." But we went over the Kaimais to Matamata and as we were driving the driver started loosening up and telling me how wonderful this new Government was. He noticed there weren't as many potholes anymore. We drove over the Kaimais and I was looking for potholes and I couldn't spot one. Maybe that's because our Government is taking roads seriously because we believe they are the best way to deliver people and goods efficiently and safely around the country and around the Bay of Plenty and around Tauranga. It's been very very good to see.We've got some other significant roading projects underway there too. I drove past one this morning the Pāpāmoa East interchange—we've already given Pap East shout-out.Tom Rutherford: As a resident it's good for my property value.SAM UFFINDELL: How good is that interchange going to be for you Mr Rutherford? Very very good indeed. Some significant challenges the new council's going to have to grapple with around Fifteenth Avenue and Turret Road. We've got an old bridge an old rusty bridge there that needs to be replaced. But I know this Government actually has the wherewithal to make sure we recognise that and prioritise that. Instead of prioritising raised speed bumps and cycle lanes we will be prioritising getting people from A to B as efficiently and as safely as possible.I was walking down the road yesterday and a guy came up to me and he said "Are you Sam Uffindell?" And I said "I am." He was quite up front with me and I thought "Where's this going to go? Where's this going to go?" Then he said "I just want to thank you Mr Uffindell for all the great work your Government is doing." When we got into caucus before it started today I told the Minister of Finance because it was directed at her and directed at her wonderful Budget.This is a Budget that is delivering for the people of New Zealand. It's delivering for the people of Tauranga. Good news too because in a few days' time they are going to find out that the average household in New Zealand and in Tauranga is $102 a fortnight better off. How good? Then they've got—they could be $75 a week better off as part of our FamilyBoost policy. This is good news for the people and the families of Tauranga. This is a happy Budget. This is a good Budget. When they get their tax cut and they go and spend it on their food they will see that food prices have only gone up—wait for it—0.2 percent in the last year; inflation down to 3.3 percent. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand predicted 3.6 percent; we've got it at 3.3 percent. It's almost back within band. This is an excellent Budget I commend this bill to the House."