Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill establishes a new Crown agency that will be the Government's delivery agency for housing and urban development. It's going to have two main jobs. One is that it will be our public housing landlord so it will inherit the great tradition that Housing New Zealand currently has stewardship of. It will manage the assets and the tenancies for some 68000 State houses but alongside that it will also be responsible for delivering for the Government a programme of large-scale urban development projects. This is something new and it's something that New Zealand cities desperately need.We haven't had in this country a tradition that has been common for the last three and a half decades in Australia going back to the Whitlam years in New South Wales Victoria and South Australia of public agencies whose job it is to lead and facilitate large-scale either urban regeneration projects brownfields and greyfields projects or large-scale greenfields developments. These entities often described as urban development authorities are very common in North America and Europe and their purpose is essentially to de-risk for private investors what otherwise would be developments in our cities that are too complex for the private sector to do on their own. We need public agencies who can do the master planning handle the resource consenting invest in the infrastructure and the public realm—the parks for the neighbourhoods civic amenities—and then provide the opportunities for private sector investors to come in and do what they do well which is to build great places for people to live play and work.I said we haven't had that kind of track record in New Zealand of doing that—there are some good examples and Hobsonville Point is one of the finest. It has been without doubt a brilliantly successful development commercially it has demonstrated a way of working that has changed the model for so many property developers and construction companies and it has created a new normal for medium-density suburban development in our country's biggest city. So HLC the subsidiary of Housing New Zealand that have led that project deserve enormous credit for that.The Auckland and Wellington waterfronts actually are also really great examples of urban renewal led by in this case local government and the urban regeneration that we've seen at Wynyard Quarter led by Auckland Council subsidiary is another great example of that. The Britomart development is also a good example. New Lynn in Auckland: an example of transit-oriented development. All of these projects demonstrate elements of what we want to achieve but we're looking to scale it up and we're looking to be able to do this throughout the country.The companion piece of legislation to this which will be tabled in the House in the next few months will legislate a set of special powers that the new urban development authority Kāinga Ora will exercise almost always in partnership with local government or local government development agencies but also with private sector investors and developers and mana whenua. They will be joint-venture vehicles at the local level designed to unlock private investment and deliver large-scale master plan developments at scale and pace and deliver vibrant new communities with all of the transport infrastructure the urban design—all of the things that modern communities look for.I want to say something about Housing New Zealand because that is something for parties on this side of the House that is incredibly important to us. Public housing or State housing is part of the great New Zealand tradition and it will find under this legislation a new home within Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities. Why are we doing that? The first reason is that we want State housing to be at the heart of all of our urban development work. We want public housing affordable housing to be in the mix whenever we do these large-scale developments—big medium or small.The other important thing is that in recent years Housing New Zealand has developed an impressive non-profit developer capability. It's currently building several thousand new homes a year all around New Zealand and we want that capability to be alongside the KiwiBuild procurement programme and alongside the precinct planning and land development capacity that HLC has built up off the back of Hobsonville Point. We're bringing all of that together so that the Government has tooled-up capability to engage directly with the market to build the volume of homes—the affordable homes with high-quality master planning—that we desperately need.One of the things that so many people in the private sector have said to me over the last 18 months is that the Government's had multiple agencies—HLC KiwiBuild Housing New Zealand's development unit—that are out there in the market often competing against each other and sending different messages. So we are bringing them together into one consolidated capability.The other critical thing that's in this legislation which I just want to mention—there will be plenty of time to debate this as the bill makes its way through the different passages—is that we are in this bill mandating a Government policy statement for housing and urban development. It mirrors in function the way that the Government policy statement works in transport. It has a 10-year horizon and a three-year cycle. It gets renewed in sync with the parliamentary cycle so every new term of Government there will be this high-level policy statement that sets out the Government's goals its strategy how it's going to work with other players and partner with others to deliver so that everybody in the system from non-profit community housing providers through to the property development sector and local government know exactly where we're going what we're aiming to achieve and how we can work together to deliver on these goals. That will not only provide that high-level policy statement for industry and for the sector but will also provide Kāinga Ora with its riding instructions.I'm going to leave it there. I want to thank all of the people particularly the public servants who have done a huge amount of policy work bringing this bill to this point over the last 18 months. I'm sorry to hear that the National Party are opposing this bill. It's worth mentioning that the Hon Dr Nick Smith over the course of 2017 took this very concept of an urban development authority to Cabinet. In fact he published a discussion paper with very similar policies and took it up and down the country consulting. So I'm sorry that the Opposition is not going to support this bill because they did actively promote and support these ideas and these policies in their last year in Government. Thank you.