Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am particularly interested in the clause of the bill that extends the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act from what was supposed to be September the 19th—was it?Hon Members: 15th.CARMEL SEPULONI: It was the 15th or 16th?Hon Members: 16th.CARMEL SEPULONI: September the 16th 2016 to September the 16th 2019. I guess my real concern is how did the Minister allow it to get to this point? So 10 days out from this particular part expiring here we are in urgency actually having a debate about this and trying to push it through quickly. Obviously we have had 3 years to think about this and we have had 3 years to see whether the short-term measure was going to be effective. I mean when we look at the regulatory impact statement it does say that it was supposed to be a short-term measure to streamline and fast track housing development and associated infrastructure through the Resource Management Act. Well we have known for a lot longer than the last week that that short-term measure was not going to be enough and it was going to need to be extended. So I really want to know from the Minister what was the delay? What was the delay in making the decision to bring this to the House to extend this?There are problems that have been highlighted in the regulatory impact statement in relation to this problems with regard to what had been hoped to be achieved that has not been achieved and it is spelt out really clearly here. It does say that The principal issue discussed in this RIS is whether to amend HASHAA [to extend the] timeframe to allow further SHAs to be established and to create new provisions in the HASHAA for a 12-month time limit to lodge consents within SHAs and ministerial discretion to extend this time limit." It basically says that there are still consents waiting that need to be put through. The Minister must have already known that they were not going to be completed by 16 September 2016 so why the delay?I also want to point out that it is not something that has recently come to light. For the last few months at least there has been an ongoing discussion about this. I just want to refer to an article in the newspaper—[Interruption] Thank you. I want to refer to an article in the newspaper where one of our mayoral candidates Phil Goff—who we think has a strong likelihood of winning the mayoralty—pointed out that this transition was going to be a problem. He expressed his concerns that the Minister had done nothing to deal with this transition. The actual headline is "Legal stuff up could hamper plans to build 15000 new homes in special housing areas". He highlighted that on 25 May and at that time Mr Nick Smith is reported in this article as saying that the Government was: "open-minded about legislation to effectively extend the special housing area legislation but would not make a decision until it had seen the plan recommended by the hearings panel and the council's response."So I would like to know from Minister Nick Smith whether or not that is what delayed him. Did he see the plan just yesterday or last week hence why he has had to bring this to the House only 10 days out from when it was due to expire and why we could not give it the public scrutiny and the due process that it deserved—is that why we have delayed to this extent? I just want to know really what other special housing area projects are on the cards that the Government had anticipated would get through by the 16 September date that have not actually made it to that mark so that we are fully aware of the reasons why we do need to extend this for 3 years.I guess we do accept that despite the fact that what the Government has done here has been underwhelming and has not achieved anywhere near the extent of what we needed it to achieve in terms of actually addressing the housing crisis it has done something even if it is just a little bit. For that reason we want to support that part of the bill. The second part—obviously we will not go into it now but we do not support it at all.So I just want to know from Mr Smith what the delay has been and why we are here 10 days out from when this expires. Why are we here under urgency? Why was this not brought to the House sooner? Why could we not have had a more robust formal discussion about this?"