Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to quote the Hon Dr Nick Smith. In 2013 at the time of the first reading of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill Dr Smith said: The bill isn't a silver bullet for the problem but a much needed interim measure while the Government's longer term work programme to address housing affordability beds in." So 3 years ago this was some kind of interim measure but now the Government needs another 3 years while it desperately hopes that the special housing areas (SHAs) will deliver some kind of result. Will this Minister ever do anything more than the chronic piecemeal tinkering that passes for a housing policy? Will he? Will he ever do anything more than tinker around the edges?David Seymour: Tell us Phil. What would the member do?PHIL TWYFORD: David Seymour says this bill is "little more than ad hoc tinkering." Well I agree with David Seymour on this. That is all it is: ad hoc tinkering. Let us consider some of the provisions in this bill. Clause 5 amends section 16 of the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act (HASHAA) which provides for the establishment of SHAs. New section 16(4A) allows an Order in Council to define the boundaries of an SHA—blah blah. Clause 6 replaces section 18 of the HASHAA and allows SHAs to be disestablished and then there are a whole series of criteria about disestablishment. Section 18(3) currently provides for the early disestablishment of an SHA. It is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is the product of this Minister's mind—a Minister who for 10 years has been blaming the Resource Management Act (RMA) and blaming councils for producing an uncompetitive urban land market. He has done nothing substantial about it and this is what he is reduced to: a bureaucratic exercise in micromanaging urban land markets. It is a massive bureaucratic exercise with a whole lot of bureaucrats writing little lines on maps and saying: "You can do this. You can't do that. Now it's time to do that. If you don't do this by a certain period we're going to disestablish you." It is a Kafkaesque nightmare. Minister why do you not just follow through on the rhetoric that you have been spouting for 10 years and actually genuinely reform the planning process? Why do you not abolish the urban growth boundary and introduce a smarter way of managing urban growth? Why do you not protect the special environmental areas invest in rapid transit growth to support new development and genuinely reform infrastructure financing? But you will not. The Minister will not do that. All he does is tinker. I asked the member for Epsom who claims to believe in competitive land markets who wants to see the cost of urban land go down because he understands that the high price of urban land is at the heart of the housing crisis in Auckland. Well it is fine for the Minister to nod his head like that. He has been saying things like that for 10 years but he has done absolutely nothing about it. He had his chance with the draft national policy statement. That was his opportunity to genuinely reform the restrictive planning and zoning system that creates an artificial scarcity of land and drives up urban land values and makes affordable housing impossible in our biggest city. The national policy statement was his opportunity to make change. But what did he do? He produced a draft national policy statement that implemented a giant bureaucratic mechanism telling councils that they had to project the future need for development land and then if they did not think there was enough they had to increase the amount of land in supply. An incremental infusion of land into a highly speculative land market bears no resemblance to what the Minister and Bill English have been wittering on about for a decade talking about uncompetitive land markets. What an incredible disappointment. This Minister is in the twilight of his career. He has been mouthing off about reforming the planning system driving down the cost of urban land all these years—blaming the RMA and blaming councils."