SpeechLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): This is an extraordinary bill at an extraordinary time done in an extraordinary way. This House and this side of the House never saw the bill until 1.20 this afternoon have had no time to scrutinise it. We're now in urgency for the first reading. The Government parties themselves are taking one-minute calls at best on a significant change that really is to try and win votes at this election. Now National will support the bill to the first reading. We've made that clear. But let's be really clear about all this does. All it does is allow some enabling legislation for a few pet projects that the Government has to get over the line. It's important that we understand the process that's being followed as the post-COVID response put up by the Government. Nearly 2000 projects were put before the Government that were meant to be shovel-ready—that is you can put the shovel in the ground—hopefully before the election. My understanding is that 40 percent of those projects were rejected by the Government as being shovel-ready and about 60 percent are going through the second phase—60 percent. Then we heard today under questioning from Todd Muller to the Prime Minister Would any of those actually have a shovel in the ground by the election?" that the answer was clearly no. Even the Prime Minister couldn't bring herself to say no. But the answer was clearly no because she just moved completely around answering it both times. If she had a project she could have said what it was but there isn't one. And the reality of this is that 2000 projects hundreds of billions of dollars in requests the Government can't deliver anything like that and certainly can't deliver anything in the time frame. So what it's doing today under urgency is bringing in some legislation that fast tracks some—11. Well 16 depending on where you look.But I want to bring the House's attention to the scale of some of these projects or should I say the lack of them. Project LP09 says "Construction of 14 affordable … homes in Auckland." Project LP10 says "Integrated papakāinga development of 6 homes"—six! This is one of Labour's and the coalition Government's and the Prime Minister's Government's key strategies and two of those projects between them build 20 houses. So in the schedule 20 houses. We don't know and have never seen—and the Hon Shane Jones probably does know but we have never seen what is in those 2000 projects—what is in those 2000 projects that have been submitted. If we're passing legislation with a schedule which includes two projects to build 20 houses then we are seriously underestimating and missing an opportunity as to what we could do. I want to acknowledge what David Seymour's just said because what he really hit on was the opportunity that New Zealand has and how we're being held back by the Resource Management Act (RMA). I heard the Hon David Parker say "Just wait. We're bringing changes to the RMA." This side of the House through the Hon Nick Smith and others have tried to reform the RMA over the past decade and it hasn't gone too well because we couldn't find support from that side of the House. And now tonight when they're in power they're rushing something through that deals with 11 projects—11 projects—of which two of them build 20 houses. It's revolutionary this stuff—20 houses included in the schedule.You see the problem is that while we support it we don't think it goes far enough in terms of the scale of the projects. And then the Minister says "It's OK. We'll just put an Order in Council through and you can apply for new projects." or there's a process where you can apply for new projects. OK. Now in theory that's OK but if that's the case I would argue why put any projects in here at all? Just allow a system that says a list will be drawn up. But in this we have the Minister saying these are Government-led projects. And I come back to what David Seymour said quite rightly that there are thousands of private sector projects out there that are not even thought about. These are just the Government pet projects. The National Party and some speakers including the Hon Scott Simpson have said that if this Parliament seriously wants a fast-tracking provision—and it's limited to two years at the moment but one can make an argument it could be for longer or the Greens might have to come back to their philosophical differences. But if it was to be longer then the Parliament should have some right to decide which of those projects are supported not just the Minister. So in terms of our side of the House supporting this we do. But if we're going to do this properly there could be some projects in the future which demand the support of all the political parties in this House or the majority rather than just the Minister of the Government at the time. And if that was the case some of this could carry on. This Government has been in power for two years and nine months. I want to come back to what the Hon Dr Nick Smith said. The special housing areas that he ushered in in the last Government were fundamentally important. Why were they fundamentally important? Because they actually worked around the traditional RMA thinking and they focused areas councils communities developers on building houses. And they did. Private sector developers built thousands of houses because of special housing areas. That in itself showed up that the RMA had big problems and today it's no different.The Hon David Parker said he's coming back to the RMA reforms. It is the view of this side of the House that the RMA is one of the biggest handbrakes on the development of New Zealand the ability to build anything and the structures—Hon David Parker: Why didn't National fix it in Opposition?LAWRENCE YULE: National did try. You know that Mr Parker. National did try but it didn't get the support of the Parliament and you people—the Opposition at the time—opposed it. I also want to finish in the last couple of minutes by talking about where this could go if the Parliament properly thought about it. I listened to the Greens and the Hon Eugenie Sage talking about this being a short-term thing and we're only doing it to create some jobs. We need to be really careful in terms of when we pass legislation like this for projects like this that we are creating the maximum number of jobs and I'm not at all convinced in this schedule that we are. We're passing legislation to allow a streamlining of the RMA but ultimately I haven't seen any measure of the maximum number of jobs they've created.The Green Party on the other side also under its climate change bill—and we just passed that through its third reading; emissions stuff this afternoon. How do you expect New Zealanders are going to build extra hydro stations extra wind farms extra solar farms with the current RMA legislation? As I've previously said and as the Hon Shane Jones will know I don't know what's in those lists but in those lists that've been provided across New Zealand there will be hundreds of projects that are way more inspirational than are listed on this schedule. If the idea is to be shovel-ready let's be shovel-ready but also let's be inspirational.In my last minute I also understand that in this list the 2000-odd projects that were submitted there were hundreds of projects—hundreds of millions of dollars on the waters and other things—which have largely been bypassed at the moment. Most of those things don't actually require RMA changes. They just need the cash and the approval to make it happen.So in closing we will support this bill. We think in times of need you need to make some changes. But I do reflect on what the Hon Dr Nick Smith said. In the previous Canterbury earthquake legislation he reduced the select committee period from six months to four. In this case the select committee is two weeks and I don't think that's acceptable. I know there's an election coming. I know the Government wants shovel-ready projects. But as I conclude I doubt that any single project will be started by the election. All we're doing is rushing something through this House and through the Parliament and I think the chances of making mistakes are high. Thank you Mr Speaker."