Goudie Sandra: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Goudie Sandra: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18480] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I would like to follow on from my most eminent colleague John Carter who spoke about clause 42 “Amendments to Local Government Act 2002” and particularly about new clause 7A “Affordable housing policy” which is to be inserted in schedule 10 of that Act by clause 42. This is Mr Carter’s famous “if clause” and it states: “A long-term council community plan must contain a summary of the local authority’s affordable housing policy if it has adopted one under the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2007.” 
What I understand that to mean is that there is no way that a council could actually consult on an affordable housing scheme in conjunction with a long-term council community plan. It would have to run a separate process in time to catch the process of a long-term council community plan if it wants to include a summary of the affordable housing scheme within the long-term council community plan. So in actual fact it will have to either wait for another 3 years before it can do its long-term council community plan or run it in a pretty condensed time frame through a consultative process with its community to try to get it in the next round of a long-term council community plan. 
So in spite of the comment made earlier by a speaker I do not see that there is any way that an affordable housing scheme could go through a consultative process in tandem with a long-term council community plan. That just adds another cost because the council would not have that advantage. If it wants a summary then it will have to do all that work beforehand and it will not be able to run it concurrently. So there we have that separate cost of consultation and of course the hundreds of thousands of dollars that go with that. Councils have already said that there are 60-plus pieces of legislation that already add about 6 percent to the rates bill as it is. 
Further in speaking to Part 2 I am looking at the commentary on the bill with regard to the amendments to the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985. As my learned colleague John Hayes mentioned there was a recommendation for the inclusion of new clause 40A which would make consequential changes to that Act. There are two main effects of the recommended amendments. The commentary states: “Under new clause 40A(2) when a person undertaking a development made an affordable housing contribution payable to the territorial authority the authority would be deemed to supply goods and services to the developer. Under 40A(3) when a contribution from a person doing a development was in the form of land both sides of the arrangement would be charged at a rate of zero percent.” The commentary goes on to state: “These amendments should”—not “will” but “should”; ever hopeful—“reduce compliance costs for all parties.” 
Well it quite patently will not. It will not do anything in terms of reducing compliance costs. If we look at what compliance costs are we see that they are the costs of applying for a resource consent and the process that one has to go through to do that and hopefully the consent process is not challenged. That is a compliance cost. Then the cost of building consents for actually putting any housing on the subdivision if that is what one is doing is a compliance cost. So I do not see that having a GST rate of zero percent will do very much at all because a person is already incurring all those other costs and they are not being changed in any way shape or form. 
I refer to the comments made earlier by my learned colleague Phil Heatley who talked about development contributions which are another compliance cost that will not be addressed by this bill. 
Phil Heatley 
: They listen to me! 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Oh we absolutely do listen. You know the tragedy of it is that those members on the Government benches are not listening because they do not understand this stuff. They cannot get their heads around the simple cost of doing business because all they can see is the profit line and they hate that. Businesses making a profit is an anathema to them. So we are looking at amendments that “should” reduce compliance costs and at the word “if” which John Carter was fixated about in clause 42 “Amendments to Local Government Act 2002”.