Goudie Sandra: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Goudie Sandra: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18499] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I will raise some pretty scary issues here. The Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill gives councils the option as to whether they want to have an affordable housing scheme. That is great I say to members. It is optional but the scary part is that if councils decide to take up that option and go down the path of having an affordable housing scheme the bill states in clause 28 that binding commitments may be required. We must remember that an affordable housing scheme will have a standing accorded to it alongside the Resource Management Act so that it goes through an Environment Court process and is then included as a part of—and has the equivalence of—a district plan. That means it will be very difficult to change that policy once it is in place. 
I also add that the Governor-General has the power to make regulation to enforce or require some commitments through those affordable housing scheme policies. Some considerable commitments will be required of developers here so I do not see how that can be supportive of affordable housing because those additional costs on developers will have to be met in some way or another. Let us look at the binding commitments that may be required when a council develops an affordable housing scheme. The council can make some binding commitments on the developer at the time of granting the resource consent and the building consent. Those are two different occasions when the council can make the developer meet commitments in terms of affordable housing and that has to come by way of land money or the building of houses on property. Whichever way that cake is cut it is going to be a cost on the developer. How is that to be met? It will certainly not be the council that will meet that cost; it will be the developer and that cost will be passed on. It will be interesting to see how that pans out in the future. 
I go to the commentary which states in regard to GST: “These amendments should reduce compliance costs for all parties.” Well hello I have never seen such a glaringly incorrect statement. That is an absolute joke. It shows complete ignorance and a lack of understanding of what compliance costs are and how they are passed on. It shows that this Government—and in particular this Minister—has no understanding of the fact that businesses provide jobs and wages to people to be able to afford to buy homes. In the Coromandel our average wage is one of the lowest in New Zealand at around $26000 a year. How on earth will lower socio-economic groups be able to afford even an average home—even the home that John Carter talked about? It is an absolute joke. It is absolute nonsense that not only will binding commitments be possibly required of developers but also it gets really scary when we consider what has happened through the Resource Management Act process and how it has developed under councils. This measure is just adding to that process and frankly anybody building subdivisions should be very very afraid of what it will mean if a council adopts it. Not only will this put compliance costs on to developers but also it will put added costs on to ratepayers. 
Once again we have to look at the bill to see what the criteria are around developing an affordable housing scheme. The bill has gone to great lengths to outline all the things that are necessary for a council to do to meet the criteria for having a scheme. The commentary states in relation to clause 10 that the criteria must include the proposed location of the development the kind of development the potential of the development the desirability of the community having a variety of housing tenures or whatever and also a cost-benefit analysis is required—the whole works. The bill is really really prescriptive about all of the work a council has to do to come up with an affordable housing scheme. Councils will have to develop or purchase that expertise. That means—[ 
Interruption 
] 
John Hayes 
: Let her speak! 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: No just ignore them. The Minister of Housing is totally ignorant about compliance costs. If we ask Government members to define what compliance costs are they cannot come up with an answer. Maybe the Minister might like to take a call and share with us what she understands compliance costs to be. If we ask anybody applying for resource consent or building consent what sort of charges they are experiencing at the coalface they will say those costs are prohibitive in terms of undertaking their activities. I challenge the Minister to tell us what she thinks compliance costs are and what compliance costs she thinks will be reduced as a consequence of her bill—that is if any local authorities take up the opportunity to have an affordable housing scheme. 
I think this bill is an absolute nonsense. In her own commentary the Minister said that it should reduce compliance costs. Well hello it is not going to; it will have the opposite effect. I wish this Government would get with the programme and really understand what the fiscal implications are. It has no fiscal understanding of the impacts of any of the legislation it puts in place. I see that the Minister of Finance is here. Maybe he should take a call and tell us what he thinks compliance costs really are and maybe he should enlighten his Ministers as to what they are. This bill will deal to developers. It will do nothing but shut down subdivisions and shut down housing. There will be even fewer opportunities for people to buy their own home.