Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): Madam Speaker it's 5.40 p.m. and people are getting a bit jaded I can see. It's important though that this bill gets through its passage. First of all I want to acknowledge you Madam Speaker as the former Minister that was involved in local government with the Hon Steven Joyce. That's why the National Party is supporting this: because it makes sense. Its genesis was actually developed by the previous Government who saw the need. I do want to congratulate the Hon Phil Twyford on his words and getting it to this point because I think you have cross-party support because it makes sense and it is a real issue in New Zealand.I just want to give a little bit of context because in my previous role I often worked and understood issues with local authorities who reached a debt ceiling. Auckland Council is a classic but there are others—high-growth councils—in New Zealand who got really worried and in many ways almost got unbankable from a debt perspective as to how much further they could raise their debt. They could actually raise their debt further but usually what happened is that the institutions responsible for their credit rating or their lending perceived that as a higher risk and the total cost of their borrowings went up. So while it might have been a marginal increase in debt the total cost across their whole portfolio if you had $50 million or $100 million was significant.I always used to argue that largely local government debt is safe as houses because ultimately you know the council had the guarantee of the rates supply—guaranteed. If people didn't pay their houses were sold. Now that never usually happens; so it's a very stable income source. But then what ended up happening was that in the middle of the global financial crisis councils became very risk averse as well. One of their areas of greatest exposure is developing the infrastructure for land development and then not getting the development contributions in to fund that cost.I remember going to Te Ānau about I think seven years ago and there were roughly a thousand sections that had been developed by the Southland District Council; all developed not a house on them and there were holding costs of development at that stage. It's been developed now but the holding costs of that development were significant. And in those cases many councils became even more risk averse more risk averse because economic cycles and housing cycles go like this and while we've got a massive boom on at the moment and we have had for some time councils still have to watch what their exposure is to the debt market.So these special purpose vehicles Minister are a very good thing to do. They do not though take away the total encumbrance of costs on a property owner but they do allow the local authority to operate over here with a relationship with its council through rates and its debt servicing ability but also allow a thousand dollars a year or something—whatever the value's set—to be set aside for that infrastructure. And believe you me there's a lot of developers out there today who would say Let us build the infrastructure to a standard at a cost guaranteed funding. We'll get it done and take the risk away and put it straight back on to the owners of the property rather than the collective risk of the local authority." I agree with what Chris Bishop has said: this has been a bit of a perfect storm. And Minister you'll know even in my own patch you know we have some social housing issues and the party I now represent could have done more at the time and I've been publicly acknowledging that. I now want this Government to do more and I want them to do it quickly because we have 459 people in motels looking for houses.So this is a very big issue. The land supply issue in Hastings district anyway is one issue. The ability to fund the infrastructure is another issue. And when you put all that together what it means is that development doesn't generally happen as quickly as it can. When there is more and more demand for housing what happens is some people get displaced rents go up and we have lots more people living in motels and things.So I think this is a good thing to do and I hope that councils who are largely and quite highly indebted will make use of this. There will be some things we have to work out at the select committee stage some details but this is a good bill. It's a good idea. It's a good piece of legislation. And I agree with what Chris Bishop and the Minister have said. We have got this wrong in New Zealand—how we manage housing supply land supply and demand—and it has ended up costing everybody; unfortunately some people disproportionately more and that's what we're trying to help. So I commend this bill to the House."