van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to talk today about housing. Now housing is an issue that I hear of no matter where ACT goes in New Zealand—I have to put an asterisk there and say before this latest lockdown" of course. But even today I have had people reach out to me on social media saying they cannot see a future for themselves in this country because house prices are increasing at such a large rate. And there is one person that comes to mind when I think of housing and it was when I was down in the South Island. This is not somebody who is trying to get a million-dollar home in Auckland this is somebody who lives in Ōāmaru a 30-year-old man a skilled tradesperson who says "I cannot see a future for myself in this country and maybe I should go overseas." That's because house prices are rising so fast that people are having to put aside more money than they can even save each week.There are nurses builders skilled tradespeople who are all saying "Maybe there is a better future for me somewhere else." It is unmotivating. Somebody budgeting every single week has to ask the question "Why bother if it just feels so out of reach?" Why would you even strive and ask for a promotion if you know that it's just going to be a drop in the bucket? We need to get the rules right so that people have a future in New Zealand. National and Labour have failed on housing. It's fair to say both parties have failed on housing. Neither of them have credibility on this issue at all. Now surprisingly they both say that they have a solution that they've worked on together. It's called a bipartisan bill. It's cynical and it's so that they can stop attacking each other across this Chamber rather than actually putting in place rules that would help New Zealand. It's safe for them but it's not good for New Zealanders.The first issue I have with this is the secrecy of the process that it went through. Nobody was consulted before it was radically announced but people who work in this area—the councils the planning experts the builders and developers none of them were consulted. And now we're going to see it rushed through before Christmas when they don't even have enough time to look in great detail about what this will mean for the future. There is no reason to change our planning rules and chuck them out overnight because National and Labour both want to kick this for touch.So what is this actual bill? The Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill would allow for three-storey homes in any section in the largest five cities in New Zealand with almost no exceptions. It creates a new zone called the medium density residential standard or the MDRS. Now the Government's commissioned report said that because the Auckland Unitary Plan put in place a new zone and then we saw more houses being built therefore if they put in place this new radical zone more homes will be built. It is more radical than what the Auckland Unitary Plan does and ACT opposes that. We oppose the fact that there could be more homes built under an already existing zone: the mixed housing suburban zone. That's something that's already in place everybody knows what it is and it would allow for more houses. It would also stop the unnecessary divisiveness of this Government for what they want to achieve.ACT is glad that the Government has acknowledged that this is a housing supply issue but we've talked to councils and developers and they say that it won't work it won't deliver the more homes that this generation has been promised. And that's a shame. There is a real lack of supply but we've got to get the incentives right. The biggest barrier to growth is the cost of infrastructure. ACT has a solution to allow for more infrastructure. It's our GST sharing scheme that would allow half of the GST to go to the local council that issues the consent for every new home that's being built. That is the incentive. It is a positive solution for New Zealand rather than dividing people and putting in place unnecessarily radical changes overnight in this country. The National and Labour Party working together won't solve the housing shortage in New Zealand. We need to fund infrastructure."