Prime Willow-JeanHon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a short call on the—Hon Shane Jones: Short.Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —short as in five minutes not 10—Overseas Investment (Build-to-rent and Similar Rental Developments) Amendment Bill. Dan Bidois: Willow Matariki!Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Sorry I'm not going to give you that Matariki gift tonight and keep it shorter than the five minutes that I've got.But I want to support the contributions from my colleagues on this side of the House and the points that they have made about not only the work that Labour did while we were in Government to address the housing crisis that we have but also the disappointment that we have with some of the announcements and the things that we can see in the Budget. It would be remiss of me as Labour's spokesperson for youth if I didn't point out that I am disappointed in the $20 million cut to youth homelessness in this year's Budget.As you have heard this evening from my colleagues on this side of the House we are supporting this bill and we are supporting it to select committee. There are some important things that do need to be teased out at select committee and understood by the select committee. I want to elaborate a little bit more on those. But if I can first say for the benefit of the Hon Shane Jones—if I refer to a news story which quotes the Property Council of New Zealand's chief executive Leonie Freeman who told Newsroom that this is a journey the sector has been going through in recent years. During the last Labour Government housing Minister Phil Twyford and his successor Megan Woods publicly shared their support for build-to-rent developments. In fact under Woods the Government carved new build-to-rent projects out of its decision to end interest deductibility for investor rentals and Land Information New Zealand issued a guidance note intended to make it clear that such developments were not subject to the Labour-led coalition's foreign buyers ban.I'm pleased to say that I can see in a recent article that the Property Council has launched a build-to-rent tracker in the last month or so which has shown that more than 1300 units had been completed with at least 4000 more under construction or in the pipeline. Is Shanan Halbert here? I understand he's joining us shortly yes? Over 95 percent of those are in Auckland and as our spokesperson for Auckland I'm sure he will be pleased to hear that. Now the one thing that I wanted to bring the House's attention to and just raise in the debate this evening and leave it for the select committee which I am not part of to consider and to question officials and tease out a little bit more is the new section 11A inserted by clause 6 how the large rental development test is met. So that is in particular 11A(1)(b). That one is that at least 20 of the residential dwellings will be or are likely to be available for use within a time frame that is satisfactory to the relevant Ministers as a residential dwelling occupied under a residential tenancy to which the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 applies or would apply (the large rental development outcome)".Now the reason why I have some questions about that is because in order to be eligible it has to be 20 or more and of course some can be and hopefully will be much larger than that. So what we want to know is how did the Minister determine that the number would be 20? Is this a percentage basis? Just the rationale behind that but also a bit of a concern that this isn't or couldn't be used as a loophole to get around it. So that is something that I want to raise in this debate for those who are going to be on that select committee to consider to probe officials on that to understand that a bit more so that we can have confidence that it won't be used or is a loophole. I look forward to the select committee reporting back and giving us more clarification and assurance around that. Thank you Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House."