Rurawhe AdrianLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's my pleasure to take the call leading up till 6 o'clock. National supports this bill but I do wish to talk really around the reasons and the genesis for where this bill came from. It's a National Party idea it's a National Party suggestion but also in my former role as president of Local Government New Zealand despite what Fletcher Tabuteau MP said previously in this House there were a lot of conversations with the Government around how we could advance housing how we could fund infrastructure and what were the barriers to that.It's fair to say that the funding model particularly around housing for the provision of infrastructure is a barrier to development and I just want to paint a picture for members of this House of the sort of choices that local authorities face. They are faced with in many cases debt ceilings—Auckland in particular has a debt ceiling. They are faced with for want of a better word a reluctance for communities to pay substantially more in rates and to spend more on debt servicing and debt itself. So you have that on one hand and then you've got this insatiable demand for housing. When you have an insatiable demand for housing there's a lot of pressure on local authorities to do things. Developers come along and they say Mr Mayor"—or Mr Councillor or Mrs Mayor or Miss Mayor—"we'd like to do this." and generally the council has to put all the money up first has to build the infrastructure and then from that it charges development levies but they generally only occur at the subdivision stage and when the titles are issued. Generally the infrastructure's already done by that stage because there's a lag. So local authorities in my view carry all the risk. I'm reminded of going to Te Ānau about seven years ago. There were almost 800 sections in Te Ānau: fully roaded all the reticulation and no buyers. Now that's now been sorted out—I haven't been to Te Ānau for a while and I'm sure it's been sorted—but that local authority took the risk did that development and carried that risk itself.Then you have this whole issue of developers saying "We don't want to pay the development levies or if we do we want to pay them as the closest possible time to when we get paid for the sections." So there is complete misalignment of incentives for councils to stimulate housing development to fund all the roading to fund the other water and waste-water infrastructure when they know it could be a significant number of years before they get that money back. When councils have a debt ceiling and they have rating risks generally councils are cautious. So they will develop a little bit here and a little bit there but nothing of the scale of the demand that housing requires. Currently most high-growth local authorities are close to their maximum debt levels—most. Auckland—it's well known that it is and in the recent controversy at Ihumātao they talk about the fact that Auckland can't borrow any more. That's been a conversation that's been part of that. I know of a number of others who are at their debt ceiling and really they have limited ability to do things.So effectively this sets up a new vehicle—a new vehicle that allows the councils to do things differently. It allows infrastructure funding and financing to be done differently and effectively takes it off the council books and allows a repayment mechanism which is not damaging to the credit ratings of the local authorities. Simply put without it Auckland would currently not be able to fund its future demands for housing requirements infrastructure bus lanes and all the things that go with that development.I remember sitting in meetings with the Hon Steven Joyce talking about how we could do this and he reminded me of the fibre concept. Crown Fibre really was a concept that recycled cash and this really is no different. There is a debt vehicle that the Crown largely helps with the housing infrastructure fund is developed the development happens. Once the money's paid back then we get on and a new development is funded. So we support this because frankly without it the challenges we face in housing would almost be insurmountable.I look at my own community in Hawke's Bay where the provision of land is easily done usually. There are zoning rules. In my own case there is a thing called the Heretaunga Plains Urban Development Strategy that determines where future growth is going to occur between Hastings and Napier and how that works. I can say from experience that what we generally find is the limiting factor is not what the land is; the limiting factor is who's going to pay for the infrastructure who's going to take the risk and what is the uptake of those developments. I often see and I used to see in my previous role developers come to me and say "This development only works if you fund the infrastructure upfront. We're not prepared to take the risk and nor are we going to fund those development levies in the way you want." Whether it's industrial development or residential development the net result of that is the council's risk-averse the developer doesn't want to pay and things get held up. In that environment we are not helping ourselves or the people of New Zealand who need houses.So this mechanism worked out by the previous National Government initiated in my view by people like Steven Joyce Bill English and Judith Collins is a way of transferring that risk off the council balance sheet and putting it on the Government balance sheet through the Crown infrastructure fund. It can be used also for other things not just housing: waste-water costs water costs electricity costs even fibre. There are a whole lot of things that the Crown infrastructure fund can be used for on the very successful model that Crown Fibre has developed.I'll remind this House as we come to the close for the day in COVID-19 New Zealand was only able to operate because effectively we'd invested in fibre—way more than Australia actually. We have a fibre network in New Zealand that allowed New Zealand to communicate and keep in touch with each other by Zoom and all those other things. That is because of the model that Steven Joyce put in place to recycle the money. As a result we are the envy of the world.So in commending this bill to the House I think it goes a long long way to solving our housing issues. Nobody else has been able to come up with a better solution and it will take the risk aversion away from local authorities. I've sat round those tables and everybody wants to spend money—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member but it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m."