Prasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13203. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I want to carry on in the same vein that my colleague has been—suggesting alternative titles for the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill that will really reflect its true intent or the intent of the policy that this Minister of Housing is following. Let us look at the history of this. It was only when the Labour Party came up with a very popular housing policy that all of a sudden this became urgent. Perhaps we should call it the “Let’s Take the Focus off Labour’s Housing Policy Bill” because indeed prior to that the Government was not particularly interested in this area. The way in which the provisions of this bill have been spelt out gives the lie to the fact that this is not all that genuine in terms of a real response to what this side of the Chamber has said all along that the focus needs to be on affordable housing. That is where the big problem is but somehow the Minister has his own ideas as to how that is to be fixed.The second title which I think my colleague has already taken is what Jacinda Ardern coined—the “Trickle-down Process Bill”. It is as if that will work it out but that has already been taken now. The other point is that this bill has a provision that states that when it becomes an Act it will be repealed in 5 years’ time. So it could be something like the “Housing (We Will Fix it in 5 Years’ Time) Bill”.Think about it for a moment because that is about the time that this Government has been in power. It intends in the same length of time to fix the housing problems of New Zealand. It is not credible to believe that by creating some special housing areas through the provisions that are here we will have fixed the housing problem and we will have moved on. We do not think that will happen indeed.The driver of this particular policy that the Minister has taken is the use of the market—that the market really is the only mechanism by which our housing problems will be fixed. Nobody believes that except the Minister. So maybe it should be called the “Housing (Leave it to the Market) Bill”. This is a failed market yet the Minister has so much confidence that the bill will fix it up. Perhaps all that the bill will achieve when you think about it is it will enable more land to be made available to the developers who want to build big houses. They will build them through a faster process through the planning process that is in Part 2 of this bill. It will be a faster process to get land available and thereby it will make—[Interruption] Sorry Minister?Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s a short title debate.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well a faster process is what the Minister is proposing here. That is not credible. It is not credible that it can be done in that period of time. But maybe it does belie the true agenda of this Minister: to advantage one side. The other area that we have constantly talked about on this side is the override provisions which we find entirely objectionable despite the fact that there is now a mediation clause in the bill. Another name could actually be—and this should generally be in there—the “Housing Accords and Overrides Bill” because the override provision is objectionable. It is hidden there somewhere. There is a little change in there around mediation and that fixes it! It does not.Perhaps the other one that we object to is this notion that there are provisions hidden somewhere introduced at the last minute and hidden in the amendments that state that by Order in Council the affordability question will be answered. We notice the Minister has taken no calls on that at all to explain how the Order in Council would work. We all appreciate the Minister being in the Chamber and engaging with us but on that point Minister you have not. Perhaps you ought to have and maybe you can still do that. Itneeds an explanation as to how that is going to work. It is the Minister’s own answer to our requirement and our objection to there not being a process of the type that addresses affordable housing.In the end the bill is suboptimal in terms of what it can achieve. We will not be supporting it. Thank you.