Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Salaam alaikum Madam Chair. I thank the Minister for her remarks to the committee and actually there's quite a bit I agree with her on. We do need to do better density in New Zealand and we do need to grow the number of homes that we build and planning is all about that and infrastructure is all about that as well. But I have a few more questions that I would like her to address. The first is in response to what she said around KiwiBuild. The Minister has told us that KiwiBuild will continue and that's fine. That's a question for the Government and a legitimate policy decision. The question is just simply: what is the target for the future of KiwiBuild? Are there any targets? We've done 1300 homes since KiwiBuild started and 917 I think the Minister said are under construction now. Are we going to rattle along at a thousand homes a year for the foreseeable future or is the plan for KiwiBuild to grow and if so how much? I think we deserve to know as a Parliament exactly what the targets in broad terms are for KiwiBuild and we look forward to that being addressed.In relation to infrastructure I for one agree with the Minister that a critical part of enabling more housing is the infrastructure that underlies it and that's why I am so pleased to have both shadow portfolios for the Opposition. So my question would be in terms of working with local government—is the Government doing work on any policies to incentivise councils and local government to be in favour of growth? One of the underlying problems with New Zealand's housing issues is that councils are at best ambivalent and at worst hostile to growth. There have been suggestions from some commentators and some experts in the area that one way around that is to change the planning rules and change the financial incentives upon councils so that new subdivisions and new density is not regarded as something to be pushed against and something to be angry about and worried about but something to be welcomed.We need to go for growth. Growing cities are good things. Cities that grow reflect cities where people want to live and I for one don't want to live in a city where growth doesn't happen and the city just stagnates and inertia takes over and populations age and stay the same. I don't want to live in a country where that happens either. If you don't grow at the same time that your population grows you end up in a situation like the Minister rightly talks about where we have some of the most unaffordable housing in the developed world and we have 26000 people who can't afford market rents and are waiting on the social housing wait list and we have 4500 kids growing up in motels. I don't want to live in a country like that. The Minister is completely right—no one in this Parliament does. The question is how we solve that.So my question is: is the Government looking at incentives for local government to be in favour of growth so that we can partner as central government with local government and make sure that when it comes to council planning decisions the prevailing attitude in local government is not Oh here we go again. This is central government telling me I have to build more homes without providing funding and infrastructure to deal with it and I'm going to have to do all this work." but instead is "Awesome let's go for it. We can provide housing for our ratepayers and get on with growing our cities and our regions."?"