Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): One of the great things about the committee stage of Parliament is it really does expose the weakness of either the Government's position or the Opposition's position. And we heard at the start of that debate self-praise from the ACT Party claiming to be the most consistently in favour of removing planning constraints of housing development of anyone in this Parliament. He risks renaming himself the Dorian Gray of Parliament because he should look in the mirror. It is so obvious that his actions here are the absolute opposite of as he says everything that he stands for.Dealing with the assertion that there is no analysis as to whether this will work or not: there is a 150-page cost-benefit analysis which I think is one of the best pieces of cost-benefit analysis that I have seen attached to any piece of legislation in this area of law. It is an outstanding piece of analysis that is grounded in economics—the economics of land markets the economics of infrastructure. And it says in that report that there is less uncertainty in respect of the analysis in that report than there is normally because they have the good data from the mixed use zone in Auckland already. It's prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sense Partners as the member correctly said—two leading analysts in this area. And the economists who have done this work within those organisations are some of the best economists in land markets and planning economics in the country and they have put their name to the independently prepared cost-benefit analysis.That cost-benefit analysis is absolutely clear. It shows that upzoning in areas which enables people to build denser—doesn't require it; it enables them—when people are given the choice to build more densely the choice to have a more affordable home because it uses land more efficiently uses infrastructure more efficiently the choice to live closer to their work closer to the shops that they use when people are given those choices they take them. Developers build to the choices of the people because they know that if they build to that type of house they will find a buyer.Now I hear complaints about quality from members of the ACT Party. They haven't quite said what some of the planning profession have said that people will want to buy slums or live in slums—they haven't quite said that but that's sort of the tone of what they say. Again this is just an abrogation of their viewpoint that people should have the choice of being able to develop their land more intensively and the choice of buying a home that is affordable to them. Because instead of the land content being half a million dollars per house or something maybe the land content will be lower and they'll spend more on a high-quality house because they'll be able to afford a higher quality house because they won't have paid these astronomical amounts for the land content.In terms of what the cost-benefit analysis said it showed that the earlier cost-benefit analysis of what would be the effect of the national policy statement on urban development and the effect of the mixed-use zone those early analyses by other cost-benefit analysts they undercooked it. The actual outcomes compared with the outcomes in those earlier examples of cost-benefit analysis understated how powerful this will be and how much this is important to affordable housing.In terms of the numbers that they produced they said that this piece of legislation will over the next I think it is five to eight years—is it?—result in between 48000 and 105500 extra houses being built in New Zealand for people to live in and yet the ACT Party opposes it. In respect of how much of that is in Auckland according to their analysis: between 27900 and 53700 units. Now if the Supplementary Order Paper is adopted that extra housing will go down by about 4 percent because we have changed some of the boundary rules that will come up in a later part of the speech. But those are the numbers—those are the numbers. They are real.