Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker and it's a pleasure to take my first call as National's new housing spokesperson on a bill that I won't pretend to have had anything to do with but I do want to acknowledge the very hard work of Nicola Willis who has the custody of this bill but also Judith Collins who I see is in the House tonight. The former National housing spokesperson who introduced this bill was the Hon Nikki Kaye who did all the sort of heavy lifting on it as a member's bill back in 2016 and 2017 at the tail end of the last National Government. Nicola Willis: Oh they were better days.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh they were glory days—Hon Member: Glory days.CHRIS BISHOP: They were glory days. It's just one of those lessons I suppose that good things take time. And a real example of building support within a particular community and going away and doing the research which Nikki Kaye did as local MP for Auckland Central—I remember she ran the apartment blues session and a lot of people told their stories in some cases horror stories of owning and living in apartments and then she worked with the sector and developed a bill. And like many members' bills that attempt to deal with complicated areas of law it wasn't probably perfect when it first turned up but now it's been introduced and sent to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and it's come back in better shape. And so here we are in early 2022 considering it and I understand that there's further changes proposed by the member and we'll wait and see whether or not they meet with the support of the House. But I do want to say that today's member's day is really an example of Parliament at its best because we've just had the debate on the abortion legislation the safe areas bill and as David Seymour noted that is an example of a bill that again wasn't in a particularly great shape when it first came into the Parliament. It was sent to the committee. It's been fixed. It's now met with near unanimous support of the Parliament over an extended period of time. And this is another example where perhaps not perfect when introduced but a good start addressing a serious issue or a series of issues improved by a committee where a committee put their head down and really got on with the job. And I want to acknowledge Duncan Webb who I understand is a pretty fair and good chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Just in passing I will say that the treatment of the abortion bill and also this unit titles bill stands in contradistinction to the treatment of my bill which is the lawyers and conveyancers bill which went to the Justice Committee and met with unanimous support of the Parliament at first reading and there was no good faith attempt by anyone to improve the bill and work together with the officials to—Kieran McAnulty: Sour grapes.CHRIS BISHOP: Well it is sour grapes. I'm annoyed about it because politics has got in the way of access to justice and Labour members will have to justify on the campaign trail in 18 months' time why they have disenfranchised 8000 lawyers from doing pro-bono legal work who want to do work. So I mean good luck with that if you want to defend that. Good luck to you but I think you'll struggle to explain why 8000 lawyers are prohibited from doing pro-bono legal work on the basis that Labour members don't like me very much. OK that's cool. You can do that. But maybe maybe they like Nicola Willis and Judith Collins more; maybe not.Kieran McAnulty: That's not true.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh That's not true." says Kieran. See we play in the parliamentary cricket team and I know that Kieran thinks I'm all right but maybe his colleagues don't. But anyway that was really just an aside and he's right. I do have sour grapes about it but that's OK. This this is an important vote. My first home—[Interruption] What was that?Hon Member: He's 12th man.CHRIS BISHOP: Well he's actually our best player so we can't make him the 12th man. [Interruption] I'm trying to be nice. We never got that coffee earlier today that we had after a little tête-á-tête with the Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I remind the member to come back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: We can go for a coffee too Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! Thank you. Back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: Anyway I was going to tell you Madam Speaker and Mr McAnulty about my first house or apartment—you know my first home which was an apartment. And like many New Zealanders I bought my first home in my mid-twenties and I couldn't afford a house. I was living in Auckland at the time and I could see house prices going up. And like many Kiwis you want to get on the property ladder and you don't want to miss out; you've got FOMO fear of missing out and that drives a lot of price increases. This was back in 2013 and the first home I could afford was an apartment and I bought an apartment in Ponsonby. I can testify to the House that the prospect of owning an apartment did scare me because you do hear the horror stories—you do. You read about people who buy apartments and it all looks great when you first turn up and you buy into the body corporate and then a year later you find that you're up for the lift which has broken down and no one has put aside the money to upgrade it. And you're stung with a 15 grand bill and when you've just bought the apartment you probably don't have that much spare cash lying around. So you do read these stories.And many people listening although I suspect there's not that many at this time of night but people listening in Wellington will know of stories in Wellington and Auckland that are very similar to that. But the critical point is this: we need more apartments we need more apartments built and we need more apartments that people live in. And we want people to have confidence to be able to buy an apartment not necessarily even for their first home. There are many older New Zealanders who move out of the big three and four bedroom house with the picket fence in the suburbs because it's too big for them. The kids have left home and they want to downsize and actually there are many older New Zealanders for whom a nice one or two bedroom apartment in the city is something they want to move to. So the critical point is we need a range of housing types. We do need the suburban greenfields housing houses and we do need the medium and high density townhouses in and around public transport corridors and spines and we do need apartments in the CBD. And I for one would like to see more apartments in Auckland and more apartments in Wellington because it's ultimately by getting greater variety of housing types and greater housing supply that we will start to grapple and tackle our housing challenges. And so this bill's aim of promoting confidence in apartment buying and particularly bodies corporate is extremely important. I look forward to the debate as it progresses and as National's new spokesperson I'll be participating in that debate. Thank you very much Madam Speaker and I look forward to this bill progressing further."