Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Madam Chair. Oh Madam Chair that's a beautiful expression. I am delighted to have a chance just to contribute a little to this discussion tonight. The reason is that this bill came in to the Environment Committee round about May this year when I was chair of the committee and got the work on this bill under way—you know the submissions and then getting them in. I heard some of the submissions on the bill but as we were partway through that process of hearing submissions and getting really into the nitty gritty of working out what was going to be done with the bill we had a bit of a shuffle around and I moved over to chairing the Finance and Expenditure Committee and so I was no longer sitting on the Environment Committee so I missed the opportunity to really understand some of the details in this bill. I had read the bill as it was but I hadn't seen the changes that the select committee suggested for it and they are quite interesting particularly around the Government policy statement (GPS) and some of the links between the Kāinga Ora bill and some of the other bills that we've been working on in this House and I'm interested to know from the Minister to what extent the progress of the bills has influenced each other. I would like to direct the Minister's attention in particular to clause 24 of the bill which is talking about the purpose of the GPS and there are two issues there that intrigued me. It sets the overall direction and priorities—so that's in clause 24(1AAA)(a) and (b)—but then in clause 24(1)(a) the multi-decade outlook:". What it made me consider was the links between the thinking around this bill and the thinking around the Infrastructure Commission bill because they are both focussing on that long-term outlook and I guess I want to know from the Minister to what extent he would expect that some of the findings of the Infrastructure Commission or the reports from there might influence what would go on in the context of the GPS issued under this bill the Kāinga Ora bill and in particular again that multi-decade outlook. Our colleague Dr Clark has talked about that this evening but I was thinking "Well 'multi-decade'—how many years are we expecting the GPS to go over?" The Infrastructure Commission talks in terms of 30 years I think but it is that sort of time horizon in where we are thinking. So I'm interested in that and those links between the bills.The other one that I am interested in is clause 24A—and these are all things that have been inserted by the Environment Committee so I'm quite interested. In clause 24A(a) it talks about "that the GPS promotes a housing and urban development system that contributes to the current and future well-being of New Zealanders;". Again that's quite interesting in the context of the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill which had its first reading in this House just yesterday evening. It's not just the word "wellbeing" that sits in there that triggers the connection—obviously that's a very clear signal that these two entities are linked. But of course it's also that focus on communities and understanding how communities develop and what communities need and what their expectations are and what works best to support communities and developments—especially in that wellbeing context. Again I'm interested to understand the links between this bill and the wellbeing approach which is going to be introduced into the Public Finance Act. I guess it signifies a lot of joined-up thinking which we know is something that Government is always interested in doing to make sure that Ministers and agencies don't operate in silos. So I am looking for some comment from the Minister on the work that he has done with his colleagues and I guess also the extent to which officials may have been communicating with each other about how to link up these three bills which to my mind do have a very clear relationship to each other and do guide us in a much more interesting direction in housing policy."