Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just want to correct the previous speaker Paul Foster-Bell on a couple of points. The first point is that in all those many many years when people were struggling to find affordable housing in the city which was hugely damaged by earthquakes when 11000 to 13000 homes were damaged by the earthquakes the Government did not step in. There were calls for the Government to regulate rents which sky-rocketed. There were rents in parts of New Brighton where $1200 a week was not unusual. That member who spoke previously has the audacity to say that the Government stepped in. Well it did not. I can assure you it did not. The other thing I want to say is that the Riccarton Market is not ramshackle; it is actually a well-supported well-loved institution. The people who attend that market will be hugely offended to know that the member on that side of the House thinks that it is ramshackle. When this bill was first proposed there were many people many markets and many community organisations that said: We would love the Riccarton Market to come to our site." That is how much it is loved in Christchurch. So it is not ramshackle. I want to also correct one of the statements about how involved the Government is in promoting this bill. When the Riccarton racing club was promoting the idea of having 40 hectares developed into housing some of the Christchurch city councillors were questioning the rationale about why that should happen. Their fears and concerns were allayed to the point that they actually became the formal promoters of the bill. For the members on that side of the House to say that the Government has been the key driver and the key institution particularly in supporting the development of housing in this area is blatantly not correct—it is not correct. I do want to say that I do commend the Riccarton racing club members for their foresight and their forward-thinking in wanting to do this. Some of the reasons that they have gone down this path have been traversed but one of them has not been expressed in this House tonight and that is the fact that the Riccarton racing club really wants to preserve its racing club—the facilities the track the buildings that make up the Riccarton racing club—for perpetuity for the people of Christchurch. In order to do that this development will help them to achieve certain things and one of the most important things is actually the ongoing maintenance of some of those buildings at the club which are old. They need maintenance and ongoing maintenance and because of their age they need specialist care. So that is one of the reasons that this is happening. The other reason is they saw an opportunity to support the people of Christchurch and Canterbury to actually be able to have some housing. For such a long time the redevelopment and the rebuild of our homes has taken a significant period of time and adding 600 homes to the mix actually really does alleviate a lot of that pressure. So we are really looking forward to the development going ahead. I do want to commend and acknowledge the hard work of Dr Megan Woods the local MP. When the local residents were concerned about what would happen to their much-loved park area she made sure that there was lots of good information. She had public meetings. She got members of the racing club to attend these meetings and really talk through some of the big issues that they were concerned about. I think that a lot of the work that she did up front has allowed for a really succinct and really well-crafted process. This is because of a lot of the work that she did to ensure that the voice of her community was heard. Some of the issues that the community raised were around the significant increase in traffic that would happen. Yaldhurst Road is a significant thoroughfare. It leads from the southern part of the city right through to the airport and beyond. It also leads on to the main highway that heads out west and on to the West Coast. So it is quite a significant arterial route and it will be impacted by 600 new homes in the area—all those people at rush hour wanting to get out to work and school and then coming home at the end of the day. This development was originally going to be an exemplar. An exemplar project has to have certain criteria within it—affordability a percentage of affordability which this development assures us it will have; it has to have particular amenities; good urban design; and infrastructure and transport planning. Well in that regard I think that perhaps there may be some problems. But this development is not an exemplar. Clause 9 in Part 2 of the bill talks about the requirements which include relevant regional and district planning that the interests of Ngāi Tahu are fully considered and that—and this is an interesting provision—fibre-optic broadband connections are provided to all premises. I thought that was really interesting. What it does not include which I think is really short-sighted is the ability to have good design that means that the homes are accessible whether you are 3 years old or 100 years old or whether you have a disability or not. They have missed an opportunity to build accessibility options into the requirements which I think is really short-sighted. So we are looking at 600 homes—a third of which will be priced at $450000 or below. It is in the legislation that affordability is $450000. I have said in previous readings of this legislation that I think Aucklanders would love to have a bill that determined what affordability was. However I suspect that in the Auckland market we would be coming back to the House week after week after week to change the level of affordability. There is one thing that is for sure—affordability and the Auckland housing market do not go together. They are not synonymous at all. But in this piece of legislation we have got a definition of affordability at $450000. Some of my colleagues have questioned whether that is actually affordable when the average price of a home in Canterbury sits at around $490000. I too would question that definition of affordability. It may be that we at some point have to come back and redefine what affordable is in terms of the Christchurch housing market. To end my contribution I just want to say that housing is a major concern across our country. I want to just acknowledge what is going to happen tonight at Park Up For Homes Māngere where 1200 people have indicated that they are going to sleep in cars in solidarity with all the New Zealanders who are forced to sleep in cars. Twelve-hundred people are going to volunteer to sleep in cars tonight including Labour MPs. I just want to acknowledge that they are making a stand for those people who cannot afford housing in this country."