O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will also support the bill—as far as the select committee at least. I would like to say at the beginning that it is always very difficult to agree to the loss of reserve land because the whole point of land being reserved is to stop the sort of ad hoc reversal of that status that we are actually seeing in this case. It is very easy to take reserves away; it is almost impossible to get them back.New Zealand First is very concerned about the loss of such a large part of this reserve. Eighteen hectares is about one-third of the total—if you take into account the 45 hectares altogether plus another 3 hectares of adjacent council land it is about one-third. It is a big chunk of a very big reserve. Even though that 18 hectares is already fenced off for grazing and is not being used for recreation that does not mean that it would not be needed in the future and that it should not be kept as a reserve for that purpose for the longer-term future. That indeed is the very reason reserves exist. Reserves of that particular size are very hard to come by so its loss must be very seriously considered so New Zealand First will support this proposal only to the select committee stage at this point in time. We want to hear from people who are affected or who have whatever it is to say on this particular proposal. We want to hear their submissions and we then want to decide rather than trying to make a final decision right now.New Zealand First is very concerned about the loss of such an important area of reserve land but we are also extremely concerned about the chronic need for more housing land in Auckland and especially for the provision of smaller sections for modest lower-cost homes—and even more especially provision for social housing and State housing. This land clearly is suitable for that. It is close to public transport and it is close to central Auckland so we would have no difficulties in that respect. In fact New Zealand First policy is for direct Government intervention in the housing market both to provide State housing and to provide sections and homes at the lower end of the scale. We feel that commercial developers provide well only at the high end of the scale and not the lower end so there tends to be a big gap not met by the market. That leaves far too many Kiwis without homes that they can buy or rent for reasonable rentals. Of course we say that this is all greatly exacerbated by the scale of immigration that has been allowed by this Government over several years—massive immigration which can only have a very adverse effect on an already troubled housing market. That scale of immigration is quite clearly and definitely opposed by New Zealand First but that is not the subject of this bill. This bill is otherwise consistent with our policy to use suitable Crown land or local authority land for housing. We would set up a commercial entity which we would call Kiwi Housing to acquire land and where appropriate to use existing housing land to create a land bank where demand clearly exceeds supply for sustainable residential development. We would want that entity to control all aspects of that development which would be aimed at delivering smaller high-quality new homes with appropriate land densities to provide good social and transport outcomes and to optimise the use of prefabricated homes to minimise costs. So we would get smaller cheaper good-quality homes. In addition to that we would sell residential sections on the basis of a long-term agreement for sale and purchase up to 25 years to first-home buyers with a low interest rate on it and other terms and conditions that would make it easy for people to buy their first home.This particular bill is similar to the Riccarton Racecourse bill which the Minister for Building and Housing mentioned. It was passed recently with New Zealand First's support because there the reserve for racing and other purposes was also preserved. That proposal did have excellent public consultation which showed significant public support. New Zealand First's continued support would depend on excellent public consultation—in this case demonstrating significant public support. In the case of the Point England land there is good reason to believe that there may be such support that the adjacent recreation reserves would not be affected that there are not unsettled Treaty settlement barriers and that there are no barriers to the offer-back requirements which would remain in place. New Zealand First looks forward to the public consultation just to see what else might come out of the woodwork what other problems there might be and whatever people might think about the proposal in any respect. We need to be assured that there are no significant unknown barriers to the proposal and we would need to be satisfied that low-cost or social housing will be provided as an essential and definite and achievable result of this proposal. We do presume at this stage that that will be the case.We do note however that the proposal will allow for only about 300 homes when Auckland needs 140000 homes within the next 10 years. That is a huge number to provide for. We know that this Government has failed dismally to come up with anything like a comprehensive plan to address the scale of that need. This particular proposal is only a drop in the bucket compared with the magnitude of the demand caused by National's policies in action and its open-door immigration policies. This proposal is a drop in the bucket but nevertheless in itself is worth supporting. So for that reason New Zealand First will support the bill as far as the select committee. We will then hear what people have to say and make a final decision.