Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. As the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I'm delighted to be able to report back on the process that happened in the select committee and on what people said to us during that process on this really interesting bill. I wish to begin however by a reflection on how well good infrastructure planning serves us and it comes from my own electorate of New Lynn with the construction of the transport hub in New Lynn.Looking at old photos of New Lynn the train tracks run right through the town centre. It was a particularly sort of grubby little train station I suppose and not much used. But quite a few years ago now the Auckland City Council and the New Zealand Government got together and worked really hard on what a good transport hub for New Lynn would look like and spent a fair amount of money doing it. But they sat there and they thought about the long-term needs of the area about what would serve the area best and they came up with a plan for transport which now involves an excellent train service which is somewhat undergrounded so it doesn't interrupt the traffic flow and it's linked in to a transport hub where all the buses come to and fro from that transport hub as well.So as a result of good planning—in fact excellent planning—in the New Lynn electorate we have bus routes that link into a train station which takes people in and out of town. This transport hub is situated right by supermarkets and the shopping centre and as a result of this it's an area where people want to live. People are very happy about living in apartment buildings near the transport hub or in quite intensified dwellings simply because the transport and the infrastructure is there. So it has become an ideal for really good urban planning as to what can be done when people think ahead about how to design around transport and living needs with really good infrastructure. Having said that it highlights to us the importance of infrastructure planning and why it is that we really do need to engage in thinking about our infrastructure long term and not just on a piecemeal basis—you know a road here a bridge there a train track there—but in fact integrating them all together so that they work for all of us.It goes even further than that. Building train stations building roads building water pipes building all the infrastructure we need takes an enormous amount of resources. It takes capital obviously but it takes machines it takes workers and it takes actual physical products like concrete and the like. It takes the expertise and the resources of the construction industry and that industry has for a long time said that they cannot operate on a boom and bust basis. They need the long-term horizons so that they can plan.A construction firm that knows that for the next few years it will be engaged on building a piece of motorway but then a few years after that they might move on to building another piece of motorway elsewhere—that they can take their skills and move along a planned sequence of projects—is a firm that can take on workers long term that can guarantee its workers' jobs and that can plan its own expansion on an ongoing basis. So as well as serving the needs of ordinary citizens as we use the infrastructure of this country this bill this infrastructure commission will also serve the needs of the construction industry. So it's a very good idea and it's good to see that it's being supported across the House.The bill itself has come out of the select committee with very little change. We actually really as Mr Yule has just said did some work with some of the issues around local government. Otherwise the bill is little changed. So what I thought I might report to the House on is some of what the submitters said about this infrastructure commission. Virtually unanimously they supported the infrastructure commission. They had issues that they wanted to fix up they had suggestions and they had tweaks but nothing substantive or major. So let me read some of the words that came to us from the people who submitted on this bill.Watercare who looks after the water supply in Auckland said that they were pleased to have this opportunity to submit on the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga Bill … and is broadly supportive of [the] Bill." They were delighted to see it in place and thought it was going to work well for us. Civil Contractors New Zealand said and I quote that "CCNZ strongly supports the creation of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission." They had some changes some tweaks that they thought would help but they were very very supportive of the overall idea of the infrastructure commission.The New Zealand Superannuation Fund came and talked to us about the infrastructure commission and their words—the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation—are that "The Guardians supports the purpose and intent of the Bill and the establishment of the Commission." They wanted to see this in place and they thought it would do well for New Zealand. The Property Council of New Zealand came and talked to us as well. They are perhaps not always known for being completely in line with Labour Government policy but this time they were. They said "We would like to commend the Government on proposing the introduction of the Bill for the proposed new Infrastructure Commission to take oversight of New Zealand's infrastructure planning." So the Property Council was very supportive of it too.The Employers and Manufacturers Association came to the party as well. They said "The Employers and Manufacturers Association … Northern has been a proponent of the formation of a New Zealand Infrastructure Commission for a number of years and has supported the efforts of like-minded organisations such as Infrastructure New Zealand in advocating for the creation of this organisation." A little further on in their submission they say "The EMA is strongly supportive of the formation of the Commission and supportive of the current direction and intent of the Bill."—and on it goes.The Auckland District Law Society says that "The Committee welcomes the establishment of a Commission dedicated to reviewing New Zealand's infrastructure needs." Transparency International submitted on the bill and they said "[Transparency International New Zealand] applauds the infrastructure bill's establishment of an autonomous entity to co-ordinate develop and promote infrastructure in order to improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders." Local Government New Zealand said "[Local Government New Zealand] recognises and appreciates Government raising this issue as a priority and looks forward to further engagement on infrastructure planning and provision." Infrastructure New Zealand said that they support the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga Bill and of course they welcomed the opportunity to provide feedback—and on and on it went.As I said it was virtually unanimous support from submitters for this bill. They had some changes they suggested some tweaks. Some of those we took on board in the committee some of them we didn't but the overall support for the bill was very very firmly there.As other speakers have said the one substantive change we made to the bill as a select committee was to bring local government into the information-gathering powers. It's really important for the infrastructure commission to be able to get information from the entities that it's going to be interacting with to be able to understand what local governments are planning on a long-term basis to be able to understand what central government is planning and from there the infrastructure commission itself can develop its own plans and its own recommendations for what New Zealand should be doing in terms of developing infrastructure.We've been quite careful about how we constructed those provisions because of course there are times when some entities do need to withhold information but that is in a very limited set of circumstances—the sort of circumstances that might be covered by the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. It's trying to strike a real balance between protecting the needs of local government but also ensuring that the infrastructure commission can actually do its job.As you might expect with such a united view from submitters the select committee itself was fairly united in its views on this infrastructure commission. I enjoy chairing the Finance and Expenditure Committee. One of the delights of the committee is that even when some members of the committee may not agree with the policy intent of a bill they will nevertheless grapple with the nuts and bolts of it and try to make it a better bill. In this case everyone agreed with the policy intent of the bill. The submitters agreed with the policy intent of the bill. It is a fantastic bill and I look forward to the infrastructure commission being established to support development and wellbeing in New Zealand."