Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): When I heard on Budget day the introduction of this bill picking up the concept of an urban development authority for New Zealand I became incredibly excited. I thought At last we are going to get some real action on the issues that will make a difference to the housing challenges New Zealand has got."I put a discussion document out in March 2017 around the notion of an urban development authority that would be able to cut through some of the red tape of the Resource Management Act and the need to be able to reconfigure roads and infrastructure in areas where we have a second phase of development. Further to hearing the interjection from the Minister I thought "Oh good there must be something in the bill along those lines." It is absolutely vacant. This bill does nothing more than reorganise a few Government agencies in the housing sector. I have to say the only times I see Ministers fiddling around with different Government agencies is when they have become so vacant of real reform and real ideas that will make a material difference. This makes a bigger hole of the issues around housing.Now the Government started off with a policy of KiwiBuild. I remember Phil Twyford first saying it was going to be 10000 houses a year and they were going to be an average of $300000 each. I also remember opening a whole set of the housing estate in Awatea with my colleague Gerry Brownlee. Those houses averaged $430000 each. The Minister opposite said "How could the Government possibly believe that $420000 was affordable?" Isn't it interesting how now he's selling KiwiBuild houses at $580000 and magically they have become affordable.Barbara Kuriger: Or not selling them.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well not selling them for that matter. I do challenge the Minister and say "You can rejig these Government agencies around but if you really want to talk about establishing an urban development authority—of which there are good models in Australia and there are good models in the UK and Canada and the US—you are going to have to sort the issues out with the Green Party over what we do with the Resource Management Act." because actually it is the price of the sections and it is the barriers to being able to do major developments like Hobsonville or others. If you want to get pace and momentum they will be critical to it.The last point I'd want to make is actually a very concerning report that came out from Statistics on the same day as the Budget. For the last six years we have seen compound growth in the number of homes that are being built in New Zealand of about 20 percent per year. Back after the global financial crisis new house construction levels in New Zealand got down as low as 13000 per year. They grew every year for six years—31000 when the Minister took office. We're now up to 33000. The part that should concern every member of this House that's genuinely worried about housing recognising that supply is key is that the report on Thursday from Statistics New Zealand said that we are seeing the first decline in the amount of new housing activity and that we are seeing a decline in the expectations of investments.The Minister is going to have to do a whole lot better than this bill and I suggest he does pick up the concepts and work that was done by the previous Government on an urban development authority that would make a material difference rather than this very superficial rearranging of Government departments."