Tuesday, 31 March 2026

Tuesday, 31 March 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

BARBARA KURIGER (Deputy Speaker) (14:00): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and the peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Presentation

Papers

SPEAKER (14:01): No petitions have been delivered. A paper has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK (14:01): Ministerial response to the petition of Robert Glennie.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House.

Select Committee Reports

SPEAKER (14:01): Stand by, there are 60 select committee reports which have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK (14:01):

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Callaghan Innovation

Commerce Commission

Meteorological Service of New Zealand

New Zealand Post Ltd

Financial Markets Authority, and the

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

reports of the Education and Workforce Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

the education sector, and the

Accident Compensation Corporation and WorkSafe New Zealand

reports of the Environment Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission

Climate Change Chief Executives Board, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and Predator Free 2050

Department of Conservation

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority

Environmental Protection Authority, and the

Ministry for the Environment

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation

Inland Revenue Department, and the

Natural Hazards Commission and Southern Response Earthquake Services Ltd

reports of the Governance and Administration Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Taumata Arowai—the Water Services Authority

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

National Emergency Management Agency

Office of Film and Literature Classification

Department of Internal Affairs and the Digital Executive Board, and the

Public Service Commission, Long-Term Insights Briefing 2025

reports of the Health Committee on the:

2024-25 annual review of Health New Zealand—Te Whatu Ora and briefing on the New Zealand Health Plan

2024-25 annual review of Ministry of Health, and

Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill

reports of the Justice Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of the:

Criminal Cases Review Commission, Independent Police Conduct Authority, Judicial Conduct Commissioner, and the Public Trust

Crown Law Office, Electoral Commission, Human Rights Commission, and Law Commission, and the

Parliamentary Counsel Office, Privacy Commissioner, and Serious Fraud Office

reports of the Māori Affairs Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Te Puni Kōkiri—Ministry of Māori Development

Te Reo Whakapuaki Irirangi (Māori Broadcasting Funding Agency)

Te Tari Whakatau—The Office of Treaty Settlements and Takutai Moana

Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (Māori Language Commission), and

Tupu Tonu—Ngāpuhi Investment Fund

reports of the Primary Production Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Land Information New Zealand

Landcorp Farming Ltd

Ministry for Primary Industries, and the

Outdoor Access Commission

reports of the Social Services and Community Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities

Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children

Ministry of Disabled People

New Zealand Lotteries Commission, and the

New Zealand Artificial Limb Service and the Social Workers Registration Board

reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:

Genesis Energy Ltd, Mercury NZ Ltd, and Meridian Energy Ltd

Air New Zealand Ltd

Airways Corporation of New Zealand Ltd

City Rail Link Ltd

Crown Infrastructure Delivery

Maritime New Zealand

National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Ltd

Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand

Electricity Authority

Electricity Corporation of New Zealand Ltd (ECNZ)

Ministry of Transport

New Zealand Infrastructure Commission

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi

Transport Accident Investigation Commission

Transpower New Zealand Ltd

KiwiRail and NZ Railways Corporation; Briefing on the performance of Ferry Holdings.

SPEAKER: If you could all read those overnight, we’ll have a test tomorrow! The bill is set down for second reading, and the briefings are set down for consideration.

Bills

Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Introduction

SPEAKER (14:05): The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK (14:05): Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading.

Personal Explanations

Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill—Correction

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (14:05): Point of order. Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal statement to correct a statement I made in the House last week.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Speaking in the debate on the first reading of the Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill, I incorrectly asserted that Erica Stanford had attended a five countries immigration ministers meeting. I withdraw that statement.

Question No. 7 to Minister, 26 March

Amended Answer to Oral Question

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:05): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer I gave on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment during oral questions on Thursday, 26 March.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: In answer to question No. 7, I said, “We know that around 143,000 families will receive the full $50 weekly increase. That will include 48 percent of children in material hardship.” Based on the most recent figures published by Stats New Zealand, 48 percent of all children in material hardship—around 81,000—are in working households. Not all of these children will be in households eligible for the in-work tax credit, as some families in material hardship have incomes above the Working for Families threshold.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Finance

Question No. 1

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (14:06) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:06): I’ve seen reports confirming that New Zealand continues to have sufficient fuel supply. The latest update shows that around 59 days of petrol, 54 days of diesel, and 50 days of jet fuel are in country, within our exclusive economic zone, or on the water heading here. That data is updated twice weekly. Importantly, we use maritime tracking, including the Starboard software system, to cross-check against the shipping information that fuel companies share with us. This gives us a high level of confidence in the accuracy of the data we publish. The breakdown of the exclusive economic zone data in yesterday’s reporting shows that five of the 15 ships on the water are within one to two days of our shore or already in port, unloading. On Friday, we announced a clear, phased fuel response plan that will allow us to respond proportionately to any changes in supply. We are making considered, timely, and evidence-based decisions to protect supply, support the economy, and keep New Zealand moving.

Miles Anderson: Has she received advice on whether a change in phase of the fuel plan is required?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I’ve seen advice confirming that two technical triggers have been met—they are a change in fuel stock levels and a policy shift in Australia. However, the full data set, updated yesterday, shows no material deterioration in supply risk. Under the fuel response plan, decisions to have an assessment are based on a range of indicators, not any single movement, and any shift requires careful assessment, including engagement with industry. On that basis, we have decided not to convene a formal phase assessment at this time. We will continue to monitor closely and act if needed, taking a measured, evidence-based approach.

Miles Anderson: What further actions is the Government considering to bolster fuel supply?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yesterday, Cabinet agreed to explore additional options to guard against the risk of disrupted fuel supply and to secure additional fuel security over and above existing minimum supply obligations. These options include a specific proposal to swap the tickets or put options that we currently hold as part of our international energy agency obligations into usable fuel stock suitable to New Zealand’s needs, potentially stored here or offshore. The options also include consideration of commercial proposals, including with existing fuel importers or others, that could support the procurement of additional fuel supply.

Miles Anderson: What engagement has happened with business and industry on the fuel plan?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: We are getting strong engagement from business and industry, which is great to see. More than 500 businesses have already provided direct feedback on how fuel should be prioritised if we ever needed to move to the more restrictive phases 3 and 4 outlined in the fuel plan. The Government is working with industry to get the settings right. We will make sure that any future decisions are practical, targeted, and minimise disruption to jobs, supply chains, and the wider economy.

Prime Minister

Question No. 2

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:10) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:10): Yes.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Did his Government, cancelling the planned 70 million litre strategic diesel reserve, increase or decrease New Zealand’s exposure to a diesel supply shock?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what this Government did is it cancelled Labour’s approach by putting fuel companies on the hook to making sure that they meet their obligations to hold higher levels of stocks. This is about working with industry and they’re on the hook for that.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Did his Government’s decision to delay increases to minimum diesel stock holding obligations until July 2028 increase or decrease New Zealand’s fuel resilience right now?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: That’s why we agreed to increase the minimum stock holding obligations for fuel importers from 21 days to 28 days.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does increasing the minimum stock holding obligation in 2028, rather than doing it earlier as previously planned, increase or decrease New Zealand’s resilience right now?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve said, we remain focused on supporting New Zealand’s energy security—that’s why we agreed to increase the minimum stock holdings.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Did his Government, cutting support for businesses transitioning away from fossil fuel dependence, increase or decrease New Zealand’s long-term exposure to oil price shocks?

Hon Simeon Brown: You banned oil and gas exploration.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, that member banned oil and gas. That member—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a moment—one moment. Prime Minister, answer again—his own side might give him a bit space to answer as well.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I was about to say was: that was the member who banned oil and gas; that drove up electricity prices to $800 a megawatt hour; and ended up making the rather unique transition, thanks to a Labour-Greens Government, of domestic gas to imported Indonesian coal.

Hon David Seymour: Would it pretty handy right now if New Zealanders had been allowed to look for oil and gas over the last eight years?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely. We have an energy security strategy which is about economic security and that means “and-and-and”.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Did his Government, reducing nationwide public transport subsidies, increase or decrease the options available to households trying to cut their transport costs right now?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, actually, we believe in an adult-to-adult relationship with the New Zealand people, not a parent-to-child relationship. It’s one of the learnings coming out of the COVID experience that that member led. And actually, it’s great to see New Zealanders making their own decisions; some of them are choosing to use more public transport—good on them.

Hon David Seymour: Have organisations such as Auckland Transport reported record usage of public transport despite this terrible Government taking away all these subsidies?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’m proud to report that our Minister of Transport has met with the public transport authorities: he confirms that there is capacity in our transport network. The public transport authorities are looking at rejigging their network schedules so they maximise support for people in key peak times—all that’s good stuff.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he regret cutting the clean car discount, given estimates suggest that had New Zealanders continued to buy electric vehicles at the rate they were under the discount, there’d be 50,000 more electric vehicles on the road today than there are now under his Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No, because we believe in farmers in this country and they need utes, and, actually, they shouldn’t be subsidising people who want to buy EVs. As you’ve seen in the last week, EV sales have been just fine.

Energy

Question No. 3

Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (14:14) to the Associate Minister for Energy: What reports, if any, has he received on fuel security?

Hon SHANE JONES (Associate Minister for Energy) (14:14): I have received a number of reports, not the least of which is that the fuel import companies and the decision that they made to move New Zealand towards a just-in-time model is working as they contemplated. But, sadly, we are bereft of adequate storage. And I have received a report—that I did receive a very threadbare proposal, unfunded, which, sadly, would have required us to raid the money that the Crown has put aside to meet the 50-day cushion internationally. And on that basis, there’s no way the Matua could proceed with that half-baked idea.

Dr David Wilson: Why is the Government pursuing additional supply options to support New Zealand’s fuel security?

Hon SHANE JONES: After the refinery was closed down with the approval of the Labour Government—

SPEAKER: Sorry, we established last week that while it might have been a matter that was considered by Cabinet, consideration does not mean approval. This is a very important issue, so just keep it straight for the public.

Hon SHANE JONES: We are aware of how important it is to build a sovereign buffer. We are relying upon the oil companies to honour their word and to avoid very serious penalties in the event they do not comply with their statutory mandate. However, the development of future storage capacity is under way as we work through a proposal. This proposal will happen not over three or four years but in a matter of months.

Dr David Wilson: Where would the Government secure fuel from?

Hon SHANE JONES: As I’ve said elsewhere, we have the option of 960 million litres. Given that the nation consumes 24 million litres a day, that will require time to convert that virtual fuel into genuine, physical material. We also have been in receipt of a range of offers; however, they will require alacrity from the Crown as we are in a very competitive market. I say again, once the refinery was closed, New Zealand lost 700 million litres worth of storage capacity. Look no further than that side of the House.

SPEAKER: The answer was fine right up until the last minute. It’s the Government who’s accountable here, not the Opposition.

Hon SHANE JONES: Point of order, sir. I think you are being unfair. Now, look, I know that it may seem contradictory that I be the purveyor of truth and righteousness, but it was only a week ago, sir, that I was brandishing a Cabinet paper that clearly states—

SPEAKER: No—

Hon SHANE JONES: —the other side of the House agreed to the closure of the refinery. The Cabinet paper says Labour agreed to the closure of the refinery. How can I possibly be wrong?

SPEAKER: No, the Cabinet paper says, if you were to interpret it any way, that the Government of the day chose not to support it remaining open, which was an entirely different proposition.

Dr David Wilson: How will the Government ensure that the additional fuel stock is securely and effectively stored?

Hon SHANE JONES: There has been a random press reference that apparently the Channel proposal—Channel being the import facility up in Marsden Point—may not be able to develop the project within the original time I referred to—i.e., a matter of months—that is not accurate. There is scope to rapidly develop the capacity for 90 million litres worth of storage in a matter of months. I suspect the person who made that stupid remark in the media was reading the Māori calendar or something like that.

Prime Minister

Question No. 4

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) (14:19) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:19): Yes.

Hon Marama Davidson: Is tomorrow’s minimum wage increase of just 2 percent, or 45c, enough for working families to keep on top of the bills when inflation was over 3 percent in the last year and is likely to be even higher this year—especially when we know beneficiaries and other low earners typically face worse inflation than others?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as we’ve explained, as we deal with this and navigate this global fuel crisis, we want to make sure that any support we offer is timely and targeted and actually make sure that it gets to the people who most need it. As of 1 April, there’s a series of increases coming through, including for students and superannuitants, and also for jobseeker support and beneficiaries, and that will help people at this time.

Hon Marama Davidson: Why has he left more than half of the children living in hardship, disabled people on the supported living payment, and care workers without children to weather this fossil fuel crisis without support by excluding them from his Government’s support package?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we’ve learnt the lesson from COVID, which is that you don’t go spend $60 billion and half of it go walkabout and can’t be explained. What we need to do is make sure that we protect New Zealanders—low and middle income working New Zealanders—by making sure we are economically responsible, not adding to and impacting inflation and growth, and minimising the impacts on that as much as possible. And, therefore, that’s why we have a criteria which we’ve laid out from day one of timely, targeted, and temporary support for people who need it the most.

Hon Marama Davidson: What does he say to the woman I spoke with in Manurewa over the weekend who cannot afford to take her partner to the hospital for his lifesaving medical treatments because of rising fuel prices?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, as we talked about support last week, this is a Government that will continue to look at what it can do to support New Zealanders in this difficult time, but we have also been upfront that we are not going to be able to alleviate the pressures for everybody. That’s why we’ve been incredibly targeted for the 143,000 families—working families—who are using their cars getting to work and getting their kids to school.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think it’s fair that home support workers who provide an essential public service, yet had their pay equity claim cancelled by his Government, are struggling to pay their bills because Government won’t fully reimburse their fuel costs?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve said, this Government continues to look at ways it can support New Zealanders, but it’s through the frame of timely, targeted, and temporary.

SPEAKER: I let that last question go but you need to think carefully about how you ask those questions and the content you put in them.

Hon Marama Davidson: Understood, thank you, Mr Speaker. Is he comfortable with some of our hardest-working but lowest-paid workers going into debt or using their emergency savings and, essentially, paying to have a job, with Kerris Adlam from Aotea Great Barrier saying, “If I can’t get more money out of Health New Zealand, I will use our crisis fund”?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, I don’t know how to explain it any further to the member. We are looking after New Zealanders and their future, having learnt the lessons from COVID that having an 84 percent increase in spending drove a 32-year high of inflation, rapidly high interest rates, and, actually, really put massive pressure on low and middle income working New Zealanders. We care about working New Zealanders and we’re making sure that we can support the most vulnerable as best we possibly can.

Finance

Question No. 5

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:22) to the Minister of Finance: Will the Government under any phase of the National Fuel Plan offer a financial underwrite or guarantee to fuel companies, as Australia is doing?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:23): Yes, I can confirm that is something we are giving consideration to. Cabinet yesterday agreed to explore additional options to guard against the risk of disrupted fuel supply and to secure additional fuel security over and above existing minimum supply obligations. This does include consideration of commercial proposals with existing fuel importers that could support the procurement of additional fuel supply for New Zealand. Any proposal will need to be assessed to ensure that it delivers additional fuel security over and above that which would otherwise be provided by those commercial fuel importers, including in respect of their minimum stockholding obligations. Cabinet has agreed in principle that indemnities, guarantees, or loans to support commercial arrangements may be necessary in the public interest and could be included in commercial arrangements if necessary to achieve agreement, subject, of course, to any parameters and conditions needed to ensure responsible management of public finances.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Thank you. Has the Government yet considered what the triggers would be in terms of stock levels, price spikes, or supply disruptions that would cause the Government to move from relying on market settings to Government interventions such as she just described?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In terms of triggers that would lead to an assessment that would lead to a stronger response phase, we set those out when we released the fuel plan on Friday and those include a number of indicators that would lead us to believe that fuel was at risk of being further disrupted in its supply. In terms of the measures that I outlined in my answer to the primary question, these are options we are actively exploring right now because we believe that this is an insurance policy which we would be grateful for if it does prevent us later having to go into a phase 3 or 4 response in which fuel needs to be prioritised across the economy.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Has she been briefed by the New Zealand Export Credit Office or the broader Treasury on the Australian initiative to give importers the confidence, such as she is describing?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, I have been briefed by the lead of the ministerial oversight group who is in close communication with the lead in the Australian equivalent regime. The Australians informed us, ahead of their announcement about their proposed move to consider guarantees, so we were aware of that development, and we will continue to work closely with them. We have determined that it is in both countries’ national interests to share information with each other, and I note that our sharing of our fuel response plan was also appreciated by the Australians.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Are there any further measures to harmonise fuel regulations or conditions with Australia being considered?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: We will continue to give consideration to those. There isn’t one actively being explored right now; however, we have said to fuel importers and those with an interest in ensuring fuel supply that should they think that changes in specification would assist them in securing more fuel, then we will give active consideration to changes in specifications.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 6

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) (14:26) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What changes to financial support will come into effect from 1 April to help respond to cost of living challenges?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:26): From 1 April, the Ministry of Social Development’s annual adjustments will increase financial support for more than 1.5 million New Zealanders. This includes working age beneficiaries, superannuitants, and students, as well as non-beneficiaries receiving supplementary assistance. The global fuel price surge is impacting New Zealand’s cost of living, and our Government is determined to keep progressing sensible, measured changes that provide some relief.

Dana Kirkpatrick: Who will benefit from these changes?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Around 960,000 Kiwis receiving superannuation and the veteran’s pension will get increased payments. There will be over 435,000 working age beneficiaries who will get increased support, around 52,000 students receiving student allowance and loans will get a boost, and approximately 67,000 non-beneficiaries will get an increase in their supplementary assistance.

Dana Kirkpatrick: How much more will they receive?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Superannuation for a married couple who both qualify will lift more than $50 to $1,708 a fortnight, an increase of over $180 since the 2023 election. A single person over 25 years old on jobseeker support will receive an additional $22 a fortnight, a couple with children receiving jobseeker support will receive an increase of more than $40 a fortnight, and a sole parent receiving sole parent support will receive an increase—

Rawiri Waititi: Eleven dollars a week.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: —of more than $30 a fortnight. It’s sorry to hear that members opposite don’t believe this group of New Zealanders should have an increase. [Interruption].

SPEAKER: The answer could have done without the last bit, but we will hear the next supplementary in silence.

Dana Kirkpatrick: How does this change help New Zealanders with the cost of living?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Increasing benefit rates in line with the upward movement in the consumer price index means beneficiaries will continue to be able to afford the same essential goods and services such as food, clothing, accommodation, heating, and transport as the cost of living rises.

Prime Minister

Question No. 7

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (14:29) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:29): Yes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why did the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) stop publicly reporting on fossil fuel profit margin data on 18 March?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’d just ask the member to direct her question to the Minister for Energy. I’m sure they’ll give an answer.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister believe that MBIE should continue its reporting on fossil fuel profit margin data for the sake of the public interest in fossil fuel companies not price gouging during a fossil fuel crisis?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we have the New Zealand Commerce Commission that has a watching brief to make sure that fuel companies aren’t gouging, but I’m proud of the way that our Government’s actually working with the industry to provide solutions to New Zealanders at this time.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister understand the difference between the Commerce Commission monitoring this information and the public reporting on fossil fuel profit margin data?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, but more importantly, I understand the importance of securing fuel.

Hon David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the importer margin, which has been misnamed as the profit margin, fell dramatically in the early days of the Iran war, but has subsequently ceased to be reported because the data had become so erratic it might not be reliable; and wouldn’t it be easier to invent that than make up conspiracies?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I can’t speak to the specifics of that, but what I can speak to is the way that this Government is working in an adult-to-adult way, partnering with industry to deliver solutions for New Zealand. We are working with industry; we are not doing things to industry.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Can the Prime Minister then name just one thing that his Government has done to implement the International Energy Agency’s recommendations to immediately reduce demand for fossil fuels?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’m sorry, but we are going to secure fuel for New Zealanders. That is our number one priority. We are a Government that has delivered a renewables boom because we have action and investment, not just words. We are a Government that has created a strategic coal reserve for a dry-year risk, and that’s all good stuff. We’re a Government out there making sure that we get fuel to New Zealanders, and we’re going to continue to do so.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order. Mr Speaker, you’ve just told the House about how serious an issue this is, and the Prime Minister did not even attempt to answer or address the question, which was about reducing demand for fossil fuels off the back of the International Energy Agency’s recommendations to all jurisdictions.

SPEAKER: Well, that might be right, but his answer was that the Government is acting in the interest of New Zealanders. I think that’s quite reasonable. We’re not subject to the directions from outside international agencies.

Chlöe Swarbrick: I understand—he couldn’t name one. So supplementary, Mr Speaker—[Interruption] He pātai tāpiri.

SPEAKER: I beg your pardon?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Has his Government commissioned any advice whatsoever from officials on making public transport free to reduce demand for fossil fuels during this crisis?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Look, as I answered before, I can assure the member that this is a transport Minister that is talking to public transport authorities—they’ve increased capacity. New Zealanders are free to use public transport if they think it helps their household budgets, and many are, and that’s a good thing.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 8

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (14:33) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: How many people who have children in their care, are in paid employment, and who receive superannuation or a benefit will get the $50 a week fuel relief?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:33): Around 143,000 families who have children in their care and who are in paid employment will get the $50 a week increase in the in-work tax credit from 1 April. Inland Revenue advise that this translates into around 230,000 individual parents and caregivers. People who receive a main benefit have never been eligible for the in-work tax credit, but their payments will also go up on 1 April through the annual adjustment. For example, New Zealand superannuation for a married couple who both qualify will go up by more than $50 to $1,708 a fortnight. Our Government is determined to keep progressing sensible, measured changes that provide some relief.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why didn’t the Government’s response target solo parents who are raising children and working part-time while receiving part of a benefit?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Our Government’s been clear about the support that is available for New Zealanders. In my answer earlier today, I talked about the over 1.5 million New Zealanders who will receive support from 1 April, and the 143,000 families that will be receiving the targeted fuel support payment.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why didn’t the Government’s response target grandparents raising grandchildren who are on superannuation or a benefit and who are in part-time work?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: That member will realise that there are a number of circumstances that superannuitants and beneficiaries are in. What we have done is focused on the 1.5 million New Zealanders that will get support from 1 April, that increases to receive their cost of living as well as targeted, temporary, timely support to ensure that what we don’t do is follow the mistakes of a previous Government in COVID, where it was very widespread, untargeted support that led to high inflation. Actually, let me quote the Governor of the Reserve Bank—

SPEAKER: Well, you’ve done pretty well with the answer so far. Have we got another supplementary on this?

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why didn’t the Government’s response target parents of disabled children who are in part-time work to make ends meet and getting State assistance?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, I’ll repeat what I said before: 1.5 million New Zealanders will get additional support from 1 April, and 143,000 families will get support through the targeted, timely, time-bound support through the in-work tax credit.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why has the Government’s response been to do nothing for those most in need, pretend the 1 April changes don’t happen every year, and ignore the fact that working people who still need to drive their kids to school and go to work are being left behind?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, I totally and absolutely reject the comment that that member has made. What our Government is doing is making sure that there are increases available for New Zealanders in a range of ways, whether they are superannuitants, beneficiaries, or those working families. But what we’ve been very clear about is that widespread, untargeted support, where the hose of money is spread around, leads to high inflation. Who does that hurt the most? According to the Governor of the Reserve Bank, we have to remember that high inflation hurts everyone, but it particularly hurts households with low incomes.

Housing

Question No. 9

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:37) to the Minister of Housing: What recent announcements has he made about the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act 2020?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (14:37): Last week, I announced around 1,500 new homes that are set to be built as part of the Te Awa Lakes development, thanks to the Government approving the use of an Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act levy. This is a 2,500-property greenfield development north-west of the great city of Hamilton. The IFF Act levy will fund up to $50 million of water and roading infrastructure supporting 1,500 of these new properties. The first of these homes are expected to be delivered in 2029.

Ryan Hamilton: How does the infrastructure funding and financing work?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: About six years ago now, Parliament passed the Act to try and accelerate greenfields housing developments supported by both sides of the House. Since then, no new greenfields using the Act have been approved—this is the first one. It makes it easier for new housing developments to get off the ground, away from the borrowing constraints that councils are often subject to. Developers with viable projects should not be held back by an inability to gain infrastructure funding and finance. The model works by establishing a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for projects, separate from council balance sheets. The SPV then repays the finance raised by charging a levy to homeowners and landowners who benefit from the infrastructure that is delivered. The model allows growth to pay for growth.

Ryan Hamilton: What does the Te Awa Lakes development mean for Hamilton?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, the wider development is a great example of the type of urban growth we need in this country. They are transforming an old sand quarry into a masterplan community with residential development, retail, hospitality, recreational facilities, and tourism. It means more construction, more homes for families, more business opportunities, and a vibrant mixed-use suburb that blends housing, amenities, and services all in one place.

Ryan Hamilton: What else is the Government doing to improve infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, the Government is a believer in the IFF Act model, and, of course, we have a piece of legislation to amend it, before Parliament right now, to make it easier and more nimble so that we can get more greenfields developments under way. The amendments enhance the Act’s usability and remove unnecessary barriers to uptake. We’re also making different changes to funding and financing infrastructure more broadly, including replacing development contributions with a new development levies regime. The fundamental point is that for commercially viable projects, infrastructure should not be used as an excuse to prevent growth.

Emergency Management and Recovery

Question No. 10

SPEAKER: Cushla Tanga—[Interruption]. Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. My apologies.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Just for those who might have misunderstood there, the member herself has given me instruction on how I should pronounce these things. So I hope I got a reasonable mark out of that one.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: Something to work on! Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Some things you’ve just got to let go, don’t you?

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (14:40) to the Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery: Does he stand by his commitment to “strengthening New Zealand’s emergency management system and ensuring that it can meet the growing risk we face from severe weather events and other emergencies”?

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery) (14:40): Yes.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: How would a move to phase 2 of the National Fuel Plan impact civil defence and emergency services’ access to fuel in emergencies?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The National Emergency Management Agency is heavily involved and engaged—in fact, they were the architect of the original fuel plan for us, as a country; that, obviously, has gone through some modification due to what we’re dealing with now: a conflict in the Middle East and enormous pressure being put on fuel not just for us but around the world. So phase 2, quite simply, in terms of making sure that front-line services continue to respond and support New Zealanders—that will not be impacted.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: What is he doing to prepare civil defence and emergency services in the scenario where there is a shortage of diesel?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, they’re already well prepared but there is a lot of contingency work going across all Government agencies because we have to take a responsible approach to this as a country—all of us. So there is a significant amount of work being done to make sure that, fundamentally, the first priority is to make sure that, as a Government, we continue to provide all of those front-line services that Kiwis expect to get.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: What assurances can he give New Zealanders that emergency generators, civil defence vehicles, and rescue equipment will have guaranteed access to diesel if stocks decline?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I can assure all New Zealanders that, in the last two years, I’m extremely proud, as a country, of how, in fact, we didn’t wait for Mr Jerry Mateparae’s report to come back to us after Cyclone Gabrielle; the whole of our emergency management system had already responded—and that goes from mayors to their councils, the civil defence and emergency management teams, the chief executives, right through to our world-class first responders, community groups, iwi and hapū, and our rural sector. The best response to these events is whole of society. We’ve never been in a stronger position to be able to respond to these events, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do so.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: How will diesel supplies be prioritised for the emergency management system in the National Fuel Plan’s phases 2, 3, and 4?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The Government, at the moment, is fully focused on making sure that we build in as much resilience as we can, as a country. I think everyone can see the global challenges and the headwinds, but our Government has been proactive from day one. We’ve put ourselves in the best possible position, and we remain fully committed—as a Government should do—to make sure—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: He’s as bad as Luxon.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Mr Speaker, I thought this was a really important question. So far, all I’ve got is nonsensical comments from the Leader of the Opposition, on what is actually really important to people.

SPEAKER: We’ll all calm down and we’ll get the answer to the question.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: This Government is 100 percent committed—and has got a proud track record over the last two years—to making sure that we provide those front-line services and support for Kiwis in their time of need. We will continue to do that.

Immigration

Question No. 11

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) (14:44) to the Minister of Immigration: What recent announcement has she made regarding strengthening New Zealand’s immigration system?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration) (14:44): The Government has progressed the Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill to improve the integrity of our immigration system and strengthen the consequences for serious offending. Alongside the bill, I’ve tabled, also, a parliamentary paper with additional proposals. This bill delivers practical, targeted changes to improve compliance and enforcement, increase the maximum penalty for migrant exploitation, and ensure there are immigration consequences for criminal offending and deliberate use of the system.

Catherine Wedd: Why are these changes needed?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Because the world we are responding to has changed. The geopolitical context is rapidly evolving, and the immigration risks are increasing in scale and complexity. We are seeing more risk, more deliberate misuse of the system, and ongoing harm from migrant exploitation. New Zealanders have also been appalled by cases where people have committed serious crimes, like the Jaz brothers, who are not able to be deported due to how long they’ve been in New Zealand. The system needs to be fit for purpose and ensure that our priority is on victims of crime and public safety, while ensuring that individual cases are considered on their particular circumstances. It’s about maintaining public confidence and making sure the system adapts to this changing world.

Catherine Wedd: Why is the Government proposing to exclude people who commit serious crimes in New Zealand from refugee status?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: We will always meet our international obligations, including allowing people to remain in New Zealand who genuinely need protection. However, we will update our interpretation of the Refugee Convention so that people who commit serious crimes after arriving in New Zealand but before the decision is made on their refugee status are to be excluded from refugee protection. There are currently 12 known refugee claims from people who have been convicted of serious offences in New Zealand, including for murder, accessory to murder, rape, indecent acts on a child, drug offences, and dangerous driving causing death. This change will mean that Immigration New Zealand can take convictions from crimes like these into account when making a refugee determination, and it’s important to maintain public confidence in our refugee and protection system.

Catherine Wedd: How do these changes strengthen deportation settings?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: The bill expands deportation liability across a wider range of criminal offending over a longer period of time, and strengthens our ability to deport people who commit the most serious crimes. It also closes loopholes, making it clear that providing false or misleading information, as well as historic offending, can trigger deportation liability, and ensuring that all victims can have a voice when a criminal appears in front of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal. If you come to New Zealand and you comply with our laws and contribute, you are welcome here. But if you are convicted of criminal offending or provide false or fraudulent information, you should be expected to be required to leave.

Internal Affairs

Question No. 12

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (14:47) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Is she confident that Fire and Emergency New Zealand has the equipment, appliances, and supplies it needs to operate effectively; if so, why?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister of Internal Affairs) (14:47): As I said last month and prior to that, Fire and Emergency New Zealand has inherited decades of under-investment in old trucks with the amalgamation of multiple services into one. They have a plan, and have had a plan for a number of years, to invest in new fleet and equipment. This year alone, they have a plan to invest $84.7 million in new fire trucks, property, and equipment.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: What actions, if any, has she taken to ensure that Fire and Emergency New Zealand has enough fuel and diesel reserves to operate during a prolonged fuel shortage?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Look, I’m very confident that Fire and Emergency will continue to respond to New Zealanders’ concerns and their calls of help. I’m advised that Fire and Emergency is taking a coordinated set of actions to manage the current fuel prices and potential supply pressures. They have established a Fuel Planning Group to assess potential impacts on fuel availability and cost and to coordinate contingency planning across the organisation. This work aligns very closely with the all-of-Government National Fuel Plan, under which Fire and Emergency, as an emergency service, is classified as a “critical customer”. I’m also advised from Fire and Emergency that they are working closely with their sector partners, including New Zealand Police and St John, to ensure planning assumptions, prioritisation settings, and potential response measures are aligned across the emergency services. They are also engaging with their aviation suppliers to ensure that there is continuity of service with the in-air service of Fire and Emergency, as well.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: How many days of operational diesel reserves does Fire and Emergency New Zealand have to hand, and how are these distributed across the country?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: That sort of question would have been quite helpful to have in writing as the primary question. That sort of detail can be sourced through a written parliamentary question.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: How will diesel supplies be prioritised for Fire and Emergency New Zealand in the National Fuel Plan phases 2, 3, and 4?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: As I have earlier alluded to, Fire and Emergency is working with the all-of-Government National Fuel Plan, under which they, as an emergency service, are classified as a critical customer. However, we are only in the first phase. I have had conversations with the chief executive, Kerry Gregory, and we are on the same page that all New Zealanders should expect a response from Fire and Emergency in a time of need, even while we have this fuel crisis.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: Would professional crews be prioritised over volunteer crews in the National Fuel Plan phases 2, 3, or 4, and, if so, why?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: As I said, if this question had actually been about the fuel plan, I would’ve been able to come to the House with those relevant pieces of information. So I’d ask the member to actually put those down into written parliamentary questions, because I’ve had the exact same question in writing for pretty much month on month on month on end, and it’s very difficult to know where she’s going to go with the technical aspects of the question.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions. Members who need to go off to other business, please do so quietly and without conversations on the way.

Standing Orders

Sessional Orders

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Deputy Leader of the House) (14:52): I move, That the Sessional Order relating to electronic petitions with highly discriminatory content, adopted by the House on 9 October 2025 be amended by deleting Rule 4 (Expiry).

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Public Finance Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 26 March.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:53): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me great privilege to close out the third and final reading, as the last speaker on the Public Finance Amendment Bill. This bill seeks to do a few things: to introduce more specific disclosure requirements for the statement of specific fiscal risks; to introduce a requirement to publish a tax expenditure statement; to increase the forecasting period for the economic and fiscal forecast to align with current practise and remove fiscal cliffs such that this Government inherited coming into election; and, finally, to repeal the requirement to articulate wellbeings that were put in by the previous administration and gave the last administration the ability to chase ideology, remove tangible measurements, and enable local government without any fiscal constraints. I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Finance Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill.

Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill

Committee of the Whole House

Part 1 Amendments that commence on day after Royal assent, and Schedules 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The House is in committee on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. Members, we start with Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 16—amendments that commence on 1 August 2026—and Schedules 1 and 2. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (14:56): Kia orana, Mr Chair. Thank you. I appreciate having the Minister for Racing in the Chair. In relation to Part 1, I have just a couple of quick questions that focus around the functions, the duties, and the powers of the new transition agency. I know that the Minister has publicly indicated—and, indeed, in this Chamber—his desire that the members of the agency would, effectively, be the members of the ministerial advisory committee at the moment. Although it’s over to his remit, I think that that does provide some continuity in terms of some of the issues there.

But when we look at what is new clause 53D, “Functions, duties, and powers of Agency”, in clause 10—and this is in new Subpart 6 in clause 10—there are a number of things that are outlined there. The Primary Production Committee did hear about the need to ensure that the rehoming of the specified greyhounds was a process that was clear and understood. There is an expectation that the agency would be responsible, under subsection (1)(h), for keeping “a record of specified greyhounds that have been successfully rehomed:”.

Given this was a key part of the select committee’s consideration, my question to the Minister is whether he thinks there needs to be any other changes around the record-keeping, or whether he is satisfied with the information that he’s received to date that the incoming agency, once it is stood up, will have processes in place. Some of it might be inherited from Greyhound Racing New Zealand, but none the less they will be in place to be able to ensure that the record of those specified greyhounds that had been rehomed was accurate.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (14:58): Thank you, Mr Chair. I was fortunate enough to be on the Primary Production Committee for the hearing of this bill, and we heard many, many concerns. But I think I’d just like to first reiterate that the universal thing we heard—and why we are here—is concern for animal welfare in the greyhound racing industry, concern for the dogs, and concern that the right practices are being put in place, and that’s what’s brought this bill to the House. During the select committee, we also heard concerns that go to the human aspect of what’s being done here—concerns for a community which has been established for a long time in New Zealand. They have been a core part of New Zealand’s identity that have built their own community around the sport and have intergenerational connections to it.

The concern for the people is what came through in the select committee, and so I have a couple of amendments that I’ve tabled. In Part 1, I have Amendment Paper 566 inserting a new clause 10A, and the reason why this clause, I think, is important is that there have been concerns that were taken seriously at the select committee, to the point that the Government’s intention be to allow overseas betting be put into this law. That would provide funds, through the TAB, to enable profits to be distributed back into New Zealand’s economy, you could say, but mostly it seemed like the equine codes is where that money might head to.

The people who came to the Primary Production Committee and who told us their stories of investment, of good faith, of community, and of heritage in this country need to have some olive leaf put to them from this House and from this Government that says that we understand your concerns that you felt passed over in the development of this bill—sorry, not you, Mr Chair. The people who came in felt passed over in the development of this bill. They felt that their trust was perhaps not given the weight that it deserves and that their input into our community has not been properly looked at, and the efforts they have made to address the legitimate concerns that have been made in the past and in reviews weren’t addressed.

This amendment—and the one I’m speaking to here is Amendment Paper 566—would make it so that the revenues derived from overseas betting on greyhounds, which was changed at the select committee to allow it to happen, only be given for purposes specified in this amendment. Any profit for which this section applies, to quote it, is “only [to be] used for an animal welfare related purpose, an approved greyhound rehoming programme, or an approved compensation regime.” I don’t want to talk too much about the third part there, because I have another Amendment Paper that will touch on compensation and I don’t want to pre-empt this committee stage, but I think that it is an important thing that it makes it clear where those funds are going.

It also makes it clear that there is some flexibility where the Minister, in every 12 months after the date of the amendment Act coming into force, must approve where those funds are going. That’s because we don’t know this early in this stage what sorts of compensation regimes and what sorts of rehoming programmes will actually be used, because there is some disquiet about the potential of current rehoming facilities and agencies or organisations that have done rehoming in the past and their capacity to help these dogs as they are no longer able to race, which the greyhound racing breed is for. When that moves on, where will they go? What rehoming programmes will be used? It’s hard to tell.

My amendment would mean that the Minister must be constantly vigilant over the shutdown of this industry. That’s my first contribution, Mr Chair, and I hope for some more.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (15:03): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just have a couple of questions on clause 10, which inserts new Subpart 6 in Part 2 of the Racing Industry Act. My questions to the Minister are on the establishment of the transition agency. Minister, can you confirm that the establishment agency, as a separate legal entity, ensures operational independence? It would be helpful to understand what type of entity it is, and its operational independence is important because, as we’ve heard, a number of submitters were very worried about the transitional arrangements that will take place under the bill.

The second question I have is: how will the agency’s corporate status assist with employment continuity and asset management? We heard the concerns about when it moves to the regime, whether those who have experience and skills with rehoming dogs and who understand the industry be allowed to continue. Will there be opportunities via the agency to look at those types of arrangements so that the people who are currently employed are not just out in the cold, but the experienced people can transition through and continue in that space of employment? In particular, how will the assets that will be managed by the agency be disbursed, or what categories—there are a number of questions with those assets that are, in particular, with the different programmes that are decided by the agency. How will they be disbursed?

My last question is: is it expected that this structure will improve confidence among industry participants, specifically with rehoming agencies, Minister? We heard a number of people who were very upset and trying to handle their emotions, going from the current regime to a new regime. It’s all the different questions that they had and they put to committee members. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:05): There’s another question that remains on the table following the select committee stage and, indeed, the first and second readings, and I’m hoping the Minister for Racing might be able to shed some light on it because it leads to a major part of the fee. What’s happening in this bill, with an industry being completely disestablished and their assets being moved into a transition agency, is that there has been the change at select committee—which we talked about at the second reading, in response to member’s contribution—to make sure that those funds that were for greyhound racing, at the end of the rehoming process, whenever that end may be, will be redistributed back to participants in the industry.

There are some changes in the process here, where we’ve had a ministerial advisory committee coming up with the programme and coming up with the bill and the transition agency, but it worked at the beginning with a report. In the regulatory impact statement (RIS)—and this is relevant to Part 1 because it’s the establishment of the transition agency. In the RIS, at paragraph 164, it says that after the ministerial advisory committee disbands—which is at the beginning of the transition agency—it will produce a final report that will document the steps taken towards closure, what steps might be needed, and any remaining aspects of the closure, and, interestingly, it’s got a one further part of their role, which is to “provide advice about any general lessons learnt from this process should the Government consider disestablishing any other industry in the future.”

I would like to ask the Minister what other industries, or even recreational activities, could be referenced in this? What other industries or activities could the Minister see this process being replicated upon? It leads to speculation in many New Zealanders’ heads that if this can happen to—as the Racing Industry Board has said—an industry that is meeting all its obligations, that is deemed compliant, and that is acting within the law, what lessons have been learnt? As we move from a ministerial advisory committee to a transition agency, what lessons have been learnt that could be applied to disestablishing any other industry in the future? Minister, what industries do you expect this could relate to?

I have another question that’s been left on the table, perhaps, after our select committee process and the second reading, and that is about the personnel that will be coming into the transition agency. For example, there are a lot of people in rehoming who have got a great deal of experience in finding homes for retired or uninterested racing dogs—dogs that never found their calling, despite their breeding, to become racing greyhounds. In going off to find loving homes for these beautiful animals, we’ve got a lot of experience in this country in that regard. We’ve also got people in Greyhound Racing New Zealand who have got deep connections into the community and they are people who know the individuals, because that’s what we’re talking about: an industry of some 1,000 people whose livelihoods and industry and community are about to be ended.

There was a great deal of concern at the select committee from members across the parties of the House about the welfare and the connections that these now deemed industry participants are losing. I would love to hear the Minister address the questions that have been left on the table about who will actually be in the transition agency, managing the transition and the rehoming but also the people and the relationships.

There are members of the Opposition with portfolios in areas such as mental health who, I think, would be very interested, as they were at the select committee, and I hope they take contributions on this, as to what the transition agency will be doing to make sure that the people whose communities and livelihoods are being taken away by this are seen right.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Can I just remind members that pregnant pauses will often lead to a closure.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (15:10): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wish to speak to some of the concerns of my colleague opposite, Cameron Luxton, regarding the practical impact on people in the industry. I believe the Minister has made it clear that it is his expectation—and I wonder, Minister, if you would respond to this—that the transitional agency does take account of how it can support the people currently employed by the greyhound industry in transition away from that industry, given its closure.

As it is currently drafted, Cameron Luxton’s amendment goes too far, I believe. It puts an expectation on the Minister to evaluate all of the factors and the cost to the industry of the closure and then make a report—

Cameron Luxton: I think you might be talking about No. 567. It’s No. 566 in this part.

STEVE ABEL: OK, sure. I’m sort of talking more broadly, because it relates to the impact on the industry itself and how that might be addressed. Sure, I can speak to your amendment later if you’d prefer.

Perhaps the Minister can respond in terms of the intention that he expects of the transitional agency and how those who are part of the industry are treated. Obviously, it’s very clear, the intention to protect the animals and ensure that they are rehomed in an effective way. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:12): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have spoken—this being Part 1—on that interjection I had with Steve Abel there, he was referring to one of my later Amendment Papers, but the Amendment Paper that I have right in front of us, on Part 1, Amendment Paper 566, relates to a rebuilding of trust. I hope that the Minister takes this opportunity to take a call, in Part 1, and that pregnant pauses, as directed by the chair, do not lead to moving on before such parts are addressed.

I am sure the Minister would like to talk about making sure that the betting on overseas greyhounds, which was a change that the select committee made, is addressed and speaks to an Amendment Paper that has been tabled that means the decisions every 12 months as we move through a transition process, which involves the ending of an historic and culturally important industry in New Zealand, a legally abiding and complying industry, are taken seriously. I just urge the Minister to address Amendment Paper 566 before the pregnant pauses of this committee move us on to another part.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I’d just remind the member, too, that his second Amendment Paper is to the Schedule, which is actually being debated with this part at the moment—just for his information.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:14): There is only one thing more depressing than what we’ve been doing today, and that is not doing it. In 2013, there was an investigation into greyhound racing, with some serious concerns. Then the Hansen report, in 2017—a superb report—raised some serious concerns. Then, in 2021, the next report turned up. Again, there were more and more concerns. So pray, do not tell me that this is an industry that was not on alert as to what was going on. That’s the first thing.

The second thing: our bona fide in this industry is that we gave them the highest earnings they’ll ever have in the history of this country, by a factor of 150 percent more than ever before, and then when they were broke during the COVID years, we bailed them out. Perhaps it is important to say that at no point have I ever received a letter of thanks from anybody in that industry, but, anyway, that’s what life’s like. We’re not here for gratitude, otherwise we’d be very disappointed.

Now, with regard to the functions and powers of the transition agency, can I first of all say that someone questioned as to whether or not they were legal in their standing. Well, yes, they’re a separate statutory body, and so that’s the answer to that question. I think it was the honourable Lemauga Lydia Sosene who asked that question. She also talked about the dog industry personnel being used in the transition, and as much as we can do that in a positive way, of course that will be a sound idea.

In terms of confidence in the rehoming structure, well, there’s an enormous amount of preparation and we’re going into it, as we speak, and in every respect the plan and the time duration and the statutory safeguards for that to happen and the choice of the right people, we believe, is well under control. But I see emerging of late two questions. There is the idea that you can have an industry that is concerned massively in terms of animal safety and cruelty to animals, and, despite that, being massively compensated for that failure not once, not twice, but three times is somewhat of a tall, tall poppy to recognise. The second thing is we have made sure that there is sufficient funding, but to start setting out what your funding options are before you know who will be relevant as an applicant would be a very, very unsound governmental strategy and a terrible precedent for all other forms of compensation going into the future, and there’s no party in this House that’s ever got up in the past and advocated for that sort of circumstance where, no matter what the statutory change was, there was going to be full compensation. Dare I say it, if that was the case, there would be no change in this country in so many other areas where the question of precedent arises.

Now, do you remember—just as the background to this—that there are still advertisements being put in the newspaper from this industry? If they’re short of money, they’re not showing it—they’re taking out whole pages. If they’re short on money, why are they doing that? Or, more importantly, they’ve hired this King’s Counsel and went to court. The case was so weak on day one, the judge said, “This case is going to have to be adjourned so that you can substantiate the volume and the quality of your case.” Well, on the resumption, the judge thought the case was weaker than on day one.

We’re not coming here without history on our side, and we do not do it out of pleasure, but one thing we’re not going to do is face up to the responsibility of doing what is right on this occasion, and this Parliament, unlike any other Parliament, has been awfully long-suffering to have gone through three separate inquiries. Two were under National and the third time was under Labour, and so it wasn’t to do with party politics; there was just a general concern that something was going horribly wrong in the peak damage of dogs in too many industries.

Now, the question was also asked: what possible industries in the future could be affected by this? Well, this is just a safe catch-all clause that should something in the future roughly approximate to this be required to happen, what lessons could we pass on to them from the experience that we’re going through now? Unlike, of course, the COVID inquiry, where there was a fake inquiry with fake terms of reference and fake personnel with a fake outcome, and now we’re finding out all sorts of people never got heard and all sorts of people were victimised—we’re not going to have that on this occasion. So—[Bell rung]

Cameron Luxton: Mr Chair.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Sorry, this is too long!

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I do have to remind the Minister that—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It’s only 10 minutes in.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): —the broader he goes, then the more comes up for discussion.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:20): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister, for addressing the questions that have been proposed so far. It’s good to have some of those answers. A couple of points that I’d love to explore further with the Minister is—and the Minister is right: there have been reviews that have found the industry wanting; in fact, reviews that have found it more than wanting, with animal rights issues and abuses that need to be solved. But that goes to the very point: what we have here is an industry who the Racing Integrity Board has marked as compliant on every issue, exceeding on most of them, and saying that this industry is an industry that is full of people who have invested in good faith.

These reports and reviews that the Minister talks about—yes, over that eight years, there were three reports that identified issues. That was five years ago. We are now talking about an industry of people who are not tall poppies to be cut down; they are tall poppies to recognise. These are individuals representing themselves and their families and their communities, their sport, their industry, and their hobby—their lives that they have invested. One of these tall poppies is Craig Roberts, who, at the committee, said: “Over the years, I have made a significant financial investment in this industry, including approximately $150,000 in kennel and facility improvements. This was not speculative spending—it was long-term investment made in good faith in a legally operating, highly regulated industry”. He goes on to talk about the people he employs and how long and important they’ve been doing this work.

Katie, who’s a trainer, owner, and handler in Canterbury—this is one of the tall poppies—says: “This ban directly affects me by losing my livelihood, I will have no income. The ban announcement in December 2024 has meant I’ve had to put my future plans on hold (buying my first home, starting a family and having a holiday) due to the lack of certainty the Bill presents post July 2026. The ban is directly affecting my wellbeing, negatively. I will lose my greyhound community. I will lose my identity and sense of belonging”. These are not tall poppies to be cut down; they are tall poppies who we should recognise for putting the effort in that they have done, and look at them and say, “Well done, and thank you for taking the concerns of the past seriously and moving and investing and complying in a way that you have done in the last few years.”

People have invested in good faith, and that goes to—and thank you for your guidance earlier, Mr Chair, about the Amendment Paper 567 being in this part. This Amendment Paper is not a speculative—you know, agreeing to a compensation regime without any numbers attached. It is saying that when good people comply with the law asked of them by Government, that a defence of that investment and of their asset and of their life is that, if you comply with the law, your investments will not be made worthless overnight.

The lesson, otherwise, for the next industry—and the Minister doesn’t have any industries in mind, I take him at his word when he said that—but the lessons to any other future industries, when they look back at this process, and when the next industry, whoever it may be—fly fishing, perhaps; how dare these people catch a trout, take it out of the water for just a selfish photo, and then release it back? When they are put on notice, perhaps, if they invest, on a promise by the Crown, in gear to go fishing in, in vehicles and access and training, in a life, means that a compensation regime—which is not “numbers”; it is in my Amendment Paper 567. It says that there will be a review of the financial loss. There will be a recommendation made—not a binding recommendation, but a recommendation. The Minister can assess it then. The funding will be coming from sources of the TAB, which, in all likelihood, will be overseas greyhound betting. This is not a binding situation. This is saying that, when the next industry looks back on the lessons we’ve learnt here today, the Government didn’t just come in and destroy their livelihood and take their assets without recognising the pain that they have put in. That is what my Amendment Paper speaks to, and I hope the Minister addresses it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:25): Hang on—so somebody spent $150,000 on kennels in their industry and that’s being proposed as some sort of terrible sacrifice made on behalf of the industry? I would have thought that had been essential since day one.

That’s the problem we’ve got here. They had warnings in 2013, 2017, and 2021, and the member says they complied with the law asked of them by the Government. No, they did not. How many warnings would you need? To be told, “Look, if you don’t change dramatically and change those figures, then something’s going to be done.” That’s the point I’m making. I don’t know where all this righteousness came from at the last moment, because I was there at the time during COVID when they were flat out on their bones, and we saved them. And, as I said, if consultation and conversation was required, why hasn’t anybody in my office or I gotten any communications on that score?

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (15:26): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:26): Thank you, Mr Chair. It would be a shame for a Government to be proposing laws that end an industry without having a proper back and forth with at least one member of this House on what that means to the people in that industry, but, also, to the wider lessons that will be learnt.

The Minister—I wouldn’t want to be unkind—scoffed, perhaps, at a $150,000 investment in kennels. That’s not the only investment that’s been made. Yesterday, there was a piece in The Post which outlined a whole lot more has been invested by participants in this industry—it employed loads of people. The article doesn’t quote the Minister, but it does quote a spokesperson for the racing Minister, Winston Peters, who said “compensation for lost earnings was part of the closure plan and support for trainers and owners would be rolled out while dogs were being rehomed”. That is a good thing to hear, but the select committee—the second reading, and now we’re in the committee of the whole House with members taking closure motions—has not seen a plan for these earnings compensations that were alluded to by a spokesperson for the Minister.

But earnings are not capital, and I think the lesson that, in my last contribution, I was trying to draw members’ attention to—that is being learnt here—is: yes, there was money spent on kennels. We don’t know how much of that was upgrades required, how much was already invested in kennel infrastructure—you know, scoffing at $150,000; for a lot of people, that is a great deal of money, and that was one example. There have been many others who have come to the select committee talking about their investments. But just scoffing at a—I mean, a tradie in a van worth 25 grand, with 20 grand worth of tools; are we going to scoff at a $45,000 investment into a small trades business? I really hope that’s not the precedent that’s being put here—that just because it doesn’t seem like a great deal of money means that the Government can step in and take it whenever it pleases.

What my Amendment Paper is trying to do to improve this legislation for the future, for the people who are having this industry close, to give them some understanding that the money that they have invested to exactly comply with the law, meet the guidelines—you could say they should have invested it for animal welfare and yes, they should have. You can say they should have invested it because that was asked of them by the Government and yes, they should have. But the very fact that they made that investment requires a good faith on their part that should be recognised in good faith on our part, on the part of the Government who says, “Yes, we recognise that your industry is coming to an end. We recognise that you’ve acted in good faith. But we also recognise that the precedent that’s being set here, that just because”—I think, was it, the Minister said—“we have might on our side, we can do it.” That’s quite a principle to be supporting around the House.

So my modest Amendment Paper—with the words from the Minister—is simply saying that we will recognise the words that have been spoken in this legislation. We will say that there must be an arrangement for an independent review of this Act, for the purposes of assessing the extent of the financial loss to any affected person that has resulted from the commencement of this bill, recommend the establishment of a compensation regime that seeks to address the financial loss, recommend any eligibility requirements for the scheme, and propose that the funding for the scheme comes from the TAB, not the taxpayer. We have a beautiful solution here, where the select committeehas enabled overseas betting to be brought in.

In consideration of the appointment of an independent reviewer, the Minister must consult with, and have regard to, the views of Greyhound Racing New Zealand before its dissolution, which will enable the people who are connected to the industry to make sure that those views are going to be taken into account. The recommendations of the review must be reported to the Minister. That is what we are asking here. It doesn’t say “will pay”, but it says the Minister must assess the losses here and reckon with the damage that is being done to livelihoods, lives, and communities.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:31): The reality is that, on the question of the Amendment Paper, we don’t believe it’s needed. It’s not necessary to ring-fence the revenue from overseas greyhound betting in the legislation. The bill already requires TAB New Zealand to provide an amount of funding approved by the Minister for Racing to enable the transition agency to perform its functions efficiently and effectively. Therefore, there is no need to further specify the source of TAB NZ funding, given that all funding will come from within TAB New Zealand’s overall bucket. Ring-fencing a single stream in legislation would only add unnecessary rigidity without improving outcomes.

The transition is estimated to cost $60 million over three years. Of that, approximately $44 million is expected to come from TAB NZ’s overseas greyhound racing revenue, $15 million from Greyhound Racing New Zealand and club assets, and any shortfall, of around $1 million, from the wider TAB NZ distributions, most likely from the equine codes. Here’s the point: revenue generated from betting on overseas greyhound racing is intended to support greyhound welfare and industry participants, reducing the financial burden that would otherwise fall on the remaining two equine codes. That’s our position.

Just one thing on the $150,000 on kennels: again, that’s astonishing when it’s been put up as some sort of sacrifice, when all the information you’re getting from the public and Parliament is that your industry is in danger because it is not reacting to the inquiries that have come its way—independently sought and commissioned—in the first place. Then to think “We haven’t reacted to that but we’re still going to get full compensation no matter what, because we’re blameless” is not a meritorious position.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (15:33): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Steve Abel—speaking to his amendments, presumably.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (15:33): Pardon me?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Speaking to his amendments, presumably.

STEVE ABEL: Yes, I am. I’m speaking to Amendment Paper 567 specifically, from Mr Luxton. The concern we have with that amendment—what I think the Minister has expressed—is just how broad it is. It does set a problematic precedent if there’s an expectation that, when an industry has fallen out of favour with the public and has moved beyond being acceptable, in terms of social licence, they will be compensated if the Government does what is appropriate and brings an end to that industry. That would be a problematic precedent for us to set in the House.

I think there is another option available which recognises that we would wish legislative structures around the closure of the industry, not only to protect the animals but also to give some recognition of the need for transition for the workers. I have a proposed amendment to Mr Luxton’s Amendment Paper 567, and that is at new clause 35: “(2) The purpose of the review is to—(a) assess the extent of transitional challenges for any affected person that has resulted from the commencement of the amendment Act; and (b) recommend the establishment of a scheme that seeks to support retraining for those affected persons.” It very specifically narrows the scope just to support and retraining.

It articulates, in specific terms, Minister, what I think is your intention—that the transitional agency take care to the welfare of the people involved—but it certainly doesn’t move to the extent of compensating the industry for the closure, which we agree would be an inappropriate precedent. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:35): Thank you, Mr Chair. I suspect that my time addressing these issues on behalf of those affected is coming to an end.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Well, it’s probably time you actually look for some clarification of policy issues now.

CAMERON LUXTON: I was about to ask the Minister for Racing, in response to his ring-fencing the funding comment to my Amendment Paper 566—I thank him for his answer, but say that that response does not address any of the questions I’ve raised on Amendment Paper 567, which is the compensation scheme.

I was hoping the Minister would answer a simple question: how much monetary cost does he think is about to be imposed on the participants of the industry? How much does the Minister believe would be in a compensation regime, were one, hypothetically, to be agreed to by this House tonight? Has the Minister had any advice on how much money there would be being asked—how much an independent reviewer might come up with and say, “This is lost earnings.”? How much would an independent reviewer say, “This is lost capital investment which has been made valueless after the closing of this industry.”? How much retraining cost?

To the member Steve Abel’s amendment, how much above the retraining costs—

Hon Member: This is coming from ACT!

CAMERON LUXTON: Well, maybe you’d be surprised that we’re not—how much, Minister, above the Ministry of Social Development jobseeker and retraining schemes we already have in New Zealand does he think it would cost to implement Mr Steve Abel’s amendment? Why would we need that? I suppose I couldn’t really ask the Minister that, but how much does he think it would cost to retrain, how much to compensate for earnings, and how much to compensate for capital?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:37): The member asked that question seven times. It didn’t improve. The reality is that anyone who has been involved or with experience in this business would know that to summate that without the information—

Cameron Luxton: That’s why I asked you if you had the information.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I’ve got a transitional authority of experts, serious experts, who are going to find that out, but to take a stab in the dark, when you could be out by $10 million or more, would be irresponsible in the extreme. The fact of the matter is that, when it comes to Amendment Paper 567, the paper is not needed. The Government’s intention has always been to support industry members as they transition away from greyhound racing. We specifically said that. The bill allows for support, and the transition agency has flexibility to provide for additional compensation, such as for lost income, should this be seen as necessary.

These are blanket statements of commitment by the agency into the future and written into our law. Or is it that somebody has gone round the back door and lined up some politicians and said, “Well, hang on a minute now. You can’t trust these people. We don’t have any faith in them, and they’re out to cheat us.”? Well, if that’s the case, why didn’t they front with us and tell us that to our face? That would have been good. The ministerial advisory group set out key elements of its plan to graduate away from greyhound racing at the select committee, which includes taking over ownership of dogs by contracting to cover food and care costs until they are successfully rehomed; working with partners like On Track to provide mental health and wellbeing services for those whose daily lives are closely tied to the industry; partnering to provide retraining support for those currently in the industry.

Now, some members of the industry have continued to invest in recent years even with the knowledge that the future of the industry was at risk. They’ve probably even done it in the last year when they knew this was the last year. Participants were on notice for a long time that the continuation of greyhound racing could not be guaranteed. The reality is that not only have we put this structure in place but we’ve given it a time line, with an extra two years just in case we’ve got it wrong, to ensure that, when it’s all wrapped up, all the concerns that members are expressing will have been attended to. I want to say this thing as well: this was never going to be a painless exercise, but the fact is that the dogs are no longer going to be in pain.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) (15:40): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 112

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Noes 11

ACT New Zealand 11.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Cameron Luxton’s amendment to Part 1, set out on Amendment Paper 566 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 11

ACT New Zealand 11.

Noes 112

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 1 agreed to.

Committee of the Whole House

Part 2 Amendments that commence on 1 August 2026

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 2, the debate on clauses 17 to 24D, “Amendments that commence on 1 August 2026”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:43): There has been commentary happening through the process that meetings haven’t been happening, that people haven’t been able to be contacted, that conversations that needed to happen had not happened. It was interesting to have the Minister for Racing’s last response: “Come and tell us. If you’ve got problems, come and tell us. Come and tell us.” He said that a few times. I have a question for the Minister: how many times, this parliamentary term, had he met with Greyhound Racing New Zealand?

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I’m not sure that that relates to this exact part of the bill. That was probably a question for the previous one. The Minister may decide to answer it. It is not actually pertaining to this part of the bill.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:43): Can I just say, look, we’ve had a transition team talking to them all the time—at any time they wanted to be consulted and talked to. And just one thing: the member has just, in this debate, used the word—and it was jarring on us when we heard it because he talked about us having promised compensation. No, we didn’t.That’s in none of the documents and where you got that from, I don’t know, but we never used the word compensation.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendments to clauses 17 and 19, and to delete clause 19(8), be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Noes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendments not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 19(8), replacing the definition of “overseas greyhound race” be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Noes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Committee of the Whole House

Part 3 Amendments that commence by Order in Council, and Schedules 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor) (15:46): Members, we come to Part 3, the debate on clauses 25 to 34—“Amendments that commence by Order in Council”—and Schedules 1 to 3. The question is that Part 3 stand part.

Part 3 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): We come now to Schedule 1. The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 567 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Noes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Cameron Luxton’s amendment to Schedule 1, set out on Amendment Paper 567 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 11

ACT New Zealand 11.

Noes 112

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Amendment not agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Committee of the Whole House

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come to our final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 to 3, “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:49): It would be remiss of me not to take this opportunity to put to the Minister the views of so many people that came, trying to seek a voice and an ear to this Parliament. The question to the Minister is: why can we not extend this racing ban out to give the people a chance to graciously end their industry they’ve been operating in New Zealand for so long, and to give the dogs that have entered a chance to run their races in the prime of their life and go on to retirement, worthy of champions? Would the Minister indulge in addressing the question that’s on so many people’s minds: why so fast; why not another 12 months?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:50): The reality is that the motives behind this request is that you give another 12 months, then the future Parliament after 7 November 2026 may change its mind. That’s the full-on hope that’s being expressed here. Why so fast? Well, I don’t think 2013, 2017, and 2021 is lightning speed reacting to damage to the New Zealand reputation occasioned by this industry. It’s not a matter of being so fast. You’re asking to extend it beyond August of this year by a further year, but that is, in our view, a Trojan suggestion; it’s designed to keep the industry going at the very time that Wales is out; Tasmania is saying they’re out, they’re finished; and I bet you within two years, New South Wales will be out as well. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:51): The response from the Minister for Racing opened up a question about the Tasmanian closure and the time that they are giving. Tasmania is giving more time to the industry than the Minister is proposing. Tasmania’s got a compensation regime in there, which interacts with the title and commencement and time, because in a way you can say compensation versus time. Like, the longer that an industry has to wind down, the more it can run down its assets, depreciate its buildings, its infrastructure, its vehicles, the people’s small minor investments. That leads to less of a cost imposed on those people who interact. Final question, to the Minister: why did he think that the Tasmanian model of allowing time to let assets depreciate is beyond the pale for you, Mr Minister?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:52): Because in duration the Tasmanian model is very similar to New Zealand. It’s 2026 and they want to close in 2029. We announced what we’re going to do, and we’re now in the third year of that announcement.

STEVE ABEL (Green) (15:53): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wonder if the committee and the Minister for Racing might indulge me somewhat in the definition of the title and the commencement. I’m seeking comment on an issue around timing, given that the commencement relates to the overall timing. There was a proposal put at select committee stage that there not be a process of us continuing to collect income from Australian greyhound racing. I wonder if the Minister would consider giving us some reflection on the reason for allowing that when there is closure here and what consideration he gave to there being a time-bound limit on that, which was just voted down in my amendment, that that be only three years in a fixed time-bound limit.

Understanding, as we all do on the committee, that the logic behind there continuing to be overseas gambling, even though it will be no longer allowed here, is that that will assist in funding the closure. We recognise that, but I wonder what consideration was given to funding the closure entirely from the TAB. I realise that’s slightly more than the scope of this particular section of the debate, but perhaps the Minister would be open to reflecting on it. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (15:54): Well, I’d suggest the member call up his teal mates in the New South Wales Parliament, because that’s a matter of their sovereignty. Having dog racing in New South Wales is the choice of the people of New South Wales via their elected representatives, and we’re not challenging that. For that member saying, “Well, symbolically because we don’t like it here, we should not be allowing any betting on here” when, in fact, it enables us to better look after people going out of the industry here. That’s the compromise we’ve made.

I can see the member’s point, but I also see the other side of it. The Australians will not be very happy if you start telling them what to do. They’ll think that you’re behaving in a rather jingoistic way, and that’s what I would suggest someone will get up in Parliament and say. All we’re doing is saying to you that rather than challenging the other industries that we’re trying to rebuild, we’ve got a chance of using the resources of the TAB betting in New South Wales while it lasts to help our people here get through this transition.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Fisheries Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries) (15:57): Tēnā tātou katoa. I present a legislative statement on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

First Reading

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries) (15:58): I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the Fisheries Amendment Bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 6 August 2026.

This is an overdue but joyous day for those New Zealanders who enjoy either their economic livelihood, their recreational aspirations, or their customary legacy through the fishing resource, because this bill represents a substantial set of improvements to an area that is sadly, a highly contested space riddled with misinformation.

The New Zealand economy is based on our primary sector in so far as we generate economic wealth through our export revenue. Over 9,000 jobs are tied up with the fishing industry. A host of other employment opportunities from those who enjoy the sports fishery, those who are amateur, fisherman, fisherwoman, so it does capture a great deal of attention amongst our fellow Kiwis. Over $2 billion worth of exports. The quota that underpins the functioning of the commercial sector has a value of $10 billion. So for those of you who are listening to this speech, please don’t think that it’s the New Zealand way to indiscriminately, summarily confiscate property rights. Quota means actual wealth. This bill is going to keep that wealth flowing. I belong to a Government—the last time I checked—that believed in property rights; I presume that will continue to be the case.

Building on the economic base of regional New Zealand, we should not overlook the fact that there is a strong global level of demand for our seafood. We should also bear in mind that the industry represents a broad portfolio of activity and products, and we do face a host of geopolitical barriers, trade restrictions hitherto unknown, and a variety of other shifting trends in the market; expectations that our exports will adhere to sustainability. Look no further for a recipe of success than our fishing industry.

It’s important that we bear in mind that there are some principles underpinning the legislation that we are dealing with: sustainability, utilisation. And it’s important that we bear in mind that there are a variety of stakeholders in this sector; none of those stakeholders will have seen a suite of changes of this scale, dare I say, since 1986, with the advent of the quota system—a part of my personal history, a part of my iwi history, a part of our nation’s history. These foundations—i.e., utilisation, sustainability, providing scope for all stakeholders—mean that the system has to be robust. Our quota management system has, for a long period of time, given us an enviable reputation internationally. Of course, this piece of legislation reflects a commitment in our coalition agreement that legislation would be passed to address regulatory barriers and other factors that inhibit the growth of this sector, for jobs, earnings, within guardrails.

Now, there are a host of fisheries decisions that are complicated by litigation. This bill seeks to ensure that litigation takes place within manageable guardrails. This bill seeks to ensure that when catch limit, sustainability, and utilisation decisions are made, they don’t turn into a free for all where litigants seek to solve problems that lie well beyond decisions pertaining to how much snapper should be caught within a given period of time.

The bill introduces a 20-working-day limit for lodging judicial reviews of decisions under the Act. The High Court will retain discretion to extend the time frame, where appropriate. People will still have the opportunity to challenge the State, but we are not going to create a situation where serial offenders—like the Environmental Law Initiative—wanting to contest every single decision, costing the State hundreds if not millions of dollars, thousands, can conveniently go back many years and reprise a decision from another regime. There has to be discipline.

The Minister will also have the ability to recognise industry-led measures, such as catch shelving—decisions where evidence demonstrates that it’s supporting sustainability. It’s important that we have balance and we step away from these febrile-like responses that I’ve seen in more recent times. This is a resource that not only belongs to our time but has to serve the needs of the future, but a resource must be used. A resource has to generate economic wellbeing at a given point in time. This is the time to upgrade the rules and regulations pertaining to our industry.

The provisions in this bill also enable the Minister to set alternative deemed value rates for inshore stocks when caught by southern deep-water vessels operating in areas where, previously, inshore fish were not caught with great abundance.

Let me turn briefly to the matter of cameras. This bill provides for the ongoing operation of cameras. This bill protects the camera footage from peeping Toms hoping to distort, taint, stigmatise men and women deriving their livelihood on boats at sea. Camera footage is made available for those who are charged by the State to effect statutory outcomes, charged by the State to exercise regulatory power. They will not be made available to a range of groups who exist only to undermine the ongoing confidence of the men and women, the investors, and the owners of the industry. Now, in the event that the information is made available, it must be treated with care and used in a very circumspect-like way. Any attempt to leak information or to destroy the purpose for why the information is collected will lead to significant penalties.

Now, look, I’ve listened a great deal to people concerned about the future of our fisheries, and I’ll pay a great deal of attention to what comes through the select committee. I commend the work of the members on the select committee, but let me remind everyone in this House: this is a coalition agreement, and this agreement can be entered into and upheld by quality responses; quality stewardship of us as politicians as we seek to uphold property rights, not destroy the fisheries Treaty of Waitangi settlement; and maintain balance between the competing stakeholders. I commend the bill.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:08): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party to take our first call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

I don’t disagree with the Minister around the value of exports that this provides for New Zealand. We have a very clean and clear track record as a country located in the South Pacific Ocean, the envy of many others, and we certainly acknowledge that. However, the Labour Party will not be supporting this bill this afternoon, and that’s because it actually is a retrograde step backwards in terms of the role that New Zealand has all around the world when it comes to fishing.

The Minister talks about utilisation of resource, he talks about sustainability, but he talks in the sense or the camber that they’re two separate things; they can actually go hand in hand. You can utilise resources here in Aotearoa New Zealand and still do so in a sustainable way that protects the environment, that allows for that opportunity for exports to continue, and make sure, actually, that we continue to have that positive track record.

Many of us, I’m sure, have been receiving a lot of emails, in this House, from members out in the community who are extremely concerned about this Government legislation. When we look back at just one aspect that was cited in this particular bill, and it’s around the size of the catch and for commercial fisher people providers to have to not necessarily throw back or be able to retain and sell undersized fish—at the time when this was raised, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, who has just resumed his seat, described this, I think just last week, as noisy voices—noisy voices. Then, soon after, there was a complete U-turn from the Minister to say, “Oh, actually, no, we’ve listened to the masses.”, and he’s been told we don’t quite know yet whether it was by Winston Peters or Christopher Luxon—both of them seem to be taking credit for that change. But, none the less, this is another example of a Government that is simply out of touch with what New Zealanders are thinking and what New Zealanders need.

We are well known all around the world for the way in which we go about our place in the South Pacific seas. Having a Government that wants to initiate and head down a path of change in this space, it is going to be detrimental for the environment, it’s going to be detrimental for our image, and it’s going to be detrimental in terms of ongoing sustainability as well.

The concerns that have been expressed I’m sure to all members in this House, via emails and other means, is the real concern that there is a shift away from a focus on public and community involvement and influence towards the smaller players that seem to be perhaps seeking to gain something out of these particular moves. The level of transparency is nothing shy of dodginess when it’s seen through that particular lens, where the environmental protections simply seek to be degraded by this Government, and, in a global sense, that’s deeply disappointing.

Then we have this reliance on self-reporting. Now, I’m not intending to cast negative aspersions across everyone in the industry—far from it—but when you start to allow an increase in the level of self-reporting without an independent lens over what that looks like, naturally you get that sense of creep that allows that sense of dodginess to continue to pervade.

Reform is meant to be something where you make things better. What we’re experiencing under this Government is all their forms of reform actually do quite the opposite; they make things worse, and certainly for communities. I think the uproar from the community as to why this bill is a bad bill, and continues as recently as this afternoon, despite the Government’s announcement, is because there is an acknowledgement that this is a Government that have their blinkers on and they have their earplugs in, because they have no understanding of what this means for communities. They might say that these are particular tasks that are tagged to commercial fisheries, but that will filter down to recreational fishers, and that is a fundamental part of any kid’s childhood here in this country and on an ongoing basis. For that reason alone, the Government should simply withdraw this bill. It won’t. So we will have to continue to oppose it.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (16:13): I go out fishing with my mate Cam whenever I can, and, given the gig in this place, that unfortunately isn’t very often. But Cam is a fisherman and he likes to often reflect on the fact that he believes that this place—not his homeland—is in fact the real land of the free. What he and I talk about when we’re talking about that point is the fact that here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we pride ourselves on the fact that one can go and catch a feed for your family and your friends from the oceans or from the land, and what we have presented in the House in the form of this bill from the Government today is absolutely doing everything that it can to destroy and undermine that very birthright of New Zealanders.

This Government has not met a part of the environment yet that it will not do everything that it possibly can to destroy and pillage and extract as much short-term profit as possible for the benefit of industry at the expense of regular hard-working New Zealanders just trying to get by, just trying to live their lives, and just trying to feed their families. This bill today turns the Fisheries Act upside down. The Minister for Oceans and Fisheries himself actually said that pretty explicitly when he said that this was the most significant reform that we had seen in the fisheries space since 1986.

So let’s be really crystal clear here, that the Government is not only making bad law but it’s doing it badly. We already know that many of the changes that are presented in this legislation were consulted on, and over 90 percent of the 27,000 submitters last year rejected many of these proposed changes. Yet we saw, when the Government dropped this bill seemingly out of nowhere about a week or so ago, and then those out there in the real world had to use all of their energies and resources to pore over it, that we then ended up with the Minister backing down on some of the most egregious examples of private profiteering and plunder at the expense of regular people and the future of our fish stocks in this country—namely, the specific allowance for commercial fishers to have minimum fish-size requirements removed while they remained in place for recreational fishers.

But it’s critical that New Zealanders know and understand that there are so many other egregious and awful things in this legislation, winding back the accountability and the transparency necessary in the commercial fishing sector if we are to have sustainable fisheries in this country.

Now, we can already see that the National Party are starting to get cold feet with a number of the changes that they have enabled this Government, and particularly, apparently, Shane Jones, to push through in this term, notably the fact that the National Party has now come out and said that they are going to campaign on undoing the commercial fishing allowances in high-protected areas in the Hauraki Gulf, Tīkapa Moana. I’d just like to put it on the public record once again that the National Party, this Government, didn’t actually have to progress with those carve-outs for commercial fishers in those high-protected areas, because the Green Party offered our 15 votes to progress without New Zealand First and to keep the high-protected areas doing what it says on the tin. So, how on earth are we supposed to respect, let alone believe, this Government when it says that it’s going to roll back some of the egregious changes that have been proposed as a result of the massive public pushback that we have already seen so far?

Grant McCallum: You could’ve supported the Kermedec reserve.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: I hear there Grant McCallum heckling me, and I’d just like to make the point to that member of Parliament that he does not have to vote for this legislation, because, despite what New Zealand First has been saying about the coalition agreement, you can drive a bus through the terminology in that language and it is up to every member in this Parliament to stand up for what they think is the right thing. So the National Party does not have to be supporting this and they cannot be scapegoating New Zealand First. This bill does not have to progress, and every member of the Government that votes for it is doing so of their own free will to continue to undermine the sustainability of our fishing stocks in this country.

But I just really want to make the point that the Minister was saying that apparently he’s going to listen to the select committee. How ridiculous is that? Off the back of the fact that there has already been 27,000 submissions, 90 percent of them are opposed to many of the proposals that are in the legislation that we are debating today.

In summation, the Green Party ardently opposes this legislation, and it actually shouldn’t even be on the floor of the House, but, more than that, we don’t only want to defend the status quo; we can and should go further. We need to ban bottom-trawling and protect at least 30 percent of our oceans because there is no separating the economy from the environment that sustains all of us.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (16:18): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Why does this bill resonate with our communities, with people up and down New Zealand, with so many in this House, with myself? Why? I mean, fishing is an intrinsic part of our cultural identity, I heard it said. I think that is exactly right. In a five-minute speech, as a lifelong fisherman, I would like to spend my time talking about how much fishing has meant to me in my life; how going on the ocean with my father and my family, taking my daughter and my son out; how much catching a feed is important to my feeling of wellbeing, not just buying one; how we have a joint resource that is the definition of the tragedy of the commons, of why it needs to be managed.

I have spent two years in this House now. In that time, I’ll say I have not been the ACT Party’s spokesperson for fisheries. But, in recent weeks and months, I have begun to pay a lot of attention. This is before this hoo-ha all kicked off.

It’s because I trust the evidence—I trust that objective science that has been in the fishing world. That is part of the core of what makes up our fishing management situation. It’s the trust that we have to have in the systems and the processes and in each other. It’s the evidence that supports that trust is what we must rely on.

This system shares a resource between recreational, commercial, customary, but also it shares with a healthy environment. It’s a system that must balance so many different objectives. In my engagement in this sector, I have begun to worry that there is a severe lack of trust and that the trust that underpins what is this system is being hurt.

This bill exposes why evidence and trust is so important. That is something in New Zealanders’ busy lives, as they deal with a cost of living crisis with fuel insecurity and with other things on their plate, you can see why minimum fish sizes and fish dumping are the topic that have caught their imagination. It’s easier to grasp for Kiwis who are shocked at the price of fuel while trying to get to work and pay the bills and get their kids to where they need to go. We can hear fish sizes and get a grasp of that, but there’s a lot of other things in this bill that need to be worked through at select committee.

I’ve heard the Minister in this presentation of the bill and his opening speech talk about property rights—the most I have heard anybody say property rights or quota. This is not my position; it’s not the ACT Party position, but people have only ever talked about buying out. The idea is we have a system in which recreational limits are managed through bag limits and commercial are managed through a cap and trade quota system. But there are things that have become the norm in the fishing system: shelving of catch. But this bill talks about carryover provisions, which would increase a property right. If you could carry over a fish stock, perhaps that fish stock would have value. If it wasn’t caught in year one, it might have value in year one. This is an increase, so this needs to be addressed at select committee.

The judicial review time frames: reducing it to 20 days. I went through the Judicial Review Procedure Act and I couldn’t find any limit on any other legislation or overriding legislation on judicial reviews. New Zealanders need to have trust that when their Parliament passes a law and the executive executes that law, that they have an oversight—something that needs to be looked at at select committee. Management plans, restrictions on environmental protection being taken into account, allocation increases—it is a complicated bill. It needs to be assessed at select committee.

I have watched kahawai schools become scarce. I’ve watched my youthful catch of gurnard disappear, scallops have been shut, Northland crayfish is under attack. We need a fishing system and management system that people trust in, so that in the future, my grandchildren and yours can actually go out and take part in that resource.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland) (16:23): I rise to take a call on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. As a keen fisherman and a consumer of fish—when I’m fortunate enough to catch one—I understand the passion of this recreational fishing sector. I also acknowledge the importance of the fishing sector to all New Zealanders, both commercial and recreational.

We are supporting this bill at first reading so it can go to select committee and the public can have its say, but we have concerns. Some worry their voices won’t be heard and that we won’t listen, but let me assure you that we will. National will listen; I will listen. In fact, we have already listened. Late last year, proposals were put forward to make changes to the regulations that would have meant 19 species of reef fish would be able to be harvested and sold by commercial fisheries—we rejected that.

There was a proposal to allow dead marlin to be landed as a bycatch. The sports fishing sector were horrified by this. Why? They remembered the swordfish experience in the 1990s, when dead swordfish were allowed to be landed and sold. The bycatch, when they changed this rule, went from 100 tonnes to 1,000 tonnes in only a few years. Now the swordfish are part of the quota management system, and this world-class fishery was devastated. So after a meeting with the New Zealand Sports Fishing Council and LegaSea and boat building businesses from the north, the message was clear: “Stay away from our marlin.”

As Northland MP, I fought to get the marlin bycatch proposal thrown out. That is what representing your electorate means. In fact, at 6 a.m. on Boxing Day, there was an article in the paper highlighting this issue and that well-known fisherman from the north, Matt Watson, constituent of mine, was highlighted with his concerns. I made it clear that as Northland MP I did not support the proposal.

Now to the current bill. The initial proposal was to allow commercial fishers to harvest nine different species, including snapper, without a minimum size limit. The feedback from the recreational sector, which has been acknowledged—we’ve all had plenty of it—was loud and persistent, and they said no. No to the commercial sector not having a minimum size limit. Why was that? Well, because they have—the recreational sector has. So not only is it unfair, but it also meant that smaller fish would never have the chance to breed. The Prime Minister listened, and asked Shane Jones to remove the proposal, and he agreed to do this during the select committee process.

There are other changes proposed in the bill. This is where we need your help. Please submit to the Primary Production Committee. We want to hear from you, and we need to hear from you. Ultimately, if National is not happy with the bill following the select committee process, we will not support it at second reading. Let me say that again: if National is not happy with the bill following the select committee process, we will not be supporting it at second reading.

After the last few weeks, I’ve had further meetings with the Sports Fishing Council and LegaSea and numerous other conversations with that well-known member of the Northland community, Matt Watson. Yes, I’ve said, he is one of my voters—or he might vote for me, I don’t know. We’ll find out. One thing I’ve learnt from all these conversations is that they all want one thing: an abundant fishery and a healthy marine environment so our kids and grandkids can pick up a fishing rod, chuck on a life jacket, and head out and catch a fish for generations to come.

I recently attended the Snapper Bonanza on Ninety Mile Beach—what an event! Twelve-hundred hopeful anglers spend a week trying to win a $30,000 cash prize for the biggest snapper. The tickets for that event sold out in 30 minutes, with a waiting list of 500. Entrants came from all over New Zealand, and some even came from Australia. It is an annual pilgrimage. For future generations to be able to enjoy experiences like this, we need an abundant fishery and a healthy marine environment.

Ultimately, the commercial sector also needs an abundant fishery, or else their businesses will struggle. The best examples of where we haven’t got it right are the scallop fishery and the crayfish fishery in the upper North Island, which have been closed. The time has come for all interested parties, recreational fishers, environmental groups, commercial operators, iwi and customary interests, marine scientists, and regional communities to develop a pathway to a healthy marine environment, so we can all have an abundant fishery. Thank you.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (16:28): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I rise for Te Pāti Māori today to take a call on this particular bill. I’ll open with: Tangaroa i te tītī, Tangaroa i te tātā. Tangaroa supreme below, Tangaroa supreme above.

I come from a community that relies heavily on the moana—born and bred on the moana. My grandfather was a commercial crayfisherman back in the 1970s. My father also fought one of the biggest fishing cases back in 1986, when he went to court to stop bottom trawling, Danish sailing, recreational netting in Whangaparāoa—Cape Runaway—and he was successful in his bid to stop that. Why I mention that is that he also was responsible for footing probably the biggest mātaitai in the North Island, which is Te Kopa o Rongokānapa, which also takes in the hapū of Kauaetangohia. Why I mention that is that we find that the mātaitai is one of the easiest ways to manage fisheries, which brings me back to this bill. This bill shows me that it has not consulted commercial fishermen, because the commercial fishermen I have spoken to do not support it. I’m talking about commercial fishermen who are Māori commercial fishermen; Māori have one of the biggest interests in commercial fishing in Aotearoa. The commercial fishermen I’ve spoken to—and I’m talking about small little commercial fishing companies and operators—do not support this bill.

What is also evident is that he didn’t consult recreational fishermen—hence why we got millions of emails last week that we’ve also spoken to since then. I can tell you what, he hasn’t spoken to customary fishermen. You’ve got three sectors who haven’t been consulted with in regards to this particular bill, which tells me that this bill has been created by bureaucrats. It has been created by bureaucrats, and it has been created by the Ministry of Fisheries, who are absolutely out of touch and have not consulted the right people in regards to this particular bill—hence the turnaround. I don’t want to come to the defence of the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, but I know that this has been in the pipeline for a while and has now come to light.

Where does the responsibility lie when it comes to legislation that has a damning effect on our fisheries here in Aotearoa? I absolutely agree with our recreational fishermen and their disgust at this particular bill. I also want to bring the point of view that Māori commercial fishermen also do not want this. If they have to catch over their quota, they have to pay deemed value on fish. That deemed value is a cost to that commercial fisherman. Little small operators have to now pay, through this bill, for the amount of fish that they catch over and above their quota. Then they have to get rid of it—this was the turnaround. They have to get rid of it at landfill, which they have to pay for also.

These were the discussions I had last week, and I welcome the turnaround by the Minister. I agree with Labour and I agree with the Greens: they should get rid of this bill, because it does nothing but pit recreational fishermen against commercial fishermen. It’s OK for Talley’s and the Sanfords; they’ve got the money to be able to deal with this type of stuff, but the smaller operators cannot. It will be a huge cost to them.

Customary fishing has not been consulted in this particular space, hence why I talked about mātaitai. We have mātaitai in my particular hapū, where commercial fisherman still have an active role in there. It’s because commercial, recreational, and customary are all talking together to make sure that we have abundance—to make sure that our fisheries are safe. But this is not about pitting recreational against commercial and customary; this is about bureaucrats making rules and making decisions without consulting the right people to enable abundance in our fisheries. Kia ora tātou.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (16:33): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Fellow members and everyone who cares about the future of New Zealand’s oceans, today I rise, not just as an MP but also as a Kiwi who knows that what happens in our waters touches each and every one of us.

The Fisheries Amendment Bill that is before us is one of the most consequential pieces of legislation for our marine environment in recent years. It promises a sweeping overhaul of the Fisheries Act 1996, aiming to modernise management and ramp up commercial efficiency while changing the rules on landing and discarding fish and increasing ministerial powers over sustainability measures. The bill, at its heart, is about commercial fishing, but the reality is that when commercial fishing rules change, every recreational fisher, every person who spends the weekends casting lines, every family who might gather around a bonfire on the beach, every child learning to bait a hook for the first time feels the ripple.

Already, recreational fishers have made their voices heard loud and clear, and their concerns are genuine. They worry about the future of our fisheries, the impact of these changes on their livelihoods, and the experiences that make the backbone of New Zealand’s culture. We have listened, and we have responded. Last week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon intervened, requesting that amendments removing commercial minimum legal sizes for nine fish species be dropped. We share the concern about protecting young fish stocks.

We want to make sure future generations can enjoy healthy fisheries, not just as a resource but also as legacy. Fishing is more than a hobby in New Zealand; it’s a tradition, it’s a connection to our coastline, and fundamentally a part of our national identity. But there are tough questions we need to ask. Are we doing enough to protect our marine resources? Are we creating fair rules that hold commercial fishers accountable so they can’t haul in undersized fish and toss them back without consequences? Are we balancing the interests of exporters, quota holders, iwi, community groups, and recreational fishers, all of whom have a stake in these waters?

The bill is not without merit. Its main goal is to boost the value of seafood exports and to keep our fisheries sustainable. It aims to make management more responsive, certain, and efficient. National does support smarter use of data, technology, and onboard cameras to improve oversight, and we back better catch limit setting and flexibility for quota holders facing extreme weather. These are steps forward, but they don’t solve every problem. We remain wary of provisions that could let commercial fishers exceed catch limits and pay less for extra quota, potentially harming fish stocks and undermining fairness. Privacy concerns around cameras must be addressed, with strong protections and clear guidelines.

We’re open minded, but we’re not naive. If this bill doesn’t undergo real, meaningful improvements at select committee, National cannot support it. Our priority is to ensure that any changes made reflect the best interests of New Zealand fisheries, balancing sustainability, fairness, and the rights of all users: commercial, customary, and recreational alike.

The select committee process is vital. This is New Zealand’s chance to speak up, to participate, and to help shape a system that serves all Kiwis. We urge everyone, especially recreational fishers, to share their views and raise their concerns for a sustainable outcome. Let’s be honest; the choices we make now will echo throughout the generations. We must work together, listen, and act boldly to protect our precious marine resources. The Fisheries Amendment Bill and the process that follows is your opportunity to be a part of real change—so let’s make that count. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Cushla Tangaere-Manuel.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (16:38): Thank you, Madam Speaker. You move to the front of the class for that pronunciation.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Oh, thank you!

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Heoi anō rā, kei te tū awau ki te whakahē i tēnei pire, arā te Fisheries Amendment Bill, mā te Pāti Reipa.

[However, I stand in objection to this bill, that is, the Fisheries Amendment Bill, on behalf of the Labour Party.]

It’s almost unsettling to hear the speeches opposite; I feel like they should be sitting on this side. I’m all for it—ka pai koutou; I’m really glad to hear that you are listening to the public of New Zealand. On that note, I must commend the many, many people who not only sent me emails about their concerns but who hit me up in the street and sent me messages by any means possible. Power to the people—it works! We’ve seen the U-turn on size limits; that’s excellent, but there’s still work to go.

Steve Abel: Throw the whole thing out!

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: That’ll do. As I was sitting there listening to people recount their childhood memories and their experiences fishing, I thought of the many peculiar traditions we have in Rangitukia, where I’m from—the little awa of the Waiapu River. In fact, one of our local haka, Tihei Taruke, is named specifically for a type of net peculiar to our area. The saying goes, “Haere mai koe ki roto Waiapu kia kite koe i Te Awe Mapua e te paripari tihei tāruke”; “Come to the Waiapu, where you will meet the people of Te Awe Mapua, who fish with this net peculiar to Rangitukia.” Now, why that’s important is because when you think of customary fishing rights and the massive concerns people have about this and why it matters, no blanket legislation would ever have known the peculiarities to the Waiapu River and to the Motu Awa in Rangitukia. That is, obviously, a concern that I’ll get back to shortly in addressing the issues of kaitiakitanga.

I want to address some of the issues that people who emailed me raised in particular. We’ve talked about environmental issues. That goes without saying. Environmental issues safeguards are, naturally, a massive concern for people writing in. For people of Aotearoa—Māori mā, Pākehā mā, ahakoa ko wai [Māori, Pākehā, no matter who]—everyone knows how important maintaining our takutai moana and our species is.

I’ve addressed the undersize issues, and, again, I do commend the U-turn on that. Let’s talk about kaitiakitanga. The issue here is kāpata kai [pantries]—and it’s nice to listen to people’s own memories of fishing and all that. Where I’m from, we’re very famous for the kahawai, and, over my lifetime, I have caught a grand sum of zero kahawai or, as we call them, Ngati Porou salmon.

Also, throughout my lifetime, though, I observed my father, my uncles, my kuia, and my cousins negotiating, in good faith, takutai moana deals that would allow commercial fisheries—Ngati Porou fisheries are one of the key contributors not only to the Ngati Porou economy but also to the Māori economy, and we know that Māori fisheries account for billions of dollars. What we saw was them negotiating, in good faith, deals that would serve the public’s concerns and accessibility while absolutely maintaining kaitiakitanga and our responsibility as kaitiaki of our waterways and of our species or our kāpata kai [pantries]—not just for commercial purposes but for the traditions and, in times like this, indeed, feeding the whānau.

That is something that’s been made loud and clear, not just from recreational fishers but from people across Aotearoa. The amendments proposed in this bill threaten that. They threaten kaitiakitanga, they threaten the value of consulting with kaitiaki and, therefore, the sustainability of our kāpata kai [pantries] and, potentially, the sustainability of our commercial interests.

It’s been a real honour to not only reflect on our unique, peculiar Ngati Porou and Waiapu concerns about this bill but also to be able to stand up and give voice to the many people who reached out to me, as their MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, from Te Mātakitaki-a-Kupe tae noa atu ki Pōtaka [from Cape Palliser all the way to Pōtaka]. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (16:43): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Feedback on the proposed Fisheries Amendment Bill, heartfelt commentary from my constituents across the mighty Rangitīkei—keen recreational fishers just like me—has come in thick and fast, and I want to thank every single one of them. It’s been amazing to hear from everybody that’s reached out, and I’m very grateful. John Riding said that he was horrified at the imminent push to loosen up fisheries for the commercial fishing industry. “Please ensure that sense prevails.”, he said. He went on to say, “You’re National. You must be our sensible future, too. Please.” You’re right, John, we are sensible, and we hear you.

Dave Johnson said, “Our fisheries are not a private asset. They belong to all New Zealanders and are an important part of who we are.” Well, National agrees, Dave. Dave also wrote, “If this bill passes its first reading, the opportunity to meaningfully change it will be limited. That’s why I’m asking you to take a clear position now.” Well, Dave, the bill will pass its first reading, but be assured that our position is crystal clear; we will take out the sections of the bill that remove the minimum size limits. As my colleague and expert fisherman Grant McCallum said earlier, “If National is not happy with any changes made or not made at select committee, we will not support this bill to second reading.”

Rob Thomas wrote, “Having a rule that suits commercial interests and penalises New Zealanders for doing the same thing is morally and ethically wrong.” He said, “Twice a year, I get to spend a week with my family and enjoy spending time fishing, an activity we should all look forward to. We should not have commercial interests decimate the future breeding stock of the New Zealand ocean.” Paul Bickman said, “Our fisheries are a taonga belonging to all New Zealanders.” He also said, “When public opinion is so clearly unified, it raises serious questions about whose interests are being prioritised. It’s serious.” Well, I can assure you, Rob and Paul, that we are prioritising the interests of recreational fishers like you and thousands of other New Zealanders, because National shares your concerns about the impact on juvenile fish stocks. Like you, we want to do everything to make sure we can ensure our kids and grandchildren have abundant fisheries for decades to come,

Benjamin Tuck wrote, “From what I’ve seen, this bill deserves far more scrutiny than it’s getting. It shifts power away from the public and towards a small group of quota holders, removes environmental safeguards, and reduces transparency at a time when we should be strengthening it.” I can assure you, Benjamin, that this bill will get the scrutiny it needs and deserves at select committee.

To date, public scrutiny has been pretty deafening. Every New Zealander has an affiliation with recreational fishing in some shape or form. We can all tell stories from our childhood, or we know neighbours or friends or people down the road who go fishing. As my colleague Cameron Luxton paid testament to before, it’s a vital part of being a Kiwi. I encourage every recreational fisher to be part of the process and part of democracy at work. National backs recreational fishers, and I’m proud to say I’m one of them. Thank you to everyone who’s got in touch with me about this bill. Your voices really did, and will, make a difference, and that’s awesome.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (16:47): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re lucky to live in a country such as this surrounded by the beautiful moana that is integral to who we are and our culture and what we do on a daily basis. I have to say I’m very lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the country in Tauranga, where you only have to travel probably a minute down the road, and you’ve got sea, and you’ve got that beautiful view. It has become integral, right from the very first settlers to this country. Fishing has become integral to a way of life. Tangata whenua fished from day one when they came to this country. Like many others in this House today, I can also claim to be a recreational fisher. We love getting out on our boat. We’re not very good at it, I have to say. We’re great conservationists because we don’t catch very much. We probably need some lessons from my colleague over there, Cameron Luxton. I know he is very successful. We are not.

Hon Rachel Brooking: At catching fish.

Hon JAN TINETTI: At catching fish, yes.

One thing, though, that I have seen and heard in this debate this afternoon is how we’ve got members from the governing parties on the other side of the House who are saying, “Well, this bill is not going to go through into second reading and pass the second reading if we don’t get the changes that we want to see.” I question why we’re having to do this now. Why wasn’t this work done before this bill was brought to the House? It seems a very mucky way of doing this. We’ve seen the shambolic way that this bill has been shepherded in the short time that it’s been released so far, where we’ve already seen changes that have been made to it. It is a very embarrassing situation when a bill just gets tabled and then already we’re starting to see a back-down, and that was on the size limit clause. I don’t understand, when you’ve got Government parties there who say they’re not going to vote for it any further, why they haven’t worked to get that sorted at this stage. That tells me that this bill should not be progressing even through to select committee because, as one of the people that was mentioned in one of the letters that was read out from the other side said, it is difficult to get some broad-ranging changes being made at select committee. It feels like that at this point we’re wasting the House’s time by even progressing this bill to the next stage.

We stand really united on this side of the House in our huge opposition to this bill. First, that opposition was around that size-limit clause, but there are so many other clauses and so many other parts of this bill, such as the ability to challenge fishery decisions with the 20-day limit on judicial review and changes to allow for multi-year catch limits without adequate data to support such decisions—they’re just stupidity in the bill. They’re not going to offer that sustainability going forward. They’re going to have a huge impact and a negative impact on our country going forward.

We’ve heard a lot here today about people who have contacted various members of Parliament, asking for this bill to be thrown out at this stage. They want it to go back and they want it to be reworked. They don’t think it’s in a state now that can be reworked. Usually when you take a bill—as we all know—to select committee, it is at a stage where it needs tweaking. This doesn’t need tweaking; this needs a massive overhaul, and that’s why we really, really stand opposed to where we’re sitting with this bill right at the moment.

We have a vision on this side of the House for a sustainable oceans and fisheries sector, and I don’t think that that’s too far apart from what I’ve heard in the speeches on the other side. I think that this is an area that we’re all agreed on, which is that we want to see that sustainable ocean and fisheries sector, and that includes looking out for our oceans and it includes supporting our recreational fishers, as well. So why? Again, I go back to the fact of saying that after listening to this debate thoroughly this afternoon, I am so disappointed and so surprised that the work to get this bill into a good shape wasn’t done before it came to the House. On that, I will once again say that Labour thoroughly opposes this bill.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa) (16:52): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Fisheries Amendment Bill. This bill seeks to overhaul the 1996 Act to modernise management and increase commercial efficiency, including changing the rules on landing, discarding of fish, and increasing ministerial powers over sustainability measures.

This bill is mainly about commercial fishing, but what happens in commercial fishing affects everyone who fishes for fun and for recreation, because they are intrinsically linked. Already this legislation has generated some fairly significant attention, particularly from our recreational fishers. Their voices have been loud and have been pretty clear, expressing their genuine concern about the future of our fisheries and the impact of the proposed changes on their livelihoods and their experiences. We’ve heard those concerns and we’ve responded. Last week, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, stepped in to ask that amendments removing commercial minimum legal sizes for nine fish species be dropped. We share the concerns about protecting young fish stocks, and we too want to make sure that future generations can enjoy healthy fisheries, as well.

Fishing holds a special place in the heart of New Zealanders, as we’ve heard. We know that for countless Kiwis, fishing is more than just a pastime; it’s a way of life woven into the fabric of individuals, families, and local communities from the Far North to the very deep South. It’s the thrill of casting a line, sharing stories—not all accurate in terms of size and the number of fish caught—laughs on the beach, and jumping on a boat, with a life jacket on, of course, Cameron Brewer.

I must confess that I’m not a great seafarer. I’m not particularly lucky at catching big fish. I know the back end of a chop from one end to the other, but not fish. But there’s a very proud tradition of passing down the passion, the knowledge, and the skills in regard to fishing from one generation to the next.

Fishing puts food on the table, it sustains livelihoods, and it fosters a deep and enduring connection to our very unique coastal waters. Whether for sustenance, sport, or simply the joy of being out on the water, fishing does unite us and it enriches us as a national identity.

We respect the passion, knowledge, and experience that recreational fishers bring to this debate. The select committee process is a vital opportunity for everybody to have their say, and I urge all of those with concerns, whether big or small, to engage in the process. It’s their chance to raise any and all issues they may have with the bill. We want to hear from them, and their input is essential to ensuring that the legislation reflects the needs and aspirations of the people that it impacts the most.

Importantly, we must also ensure that commercial fishers are not able to continually haul undersized fish and throw them back without recourse or penalty, and there must be accountability. We need to get this right. If this bill is to succeed, it must create fair, enforceable rules for all involved, protecting both our recreational and commercial interests while safeguarding our marine resources.

Let me be clear: National is committed to constructive change. We believe that if the bill, however, does not undergo real, meaningful improvements during the select committee stage, we will not be able to support it beyond that point. Our priority is to ensure that any amendments made are in the best interests of New Zealand’s fisheries, balancing sustainability, fairness, and the rights of all users, which is commercial, customary, and recreational alike. We must work together to protect our marine resources for future generations.

This bill and the process that follows is the public’s opportunity to be part of making real change that’s sustainable, and I encourage everybody to speak up, participate, and help us shape a fisheries management system that serves all of us. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (16:58): The question is, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.

Instruction to Select Committee

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House) (16:58): on behalf of the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be reported back by 6 August.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Business of the House

Urgency

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House) (16:59): I move, That urgency be accorded to the introduction and passing through all stages of the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill and the committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.

The Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill is being passed through all stages urgently to give Aucklanders certainty on the process and requirements for Auckland Council’s Plan Change 120. This debate has gone on long enough. It is time to get on with it.

The committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill is also important to progress. There is a longer recess now, and the Government’s intention is to crack on with this, as it is a high priority for Auckland. There are 59 items of Government business on today’s Order Paper—60 if you include this urgent bill—and the Government intends to make progress.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I understand it is the intention of the Government to introduce a bill.

Bills

Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill

Introduction

CLERK (17:01): Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill, introduction.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (17:01): That bill is set down for first reading immediately.

Legislative Statement

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (17:01): I present a legislative statement on the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

First Reading

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (17:01): I move, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

This bill responds to real and immediate problems in Auckland’s planning system. Let me start with a simple proposition, which is that Auckland needs more houses. Housing affordability remains one of the most serious challenges facing the city and, indeed, this country. As I’ve often talked about, it is also a major economic challenge. High housing costs make it harder for Auckland to play its role as New Zealand’s economic engine, and the impacts are felt across the country in productivity, in wages, and in living standards. This is a significant economic reform, and it is an important economic reform for Auckland in particular.

At the core of this issue is supply. The good news is that, for about 20 years in this Parliament, we had a longwinded, esoteric, and, frankly, facile debate about what the causes of housing unaffordability were. We’ve had endless debates about capital gains and endless debates about immigration and endless debates around first-home grants, and all this other stuff that, frankly, is at the margins of what is actually required to enable competitive land markets and affordable housing.

Eventually—eventually—people figured out that this is a supply issue, and eventually, people figured out that it is the urban containment policies in our cities that have stopped or stymied housing growth, from letting our cities grow. The good news is—

Celia Wade-Brown: Sprawl—sprawl.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —notwithstanding the remarks from the list MP based in the Wairarapa; notwithstanding those remarks—there is now actually a consensus across the sensible parties in the Parliament that this is a supply issue and that urban planning rules need to reflect that.

We’ve made really good progress, and I don’t want to litigate the long history with the National Policy Statement on Urban Development and then the medium-density residential standards (MDRS), but it is true that successive Governments have taken steps to enable more housing. What happened after the MDRS came in is that Auckland said, “Hang on a minute, this is too one-size-fits-all for Auckland, and we require the ability”—post the cyclone events of Gabrielle in 2023—“to downzone areas in Auckland.”

Auckland faces a combination of growth pressures, infrastructure constraints, and natural hazards that are not evenly shared across the country. The Government agreed to a bespoke approach for Auckland, reflecting how important Auckland is for the country. In doing so, we required the new Auckland Plan to upzone particularly around the City Rail Link stations—a $5.5 billion to $6 billion investment into the future of Auckland. It is critical that Auckland gain the benefits from this once-in-a-generation, transformational opportunity for Auckland. Now, that was not in the Plan Change 78 that was being advanced. Parliament legislated last year to enable broad upzoning in five City Rail Link stations in particular, and that is preserved through this legislation.

What we did last year was require the new plan to provide at least the equivalent capacity of the previous plan change, and that equivalence requirement turned into a capacity figure of just over 2 million homes. There’s been a lot of information thrown around about 2 million. What this planning aims to do is enable theoretical development capacity on the basis that, when there are abundant development opportunities—not all of them will be taken up, clearly—the surplus of development opportunities leads to competition around those development opportunities, which leads to affordability over time.

This idea that there were going to be 2 million homes in Auckland plonked down into the middle of wherever is not accurate, and it was never accurate. However, it’s a lightning rod, and I want to make it clear that the idea that the Government will facilitate 2 million homes to be built in Auckland, all those homes would ever be built, is not accurate and was never accurate.

The other thing that has become really clear is that flexibility matters. Aucklanders care, as indeed everyone does, about where housing growth takes place, and that’s what we are now fixated on: making sure that housing growth in Auckland takes place in the areas that make the most sense. For example, I am yet to find someone who thinks that we shouldn’t grow around City Rail Link stations. There are a few people out there probably, but most people think, “Well, OK, we’re spending $6 billion, there are going to be rapid transit trains running to and from and through the network over the next few years, once it eventually opens in the second-half of the year”—no date yet; just wait and see—“people should live around there, and for people who can live 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 metres’ walk to the train station, that’s good. That makes sense.”

I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t think that we should grow more in the Auckland CBD. It’s not included in this bill, but I’ve started an investigation into unlocking some of the planning restrictions in the Auckland CBD, because the Auckland CBD is the economic powerhouse of Auckland, and, indeed, it’s important nationally for the rest of the country. I’m yet to find people who don’t think the CBD should grow. I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t think we should grow by busways and by rapid bus stops. I’m yet to find people who don’t think we should grow in metropolitan centres that are the villages—they’re not villages; they’re actually quite built-up areas—that dot around Auckland and in the wider Auckland urban area.

That’s what this bill allows for, and that’s what the Auckland Plan that will flow from this bill allows for. It allows flexibility around exactly where the density takes place, and it settles the issue of who is in charge of this, because, once this bill passes, it will be over to Auckland Council and the local boards and the local communities of Auckland to shape where that density takes place. It’s completely legitimate for interested communities say, “Well, hang on a minute, you’ve upzoned this street, you’re allowed to build terraced houses here or apartments here, or you’re allowed to build XYZ here. Hang on a minute, there are all these constraints here. You haven’t taken account of all this. You haven’t taken account of all these things.”

Tamatha Paul: No, that’s nimbyism, Bish’, you know it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I’m sorry, if your proposition is that central government should dictate on a street-by-street level what happens in Auckland, good luck explaining that to your constituents in Wellington Central. If that is your position, I think you may find that Wellington Central constituents don’t like the idea that—

Chlöe Swarbrick: No one is proposing that.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, no, I just put that proposition, and she told me I was wrong. We are not going to do that. Auckland Council and its communities will be involved in that process, and there’s an independent hearings panel that people will be able to submit to. This is about flexibility and making sure that we reduce down the rigidity.

The minimum capacity required under this plan change will be reduced down to 1.4. However, I want to be clear with the House about what officials have advised us. Once you take into account the City Rail Link upzoning, once you take into account the mandatory legal requirements through the National Policy Statement on Urban Development—that’s the legal instrument advanced under the last Government that we have supported; that legal instrument means upzoning around rapid transit stops, around busways, around metropolitan centres. That is unchanged and, in fact, is a core legal requirement, and every other council in the country has implemented it, with the exception of Auckland.

Once you take those two things into account, the capacity that will be unlocked as a result of this will be, roughly, around 1.6 million homes. That is a substantial advance on the status quo, which is in the Auckland Unitary Plan—which hasn’t been updated for years—which is around 1.2 million homes. The Auckland Unitary Plan has been internationally studied and scrutinised as an example of successful upzoning. It is true, almost objectively, that rents in Auckland are lower now than they would otherwise have been as a result of the upzoning—Auckland rents are lower than they otherwise would be.

I see that the list MP based in Northcote is shaking his head. I suggest you go and talk to your colleagues who understand this point. I suggest you go and read the extensive academic evidence around the Auckland Unitary Plan. If you don’t like that, go and talk to Phil Twyford, who put in place the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, which was an advance on the Auckland Unitary Plan in the first place. If the member opposite wants to shake his head and deny economic reality and the broad thrust of successive Governments’ housing policies for the last 10 years, well, he’s welcome to it, but it doesn’t speak very well about a future Labor-led Government.

So 1.6 million homes is about where we’ll land; 1.2 million homes is the current capacity. This will be a substantial advance on that. Here’s the critical point: it centres the growth in the right areas. The advice that I’ve received is that the theoretical capacity that is unlocked is more likely to translate into actual houses being built, because it centres the growth around the infrastructure in the right places.

This is a sensible plan. It will, I hope, lead to a durable consensus in Auckland around where growth happens. Auckland must grow; this bill allows for it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (17:12): Thank you, Madam Speaker. While the Minister is in the House, I want to be very clear that Labour absolutely supports more houses in Auckland—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Of course we do.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —of course we do; what a ridiculous statement that he just made.

But it is also an interesting potted history that he gave there. I want to remind the House that in the last term, National came to Labour with a bipartisan proposal of that mixed-density standard, and they said, “Yes, we want to do this together.” Then there was a sniff of unhappiness from some of its Auckland-based MPs, and they reneged on that bipartisanship after it had been passed into law.

They then campaigned—nothing to do with the Hawke’s Bay. It was nothing to do with cyclones and hazard issues, because if that was the case, then we would have seen a lot more hazard work in the Resource Management Act that we have not seen. Instead of focusing on repealing things and fast-tracking projects in flood plains, we have not seen the work that could have been done at the outset on natural hazards and national instruments regarding those things—no, no. Instead we saw a promise that “Well, we’ll get rid of the medium-density residential standards (MDRS), but do not worry, Auckland and Aucklanders who are worried about housing and housing prices. Do not worry, we will replace it with something that we’re going to do through a very convoluted resource management process, and we will require this equivalence”—that we just heard about—“that whatever the plan change you were doing to implement the MDRS, we will have as many houses, but it will be better intensification.”

We went through the resource management amendment process and we understood that the Minister was talking with Auckland Council about how to make it work, and so we let that process roll. Then, on the day that we were debating the committee stage of that bill, a giant Amendment Paper landed. The Minister had signalled that there would be some changes around this Auckland urban development, but included in that were other changes that related to burning more coal and polluting more rivers, and so we voted against it. But what that change did that was changed at the last stage was to have this equivalence test, and so the Minister said that would relate to about 2 million dwellings.

It went through a process without a select committee, and then, over summer, it seems that maybe some of those same MPs who didn’t like the MDRS have been chatting away to the Prime Minister and others, who, finally, noticed what this meant. They could have, of course, read the legislation when, I presume, it went through a Cabinet process.

We’ve also seen the Minister just now say, “Well, the unitary plan would produce 1.2 million homes with capacity.”, and I agree with what the Minister was saying about capacity. What the bill in front of us does is it says that it’s 32 percent or less than Plan Change 78. We’ve heard today that that is 1.4 million capacity, and so it is only 200,000 different from the status quo and we are looping around in these very expensive plan-change processes because this Government cannot make up its mind.

However, just a couple of minutes ago, the regulatory impact statement landed on the Table. This bill has been in urgency, and so we went up and we got it as soon as the Minister started speaking, and the number in the regulatory impact statement—is it 1.4 million capacity for houses? No, I think you’ll see that the headline number there is 1.6 million, and so what is it that this Government wants to do? Why is it that Ministers go to Cabinet meetings and Ministers pluck numbers out the air, and then change legislation that they’ve already changed in a very poor process, which we now are going to stand here and do all-stages urgency on because they cannot make up their minds and have proper, robust discussions at the outset and stand by their decisions?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (17:17): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. It’s like we’ve entered The Twilight Zone. We’ve just had a Minister of the Government saying that what this bill does is unlock housing growth, but I just want to read from the first page the first paragraph of the bill that that Minister just introduced, which says—and I quote—“In effect, this reduces the requirement from approximately 2 million dwellings to approximately 1.4 million dwellings.” That’s a quote from the legislation that the Minister introduced. As he was talking about how this bill unlocks more housing growth and having more houses being built, the legislation, which itself says on its very first page, in its very first paragraph, that, in fact, what this bill does is reduce the supply of housing, or the potential supply of housing, in our largest city by 600,000 units—it’s insane. It’s bonkers.

We are truly living in the Upside Down, where we have a Minister of the Crown who can say something that is so demonstrably untrue. I don’t know where that leaves us, as a House, if we’re not able to have—I don’t know—a debate on what is literally contained within the legislation: the Minister’s saying one thing, and it is actively being undermined by the very law that he is tabling in the House for us to debate. How are we supposed to have any form of rational engagement on that basis?

This Government tells us that it’s all about the market and that the market needs to just sort everything out, and I guess they mean that if you are somebody who right now is struggling to get by and being pushed on to commuting for hours by bus, on a public transport system that has been systematically underfunded for generations. But they don’t mean it if you want to build some housing where—God forbid—people actually want to live near the city centre and the surrounding amenities in suburbs like Parnell and Remuera and in the Epsom electorate.

This Government says that they want to cut red tape—oh, but they mean it everywhere but the Epsom electorate. They say that they want localism, and it seems as though, perhaps, maybe, at least in the language that we’re hearing they want it, but they don’t actually want local decision-making for our largest city, which has already so far progressed on the process that had been undertaken per Plan Change 120.

I know that we’ve already had a bit of a potted history from both the Minister and from my Labour colleague, but I think it’s really important to put this on the public record, because in 2022 there was an agreement by two of the legacy parties in this place that we would have something called the medium-density residential standards (MDRS).

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Ponsonby.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Then, in 2023, the National Party started getting cold feet—funnily enough, as the Minister, Paul Goldsmith, was just heckling at me, from places like my electorate, where I have very clearly made the case for density done well and managed to retain that electorate, because my constituents understand that our city is not a museum; it needs to house people—and, in fact, leafy suburbs should be the same thing as dense suburbs.

But nonetheless, we had that rollback from the Nats in 2023, who promised that they would undo the MDRS and promised, instead, 30 years of growth. Then, in 2025, we saw that they passed an update to the Resource Management Act (RMA)—which, again, we’re now amending today, despite the fact that the Government is saying that it wants to completely undo the RMA—and that resulted in a break in the process on Plan Change 78. Then, Auckland Council had to move on to something called Plan Change 120, which it has done significant consultation on—and guess what? The Government’s now pulling the rug out from underneath Auckland Council, prompting some statements from Mayor Wayne Brown of the likes of, and I quote, “They”—by which he means this Government—“don’t want any concerts in Auckland. They don’t want any sports events, because they’re opposing the bed night levy. They don’t want people living intensively. $2 million; I was happy enough with that. Just let the market sort itself out. ACT is meant to be about the marketplace, but they are the most anti-marketplace outside of Russia”.

That is the position of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. If this Government believes what it says about localism, then let’s be honest and hand back the local decision-making powers to Auckland Council and to our mayor, who very clearly has made the case for density done well.

In closing, I just think it’s utterly bonkers to hear from the Minister, who is waxing and waning lyrical about this all being about increasing the supply, despite introducing legislation that actively and explicitly says that they are cutting 600,000 units from that potential supplier—but, more than that, to say it’s about where we build this housing, as this Government enables more sprawl, more climate-changing emissions, and people being pushed further and further away from where they want to live.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (17:22): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT and my electorate of Epsom in support of this piece of legislation.

I’ll start by saying there’s nothing more important for New Zealand to achieve in terms of public policy than making it easier to build more homes, because you could give a potted history of the economics of the last decade that productivity growth has been almost flat. Wages have not risen. However, some people have done OK out of asset value inflation, while others have fallen behind looking at the eye-watering price of getting themselves into that same housing market. That’s not sustainable. People won’t keep voting for a market-based economy with property rights if they see no prospect of advancement and ownership of property themselves.

It matters that we get infrastructure funding and financing right. It matters that we get consenting right. It matters that we get building consents and building materials right, so that we can be affordable and productive as a country. All of that stuff really matters.

Unfortunately, for the last five years, a series of well-meaning but misguided interventions from this place into our city of Auckland have distracted from those things that matter to get more homes built. Instead, there has been this absurd battle over what the heights should be of different areas of the city according to the zoning map. It goes back as far as 2021, when a number of parties—I think, all parties bar ACT—in this Parliament voted to impose a three by three - storey housing law right across Auckland and, indeed, across all of the larger cities in New Zealand. This was unpopular. This was impractical.

There’s people that say, “Oh, well, we want to talk about the market.” Let me tell you a little bit about the market, is that there are such things as natural monopolies. In case you wonder if I know what I’m talking about, a natural monopoly is a service that has constantly increasing returns to scale, so one provider is the most efficient way to provide. And, as it happens, roads and sewer networks and water pipes and public transport networks and a whole lot of things that cities rely on are natural monopolies. That’s why you can’t have a competitive market, and that is the public policy case for zoning and actually having some central control of where growth and intensification occurs. So you, if you know your economics, will be in favour of having some regime of zoning.

The question is: who should decide? When Wellington decides and says it’s three by three - storey houses everywhere, they missed the most critical and important facts on each streets and in each suburb of our city. They missed the areas that are flood prone. They missed the areas that have cracked pipes that are over 100 years old. They missed so many things that are important to the people in their community that it cannot stand. And when our city flooded, people became clear that the three by three - storey home rule would not work. So we campaigned and won an agreement to remove that three by three - storey house rule, and it will be gone.

However, there was also in law a proviso that there needed to be at least the same number of homes—2.078 million, I think, about 2.1 million homes—built in the new plan that replaced the three by three - storey home rule. And, again, we heard it from Aucklanders, people who actually believe in localism, saying, “We don’t want to have this forced on us and dictated to us from Wellington. We want to be able to have the Auckland Unitary Plan that we all battled over as Aucklanders to establish over a decade ago.”

And so today, I’m proud to stand here in this House and support legislation that says that the required number of homes will only be 1.4 million. We’re not going to force on Aucklanders something that they did not want. We are effectively allowing Aucklanders to go back to our Auckland Unitary Plan, plus intensification around transport corridors, villages, and train stations, as envisaged by the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. This is localism. This is the market with the realities of network infrastructure. This is a sensible approach to getting more homes built for the next generation, and I commend it to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (17:27): I’m going to start with some personal reflections, because one of the things that central government has done, whether it’s a red-led Government or a blue-led Government, is continuously interfere in the way in which cities are designed. I can remember not once but twice during the time that we were developing a district plan in Wellington that we literally got a call from—in my case, it was David Parker, saying, “Hey, by the way, we’re just about to change the rules on you.” We were about to go out to consult on a district plan, and he said, “Well, in two hours’ time—in two hours’ time—we’re going to change the rules.”, and that was the medium-density residential standards (MDRS).

What we should be doing is working with local government, helping local government where it needs to be helped, to design cities in the way that makes the most possible sense.

Tamatha Paul: No, you had 30 years, Andy. No.

ANDY FOSTER: We actually did a damn good job, and you were trying to wreck the place.

Tamatha Paul: Oh, wreck the place by densifying it?

ANDY FOSTER: Yeah, absolutely, you were trying to wreck the place, Tamatha Paul. What we should be doing is trying to work with councils, not continuously intervening, not continuously changing the rules.

Can I say, one thing that I’ve stood up and said in this House quite frequently is that we keep saying to councils, “Well, you need to provide for 30 years of growth.” But growth, by and large, is not driven by births and deaths now; it is driven by migration. And this House—doesn’t matter if it’s a red-led House or a blue-led House—has not got any clue about a long-term strategy around demographics and migration. It hasn’t got a clue, and that makes it really, really hard—it makes it really, really hard—for councils to plan. We are asking them to do the impossible, because we have not stepped up as Government—doesn’t matter whether it’s a red-led Government or a blue-led Government. And we need to change that.

It’s interesting to look at some of the numbers that are in the bill, whether it’s 2 million or 1.6 million or 1.4 million. As of 2023, there was something like 545,000 houses in Auckland. So whatever the number is—and we know it’s a theoretical number—it is a massive increase in the number of houses, potentially, in Auckland.

The question you’ve got to ask is: “Are we going to have a better city as a result of that or just more people living in that city?” That’s a question that I think is a real one.

Densification, by and large, I think generally people agree should be around public transport services, around jobs and so on, so there’s less pressure on the transport system. That makes absolute sense. And it should also be done in a way that helps to pay for the infrastructure. Too often we have allowed the privatisation of the benefit and then the public sector has to come along and pay for the infrastructure. We should be trying to make sure, especially in our biggest city, that we’re trying to pay for some of that needed public infrastructure and do that by getting the benefit for the public of that upzoning. Too often we fail to do that.

We had the Infrastructure Commission—who I think are a great organisation—in front of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. We asked them that question: “What proportion of the costs of growth are paid for by that growth?” We keep on talking about growth paying for growth. And they said, “Rough order of magnitude: 30 to 50 percent.” That means that 50 to 70 percent is paid for by existing ratepayers, existing taxpayers, existing consumers. Growth is not paying for growth. So we’ve got to really step up in that place as well.

Look, the other point I wanted to make, just in finishing, is around MDRS—and that’s come up several times. The problem with MDRS—and I take the Wellington example—is that it essentially said, “Three by three.” It didn’t matter whether you were on the outskirts of Upper Hutt or whether you’re downtown Wellington—it made no difference. That was the fundamental problem with it because it, basically, treated all of those areas the same. It was a completely non-targeted approach. Yes, sure, it increased capacity, but it did it in a very non-targeted way.

I think what we should be doing is to be working alongside councils, not telling them what to do, but helping those councils to design the best possible cities that they can and to be able to afford the infrastructure they need to be able to afford by capturing some of the value of that growth to pay for that infrastructure. I look forward to the discussion that is going to go on now, and I commend this bill to the House.

CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) (17:32): It’s great to stand in the House to talk on this Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. This bill, of course, locks in the Government’s decision this week to reduce the minimum housing capacity required by Plan Change 120 from 2 million to 1.4 million. This comes from the earlier 2 million number and is up from the 2016 unitary plan capacity targets. It’s a very good place to land.

As we well know, Aucklanders wanted out of the MDRS—the medium-density residential standards. They were—just to recap—three by threes: three townhouses, three stories high, on most sites without a resource consent. This Government said, “Yes, you can opt out, but show us where the density should go.” We’ve listened to Aucklanders and we’ve dropped that capacity requirement from, again, 2 million to 1.4 million, with intensification, of course, going to be happening in the CBD, along the City Rail Link stations, and key transport nodes.

Former Auckland City Mayor and long-time councillor Christine Fletcher summed it up, and she’s no easy critic—she’s no easy critic. “Thank goodness”—she said today on Facebook—“common sense has prevailed.”, said Chris Fletcher. Council, a week for two ago, agreed to some of the guiding principles, and soon updated planning provisions and maps will be made available and the public will get to have its say and the independent hearings panel will get to do its work. This is now very much in Auckland’s court, and I wish them all the very best and I commend the bill.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (17:34): What a shambles this is. Here we are, and the Government is using urgency today to bypass the very democratic process it claims to champion. Ramming through a bill that rewrites Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s housing future.

Let me repaint this picture for everyone in the House. Nicola Willis, Megan Woods, stand up on a podium back in 2022 and say, “We are going to solve the housing crisis together. We are going to work in a bipartisan way.” Low and behold, in 2023, National backtracked on a problem that Auckland and New Zealand is experiencing—that is a housing crisis. Here we are again today, and this National Government have pandered to the ACT Party to reduce the number of houses that will be built in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to address the housing crisis to make it more affordable for young Aucklanders to get into the property market and buy their own first home. This is a backtrack from Prime Minister Luxon, through his influence from his constituents, to really walk away from the key issue that is in front of us.

We need to unlock housing in our largest urban centre in this country. In my community, we know what good intensification looks like. We only have to look to the Northcote housing development. Under both Governments—both a National and a Labour Government—that is what good practice looks like. It has the right houses. It has the right mix of houses. It has the recreational centres to build strong communities. It has the water infrastructure required. When I talk to communities in my area on the North Shore, yes they are concerned by intensification, but largely their concern comes from lack of infrastructure or, in particular, ageing infrastructure.

Again, I acknowledge that Minister Bishop’s backtrack today on this particular bill—the reduction of the number of houses, the reduction of their commitment to actually demonstrating any leadership to solve the housing issues in front of us—is, in fact, actually, no surprise. Because here we are again, under a National Government: weak, weak, weak. Nothing. It does not serve Aucklanders.

Bringing this through urgency is bad process. It doesn’t allow the Opposition to actually fairly scrutinise the issues that are raised today. It doesn’t enable people, communities, Aucklanders, to have their say. Council will do that, but they won’t get to do that on this important legislation.

Minister Bishop deflected today. He talked about the rents in Auckland and said that they were coming down. His deflection shifted from this bill on to me in the House sitting here, to say to go and ask my colleagues. I said to him, “I’m not asking my colleagues. I’m asking my constituents in Northcote what they think.” Because they don’t think their rent has come down. They haven’t seen any decreases there. So I don’t know what he’s talking about. But clearly it is a deflection, a distraction, from what is in front of us today.

My concerns are that while the Government talks up localism—giving control back to Auckland Council—there’s no evidence in here that they’re doing that. The decision making and control stays squarely here in Wellington with the Government—that’s where Auckland Council has to come back and get agreement and sign-off from. That is not devolution of power—of decision making. That is not putting it in the hands of Aucklanders to make the best decisions for our communities. I encourage Government members to stand up and tell me—tell me where we are putting that decision making back in the hands of Aucklanders. But it’s because we know that politics won on the day, at the cost of unlocking housing in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. In fairness, it should be fairly spread across the city, but excusing places like Epsom.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (17:39): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s really an exciting day as we embark on the three readings for the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. We’re in the first reading. It’s no secret that Auckland has felt the pressure of housing shortage for a very long time. Some members of the House that had six years to do something about it didn’t do something about it. We are embarking on doing something maybe swiftly, but we need the swiftness after we’ve listened to our neighbours all around Auckland. I commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (17:39): Thank you. I am probably the MP in this room who is most connected with the area that looks to have the most affordable housing built in it as a result of these plans that we have been looking at. They have been revisited and revisited. I’ve tried to do my job and talk to people about what they needed to know before they made submissions to council, and they did make submissions to council—lots of them—good, informed submissions that were about things that really mattered to them, like stormwater and flooding and all sorts of issues that they should be talking to their council about when such plans are made. All that—well, what was the point? Now, we have another iteration of the bill, and it’s going through in one single day and, perhaps, tomorrow morning. There is absolutely no way that I can do the job I want to do for my constituents and go through this in the thorough way that they deserve, when it is their neighbourhood that’s being affected, when they had the floods that came across Auckland and legitimately worried people. They don’t get to participate, in the way they should have, in the process, and I do not accept that there is any reason why this has to happen so urgently. They need to be involved in those processes.

What really worries me—and what should worry us—is that we had Chris Bishop tell us that this was all about red tape and we were just going to do things quickly and we were going to get rid of zoning, and he was quoting abundance at us. All of that has gone out the window because what actually seems to have happened is that the interests of some MPs in election year are being looked after rather well. They are not going to have intensification in housing in their areas, because it does not suit them. Now, that is the opposite of democracy. That is a very dangerous precedent. I am very concerned. I’ll be asking a lot of questions about why this is not happening in certain areas of Auckland. Why not? Why are we not prioritising the things that Aucklanders were worried about, like stormwater and flooding? These are areas where all those things have happened, and we need to make sure that we look at them.

Why are we treating this like a situation that is not relevant to Aucklanders yet calling it localism? How absolutely 1984 can we get? It does actually make me think about a statement that was made by George Orwell—while we’re on 1984—which was that “Some animals are more equal than others.” In this process, we were supposed to be having a transparent process. What have we found? The very same people turn around and make sure that some animals living in some areas of Auckland are more equal than others. I can tell you that Mt Albert will be furious about that, and fair enough too. It’s their communities that are affected, and nobody is even promising them that, in those areas, they will be getting the support they need for that housing.

Now, I am for affordable housing. I want it in my community, but I don’t want it to be something that is not rational, so I come back again to the issue of stormwater management, to the issue of the infrastructure under the ground. I ask: where is that going to land here? How do people talk about these things in any intelligent way at a local level when the central government comes to this House with a piece of legislation that I’ve tried to get through—but it’s actually quite hard—in the time frame and when we get a regulatory impact statement (RIS), today, at the same time the Minister stands up to give a speech?

Do you know what that RIS says? Let’s have a look. It says, “Introducing legislative change while a plan change process is under way creates a number of risks, including risks of challenge due to the changes in the requirements midway through the plan change process … not all outcomes can be fully predicted as final implementation decisions will rest with Auckland Council and the panel … The proposals in this RIS have been developed at pace. This time frame necessarily limits the identification of options, level of analysis and the collation and review of evidence. There has been very little engagement with stakeholders on these proposals by officials.” “There’s been very little” is probably an understatement. That’s actually language that says there’s been almost no engagement with stakeholders. My electorate deserves better than this. If there are going to be major changes, they need to be involved.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (17:44): The Labour Party is completely out of touch. Aucklanders have been clear that they support growth, but as long as it happens in the right place and is backed up by the right infrastructure. People in Mt Roskill have determined that they are not satisfied with the current Auckland Council draft plan. I’ve been working closely with the Balmoral Residents Association, and the residents are particularly concerned that enabling large-scale development, often without confirming the infrastructure capacity, could lead to isolated and out-of-scale development. This is the local voice, and we have listened.

This is why we decided to make a change in this bill to reduce the minimum housing capacity in Plan Change 120 from 2 million homes to 1.4 million. This is a more realistic approach, focusing growth in the city centre, around town centres, and along major transport routes. This is better than just forcing intensification into every suburb, including my area, the Mt Roskill electorate.

Once these changes take effect, it is now up to the Auckland Council to deliver their plan and to consult with Aucklanders, including those in Mt Roskill, about where the growth should happen and where it shouldn’t. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment) (17:47): on behalf of the Minister responsible for RMA Reform: I move, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The need for this bill arises from experience. As Auckland Council has progressed Plan Change 120, it has become very clear that the current legislative settings do not provide sufficient flexibility to respond to evidence, constraints, and community feedback. The issue is not whether Auckland should grow; it must grow. Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, home to a third of our population, and a central driver of national economic performance. How Auckland grows and whether it can grow efficiently has direct consequences for productivity, investment, and living standards across the country. The issue is whether the system allows growth to occur in the right places and avoids it where intensification is unsuitable. Without legislative change, the council and hearings panel are constrained in how they proceed and respond to submissions, particularly where addressing issues in one location requires capacity to be offset elsewhere. This is not a good recipe for planning. It is also not a recipe for economic confidence—uncertainty increases, investment decisions are delayed, and housing supply responds more slowly than it should. It is not what Aucklanders expect.

The bill has a specific and targeted focus. Firstly, it reduces Auckland’s minimum housing capacity required by 32.5 percent—from just over 2 million homes to approximately 1.4 million homes. This matters because the previous minimum requirement was operating as a blunt constraint on good planning. The 2 million homes figure was never a build target. It was technical modelling output, in practice, limiting flexibility, and it constrained the ability of the council and the hearings panel to respond to evidence and submissions.

Reducing the minimum requirement does not reduce Auckland’s ambition for growth. A requirement of approximately 1.4 million homes still represents a very high level of development capacity, well beyond what the city will deliver in either the short term or the medium term, but it restores Auckland Council’s ability to operate the planning system as it is intended. This is about smarter growth, not slower growth—growth that is better aligned with infrastructure, with transport, and with employment patterns.

Secondly, it establishes a clear and workable process for how Auckland Council and the hearings panel respond to that change, including opportunities for public input on revised provisions. This matters because flexibility must be exercised transparently. The bill does not simply reduce the requirement and move on; it sets out a clear pathway of how the revised capacity requirement is worked through the planning process, updated provisions, and maps made available by the council so that people can see what is proposed and how it affects their communities.

Public participation remains a core feature of the system. The way these changes are implemented matters. Auckland Council will decide where development should occur and will make that public.

Importantly, those who have already engaged with Plan Change 120 will not be pushed aside. Existing submissions will remain valid, and submitters will be able to update or add to them, if they wish. At the same time, Aucklanders who did not previously submit will still be able to take part in the process, moving forward. The independent hearings panel will continue to consider submissions and evidence and make recommendations, just as it was established to do. This strikes the right balance. It allows the planning process to move forward at pace, while ensuring that changes are not made behind closed doors, and Aucklanders are not shut out of decisions that matter to their city.

It also resolves the medium-density residential standards transitional issue, ensuring that people who relied on previous rules are not unfairly disadvantaged. When Auckland Council withdrew Plan Change 78, the medium-density residential standards were removed across much of the city. That created a transitional gap. A number of landowners and developers were already partway through resource or building consent processes, and had relied on those rules in good faith, and without intervention, they were left in limbo. This bill provides certainty. It ensures that people who acted in accordance with the rules at the time are not penalised by a change in planning settings beyond their control. That’s a matter for fairness, and it matters for confidence in the planning system. The Government’s response has been deliberate and restrained. This is proportionate.

The bill does not reopen debates about Auckland’s overall growth strategy. It does not substitute central government judgment for local planning expertise. It does not rewrite the Auckland Unitary Plan from Wellington; instead it resets the minimum requirement and allows the existing planning process to do its job properly. This is still Auckland’s plan.

Crucially, the bill does not step away from Auckland’s intensification direction. Auckland Council must still give effect to the intensification policies in the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. It must still enable greater density around metropolitan centres and rapid transit stations. It must increase intensification around key stations, to maximise the benefits of the City Rail Link (CRL). In practice, these requirements may result in more capacity than the minimum capacity for 1.4 million homes required by the bill. The CRL represents one of the largest public investments in this country, and ensuring Auckland’s planning system supports growth around that investment is essential to realising its full economic return in productivity, accessibility, and reduced congestion.

The economic evidence supporting intensification in these locations is strong. Well-located density supports productivity, improves access to jobs and services, reduces transport costs, and makes better use of existing infrastructure. Major public investments like the CRL deliver their full value only when the planning system allows people to live and work around them. This bill does not step away from that. It intervenes only where the existing settings are clearly constraining the ability of the planning process to function as attended. It does not attempt to resolve every issue facing Auckland’s planning system.

This bill reflects what Aucklanders have told us. Ministers and members have received a significant volume of correspondence from Aucklanders about Plan Change 120 and its impacts. People want more homes but they also want a planning system that recognises constraints, local context, and infrastructure realities. Greater flexibility allows those conversations to occur within the planning process, rather than be shut out by rigid rules. This bill listens and it responds.

This House should support a targeted and balanced bill that enables growth, while respecting local conditions. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Members, it is time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House is suspended until 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the House is resumed. We are on the second reading of the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. Again, the question is that the motion be agreed to—the second call?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (19:30): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Over the last couple of decades, we’ve generated in this country a lot of heat and some light, as we as a country and as a Parliament and through successive Governments have grappled with this intergenerational housing crisis that has been such a plague on New Zealand, and some interesting things have happened. There’s some areas where we clearly—two sides of this House don’t agree on the building of public housing. We build them, they don’t. When it comes to taxing capital gains in the housing market, we do; they don’t. We legislate for renters’ rights; they repeal them.

A very interesting—an unusual and interesting—cross-party consensus has emerged in recent years about the importance of reforming the planning system and fixing the country’s broken infrastructure funding and financing. Those two things are the major drivers of an absolutely dysfunctional housing market that has caused so much downstream social and economic distress.

The sad thing about this debate and this bill that’s going through the House tonight is that it’s a depressing climb-down by Minister Chris Bishop, who has been a keen participant in this cross-party reform agenda. Future generations of New Zealanders—young New Zealanders—are going to pay the cost for this, because they are the ones who will suffer years and years of rent that will be higher than they need to be. They are the ones who cannot and will not be able to afford to buy their own home, because of the problems that we have with the housing crisis. It’s my hope that tonight, and this back-down by the National Party and by this National-led coalition that we are legislating tonight—I hope it is merely a bump in the road.

The Government has cravenly given in to their voters in some of the leafy suburbs of Auckland; incumbent property owners who do not want to see flats, terraces, townhouses, apartments, and—God forbid—affordable housing in their neighbourhoods, in the garden suburbs. To get to this point tonight, to legislate this climb-down, Minister Bishop has been openly white-anted and undermined by Simeon Brown, by David Seymour—his ministerial colleagues—and by the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, the “nimby-in-chief”. It is a climb-down, it has created an absolute shambles of a policy, and Auckland Council and the mayor, Mayor Brown, have every right to be aggrieved at what they’ve been put through. Make no mistake about it: it is a significant retreat from the commitment of 2 million or 2.1 million enabled developments in the Auckland property market.

I want to say something about that—the numbers that have been tossed around on this debate, and the 2 million that Chris Bishop said had become a lightning rod for discontent. It was never about, “We’re going to build 2 million houses.” It was about calibrating the Auckland planning system to enable the live zoning of 2 million potential properties. The reason for it, the reason that’s important, is that the planning system and the overly restrictive zoning rules have acted as a brake on housing being built. It is one of the main reasons that Auckland got itself into a terrible housing shortage, because not enough houses were being built because of this myriad of planning rules that stopped people building out, building up—stopped people building certain kinds of houses.

This move that grew out of the medium-density residential standards—and I’ll come to say more about those—was designed to flood the market with development opportunities to enable future development, thereby freeing up Aucklanders to invest, build, and live in the kind of houses that they want and places where they want to live. It was a good thing, a good reform. The worst thing about this bill tonight that we’re debating is that Simeon Brown and David Seymour are being allowed by this Government to stop houses being built in places where they should be, so that we, as a city, can build enough houses to meet the needs of our people—different kinds of houses: terraces, townhouses, and apartments, in places where people want to live.

Now, this is personal for me. I have a grievance about this, because the communities that I represent in West Auckland have carried far more than their fair share of urban intensification over the last decades since Auckland Council brought in its Unitary Plan and freed up the planning rules. And the West said, “Yep, we know more houses have to be built, and we’ll do our fair share.” And so, the West has had a hell of a lot of intensification—actually, more than it should have. Why? Why more? Because the leafy suburbs in the Auckland isthmus and the North Shore and the Eastern suburbs refused to do their bit. They don’t have the liberalised planning rules that we did. They haven’t had the intensification, and it’s totally unjust.

Because of those planning rules and the way the Unitary Plan was designed, we have a doughnut city. The intensification has happened on the fringes of the city, in West Auckland and South Auckland particularly, and not in the central city. And yet the central city has the best public transport infrastructure to support intensification. It has a far greater percentage of people who, daily, use public transport. It’s closer to the jobs. It’s exactly where the intensification should take place.

Politicians like Simeon Brown, Christopher Luxon, and David Seymour have succeeded tonight in imposing their will. In speaking up for privilege, people who have property, they are conniving in the intergenerational theft of opportunity and wealth from my son’s generation and they’re taking that wealth for themselves—and I resent that. I resent that on behalf of the people that I represent. I resent it for the people of West Auckland and South Auckland, who have done their bit. They’ve had the intensification, and now it’s time for the people of the leafy suburbs and parts of the Auckland isthmus that haven’t had the intensification, and the North Shore and the Eastern suburbs. It’s time for you to carry your share of the load.

There are some basics that need to be said about this issue. Reforming the planning rules is one of the most important things that we have to do. And, actually, we’ve made progress in recent years, and it’s been successive Governments who have carried the torch. New Zealand, in some degree because of the way that this Parliament has reformed the planning rules—people come from Europe, they come from the US to look at what we have done, because it’s bold and innovative. But this bill tonight is a climb-down. It’s a retreat back to mediocrity. Instead of a figure of 2 million, this bill only says 1.4 million properties need to be enabled.

I’ll tell you why that’s important: because Auckland Council have already delivered and enabled about 1.7 million development opportunities through the work that they’ve done, particularly in complying with the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. Now, to legislate the limit down to 1.4 million makes it virtually impossible for anyone at Auckland Council to argue that there should be more intensification along the corridor of the Eastern Busway, where the Crown has invested multiple billions of dollars building top-quality modern rapid transit infrastructure, but Simeon Brown doesn’t want there to be apartments in that corridor, because he’s against intensification. He lives in a kind of urban planning vision of the 1950s, and he has been able to exert his political will to undermine Chris Bishop and set back this policy. It’s an absolute disgrace.

Those suburbs that are getting a free ride because of this bill tonight need to carry their load. Intensification and all of the pain that goes with retrofitting a 1950s city to make it better for the 21^st century—that pain should be shared fairly.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (19:40): I’m really happy to speak off the back of that because I feel the same way. I was a councillor when the medium-density residential standards were in introduced in the country, but, obviously, I was based here in Wellington. This is just such a huge step back from the ambition that I thought we had all agreed was what we wanted for the future of Aotearoa and for the future of housing so that, like Phil Twyford has said, my generation and the generations below me can actually have a chance at maybe one day owning a home, which just is getting further and further away. That is why 200 New Zealanders, the working-age base of this population, continue to leave in droves, because there is no hope for us to own a home one day.

Let’s be clear: this bill is about Chris Bishop swallowing a dead rat. Chris Bishop is one of, perhaps, the only members of Government, and I’d say probably one of the only members of the Cabinet, who puts himself out there as a “yimby”, which means “Yes, in my backyard, build housing where I live.” It’s, basically, anyone who supports more housing and enabling more housing, so much so that, at the time, I’m sure he influenced the National Party to join with the Labour Party when they were leading the Government, and, alongside us and maybe others, to support the medium-density residential standards, which, simply put, means that you can build three homes of up to three storeys as of right.

Listening to the debate in the first reading of this bill shows that there is no understanding of planning going on on the other side of the House. Just because you enable something to be built doesn’t mean that tomorrow the developers are coming in and building what is allowed for. That’s not the way that planning works. How do I know? Because I helped to develop the Wellington City district plan, where—guess what!—we enabled intensification and, a few years later, you don’t see massive town houses springing up, because planning is a future planning exercise. That’s what it is. It’s not snap your fingers and the houses are there tomorrow—although I wish it was, because we’ve got a housing deficit.

The rationale behind intensifying our cities is that understanding and acknowledging that our city centres are the economic engine rooms of the regions and of New Zealand. Allowing more people to live in their city centres, to live close to the places where they work, where they live, where they learn, and where they connect with each other is a really simple way to make your city more economically productive, to speak in terms that I thought the Government understood, but it clearly doesn’t—looking at this bill.

The National Party pulled out of the medium-density residential standards, which means that the Government is directly responsible for enabling 400,000 fewer houses. That is huge. This bill goes even further than that, and reduces the housing supply potential of Auckland City, the home of more than a million New Zealanders—is it 2 million? Is it almost 2 million?

Ricardo Menéndez March: It’s getting there.

TAMATHA PAUL: For almost 2 million New Zealanders, it reduces that even further —600,000 homes are being backed away from by this Government. That’s 600,000 homes that will never be realised, because fake “yimby”—fake “yimby”—housing Minister Chris Bishop has backed down and been overruled by his colleagues that don’t even understand planning.

Auckland is a city—let’s contextualise it—where rough-sleeping homelessness has doubled in the last few years because of the choices of this Government to restrict access to emergency housing. Auckland is a city where 8,000 families are waiting for a public home. Auckland is a city where hundreds of Kāinga Ora public homes have been delayed or cancelled as a result of this Government. They’ve cut public housing, they’ve brought back no-cause evictions and made renting more insecure and unaffordable for renters, and they’ve always hung their hat up on this idea that they would enable more housing supply. It was the one thing that this Government was betting on—to fix the housing crisis—and you can’t even get that right. You can’t even get a simple, free thing right. That’s the thing about zoning: it’s free. It costs nothing to change zoning—literally. You couldn’t even get that right.

Then the National Party, in the debate on the first reading, were hiding behind saying that “This should be a decision for Auckland. Auckland should be able to decide what they want for themselves.” Well, what about let’s listen to the No. 1 spokesperson for Auckland, the Mayor of Auckland—who was elected by 180,130 people—who said, himself, “Two million: I was happy enough with that. Just let the market sort itself out. ACT is meant to be about the marketplace. They’re the most anti-marketplace outside of Russia,”. Damn, that must hurt—compared to even the Greens—and he’s right: the ACT Party are hypocrites. They say, “All hail property rights.”, but I wonder whether they know that property rights don’t only apply to oneself; they apply to your neighbour, as well.

What about the property rights of your neighbour to be able to develop and do what they want with their land? That’s right: inconsistency. The ACT Party are hypocrites. They brand themselves as anti-regulation, pro-market, freedom of speech, property rights supremacists, and yet look at this bill, which they’re heralding as a success.

Zoning is not about saying “This many houses will be built tomorrow.”; zoning is actually about sending a signal to the market that this is the kind of growth that we are planning for. I thought that was what you were into: letting the market do its thing. What this bill demonstrates is that there’s a fundamental lack of understanding about how the market actually works.

In fact, David Seymour said that residents in Epsom electorate were not anti-intensification, but if they were told that towering buildings would be constructed, looking into everyone’s backyards and their swing sets and their pools, they would ask “Why would you do that?”, and that’s what it’s about, right there. Thanks, David Seymour, for exactly summarising where the ACT Party stands on this, because it’s about rich, wealthy people in Epsom who don’t want the poor people coming and living next door to them.

Do you know how I know that? Because when we were rezoning Wellington City, it was the rich people in Mount Victoria and Oriental Bay that didn’t want the poor renters and the poor cleaners coming and living next door to them. Been there, done that, guess what! They never win, because there are more of us in this generation that deserve to live close to the places where we work our asses off than the people who sit there, have no job, own multiple properties, and do nothing to earn their wealth. Rich, wealthy people in Epsom, Remuera, Parnell, with their $2 million house prices, don’t want more housing in their neighbourhoods, and that’s what we’re seeing in front of us today.

I’ve fought against those same powerbrokers—those same old powerbrokers that live in the leafy suburbs—and guess what! I won my seat, over and over again, actually, with historic margins on that, and I wonder what happened to the people who protected heritage and so-called character instead. Oh, right—that’s right, we know what happened.

There’s no consensus in the planning world about what character is. This is what happens: these old powerbrokers, they’re cashed up, they’re lawyered up, and what they do when the planning system isn’t freeing up is that they take anyone who wants to build anything to court and they stop housing from being built. They use this thing and they weaponise this concept of character, protecting the special character of an area. There is no consensus in the planning world as to what character actually refers to, but there is a whole lot of literature that argues that character is a way of protecting the status quo and making sure that people of the same economic class, the same race, and the same background remain, and working people never get access to the inner city that is run off of their backs and their hard work.

When you are planning for more housing, there is a collective responsibility for everybody to share the load, which is exactly what Mr Twyford was talking about. We all have a collective responsibility and duty to share the load for our growing cities. This is obvious. But why is it that certain suburbs get to get away with not doing their fair share? We know what that is because I just said what it is. The House doesn’t like it. You don’t like to hear the reality of what’s happening here: that poor, working-class people, renters, are not able to access the inner suburbs—that’s the reality. That is why this bill started off so good, but is now reduced to so little.

I’m looking forward to the committee of the whole House and I’m looking forward to hearing your rebuttal to some of those points, because we’re going to be in for a really long night. Kia ora tātou.

SIMON COURT (ACT) (19:50): Let’s be clear about what this bill is, for the Hon Phil Twyford and for others who’ve weighed in. This is a clean-up job. Auckland Council has resisted growth for decades, through nonsensical planning decisions like denying the ability for a new seven-storey residential building on K Road, what’s now a car park, for heritage reasons. So the member Tamatha Paul makes a good point: the Resource Management Act is broken. I hope, when the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill come back to this House, the Green Party will vote for it because of its enabling housing, enabling infrastructure, and for economic development.

Now, I know the economic development part’s going to be a hard thing to swallow for the Green Party, who, if you look at their social media posts, would be quite happy for Kiwis to live in the dark, drive nothing, and maybe actually go back to a time when New Zealand was poor, but ACT does not believe that. This is a clean-up job because when National and ACT got together and agreed that there was a need to encourage more housing development in the major stories: the three storeys, the three units, everywhere—

Hon Rachel Brooking: August 2025—we’re changing something from August 2025, Simon Court.

SIMON COURT: Rachel Brooking, you can take a call and you can explain why three storeys of three units everywhere, which is the Labour and National policy that this bill is designed to clean up, didn’t account for infrastructure. ACT was the only party to oppose it. It didn’t account for infrastructure when we have artists like Gretchen Albrecht, whose paintings hang in this Parliament—an artist in her 70s—appearing at a select committee on a Saturday afternoon to say that this medium-density residential standards (MDRS) bill that Labour and National got together to propose doesn’t account for infrastructure: “I live in Grey Lynn. The stormwater and the sewer haven’t been separated. When it floods, the sewer overflows.”

Hon Rachel Brooking: Tell us about what happened in August 2025—last year.

SIMON COURT: Rachel Brooking cannot possibly believe that three units of three storeys everywhere in the absence of infrastructure was a good start. That’s why ACT said at the time this is not sustainable—

Hon Rachel Brooking: That is why there are qualifying matters.

SIMON COURT: Rachel Brooking, if you want to take a call, grab one off one of your Labour mates. Take the call and rebut it. In the absence of infrastructure, the planned development cannot possibly happen. ACT has been consistent about that.

I want to come back to Auckland Council—they’ve resisted growth. I’m aware of a private plan change for a commercial industrial development right next to the motorway north of Auckland where they have opposed it. They’ve said, “Oh, it’s not in the development area we thought all the stuff was going to be.” Well, who knew that hundreds of thousands of people who live in north Auckland and north-west Auckland where I live actually need somewhere to be able to go to work. Businesses need somewhere to be able to run their business, to manufacture and, guess what, that provides jobs. Auckland Council have been absolutely hopeless over the years of responding to the need for development.

Now, there are so many examples, but, essentially, failing to provide that balance between plan-enabled growth—in other words, what you SimCity obsessed planning nerds believe should be the right number of houses, Tamatha Paul—versus the amount of infrastructure that’s needed to support that growth is still the problem to solve. That’s why this bill is so important, because it rebalances what we could conceivably plan for and deliver in terms of homes and what we’re going to realistically be able to do. Because if you get them too far apart, you end up with really divergent policy imperatives that drive malinvestment and actually leave councils and infrastructure suppliers with nowhere to go. How does Watercare in Auckland know where to build the next central interceptor if they don’t know where the growth is going to go, if it’s everywhere all at once? That’s a nonsense, ACT said it’s a nonsense, and this bill is helping to reset it.

The next problem with Auckland Council—because, remember, this bill actually puts the ball back in their court—is do they know how to do the job that they’ve said they want to do? Well, we’ve set up the goal with 1.4 million dwelling units as what the plan that we’re asking them to enable should be able to deliver. But can they really deliver it? Because, when it comes to planning for infrastructure—when it comes to funding and financing it—Watercare in Auckland, while delivering a fantastic central interceptor project, has underspent their capital expenditure budget by $100 million to $200 million a year for the past decade. That’s a $1 billion to $2 billion infrastructure deficit that Aucklanders are suffering from because of a failure by Auckland Council to direct where infrastructure should go and to insist if Watercare’s going to collect the money from water users, if Auckland Council’s going to collect the money from ratepayers, it should actually be to deliver infrastructure, not just to waste on all kinds of things that this Government have said in a separate piece of policy that councils shouldn’t be doing. They need to get back to basics. They need to fix what matters.

What are we going to do about it? Well, this bill resets expectations. But, in the long run, we need to allow for flexibility where people want to live and work. That’s something that when laws are being made from Wellington, really doesn’t help the people of Auckland, who need that flexibility. That flexibility has been expressed, as Tamatha Paul rightly pointed out, in the Planning Bill, which is a bill designed to replace the Resource Management Act with a system based on property rights. Because unless New Zealanders, including Aucklanders, have the ability to say, “You know what? The next development I want to live in hasn’t been conceived by a council yet, but it might still be the place where a developer is going to build the roads, build the infrastructure, build the houses, build the parks, build the community infrastructure, maybe that’s somewhere I want to live that a planner in Auckland Council, despite all the hours they spent on SimCity, had no idea was where I want to live.” The new Planning Bill is going to enable, through a goal around competitive urban land markets and enabling agile land release, to allow developers and Aucklanders to decide where they want to live.

This plan change that we’re talking about today, under the legacy, failed Resource Management Act, has a zombie-like quality to it—because, in a few short months, when Minister Chris Bishop and I pass the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, Aucklanders and everyone in New Zealand are going to have a whole lot more options about where they develop that won’t be constrained by where some nerdy, wonky council planner or former Wellington councillor thinks we should live. It’s important to set this direction about what’s coming in the resource management reform. It’s important to recognise that this bill is a clean up. This bill is the ACT janitor coming with the mop to clean up the legacy of Labour and National getting together, on a whim, to design a three-units, three-storeys MDRS policy—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Last year.

SIMON COURT: Rachel Brooking—that even artists in Auckland recognised there wasn’t the infrastructure to deliver.

Now, before I wrap up, I just want to touch on this concept of property rights for the Green MP Tamatha Paul. What do property rights mean when it comes to enjoying property? Well, of course, people deserve some level of certainty—that’s what zoning is for. There are rules around the zone, how many storeys, what are the setbacks, what is the height in relation to boundary, what should I be allowed to build as of right. Those rules balance the needs and the property rights of the neighbour, who should also be confident that when a building project starts next door, they’re not going to end up with somebody looking in their kids bedroom window or looking down at them, like some of us like to do, sunbathing in the backyard in a Saturday afternoon. That’s what the Planning Bill is designed to deliver.

I also want to address some of the comments from Phil Twyford about enabling growth. Now, Phil to some of us is a hero. I probably shouldn’t be admitting that as an ACT MP, but the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, Mr Twyford, actually set the scene for why it’s important to build up around these expensive investments in transport, like the City Rail Link, and to build up around our town centres so that—for people like me, who live within a five-minute walk of the supermarket in the town centre—those benefits are extended to many, many more people in affordable homes.

I just want to close. This is a clean-up job. It’s absolutely vital. The ball’s now in Auckland Council’s court. They can choose to live out a SimCity planner’s unicorn world where there’s a 10-kilometre radius around the CBD and not a single house should ever be built outside it, or they can choose to listen to Aucklanders. That’s what I recommend they do.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (20:00): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, this is an interesting debate. Two million, 1.6 million, 1.4 million—these are theoretical houses. They are the houses that conceivably could be built under a set of planning rules, but they are not the houses that will be built. All it does is say that there are a certain number of houses that could be built and, under certain circumstances, somebody may choose to develop their property in a certain way, somebody may choose not to develop their property in a certain way, and somebody else might do it in a different way.

What we’re arguing about, it seems to me, is that there is a certain number of houses, and I do note that it is a minimum number. Now, if Auckland Council say, “We actually don’t want that minimum; we want to go further than that.”, isn’t that up to Auckland Council to decide that? If Wayne Brown and his team say, “Actually, no, we’d quite like to go for 1.6 or 1.8 million.”, well, that’s good, because they should be able to make those decisions themselves. If there’s any council that’s big enough and grown up enough to make those decisions, it’s Auckland Council, and we should be allowing them to do that.

The other thing I might say is that we are just in the process, of course, of changing the Auckland Transport regime, and they are going to have the ability to have a 30-year transport plan sitting alongside Government where we’re working together. Of course transport and urban development also need to work together and get those infrastructure things together. I’d just like to make the point, too, that, at the moment—certainly the last number I found as at 2023—we’re talking about 1.4, 1.6, or 2 million potential houses. It has taken us 183 years to get to the point of having 612,000 houses—612,000 houses. The numbers we’re talking about over the next 30 years—which are the numbers that we’re looking at—are way beyond what has been delivered in all the history of Auckland City.

Then I asked the question to you about the growth that we’re talking about. The first question we should be asking is: is that growth a good thing for New Zealand Inc? That growth is no longer being delivered by births being greater than deaths, because we know, actually, that we’re now at less than replacement level. It’s being delivered by migration. As I said in the first reading and as I’ve stood up in this House many times before and said, we actually don’t have a long-term strategy of any sort around migration. How many people should we have? What’s the age profile? All of those sort of things. What are the skills that we’ve got? We’ve got low-level policy, and that’s about as good as it gets. That is not good enough. Actually, it’s really good, when chairing the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, to have an organisation as good as the Infrastructure Commission saying we need to have a policy around this, we need to have some strategy around this. Otherwise, we are flying blind. We’re flying blind on the number of houses we want, and we’re flying blind on the infrastructure we want, so we need to have a coherent, joined-up strategy, and that is something that Government should be doing. Successive Governments have been woeful at doing that because we think about three years in advance—maybe we think about three months in advance. That is not good enough. If we’ve got 30-year strategies that we expect councils to deliver, we should be also doing 30-year strategies, from a Government perspective, about how many people we are looking at, what infrastructure is required, what schooling is required, and what health services are required. All those things should be the sorts of thing that Governments—whether red, blue, or whatever colour they are—should be looking at focusing on.

The theory behind all of this is that the more houses you potentially enable—the more theoretical houses you enable—potentially it will get the cost down because there’s more competition. You could develop this site or this site or this site. That makes sense to a point, because there’s only so far that you can push costs down before builders say, “Actually, it’s not worth it. I can’t make a dollar out of it.”, and they won’t build. We saw that because, in the COVID situation, we saw prices ramp up very, very fast; we saw development ramp up very, very fast; and then the market turned. What happened? There was a bit of a lag, and then, of course, development dropped down as the prices dropped down. We saw quite a number of developments that were cancelled because people could no longer make money. It’s only so far you can drive the cost down because there’s a fundamental amount of money, a fundamental cost, of actually building and delivering the houses and building and delivering the residences. We can only go so far.

More competition, more opportunities, and more choices are a good thing, except one of the other things there is that we need to allow councils to decide where and when the development occurs. You can have a development over here, a development over there, and development over there, and guess what! Somebody’s got to provide the infrastructure for that. You don’t want to have the cost of providing infrastructure in all sorts of different places and carrying that cost, possibly for decades, if you don’t need to do that. That is a very, very expensive way to do things. We should be allowing councils to do some sort of thinking about what the phasing is of this development so that we’re making sure that they are not carrying the significant cost. Why is that important? Well, first of all, it’s the direct cost. Secondly—and I mentioned this in the first reading—the Infrastructure Commission has been very clear that growth is not paying for growth. Growth is not paying for growth. At best, it’s paying for 50 percent of growth; at worst, 30 percent. The rest of that is falling on the taxpayer, the ratepayer, and whoever else it might be. Growth is not paying for growth. If we’re talking about markets, we need to make sure that we’re sending clear, coherent signals that growth does pay for growth, because, otherwise, it is falling on the people that are already there.

The other point is that these growth targets become very, very, very, very speculative. One of the key things we’ve got to make sure that we do is we’ve got to link growth with investment in infrastructure. We’ve got the City Rail Link (CRL), for example. We want to intensify around the CRL. That makes absolute sense. Then the last thing you want to do is then say, “Well, let’s do medium-density development all over the place.”, and you drag development away from the CRL. That’s exactly what you do. I know that when the medium-density residential standards (MDRS) were proposed—at the time, I was the mayor of Wellington—I said, “The first thing you’ve done is you have killed any chance that we’ve got of intensifying development around a key public transport corridor, because you’re treating everywhere, effectively, as being the same.” They’re not, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. You need to link investment with infrastructure. You need to be able to capture the value uplift, so you help to pay for that infrastructure. Otherwise, all you’re doing is you’re privatising the benefits and socialising the costs.

I know there have been things like fast track, where greenfield developments been approved amongst other things, but also private plan changes in delivering greenfield developments. For many councils, that is a real problem. They’ve thought very carefully about where development should occur and how that integrates best with their infrastructure. and then suddenly somebody comes from the side and says, “Hey, we’re going to do a greenfield development.” As I said, that would be fine if they pay for 100 percent of the growth costs. They don’t, so that is a cost that falls on the councils and on the ratepayers. We need to make sure that we manage those things a lot better than we’re doing at the moment, and we need to make sure that we phase development.

Penny Simmonds, when she was speaking in the first reading, said that “major investments”—I think I’m quoting her roughly accurately—“like CRL only achieve their full value when you get, essentially, full development around them.” That’s exactly right. If we spend, in this case, $5.5 billion dollars on creating this CRL capacity, if you like, and we don’t develop around that, we are not fully recovering the value. We’re not fully meeting the value that could be achieved through that investment—possibly, partly because we’re encouraging development to go to other areas of, in this case, Auckland City. As I said, the MDRS proposition failed—the whole thing—in my view, very badly. The key is that we can’t afford to develop everywhere and do the infrastructure everywhere all at once. We have to phase it and think about that very, very carefully.

To the comment that’s been made that the market will sort itself out—and that’s been attributed to Mayor Wayne Brown, who I have a lot of respect for—yes, the market can sort itself out, but we need to make sure that we send the right market signals. If growth is not paying for growth, then we are not sending the right market signals. The market can only sort itself out if it actually has the right signals there to sort itself out.

I think there’s an element to which there’s a bit of faux outrage on this. Whether it’s 1.4, 1.6, or 2 million, they are very, very big numbers. They are three times the number of houses, at least, that currently exist in Auckland, and that’s what’s been built up over 180-odd years. There will be plenty of capacity, and there will be plenty of choice there, regardless of what the number is. The key thing is allowing Auckland City to choose where development occurs, to phase where development occurs, and to sit alongside and support them in doing that, rather than what successive Governments have done—not just to Auckland; they’ve done it to other cities around the country as well—which is to keep on chopping and changing the rules and imposing rules on them. That comes with huge cost, and it is really, really unappreciated, I know, by local government. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (20:10): Let’s stop pretending that this bill is just about planning, or good urban design, because it isn’t; it’s about who gets protected and who is made to carry the burden. Those most vulnerable right now are not just Māori in Tāmaki Makaurau; there is a huge population who are struggling to put gas in their car, kai on their table, and actually have a roof over their heads.

Under National, enabled by ACT, and allowed to proceed by New Zealand First, this Government is cutting Auckland’s future housing capacity by 32.5 percent. That’s not a technical reset. That is not neutral. It is actually a political decision to protect some neighbours from change and push the change on to everyone else—specifically, West Auckland and South Auckland. I’m a westie. We know this. You can’t even get out of Te Atatū for two hours. That was why I was delayed coming to Wellington. The traffic is hideous because the intensification is just out of control in West and South Auckland. Well, guess what! The prices have gone up, and that’s an abuse of privilege—that’s an abuse of privilege.

As the member, as the māngai, elected by Tāmaki Makaurau, and on behalf of Te Pāti Māori, I represent urban Māori, five generations of it. We migrated from our rohe kāinga, our hau kāinga of Te Teko, four hours away, you can’t taxi yourself there. In Te Teko, many a Māori in our country—today, yesterday, 100 years ago—were forced away from their papa kāinga to urban centres, and still we are, at the very least, in this bill not even mentioned. Where is mana whenua? The cheek of it.

It’s rich to sit here and listen to members of this House say, “Let Auckland speak for itself.”, when the actual regulatory impact statement, in black and white, says, “Officials engaged with senior officers at Auckland Council on the detail of these proposals on 9 and 10 February 2026. No other consultation has been undertaken on these proposals by officials,”. Kei hea ngā mana whenua?

[Where are the mandated authorities?]

Ngāti Whātua, predominantly, in the CBD, the only mana whenua to the CBD—of course they’re impacted heavily. Property is their portfolio, is their domain. Did you even bother to ask them? No, you have not. Rather, you have presented this bill into this House, under urgency. And that is—I’m not here to debate; I am here to straight fact urgency. Why are we discussing this bill under urgency? Where is the consultation with the public, if you’re only going to rely on certain senior members who are put in positions on behalf of the wider electorate? Where are the 1.6 million voices?

Where are the 19 mana whenua of the super Auckland region? Remember, once upon a time, Auckland wasn’t one super-city; it was actually functioning really well when West Auckland has its own mana motuhake, South Auckland had its own voice, Central East Side, and then it got amalgamated, and then, suddenly, everybody doesn’t want to talk about the 19 mana whenua who are left out of this bill, the planning bill, the environmental bill. There is no discussion about Te Tiriti o Waitangi—takahi whenua, takahi mana, takahi tangata [abuse of land, abuse of authority, abuse of people].

You know what, Mr Speaker? It really is about locking whānau out. Tamatha is right. My passion isn’t just about the people who live now, but the decisions we make in the House really are impacting any Māori owning a home, let alone having access to any one of these new proposed bills, and any of those that are actually spare right now—which we know there aren’t, when you’ve got a thousand homeless people who can’t even access one single house right now. Where is the commitment to Tāmaki Makaurau? All of it; not just parts of it. The whole lot. You’re leaving—

Tom Rutherford: Not the Speaker.

ORIINI KAIPARA: This Government is leaving too many people behind for us to get behind any of this. I mean, there is no Te Tiriti o Waitangi clause. There is no role for the 19 mana whenua of Tāmaki in the design, nor the implementation of the bill. There is no commitment to prioritising Māori housing, despite Māori facing the greatest need.

Papa kāinga—let’s talk about papa kāinga. Papa kāinga do not look like town houses, intensification. You and I both know, Mr Speaker, that papa kāinga is the Māori solution, and that is what the Māori of Tāmaki Makaurau are screaming for. I look forward to the continued debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Before I take the next call, I just remind members that interjections need to be rare and reasonable. I don’t want to have a running commentary, and we’ve had a little bit of that from both sides of the House. So just calm it down, please. And a reminder—and I didn’t want to interrupt the previous speaker—that when you use the term “you”, you bring the Speaker into the debate, so, please, refrain from doing that. So just a couple of reminders there.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (20:16): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Our biggest city is at a crossroads. People are spending longer to get to work and to school, often working longer hours than they’ve ever done before just to make ends meet, and often trying to save for a home that they may never be able to access. What is this Government’s response to this crossroads? It’s to gut access for people who are in the most precarious conditions—often they’re homeless, as well—making it harder for them to access emergency housing; gut our public housing programme, where low-income people could have had secure housing; and, now with this bill, effectively, pushing people out to the margins of our city that are already facing the brunt of a lack of adequate public infrastructure—which has found more resource in our city centre—so to lock out future generations of being able to live in the city suburbs and the city centre, where there are jobs, where there are opportunities, where there has been more investment in things like public transport and infrastructure. This is the ultimate pandering to the wealthy few—people in Parnell, Remuera, and Epsom—by David Seymour, Simeon Brown, and Luxon, and the other politicians who keep pandering to the people that are not facing the biggest and heaviest brunt of the current fossil fuel crisis, for example.

We’ve got a Government that pretends that literally cutting the minimum amount of homes that should be built in our city from 2 million to 1.4 million is about actually accounting for the needs of our infrastructure, and pretending as though central and local government are not responsible for that very same thing; and, at the very same time, a Government that hands out billions to the wealthy landlords while stripping everyday people of the ability to make ends meet and potentially save for a home that they could have had in the city centre suburbs.

This is a Government that has pretended that we don’t have a crisis when it comes to the supply of housing—particularly affordable housing that can be better enabled through medium density—and, instead, wants to sell off State homes in the very same neighbourhoods to protect their character, claiming that we shouldn’t be having State homes in expensive neighbourhoods, because it seems like this Government, quite bluntly, just supports gentrification. They do not want to see young people living in apartments in Remuera. They don’t want State homes in Remuera. They just want those homes to remain accessible for the wealthy few. This is exactly what the Government is doing.

Let’s not pretend that Auckland also needs to rezone after, particularly, the Auckland floods of 2023, that’s what Plan Change 120 was all about. It was to account for the fact that we actually needed to downsize some parts of our city that were particularly badly affected by the floods, which I know, since my own street and my own neighbourhood was flooded and my own street is sitting half empty right now, as a result of the floods that we faced. Plan Change 120 was literally about recognising that because we needed to, basically, have less homes in areas that were flood-prone, that we needed to build more homes elsewhere, and enable that in areas that made sense.

It is time to de-gentrify Remuera, Epsom, and Parnell, and actually allow young people and working people to be able to see themselves living in those neighbourhoods. Those neighbourhoods do not belong to the multimillionaire, multiple-property-owning class. They belong to everyone, and the Government has a role to enable that by actually allowing greater density and more housing in those very same neighbourhoods.

I simply do not buy that this is, as the ACT Party speaker said, about going back to a time when we were poor. We’re the richest we’ve ever been as a country, and yet we’ve got more children growing up in this country unable to make ends meet. Make it make sense! This is not about taking us back to a time when we were poor; this is about a Government that wants to keep the poor struggling to survive, and enabling their donors and the wealthy voters to continue to hold on to rich property-investment portfolios.

The Green Party will continue to fight for communities that are affordable, where public transport is accessible, frequent, and—ideally—free, and where young people can see themselves living close to the heart of our biggest city because their Government believes in their aspirations and their right to affordable housing, which is why the Green Party will be fighting against this bill and supporting public housing in areas where David Seymour likes to take a walk and canvass to get his voters out.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie) (20:21): I am somewhat confused. We are speaking about the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill, are we not? So this bill here, right? The one that is about intensification in Tāmaki-makau-rau; the one that is about returning power to Auckland Council to be able to decide where they want to build the houses. That’s what the bill does! I do not understand where these critiques are coming from. I look forward to getting to the committee of the whole House where you can enlighten me as to where on earth these critiques are found in the bill. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (20:21): I think I’ve just had my invitation to enlighten the member Greg Fleming as to what’s going on in this bill. I think that’s a really good opportunity. The first thing I’d do is I’d ask the member to have a look at what’s called the regulatory impact statement (RIS). It has come out and it has this proposal that we’re dealing with tonight and it has a counterfactual in it. It says what the policy initiatives are supposed to be and what the objectives are. It goes through those objectives and it says that they will “Ensure [the] Auckland Council provides sufficient, well-located housing and business”—that sounds good doesn’t it?—and it will “Provide sufficient flexibility for Auckland Council and the hearings panel to respond to submitter feedback and evidence,”—all sounds really good. Then, it comes to a counterfactual, which is basically, “Do what we’re doing and make sure that we give people a chance to submit to the plan and build around the City Rail Link (CRL) stations.” That’s what the counterfactual is. Then, there’s the plan we’re adopting tonight. And guess what the RIS people think? It says, when it comes to the advice of Cabinet, that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry for the Environment consider that the counterfactual performs better overall than option 1 or 2, but the Minister prefers option 2.

Tonight, we are not doing what the advisers say, and we’re not doing something that will produce the best results if those are our objectives. We’re doing something that’s less than that. We’re doing something that people on this side of the House—who can read—are actually comprehending; it is not the weasel words spoken by the ACT Party tonight; it is the reality of the situation.

So let’s talk about it from the point of view of one of my constituents. Actually, if you would just bear with me, I’ll just take an email that I got this morning. This is what it says. [Interruption] So it produces—please, bear with me. Just listen, OK? This is what somebody in my area—I know that this person in my area lived in the next street to me and I know that there was flooding in his area and there was a guy who was rescued in a wheelchair in that street. It was quite a big deal, so he is concerned. He’s concerned when he sees the reports of this. In this bit he says, “We have no drainage or waste-water system—literally. Why pick on us? There are other suburbs that are inner city and have train stations. Is it because we have Labour MPs? I thought the Government was going to stop ordering the Auckland Council around and let us decide what happens to our city.”

Hon Members: We are! [Interruption]

HELEN WHITE: Guess what? Today, what we are doing is we are making sure—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): A reminder to what I just said around reasonable interjections.

HELEN WHITE: Thank you. Today, what we are doing is we are making sure that David Seymour’s area does not have the kinds of houses that are going to be going into my area. You have heard the passionate response of Phil Twyford today about his area, which already has those. We are deciding, in our centralised system—not the council—that, no, we know best. We know this is an election year and we are actually intervening in a way I would strongly suspect was partisan. We are not making decisions based on where the train stations are. We are not making the decisions based on justice. We’re not even making the decisions based on what our good council, the super-city, think—all those people who we have voted in and were supposed to make those decisions. No, we are making decisions based on what the National Party and the ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party have decided suits them this election. It is incredibly damaging to our democracy when we do that.

I have watched the flag be raised that we were going to have some sort of veto, etc.—and you can see our mayor is worried about that and is trying to take power back—but I want to just talk again about what it’s like for a constituent in my area. What we have done, since I have been the MP there, is we have had a plan. We have had meetings about the plan that was there. We have had people with a variety of different views about that plan. We have had a consideration of floods. We have made submissions. I made a big submission where I gathered up what I was being told by my constituents and I made that submission to the Auckland Council who was supposed to be able to go through that process. Now we are being told, “Well, too bad, we’re changing the rules again. And you’ve got about 20 days to get any extra things in.” A lot of that work that was done was really expensive—I think it’s about $20 million to do that work—but, oh, it’s gone because it doesn’t happen to suit the National Government today. That’s why it’s gone. It’s not gone because it made any sense and it’s definitely not gone because it gives flexibility. They are weasel words. It is not about flexibility, because if we want flexibility, we need to give the council the right to look at these things in the way that they should. We need to take into account areas like flooding, etc.—all those really legitimate concerns. We need to let that happen and we need to let go of it in that way because we believe in the people that are elected in that area. That’s what we need to do. Hopefully, as a result, we’ll get a just result. And guess what! Under that result, there’d be houses in places like Epsom—and that is important.

Now, I want to talk about the value of these communities, because this is something that I don’t think we’ve told the story of: the value of communities where there are more houses. If we do the infrastructure work in those areas, they are the best kind of communities. They have a range of solutions in them. They are close to transport, etc., but they are valuable to every community in the inner city, including Epsom, because it means that your neighbour, when their children have grown up, move into smaller places in the same area because it’s available, because there’s an apartment block. It means that your kids get to move next door or down the road and they get to have all the things that you have in a community with a multiplicity of different options. That’s a valuable thing. Actually, Epsom will be the poorer for its choices tonight because it won’t have the range of solutions in it because it is afraid of the value of people of different wealth living in its community. It’s really, really sad to see New Zealand dividing like that.

My community has some of that stuff in it, and I don’t want to go away from this speech without mentioning how valuable it can be, but it needs to be developed with good infrastructure. It needs to be developed with a sense of community. Those are things that are important and they need to come alongside it.

I take the point that some people have made tonight—that’s valuable and important alongside it—but what I have come to the conclusion about, over this term of Government, is that we have a lot of things in common, but we have a lot of things where we’re very different in the Labour Party from the National Party, and this is one. We have a sense of community. We are actually stretching to bring New Zealand together. I am worried that this piece of legislation, which is partisan, which does ring-fence certain leafy suburbs, which does not share the burden, which does not understand the value of communities that are multiple in the nature of their people—I am afraid that’s a sign of a Government that actually is extremely elitist, and it is going in a way that means there is going to be a division in society.

Now, I want to talk about one thing that is relevant to affordable housing in my area. We have an area called Wesley. I think the Labour Party should be extremely proud of the planning that was done in Wesley. I had a public meeting there the other day. The planning that was done there, the infrastructure that was put in the ground, meant it was going to be a walkable, livable, affordable part of our city. It was going to be great. Guess what the National Government has done? While barking on about affordable housing at every turn, guess what it has done? It has put that project on hold: 11,000 houses that we could have had in the inner city, that could have been an affordable community in the inner city, on hold, as if there is no crisis. I ask this Government to reconsider that—not put such things on hold—because they’re the things that stop people being homeless.

It’s a hell of a lot better to spend some money building houses in a place like Wesley, walking the talk of affordable housing, than it is sweeping the problem under the carpet by changing the law and criminalising rough sleeping. That is the difference between the Labour Party and this Government.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (20:32): Well, I must say, I feel like I’m debating different bills in this House. We are here talking about the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill, which seeks to provide Auckland Council with greater flexibility in how housing capacity is allocated across the city. That is what this bill is about. It was all about getting density right, in the right areas, where it makes sense: in the CBD, around the City Rail Link corridor, around major centres, and around major arterial routes and bus routes as well. The next step is that council will decide how this is going to be applied to the city.

Greg Fleming: Can we trust them?

DAN BIDOIS: Can we trust them? They are elected representatives. I trust my councillors to do their job; I think the member that just sat down should trust theirs. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (20:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call, and I feel very privileged to be able to speak about the worries and concerns of my local community, because we oppose this bill on this side of the House.

As the local MP for Māngere—infrastructure, housing, because of our proximity and because we don’t want to be that island in the middle of South Auckland, it’s really important that we in my local community are informed of what is happening. This bill goes against the very beliefs that our local representatives, who were elected by our local community just recently, in the last six months—intensification, getting roading and stormwater and pipes and all of those things. It is really important in our local community—and affordability and affordable housing in my local community. What we see is the intensification that was promised through the various elected member roles is all going backwards. Why? Because of this Government. The announcement that the Minister of Housing has made today, this urgency process to bypass the very democratic process, and going backwards in rewriting the rules is ignoring the will of the people.

I really want to reflect—I’ve been listening to the intense contributions from different sides of the House, and it’s really important that people actually understand the will of South Auckland. The reason why I bark on about South Auckland all the time is because I come from probably the most diverse community in the country, so I really want to highlight them in my short call. Minister, we feel on this side of the House that this bill is being rushed through because of things happening in terms of planning instruments. The Government must be honest, and it must be consistent in terms of the legislation that is brought before the House, because New Zealanders want to know what is affordable in this time, especially with the fuel crisis at the moment. Listening to a number of the speakers this evening, it is really important the Government realises that, when they fail Auckland, they fail the whole country.

We’ve heard the Minister this afternoon, and on this side of the House I want to highlight why he is buckling to political pressure and also not showing leadership for New Zealanders. Auckland is very, very important, and in Auckland, we’ve recently had a number of celebrations, called Pasifika festivals. Then we’ve had ASB Polyfest, where thousands of young people have come across not just Auckland, actually, but the North Island region. We want to give those young people hope. We want them to stay in New Zealand. We want them to represent the diversity of Auckland. When young people go to the polling booth, those that are interested in politics, and they vote for their elected leaders, they are voting for change, they are voting for hope, they are voting for Auckland Council to keep their promises to the people.

Infrastructure is really, really important, because just a couple of years ago we had the Auckland floods. We saw, in Māngere, a number of houses were affected, over a couple of thousand, and some of those people are still homeless and still displaced.

I just want to quickly reflect on Auckland Airport. For those that are interested in figures of domestic arrivals and also international arrivals, in the year to 30 June 2025, 8.4 million people went through on domestic trips. In international arrivals, the year to end 30 June, there were 10.3 million people, and the total of passenger movements in that last financial year, ended 30 June 2025, was 18.7 million passenger trips. The Auckland Airport precinct is in Māngere. For all of the Auckland politicians, it’s a very important piece of infrastructure. If we don’t have affordable housing, if we don’t have planned infrastructure through Auckland Council, then communities like mine in Māngere miss out, and our young people miss out. And what happens? They get on those planes and they go overseas.

I’ll just wind up, in my short contribution, by saying how important this bill is to Auckland, and getting it right for our young people for the future is really, really important. Thank you.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn) (20:38): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city—it’s the centre for commerce for New Zealand—but unlike many big cities in many countries around the world, Auckland still has room to develop, to build more housing, and to be able to provide housing opportunities that are more affordable for everyone.

What the bill does is reduce the minimum housing capacity. Reducing the minimum housing capacity only means that it cannot go below 1.4 million. These are numbers that are put out there for people to take on and be guided by, but it does not set a restricted amount of development. When we say, “Market forces will lead the way”, what that means, really, is that more housing will be developed in the areas and in the places where they matter—where people can be able to live well and walk to work and live in a good environment. It does not restrict development at all. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Just to inform the House that this is a split call between Labour and Labour.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (20:40): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

On Saturday, I held a community event in Onehunga, where I live, and it was on the topic of housing and homelessness, in that particular instance, where locals came to the event and talked about how desperately Auckland needs more housing. We’ve seen homelessness rise by 120 percent in this city. We’ve also seen this Government cancel 3,500 public homes across the country, 510 of those in the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki area alone, across about 11 plots. About half of those are being sold to private developers. While that event focused specifically on public housing and homelessness, there was, I guess, a clear plea from those who came along about the wider spectrum of housing that needs to be built across Auckland.

Sadly, members opposite don’t seem to have read anything in this bill. We’ve had National Party MPs stand up and say, “Oh, we don’t know what the problem is with this bill. What is the other side talking about? We’re still going to build some houses.” This tells us clearly that nimbyism is alive and well; that leafy suburbs and their members of Parliament, particularly Botany and Epsom—the CEO, sorry, the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, and David Seymour have listened to their constituents and decided “Oh, no, we believe in housing intensification. Of course Auckland must have more housing, but not in my backyard. We’ll build it somewhere else.” I’ll get to the “somewhere else” in a minute, but it’s clear that some suburbs don’t want to see apartments or terraces or townhouses, or more affordable housing, because they’re just fine. They’re wealthy and sorted.

And the sad thing in this is that the housing Minister had good intentions at one point and wanted to see additional housing. That’s where the bipartisan approach to the medium-density residential standards came into effect—because both sides, at that point, wanted to see growth in housing and in communities across Auckland. Sadly, that Minister has been undermined by his own Cabinet colleagues and now has to come back to the House and say, “Oh, sorry. Luxon and Seymour don’t want more housing in their electorates, and so now we’re just going to backtrack.” So much for “back on track”; they’re backtracking from their commitment to build more housing.

We’ve heard about some of the suburbs in Auckland that have seen intensification over the past few years, and I want to add to that. Right next door to where I had my housing meeting on Saturday is Oranga, which has seen a fair bit of intensification over the years, and it’s well deserved. It’s a community where Kāinga Ora has built a number of houses and has also worked to improve community and public facilities in that area, in the same way that the Tāmaki Regeneration Company has done on the other side in the neighbouring electorate of Tāmaki, where we’ve seen a huge amount of housing go into Glen Innes, into Point England, and into Panmure—where potentially more intensification can happen—and Mount Wellington.

That’s not the issue here. The issue is that certain suburbs in certain areas shouldn’t be expected to continue to bear the intensification burden, in a sense. We need to see other suburbs, I guess, having a fair share of intensification there, as well, and for that to be shared in a fair and equitable way across Auckland. It’s not fair that certain areas, particularly out East, which are well served by transport and road links, don’t see intensification just because of the nimbyism that we are seeing at the moment.

The final point that I’ll make is the huge amount of uncertainty that this Government has brought into play, as well. We heard that loud and clear at the Environment Committee from many submitters to the two bills that will be replacing the Resource Management Act (RMA), which this bill now tweaks again. They’ve seen Plan Change 78 and then Plan Change 120, and now we’ll see a complete overhaul of the RMA—which, actually, Labour and Government repealed and replaced with two bills that are only different because of this Government’s fascination with property rights and with eroding the environment. Because of all that, those who want to develop and just get on with building communities in our biggest city are being held back, and they were very clear at the select committee that this constant chopping and changing by this Government is unhelpful.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (20:45): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think it’s been interesting listening to members of the Government speak on this bill, because it feels to me like they genuinely don’t understand what the issue is. They’re genuinely asking for some engagement to understand—which is good, which is really good.

I think if you reduce the minimum build and you have suburbs in West and South Auckland that have already been intensified, there is no incentive to continue to intensify equitably across the city. You will do that in particular regions, as they have, and there is no incentive to equitably build across the city. What that means, in effect, is that for all the young people who are leaving New Zealand now, there will be no incentive for them to stay. It is really just that simple. I’m going to speak a little bit more about that in a moment.

I did just want to touch on the fact that we are here in all-stages urgency this evening and potentially into tomorrow, as well. I know I raise this every time we are in urgency, but I am keeping tabs. I think there has to come a time when the period that the House is sitting under urgency just becomes a little bit silly. If you ask people at home, “What percentage of the House’s time should we be in urgency?”, some people might say 5 percent or 10 percent. Well, in the 52^nd Parliament, we were sitting under urgency for 10.9 percent; in the 53^rd Parliament, for 15.7 percent—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Was there an emergency then?

VANUSHI WALTERS: There was an emergency then, as well, that we were responding to. Now, the numbers as of December last year are that the House was sitting under urgency for 30.4 percent of Parliament’s time—

Glen Bennett: Outrageous.

VANUSHI WALTERS: —which is outrageous for December last year. But please do know that I will continue to update as we progress through this term, because it looks like we will be facing more urgency.

We don’t have an Upper House. We rely on select committees for people to be able to submit their views. But in relation to this bill, the Government are making it very clear that they don’t care. They don’t care what New Zealanders think. They’re not interested in good governance. We have Auckland councillors who consulted initially on a 2 million minimum build, who then, when it was drawn down to 1.6 million, spent six weeks planning on the basis that it would be 1.6 million and overnight—overnight—they find out that it’s 1.4 million.

This isn’t responsible decision-making. It’s not respectful decision-making. Looking at the documents, so looking at the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement, it’s very clear that there has been a lack of consultation that we’ve seen in terms of—the documents say that while officials were engaged, no other consultation was undertaken on the proposals. The departmental disclosure statement says that the models that were used—so the options that were assessed—were done on the basis that it would be 1.6 million. So this is extremely poor planning.

Again, what the Government are essentially asking West Aucklanders to do—which is where I’m based—is to cope with the intensification, and in the case of West Auckland, they’re coping with the intensification without the adequate infrastructure around them. I know, because constituents have raised this with me frequently in Glen Eden, where there are significant builds in the community, that the Glen Eden railway station and the rail crossing is a huge issue in terms of traffic congestion, in terms of pedestrians trying to get across that crossing. But it may well be up to 30 years before the issues around that crossing are addressed.

And yet the Government doesn’t really seem to care about two sets of communities in Auckland, and that is South Auckland and that is West Auckland. And, ultimately, it also doesn’t seem to care about the young people who desperately want to stay in New Zealand, who want to stay here and get jobs but who this Government is making it absolutely impossible for, because they simply aren’t building the houses across Auckland that are needed for Auckland’s population. So I do not commend this bill to the House.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Auckland) (20:50): It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill.

I want to commend this bill to the House because, unlike the other side of the House, which talks about what officials were saying and about consultation between bureaucrats in Wellington and bureaucrats in Auckland, on this side of the House we actually listen to Aucklanders. By the way, Aucklanders are voters, and Aucklanders deserve to be respected. We’re delivering a piece of legislation which sets an ambitious target for housing in Auckland, which delivers the housing in the right places, around the infrastructure. Unlike the previous Government, which said, “We’re going to build three houses on every section, to three storeys high”, we’re actually having a common-sense solution. We’ve listened to Auckland, it’s an appropriate target, and now it allows Auckland Council to do what it should do, which is to consult Aucklanders and come up with a plan for the future of Auckland.

I hear them moaning on the other side of the House, where they’re complaining about the challenges with the process, but, actually, this is about listening and going through this process and actually understanding what Aucklanders need. Where this legislation will now lead to is that Auckland Council will have the ability, under this legislation, to zone its city, taking into account issues such as infrastructure, taking into account issues such as view shafts and heritage and a whole range of other factors, as it should do when setting policy, but with an ambitious target, which says that we expect 1.4 million development opportunities to be set, so that over the long term there will be the availability and supply of property so that young New Zealanders can buy their own home, so that there is housing in the right places, around the train stations, around the City Rail Link, around the bus stations, and then we’ll be able to make sure we have a balanced approach in other places.

That is incredibly different from the previous Government, who thought they could put three houses on every single section, to three storeys high. We have listened to Aucklanders, and now we are responding to this piece of legislation. Our message to Auckland Council is that, once this piece of legislation is passed, it will be up to them to ensure they have a robust process, where they engage with Aucklanders, and they will be responsible for the final plan for Auckland. They will be responsible for what that plan looks like. They will be responsible for delivering on it. It will be their responsibility to make sure that Aucklanders are engaged in that.

I commend this piece of legislation to the House. Many people across Auckland have been saying to me, “We’ve just spent $5.5 billion on the City Rail Link. It’s opening later this year. That is a fantastic investment in our city. We need to be focusing our housing policy on delivering houses around those train stations, around the City Rail Link, around the bus stations.” That’s about focusing housing around the infrastructure. That is a common-sense approach to delivering housing policy. I commend the Hon Chris Bishop for shepherding this bill through the House. I look forward to its passage through all stages. I appreciate that, while the Opposition might be complaining about what the bureaucrats and all of that are thinking, we on this side of the House are listening to Aucklanders.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill.

Committee of the Whole House

Part 1 Preliminary provisions, and Schedule

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. We come first to Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 3 and 4—“Preliminary provisions”—and the Schedule. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (20:56): Thank you, Madam Chair. As you say, this part is very short—two clauses—but it does include the Schedule. That is what I want to refer to, and I’m sure my colleague over there from the Greens will have many things to say about this.

Clause 4 has new Part 10 inserted into Schedule 12 of the Act. A lot of what new Part 10 is about is fixing up a problem related to the medium-density residential standards (MDRS). In some of the documents that accompany the bill, they say it was a technical mistake. It would be useful to have the Minister’s commentary in the Hansard around it, because, as we’ve been discussing in the first and second reading debates, the different legislation introduced in 2024 and passed in August 2025, after some changes at the select committee and then an Amendment Paper that was introduced on the day that we were discussing that committee stage of the bill—this is complicated stuff—what that 2025 legislation did was enable Auckland Council to get rid of the MDRS if they did a new plan change with the equivalent.

How the MDRS worked is that, if there were not qualifying factors, it was permitted to build the three three-storey houses on a site, but what happened—and this is my understanding; the Minister can add to this—is that some developers were relying on those permitted first rights, and then they disappeared with the withdrawal of that Plan Change 78, and so people were left with nothing and had to go through resource consents. My understanding is that what we see on page 7 of the bill, at what will be clause 65 of Schedule 12 of the Act, is that this is a fix for that situation. That’s one question: can the Minister explain that process and how it’s a fix? I’ve got a couple more on this point.

Another question is that we’re here in all-stages urgency, and we’ll talk about the changing of numbers when we get to Part 2 of the bill, but, given the difficulties that certainly I’ve heard about from property developers in Auckland, about this change to MDRS, why was this change not made sooner? There are bits of legislation that I’m sure it could have been added to. Also, what analysis has gone on to understand the effects on those developers of the MDRS being removed in that Plan Change 78?

Then, if we turn over the page, there are provisions there that validate the previous MDRS-permitted activity status, but it seems to me that this is all reliant on the property owner having a building consent. I do want the Minister to take us through that building consent process. Also, what happens to those properties or those developments where there’s been no building consent process yet? That’s one question.

Also, has there been any analysis on the new changes to what the Minister and other members of the Government have referred to as granny flats but are actually quite substantial buildings that can now be built, as of right, without a building consent? Are there any sorts of buildings that might have been able to be permitted under the MDRS that people may have given up on and are now doing something with the granny flat legislation? How does that all interact? If the Minister can comment on that, that would be good. Thank you.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (21:00): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to add to Rachel Brooking’s question, before the Minister gets up to answer it, and ask whether he has been advised about whether there are any developments that, if not for this retrospective deeming provision, would have become unlawful.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:00): Thank you to both learned members for those questions.

This has been a tricky Resource Management Act (RMA) gymnastics issue. Basically, what happened when the Act went through in August last year—“RMA Bill No. 2”, as we’ve called it, which, essentially, gave effect to the Plan Change 120 process that we are now in the process of altering again—the medium-density residential standards (MDRS) provisions that the member is talking about were withdrawn. There is a group of people, roughly around 400, who were in the process of applying for a resource consent or getting on with building, reliant on the MDRS, who have been affected by this.

It would be fair to say that the council and the Government had an exchange of letters around whether or not this was a legal problem. The council’s view was that it was, and the Government’s view was that it was an issue that the council could solve. That went back and forward, and then what happened is I started an investigation process, under section 360I of the Resource Management Act, which is the “Eden Park provisions”—what I used for the Eden Park changes. That then prompted the council to decide they had the legal powers to solve the problem. The issue has, largely, gone away, but we thought, for the avoidance of doubt, given we are legislating anyway through this process, that we would just make absolutely sure people could rely on the rights they thought they had beforehand. This is more for the avoidance of doubt—given we were legislating anyway, we thought, “Why not? It’s a pretty small and simple change.”—but the issue had been fixed before that.

That, I think, deals with the member’s question around why the Government didn’t move before that. It’s quite a big thing to legislate, and we didn’t really want to legislate if we didn’t have to. It turns out that we probably didn’t, but given we’re legislating anyway, we may as well do that.

Hon Rachel Brooking: It’s the only good bit of the bill.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It’s the only good bit of the bill? Well, that’s good to know!

Mr Twyford’s question was about whether or not anyone was affected by this. Well, I think I’ve sort of dealt with that: yes, there was a group of people who were affected by it, and some of them were quite voluminous in the media. The council and the Government had a—

Tamatha Paul: Who cares?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Who cares? Well, they care. The member shows her thinly veiled contempt for people just trying to do things. Actually, these are not large property developers, who I know the member hates. Most of the time, these were actually people doing things to their own property, adding another house or doing a variety of things, often quite small-scale developers who, through no fault of their own, were caught up in RMA limbo land through Parliament. The MDRS lacuna—the 400 or so people affected by the lacuna in the law—was not a foreseen consequence. If it had been, we wouldn’t have done it, and we would not have legislated like that in the first place.

No one advised the Government it was going to be an issue. It only came up once the council took an interpretation of the existing law that the Government did not expect after we’d legislated. They then told us about it. We moved to fix it. The issue has been dealt with. We’re now legislating for the avoidance of doubt. That is as simple as it gets.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (21:04): Thank you. I’ll just continue on this point and then sit down before a different point. If it is for the avoidance of doubt, can the Minister comment on why there is this building consent trigger and whether he’s got analysis that the 400 that he was just referring to will all be picked up by the mechanism that is the building consent. Like, what happens if there was a developer who was waiting to do it? Is he saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter, because in fact the council is wrong with their illegal interpretation.”—which was his point. That’s one question.

My second question, still on the point of the medium-density residential standards (MDRS) and the rights that people had under the MDRS that were removed, is that he mentioned just now that there was no advice to say that this would be a problem and that nobody raised it. I’m wondering if he’s done any analysis into whether the changes that were made in the Amendment Paper that was introduced on the day it was debated related to this point or not, or whether the changes to the MDRS provisions that created this issue with the council were always in the bill as it was introduced in 2024.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:06): The building consent point links to this, because what happened is that people went and got building consents and were about to build or, in some cases, were building already, not needing a resource consent because of the medium-density residential standards (MDRS), and then the Government let the council withdraw Plan Change 78, which took away the underlying MDRS zoning. They were stuck in this limbo land of having a building consent but having to go off and get a resource consent, and then they got stuck in that land. That’s the trigger there.

In relation to exactly how this happened, I don’t recall—but I could be wrong; I don’t recall—advice on it, and it’s not clear if it was the fault of the primary legislation that we put through in October last year or the Amendment Paper. It’s probably, in reality, a combination of both.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (21:07): My last point on this one, then, is in terms of what the Minister responsible for RMA Reform just said about the building consents and because there was this problem. What about the people who might have been relying on a certificate of compliance and were not yet at the building consent phase? A property owner has had their land zoned under the medium-density residential standards and they’re thinking and they’re planning and they’re getting their capital together to build their houses, but they’re not yet at the building consent stage. Are they able to get a certificate of compliance to say that it was permitted as of “X” date and they can still continue with it? Or is that all gone now?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:07): No, I’m advised that Auckland Council dealt with that through their processes, which they thought they had the power to do. They decided they did not have the power to deal with the wider issue that we are now dealing with—well, they eventually did decide that. It’s been an interesting process, to put it that way.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (21:08): Further to the question of the retrospective nature of clause 2(1), in relation to new clause 65 of Schedule 12 of the Act, it really points us to, I would say, the chaotic nature of this process.

The fact that the process the Minister responsible for RMA Reform has explained for dealing with developers who had begun a process under the medium-density residential standards rules really puts the spotlight on what has been a pretty torturous process, where the target for the number of enabled dwellings for Auckland started out at 2 million; it went to 1.6 million; Auckland Council have been consulting on the 1.6 million figure in the associated plan; this bill reduces the target to 1.4 million; the mayor is sort of apoplectic about it.

My question to the Minister is, really: what has this process done to the confidence that the people of Auckland can and should have in the planning process?

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (21:09): Thank you, Madam Chair. All right, where do we even start?

Hon Chris Bishop: At the beginning is a good place.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): With a clause.

TAMATHA PAUL: It’s OK. I’ve got this, Madam Chair. Let’s start with clause 63 in new Part 10 of Schedule 12, inserted by clause 4. So this says, “Nothing in the amendment Act affects the validity or status of any submission made or struck out”, blah-blah-blah-blah. That’s what I’m really interested in because I know and the Minister responsible for RMA Reform knows and probably this side of the House—but hopefully the whole House—knows that there were many submissions from people who wanted 2 million homes enabled in Auckland, including the person who got 180,130 votes from Aucklanders, who said “2 million”. I was happy enough with that; just let the market sort itself out. ACT is meant to be about the market place; they’re the most anti - market place, outside of Russia. And that was, of course, Mayor Wayne Brown.

I’m just trying to work out what happens now to all of the people who have submitted on various iterations of the Auckland Unitary Plan, who want the most density possible to be allowed under any amendments to the Resource Management Act (RMA) or any of the planning instruments that fall underneath that Act. It’s not just the person at the top, in terms of the mayor himself, but it’s also all of the renters who made submissions who wanted an opportunity to live in the inner city, close to the places where they work, learn, live, and love.

All of the future generations—and I know the Minister understands this—who aren’t able to make a submission now because they’re probably crawling around in nappies, who would one day like to live in the inner suburbs of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin—everywhere—they can’t speak right now. When we do planning exercises—so we’re talking about the validity of submissions, right, Madam Chair; that’s the relevance here. When we’re doing a planning exercise like this—I know the Minister understands this—we’re thinking well into the future. We’re thinking about what we want Auckland City, or what he or his Government wants Auckland City, to look like in a few generations. But the problem is that those generations can’t speak for themselves, so they’re not even able to inform this process. The question is: where is their voice?

I remember the Minister in the first reading of this bill tonight talking about “interested parties”. I understand that the RMA makes a special place for interested parties. But where I’ve always had beef with the resource management system is that interested parties are really only those who live immediately in the vicinity of the place that is being affected by the decision. But it precludes those who would love to live in the inner cities, and it also precludes those who maybe have not been born yet. What of all of those submissions that have been struck out, especially those coming from Auckland City mayor, but also all of the Auckland City councillors who also want to see more housing enabled? What is to come of the validity or the status of their submissions that they’ve made for 2 million—if not 1.6 million—homes to be enabled in Auckland? I could keep going—I’ve got more content—but I’ll let you respond.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:13): I can’t wait. Let me just deal with the member’s points first and then I’ll get to Mr Twyford’s.

The short point, legally, is there are about 10,500 submissions that are all valid and will be taken into account through the independent hearings panel process and then, subsequently, by the councils. That is, literally, the purpose of clause 63 of new Part 10 of Schedule 12, which is inserted by clause 4 of the substantive bill. The bill lays out a process to make sure that people are required to be told they can update their submissions or amend them in response to the revised target—well, it’s not a target; in relation to the revised minimum, and then the changes that the council will go through as a result of that, so they will have a chance to do that, but all of those submissions that have been made are valid.

The member makes a series of, I think, interesting points, to which I have some sympathy, around future generations and how they are taken into account in the planning system. It is definitely true that when you are talking about zoning and talking about theoretical development capacity, that is why you’re doing it, because you want to allow development opportunities to be there so that people can go and build houses for today’s generation—but not only today, the next generation and beyond. There is some tension there around the existing system and the way in which the planning system works, which places a real premium or places a real significance on the views of people in the status quo today. I don’t say that in a particular political way, but it’s just a function of planning law and, actually, also a function of democracy.

What we’ve tried to do here is make sure we get the balance right between ensuring the legitimate views of Aucklanders are given effect to and making sure that there is social licence for density. The member may disagree with me, but I would rather have a planning system or a plan change that the majority of people can live with, and make progress, rather than continue to have endless debates and backwards and forwards with different parts of the country and different people from different generations talking in different ways to each other. I would rather crack on and make progress because this is one of the most significant reforms that will happen to Auckland. This is one of the most significant economic enablers that Auckland can and will do.

Hon Member: Is it?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: That is definitely true. Auckland has spent six years not upzoning around train stations and City Rail Link stations. Unless we actually legislated, they weren’t going to do the City Rail Link stations to the extent that they could have done. Getting zoning in the right place where infrastructure has been invested in and already exists close to where people live, work, and play, and close to where the jobs are, is one of the most significant things we can do to aid Auckland productivity. That’s what Plan Change 120 will do and the time, frankly, for the debate and discussion is coming to an end. We just need to actually let Auckland get on with it.

In response to Mr Twyford’s points: has it been a perfect process? No. The Auckland Unitary Plan process back in 2010 through 2012 and 2014 was not perfect either. No planning process is perfect. No system is anything other than messy. But what we need to do is get on and find a solution that the majority of people can live with. And look, I’m yet to find a person who thinks that we shouldn’t upzone around train stations. I mean, there is a few of them out there, but they don’t talk to me.

Helen White: They’re out there.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Helen White’s shaking her head—oh no, you’re agreeing, that’s good. You are the MP for Mt Albert so there’s a bit of housing coming your way, I hope.

Helen White: But is there any in Epsom?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: So I’m yet to find people who don’t believe in that, and that is a bit of a sea change, actually, in the way in which we talk about politics. What was that?

Helen White: Is there any in Epsom?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, there’ll be intensification—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): If the member wants to ask questions, take a call and stand up.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There will be intensification in Epsom. There will be intensification in many parts of Auckland. But there will also be downzoning in areas in Auckland that are not close to public transport or where there are natural hazard areas. That’s another thing that we haven’t kind of covered tonight; maybe there’s a chance to. It’s really important that this plan change proceeds because there are whole swathes of Auckland that should be downzoned because they’re in flood areas. I know that Mr Twyford’s been concerned about this point in the past. In fact, I went to a public meeting with him three or four years ago around this exact point—well, maybe three years ago, post - Cyclone Gabrielle. That’s what the bill allows for so it is important we get on with it and that’s what the bill does tonight.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (21:18): I’m just going to do a couple more questions on the submissions validity point. Do you know how many of those 10,000 submissions were from people who belong to mana whenua or local iwi within Auckland? Because I noticed that in the regulatory impact statement on this bill, there was no consultation undertaken with mana whenua, and my colleague Oriini made that point: where was that consultation at? I’m really interested to know what of their submissions, and if those won’t be expressly considered amongst all the other submissions, is there is some other form of consultation that the Minister or the council might be instructed to do to directly work with mana whenua and consider their stance on the Auckland Unitary Plan?

The Minister responsible for RMA Reform talked about the medium-density residential standards (MDRS), and I really genuinely want to ask, because we’ve had the first and second reading now—and I just got the assumption that maybe some of his colleagues were under the assumption that the MDRS meant that tomorrow three-storey townhouses would be put up everywhere all over the show.

One of the concerns, I think it was, potentially, from Andy Foster from New Zealand First, was that one of the perceived flaws of the medium-density residential standards is that the infrastructure didn’t exist everywhere where that medium-density housing would be enabled, which is really tricky because this conversation is happening in isolation from the reality that the Government is actually able to capture the land value that is created through zoning to invest into infrastructure. And, actually, there are countries and cities, like Vancouver and London, who have made sure that their intensification, when it hits certain points or when populations grow or when housing is created, that it triggers a subsequent investment in the infrastructure required to support that housing.

Just interested to know: does the Government understand what MDRS actually is, because—I don’t know if you’re listening to the debate upstairs, Minister—but some of those speeches were acting like zoning means that the housing happens tomorrow. And we know that’s not true because we, together, have enabled heaps of housing in Wellington, which is awesome, but that housing isn’t out there right now, and that was what, two years ago? That’s not happening. I just wonder if there’s a bit of nimbyist attitudes that exist within the Government benches—obviously not you—that maybe need a bit of clarification as to what zoning actually is. I think Simon Court’s term was “SimCity planning nerds”.

Just one thing, you, in your answer, talked about infrastructure that already exists—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Please speak to the Minister, not directly to me.

TAMATHA PAUL: Oh, yes, apologies, Madam Chair. The Minister talked about something around the plan that he is bringing forward is one that takes into consideration infrastructure that already exists. Yes? Fair characterisation?

Hon Chris Bishop: Yep.

TAMATHA PAUL: When I talked to Auckland councillors, their argument is that Plan Change 120, or the Auckland Unitary Plan in its original form, took that into account. What it was a reflection of is where the infrastructure best exists in terms of where the transport exists, where the waste water is, where the libraries, the hospitals, all of the things that make up infrastructure, that was a key element of Plan Change 120 as they had already looked at the infrastructure capacity and enabled it. I’m just a bit confused as to why infrastructure is being used as an argument to further reduce housing capacity in Tāmaki from 2 million to 140,000—120,000.

Hon Simeon Brown: 1.4 million.

TAMATHA PAUL: The other thing is the Minister talks about flood zones—I’m sorry that my numbers weren’t completely correct; we just found out about this two days ago—and natural hazard zones; the Minister also talks about the importance of a plan around where flooding might happen, in the context of Gabrielle and the Auckland anniversary floods, but my understanding is another key element of Plan Change 120 is to allow flexibility so that housing isn’t only built in places that are flood-prone. But by, you know, hamstringing these rich suburbs from doing their part, that means housing will be built in areas that are more prone to natural disasters.

So really going to challenge you on the infrastructure capacity assumption you’re making, because that’s not what Auckland councillors and the mayor say about the infrastructure assumptions that underline the original Plan Change 120.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:23): There’s an interesting series of contributions there. In relation to how many submissions were from mana whenua into Plan Change 120: I don’t know; you’ll have to go and ask the council that. They ran the submission process on that.

In relation to the medium-density residential standards (MDRS): it’s worth noting that they actually are in existence in every city in the country other than Auckland. And there was a reason for that, which was they were too one-size-fits-all for a city the size of Auckland. And again, going back to the point I made before around the social licence for density, you’ve got to find a planning system that makes progress and works for people. And if we end up in these endless intergenerational cultural wars about it, we never actually make any progress. I’m focused on cutting through the noise and actually getting some stuff in place. The MDRS have been removed from Auckland, but that’s not to say that we can’t do density in the right places in Auckland, which is what the National Policy Statement on Urban Development provides for, and this new plan will provide for through the City Rail Link station upzoning.

I think the member asked: do people understand how it works? I think, broadly, I mean, I could say the same thing about her understanding of economics. She’s the one promoting rent caps, which would be the single most destructive housing policy for Auckland ever, which would result in—anyway I won’t belabour that point. I think people broadly understand the point, which is that you can have development capacity, but whether or not something actually gets turned into houses depends on market economics, it turns on development economics, it turns on demand, it turns on bank finance, a whole range of other things, and the point that we’re trying to create is a surplus of development opportunity so that we have competitive land markets and competitive development opportunities. Some of those things will be taken up and some of them won’t be. That’s the market in action, and that’s exactly the purpose of the Government’s housing reforms and, partly, the purpose of this.

In relation to infrastructure, it is true to say that Plan Change 78 was flawed in that it dispersed housing all over the place in areas that were not well-calibrated to where the infrastructure already exists. That is just a statement of fact. The latest version of Plan Change 120, which will go through some iterations over the next few months as it gets landed next year, is better calibrated to the existing infrastructure, not only because of the City Rail Link, but also in relation to the Auckland waste-water and stormwater networks as well. There’s some analysis floating around, I think—done by the council actually—that suggests that the zoning is better calibrated to where the infrastructure already exists. But the simple point is this: people say there’s not enough infrastructure, and that’s true in some areas, and if there’s not enough infrastructure, you can’t build. That’s the simple reality. You just can’t go and do it. You can have theoretical development capacity, but if there’s no infrastructure there and you can’t find a way to get around those infrastructure constraints, you can’t go and build. It’s just the simple reality.

There’s going to be more infrastructure built in Auckland over the next few years. Obviously, there’s a massive programme of work under way through Watercare now and there’s, probably, some improvements that could be made there, but also, members may remember my contribution in the House today around the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, which is an attempt to build a development system in which infrastructure funding is not a constraint on development; it’s an attempt to build a system where there’s an endless supply of infrastructure as long as the economics stack up. And that’s, I think, kind of the key point: rather than have a planning system dictated by planners and by arbitrary urban containment rules or arbitrary rules around where and what you can build, what we’re trying to build is a flexible system where planning is as enabling as possible—within some limits, but as enabling as possible—and where the infrastructure system is as flexible as possible to enable the flexible development opportunities. If we get that right—and there’s a lot of hard work to do and a lot of complicated reforms will land in the next two to three years—but if we get that right, we can have one of the most agile functional housing markets in the Western world. And how good would that be for New Zealand?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (21:27): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to note that there’s been quite wide-ranging discussion—I sound like you now, Madam Chair—on natural hazards and infrastructure.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The good thing about you is that I know that you’re going bring us back to the clauses.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I would just like to say that I will want to talk about those issues in Part 2 of the debate, so don’t think I’m not interested in those points, is my point, but I do want to talk about the temporary exemption from requirements of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD). There’s an exemption here—and it’s set out very nicely on page 8—where clauses of the national policy statement are referred to and in brackets there’s an explanation of what those clauses are; I’ve gone and looked at them, and they all seem very fair. The questions are very simple ones in terms of: why is this exemption needed? Is it because the similar studies that are required under the NPS-UD about demand and development capacity and future development strategies; is that because that’s already been undertaken and is not needed? It’s the first question.

And then, at Part 2, new clause 66 of Schedule 12, it says that when that exemption ends—and it’s the sooner of the following: when the NPS is updated and directs that these requirements are to recommence, or the timing of the 2030-40 long-term plan. It would be useful to know what that date is—because that’s the backstop date for the exemption—why it is that the exemption is needed in the first place if that analysis has all been done, and officials have looked at it? And also—and this is a question I’ll have in Part 2 as well—how this might link with changes to the Resource Management Act generally. With the Planning Bill, in particular, if there’s any thought about how that will work with these time frames? I have more specific questions about the other time frames in Part 2.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:30): This is a relatively simple issue. The short point is that the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) requires the council to start doing a Future Development Strategy and a variety of different things soon, and we don’t want them to do that, because we’re in the process of doing this existing plan change and also the new planning system is on the horizon, and so—this has actually come from the council—the council does not want to start a process that will be defunct soon at some point. It’s just an attempt to try and save some time and money, which I think we’re all in favour of.

Likewise, in relation to clause 66(2), inserted into Schedule 12 by the Schedule, I mean, look, the point is 66(2)(a), which is “the date on which the new or updated national policy statement directs those requirements to recommence”. The point is that there is new stuff coming in relation to that, which may—there is going to be spatial planning, as the member knows, in the new system. We’re giving some thought right now—the committee the member is on is also giving some thought to this—to the blend of what’s in legislation and what’s in national direction and how that plays out in practice. Getting that sweet spot right between flexibility of national direction but some guard rails in the legislation, as the member will appreciate, is not easy. We’re giving some thought to that, as I’m sure the member is as well.

There will be an equivalent of the NPS-UD in the new system. That’s now baked into a lot of plans around the country. It was a pretty good start. My own view is it could go further. In fact, the Government has actually made policy decisions on extending some elements of the NPS-UD—more mixed-use zoning, for example; abolition of balcony requirements in apartments; and also minimum size requirements and things like that—all of which is designed to enable more housing choice and flexibility. We actually made those decisions in June 2024. We haven’t put them into place yet, because we wanted to do it through the new planning system.

There’s been a range of things that have kind of intersected together and collided together, which we’re now starting to bring to a close—hopefully.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (21:32): Thank you, Madam Chair. For me personally, this is quite an important bill, as the Green MP who is based in Epsom.

Now, I want to actually start with clause 3 in terms of the principal Act, in Part 1, because I know we haven’t quite touched on that particular bit. I guess the question is, if you’re looking at this bill in its totality in its ability to amend the Resource Management Act, the RMA, one of the key things we discussed in Part 2, which I won’t touch on, is in terms of the reduction. For example, plan 78 and plan 120 allow for the same capacity, which is 2.07 million new dwellings. Then, overall, in terms of this bill, I want to check this specifically in relation to the purpose of the Resource Management Act, in section 5 of the RMA, which is around, in section 5(2), that the “sustainable management” in terms of the Act refers to: “which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being and for their health and safety”. I wondered, overall, as a broader policy question, noting that the capacity could be at 2.07 million new dwellings, would a reduction meet the threshold of the purpose of the RMA? That is my first question specifically on clause 3.

In terms of clause 4 in this section, again, I think my colleague Tamatha Paul raised a really important point in terms of the difference between plan 120, plan 78, and also the kind of submissions and validity of submissions that come from that. I agree with the Minister that plan 78 doesn’t allow downzoning, whereas plan 120 does, and I think that’s an important quality-of-life change in terms of that plan. I think a lot of the submitters have mentioned that. But I wondered, if those people are able to, as the Minister says, amend their submissions to match the new bill that we’re seeing in front of us—noting that they won’t have the opportunity to make a submission on this bill.

My first question is: I would assume that the reason we’re going through this under urgency through all stages is that the Minister would assume those people will make those submissions or make those amendments to their submissions on plan 120 instead—is that a reasonable interpretation of one of the reasons why we’re not going to see a select committee stage on this particular bill? If we’re looking at “Nothing in the amendment Act affects the validity or status”, will, then, there be an expectation on Auckland Council to open submissions, or, indeed, if the submissions are still currently open, to allow people to also submit in response to this bill, in light of the select committee stage that we won’t have on this bill—is that a feasible request? That’s my two questions on clause 63 of the Schedule.

My final question—which might be a really simple answer, because, again, this is the first time I’m seeing this bill, and the explanatory note doesn’t cover any details around the Schedule—is if the Minister wouldn’t just let us know why the applicable date in clause 65(6) has been selected as 9 October 2025. I was having a look in terms of the submissions, etc., but I couldn’t find any reference to a 9 October, so if the Minister wouldn’t mind just enlightening us.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:36): Look, the member shouldn’t overthink it. In Part 1, clause 3 says the Act amends the Resource Management Act 1991. There’s not a lot of debate to be had about that. That is what it does, so don’t overthink it. The bill amends the primary Act. That’s pretty straightforward.

The member’s second question—I’ve dealt with the process around the submissions already, and the validity, extensively in response to his colleagues.

Questions in relation to the date around 9 October—I’ll have to come back to the member. Maybe I’ll take one more from Rachel or Arena.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (21:37): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just seeking clarity from the Minister—he’s been very helpful on the process of submissions, because that is the messy part. I think we can all reflect on the difficulty that central government and local government find themselves in when there is back and forth while the process is open. That’s what I’m seeking to ask the Minister about now.

Given his comments around saving time and money on this, and the sort of laughs that he must have when the Greens and the Labour Party are standing up and saying, “We’d love more consultation”—a staple of every right-wing politician and local government on any planning bill who knows that the best way to do this sort of thing for the villa-loving constituents is to ask for more consultation. But that’s what you’ve got on the left tonight, so enjoy it for a bit.

What we’re asking here, perhaps, is for you to explain whether there is an opportunity to save some time here. What we’ve ended up with is, on 26 January—perhaps the 27^th or the 28^th—the Prime Minister comes out and he says to media, “We have taken on board the submissions of Aucklanders and we are responding. We are going to back away from the 2 million number.” Obviously, he had heard some submissions.

Hon Simeon Brown: Do you want more intensification in Hillpark? What about the villas in Hillpark?

ARENA WILLIAMS: Obviously, he had access to what we now know are 10,500 submissions. I can hear the former local body member for Hillpark heckling me that he wants us to listen to more submissions from Hillpark, so perhaps that’s what he had. Perhaps when he was advising the Prime Minister on 26-27 January, in fact, lots of people had submitted to the Auckland Council before Auckland Council had even had a chance to consider the first—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Is there a question here for the Minister?

ARENA WILLIAMS: There is—there is, Madam Chair. At that point when the Prime Minister was representing to the New Zealand public that he had considered the submissions of the people that the member for Pakuranga is advocating for, he hadn’t seen those submissions. Then it became clear in that week, the last week of January, that those submissions were not accumulated by the council. At that point, they couldn’t even tell us how many there were. Now the Minister has said that there are 10,500 of those submissions, and you would expect the council to know now that they have closed. But then we’re still, I think, about in the point where we’re in the back-and-forth ways, where there are counter-submissions. I want the Minister to clarify where we’re up to in that submission process.

It’s also unusual that elected members met on 10 March—and I went back and I found the council minutes of this, where they were able to discuss those submissions. But it’s very unusual for local body members, and actually in the bill they are prohibited from taking a position before they have been able to consider submissions. I would also find it helpful if the Minister could clarify—they have obviously taken a position here and written to him and told him that Auckland councillors have a level of comfort around enabling some of that development; 1.6 million was the number that they were able to write to him about, but that was also before the submission process was closed. I’m not saying that submission process—that is lengthy—is the right one. But I am saying that if the Minister is going to advocate for saving some time and money around that consultation process, then why is it that the independent hearings panel will now consider those submissions for up to a year?

Why was it fine for the Prime Minister to go out at the end of January and say that he had heard Aucklanders and that he was making a decision? Why was it then the appropriate place for the councillors to get around the table on 10 March and know that they were having a discussion at item 6.3 of their meeting about what number would be appropriate before they were able to consider those submissions, and why are we still in the situation where the submission process has not been completed, and yet we are now mandating a minimum number—not a target but a minimum. What is the status of those submissions in the first place, and if we’re not going to pay any attention to a submissions process—like the left would love, in some of these planning decisions—then why would we spend this further time? Why would we not expedite the process and get on with it, as he says?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:41): Well, I’ve dealt with this issue a couple of times now, maybe even three times: the submissions that have been made are valid; that is one of the provisions in the legislation and they will be listened to. There will be an opportunity for people who’ve made a submission to update or amend their submissions in light of the revised maps. There eventually will be maps.

Arena Williams: I’ve got a map!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, there will be maps; love a good map.

Hon Member: Mapgate!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Mapgate. Hopefully, mapgate will not start up again, but there will be maps eventually and there will be an opportunity for people to make submissions in relation to that. But, basically, cutting a long story short, we have created a bespoke process and officials have engaged quite extensively with Auckland Council around this. It is important that people are able to have their say. This is a city-shaping decision and it is important that local communities and local boards are able to input into that from a from a council point of view.

Hon Member: All those chicks with voices.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The member raises an interesting point, which is a bugbear of mine, which is this ridiculous notion that councillors and local board members are not allowed to have views about things that they are elected to local councils to do. The judicialisation of—that’s maybe not a word—but the—

Tamatha Paul: Maybe litigation?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it does sometimes result in litigation but there’s a word that means the overly legalistic way.

Tamatha Paul: Litigious.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It’s not litigious but thank you for the spelling lesson. This whole idea that councillors who run on platforms are not allowed to then implement those platforms and are told by non-elected members that they’re not allowed to express a view on anything in case it comes to the council or the local board, is frankly ridiculous. It is denuding our democracy on why we have local councils in the first place. If we need to make—and mine is a personal view—some changes down the line to actually let locally elected members have a perspective and not get told off by unelected bureaucrats that they risk ending up in judicial review because of it, we should do that, in my view.

Local boards have a totally legitimate role in this, as do the elected members of Auckland Council. It’s not as if Auckland councillors have been backwards in coming forwards about their views about various different numbers for Auckland housing. The point is this: the submissions are valid. I’ve dealt with that two or three times and I suggest we move on to Part 2.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (21:44): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Part 1 agreed to.

Committee of the Whole House

Part 2 Amendments relating to Auckland housing

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to Part 2, which is the debate on clauses 5 and 6, “Amendments relating to Auckland housing.” The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (21:46): Madam Chair, thank you. A few questions for the Minister to answer for the House: why is the Government reducing Auckland’s housing capacity requirement by 32.5 percent, from 2.2 million to 1.4 million dwellings? What evidence did the Minister rely on to walk back the target number of enabled dwellings to 1.4 million? Can he confirm that earlier work was done on the basis of a of a target of 1.6 million? If so, what evidence can he share with the House to justify further scaling back the target from 1.6 million to 1.4 million?

Was there, in fact, any evidence or data to support this policy change, other than the fact that his own ministerial colleagues—Simeon Brown and David Seymour—were openly undermining his policy, publicly and in this Parliament? Isn’t this bill that we are dealing with tonight simply the result of pressure from his ministerial colleagues who are opposed to intensification in their electorates? Is he aware that the effect of Auckland Council’s unitary plan has been to create a doughnut city where the suburbs on the periphery, particularly in West Auckland and South Auckland, have carried an unfair burden of intensification, while the North Shore, East Auckland and parts of the isthmus have largely been spared the requirement of enabling intensification? That is an inefficient urban form, and I know that the Minister understands that.

Is he confident that this bill and Auckland Council’s plan change will address the doughnut urban form of Auckland that has placed such an unfair burden on West Auckland and South Auckland, created an intrinsically economically inefficient urban form that distorts the competitive urban land markets that the Minister believes in? Is he confident that given that Auckland Council advise that their work to comply with the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and one or two other things, means that they have already enabled something like 1.7 million dwellings in their plan, and that setting a legislative target so much lower than that enablement, effectively, makes it impossible for the people at Auckland Council’s governing body to argue for significant shifts now in the way that intensification is distributed around the city?

Is he confident, further, that the substantial Government investment in the Eastern Busway, an investment made by the taxpayer, will have the economics of that investment significantly undermined unless there are appropriate levels of intensification—that is, apartment dwelling along the catchment of that busway—acknowledging that, notionally, that is within the purview of Auckland Council? But the process that he has led now, effectively, makes it very, very hard for people within Auckland Council to make those significant changes, given that they’ve already enabled way over the target that this bill puts in place.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato) (21:51): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā koe e te Minita.

[Thank you, Madam Chair; indeed, thank you, Minister].

Ko taku pātai [my question]—and just for the constituents watching at home, we are debating the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill, and we are in the committee stage, under urgency.

I just want to come to clause 6(6), new subclause (9) of Schedule 3C, the exclusion of city centre capacity. And also picking up that with Oriini holding the Tāmaki Makaurau Māori electorate seat and myself holding the Hauraki-Waikato electorate seat, our seats also cover into the Papakura and South Auckland area. So can the Minister responsible for RMA Reform explain which communities are expected to absorb the reduced capacity? That is question one. Also, why were the 19 mana whenua of Tāmaki not embedded as partners in this process? Was any equity analysis done on impacts for South and West Auckland? And also, further than that, were there any analyses done on the borderlines or electorates, such as Hauraki-Waikato, when we look at the infrastructure builds in Ōhinewai and Te Kauwhata, when Auckland can’t handle the capacity, and so the overflow and overhaul comes into my electorate, into Hauraki-Waikato, whether that be South Auckland or the north of Waikato?

Does the Minister accept that this clause protects wealthier suburbs from changes? I also note that for whānau in South Auckland and Papakura, in the electorate that I serve, and in West Auckland for Oriini as well, there’s already cost pressures of $170 to fill up a petrol tank at the moment, and whānau are really feeling the pressures of the cost of living crisis. Knowing that, and with all of this in place, what does the Minister have in place for communities like that?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to take a call from the honourable Minister, and looking at the answers to his questions, I’m going to assume that he understands what the “Auckland doughnut” is, because I don’t, Mr Twyford—ha, ha!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (21:53): I’m happy to comment on that. Let me deal with the member who resumed her seat, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. The first question was around housing capacity in the CBD, and the point there is the city centre was dealt with through a separate plan change process. The reasons for that are lost to the mists of Resource Management Act (RMA) memory. We are dealing with everything in Auckland within the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) areas and not including the city centre. I’ve started an investigation into unlocking some capacity in the city centre, which is an ancillary process, but related partly to this. But just to focus the debate, this bill is not really about the city centre. Maybe it should be, but it isn’t.

In relation to mana whenua issues at Auckland Council, those questions, to be honest, are best directed to Auckland Council rather than to me.

Let me deal with Mr Twyford's substantive contributions. The first point to note is the advice is that the minimum legal capacity might say in law that it will be 1.4 million. But once you take into account the legislatively required upzoning as a result of the City Rail Link (CRL) and the NPS-UD walkable catchments, you roughly get to about 1.6 million. That is likely where Auckland Council will land, and so that deals with a couple of issues, and it also means that councillors are sitting there saying, “Well, this is all pretty frustrating.”, and I get it. But, you know, the principles that they have adopted as a governing body and the process from here that they’ve adopted in relation to the upzoning and the making of decisions, they can just charge on with that.

Actually, part of why we are legislating is to settle the issue through legislative clarity and certainty and to say to the council and the local communities of Auckland local boards, “It’s over to you. We’ve set some guardrails. You’ve got to do the NPS-UD, you’ve got to do the CRL, you’ve got to do the metro centres. But, beyond that, you know your local communities best, and we don’t want Ministers getting involved in the minutiae of individual streets and individual suburbs. You just get on with it. You know best how to do that through the independent hearings panel.”

It is true that the Auckland Unitary Plan was a substantive step forward for Auckland, but not perfect. I had a discussion in the House during the first reading with the list MP based in Northcote, who seemed to be in denial of the evidence that Mr Twyford was quoting around the Auckland Unitary Plan. The Auckland Unitary Plan was good but not perfect. It has been an enduring frustration, I know, to that member, and indeed to me, that we have struggled to make progress on updating the plan in recent years. This is the latest attempt to do that, and I fervently, fervently hope that we can just get on with it, because it is significant reform for Auckland.

The member is right, I think, about some of his critiques of the so-called doughnut city, and the new plan calibrates the density and the intensification to the right places, far more so than the Auckland Unitary Plan does—far more so. I mean, even the idea of having walkable catchment around rapid transit stations and busways in Auckland—that is not in the Auckland Unitary Plan. To some extent, there’s smatterings of it, but it’s not in the plan, and so we are going to get that as part of this plan.

Parliament actually legislated for mass upzoning around the City Rail Link, because it was not clear to us that the council would have made those bold decisions, and they are going to have to comply—that is in the law, that is in the RMA right now, and it will continue as a result of this plan change. And that is really, really important.

Competitive land markets are not just about Plan Change 120, and partly, actually, what I’ve been trying to indicate, to some limited success, is that the debate around creating competitive land markets in Auckland, and, actually, Wellington and Christchurch, for example, is not just about the zoning rules in particular parts of Auckland; it’s actually about what I was talking about before, which is the ability to do new big greenfields on the city fringe that suppress land prices in the city centre and make housing more affordable over time.

I know the member understands that point, but being able to actually build on the fringe is a critical component as long as the economic cost of infrastructure can be recovered. And that’s the system that I know the member understands and that he was trying to build, and that we are also trying to build. We’re building on what we were left with and trying to make that a reality. It’s complicated stuff, there are barriers every which way you look, but we are making progress, and this is part of it but it’s not the whole solution.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee is suspended until 9 a.m.

Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

Urgency

Wednesday, 1 April 2026

Bills

Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill

Committee of the Whole House

Debate resumed.

Part 2 Amendments relating to Auckland housing (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Good morning, members. The committee is resumed on the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. When we suspended last night, we were debating Part 2. Once again, the question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (09:00): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just remind the committee that last night we had just started on Part 2. We had the discussion on Part 1, which includes the Schedule to the bill. We are now on Part 2, and this is where the big stuff in the bill is, because, of course, it is the decrease in the amount of intensification that Auckland must plan for. It is significant that we heard in some of the second reading speeches a lot of talk about how this Government was coming in and fixing things. So I would like to ask the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Housing, about that process because I note that the Minister in the chair is not the Minister whose name is on the bill, but he is certainly a member of Cabinet and this is a Cabinet that introduced in 2024 resource management amendment bill that linked to the Auckland Plan to say, “Don’t worry about the Medium Density Residential Standards as long as you do the same amount”—this is talking to Auckland Council—“as long as you provide for the same amount of capacity—then it will be OK.”

That legislation went through a full select committee process, which, I note, is quite unusual for this Government—and there were changes made by the select committee—but then when we were at this stage, the committee stage, a large Amendment Paper from the Government came in, and one of the changes in that Amendment Paper was to what Auckland needs to plan for.

My question to the Minister is: why, when that legislation was only passed in August 2025, are we back here in this House—and we’re still in March; the rest of the country is in 1 April—changing it again? What is it that has changed so much that between August and March we have to change things? And not only that—somehow in March we have to be here in all-stages urgency. So if it was technical mistake—and I think there was a mistake that the papers say was a technical mistake; I don’t think it was a technical mistake but the papers are saying it was a technical mistake—about the permitted status of the Medium Density Residential Standards, which is in Part 1 and we have already discussed, that is a different issue from a policy change. There was a technical mistake that could have justified the use of all-stages urgency, but that is not why this bill is not in front of us now. This bill is in front of us now because of a policy change between August 2025, when this Government was in Government, and March 2026, when it is the same Government. So that is one of my questions for the Minister.

I’m moving on and looking at clause 6, “Schedule 3C amended”. The most important provision in this bill is subclause (3) of clause 6, and that is where the schedule to the Resource Management Act, which was amended in August 2025, is changed. This is where we get to this number of 1.4 million. My question to the Minister is—I think I’ve heard this Minister say before or certainly some of his colleagues—that it is good to use plan language. Yet here we have “(a) provide a minimum housing capacity of 32.5% less than the housing capacity that would have been enabled if Plan Change 78 (as notified) were made operative;”, and that is replacing words that say “provide at least the same amount of housing capacity that would have been enabled if Plan Change 78 (as notified) were made operative.” In the 2025 legislation, it was at least the same amount and we’ve heard from the Minister that that is 2 million. So here I have 2025 at 2 million, and here there’s 32.5 percent less, as 2026. Why not say 1.4 million? That is the question on the wording here.

I have another question that goes with that. When, given that I’m interested in timing and I’ve spoken about timing at the start of this contribution, did the number change between what we see here and in the regulatory impact statement? So in the 2025 legislation, 2 million; regulatory impact statement, which is dated February, is 1.6 million, and then this piece of legislation, 1.4 million. February to March—a 200,000 difference. My understand is that the Minister for RMA Reform, who is also the Minister of Housing—I’m not sure which hat he has got on here—gave a speech, and it’s all on the Beehive website, just six weeks ago and was referring to this 1.6 number.

Now, he gave that speech, and my understanding is that Auckland Council took him at his word. They knew that there had been barbecues over summer and that there was this change in approach from 2 million to 1.6. So they were going around, working on the 1.6, and then on Monday—this is my version of history; I’m very happy for the Minister to correct me if I’ve got this wrong—there was a Cabinet meeting and suddenly it dropped to 1.4. Where is the analysis between the regulatory impact statement— the1.6—where the preferred option is still 2 million, and this 1.4 that that just popped out of nowhere, out of the head of someone in Cabinet, and made it through that process and into this bill? That is an important question.

While I still have the floor, I’m also interested in how this 1.4 works as a minimum. We’ve heard the speeches from the Government backbenchers in the second reading, saying, “Why are you all complaining over there in the Opposition about this? It’s only a minimum.” We did hear from Phil Twyford yesterday, talking about a doughnut effect, but I do want to work this through. If the minimum is now 1.4, not 2 as it was last year and not 1.6 as it was going to be last week, and we have already heard, and see in the papers here, that if you give effect to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and if you upzone all those areas around the train stations, then you are really going to get more than 1.4.

The argument is—and I’m very interested in the Minister’s response to that—that because there is already that capacity around the train stations, around those rapid transport routes, the council will be incentivised to not upzone, to not intensify, those areas that are not by the specified train routes but that are still close to the CBD, the town centre, where we’ve had, for decades now, a economists say to us, “If you want to really improve our productivity, then that is where you house people. If you want to improve our housing affordability and how our cities work, that is how you house people.” I can talk in specifics here to the Minister, who I know lives nearer Auckland than I do.

We have articles here about Parnell and we can see that many councillors do not want to upzone in Parnell, because there is a lot of community talk about this. So is the intended effect and is this what happened in Cabinet on Monday, the rationale that if you have the minimum so low that it’s going to be clearly surpassed by existing resource management instruments, then there is no way that those elected councillors are going to be able to upzone what some refer to as leafy suburbs, those leafy suburbs that many different Governments have been trying to intensify because of those good economic reasons that I’ve heard the Minister in the chair talk about many times. I would like some comment on that point as well. Is it the intention that those suburbs do not now get intensified, because the capacity is already met through the National Policy Statement on Urban Development and through those rapid transport areas?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:10): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m happy to answer the questions, which I understand the member asked.

In relation to the percentage and why it doesn’t just say 1.4, the reason is essentially a legal, technical reason in relation to the process that’s under way. Essentially, what Parliament is doing is legislating in the middle of a plan change process that has started. We had a bit of a discussion at the back end of last night about making sure the submissions that had been made in response to the withdrawal of Plan Change (PC) 78 and the starting of PC 120 could be valid. There were quite legitimate concerns from the member’s colleagues around making sure that the submissions were valid. The way to ensure that they are valid and listened to is to keep the equivalent capacity number in the law but reduce it down by percentage terms rather than go to 1.4 as a number. It just means that the process can continue—that’s the advice I’ve had. In practical terms, the percentage just reduces the number down to about a minimum of 1.4. As I’ve said repeatedly, the other legal requirements also kick in around the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) and the other existing legislative requirements around the City Rail Link (CRL) stations, so that will result in the number being roughly around 1.6.

Why are we back here? Well, I think the member knows why we’re back here. This is an attempt to land something that is met with broad consensus—not universal consensus or universal support or a programme the other way, but something that a majority of reasonable people can say, you know what, this is a good step forward for Auckland; Auckland needs to grow, and it needs to grow in the right places. I don’t think it’s worth spending a huge amount more time on that.

In relation to Parnell and other areas, the key point of this is that where Auckland grows, within some parameters set by Parliament, like the CRL, and parameters set by the NPS-UD, which has bipartisan support, it is over to Auckland as to exactly where it grows. That is a legitimate decision or a series of legitimate decisions for Auckland Council and its communities and local boards and all the rest of it. In Parnell for example, there’s a train station, and it’s near the central business district, so I’m sure there will be upzoning in Parnell, as there will be in other suburbs. The precise mix of that, the blend, and where and what streets—all of that is essentially over to Auckland Council. There will be a range of qualifying matters in some of those suburbs as well that Auckland Council has already decided to impose through the Auckland Unitary Plan, which they may decide to keep. The exact mix of all of that is a legitimate decision for Auckland. We’re not mass upzoning a variety of areas; the council is doing that.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (09:13): Thank you, Mr Chair. My question follows on from what the Minister just said and is in relation to that same clause that specifies 32 percent—the same one that Rachel Brooking was just talking about.

I take the Minister’s point around the difference or the discrepancy in terms of the figures and also what the Minister has just said—that Parliament provides some of the guardrails, specifically the specified City Rail Link (CRL) train stations and the proximity to the CBD. My question is around developers like the Tāmaki Regeneration Company (TRC)—a major landowner and major housing provider who aimed to replace about 2,550 existing homes with 10,500. The Minister will be aware of the work that they’ve done around Point England, Mount Wellington, and so on. They want to expand further in Panmure. One of the things that I’ve heard from them is a little bit of uncertainty around what they are able to do. Panmure is not one of the specified CRL train stations. The area I understand that they’re keen to expand into isn’t necessarily close to the Panmure train station either. They have of course submitted to Plan Change 120, but, given all of the other changes that are in the works, I think there is a little bit of uncertainty, from what I gather from them, in terms of where.

The Minister said that decisions around specific locations will then be for Auckland Council and local boards to decide, but then where does that leave organisations like TRC who are already planning? That’s my question.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:15): A similar point. Obviously, I’m familiar with the Tāmaki Regeneration Company, which I think has had an interesting ride over the last 10 to 12 years. It was set up with good intentions in 2014 by the previous National Government, with the broad intention of turning roughly 2,500 old State houses into about 10,000—much greater density and much greater economic use of the land, both for market housing and affordable housing, and for social housing. They are now starting to make progress. I don’t think anyone would be satisfied with their rate of progress to date. Actually, what it revealed once that process started was quite a lot of the underlying issues that we’re dealing with as a country—most notably, the infrastructure. It turned out that when they actually started to do the building, the infrastructure wasn’t there, so they spent quite a lot of time putting in place the enabling infrastructure to allow the building.

Leaving that aside, they do have this mandate to expand. It’s a jointly owned company between the Crown and Auckland Council, obviously. I wasn’t aware that they’d made a submission to Plan Change (PC) 120, but it doesn’t surprise me. A whole range of organisations would have made submissions. I’m fairly sure Kāinga Ora has made a submission because they are, interestingly, one of the most affected Government bodies by these things. One of the reasons Kāinga Ora sometimes struggles to hit their build targets—and this is true both in this Government and in the previous Government—is consenting problems at councils. They get the run-around from council staff who ask them things like, “Oh, we’re very worried about where the planter boxes are on the driveway”, and “We’re very concerned about the concrete on the property being the same colour as the grass on the property.”

I’ve got a whole list that I published the other day about totally extraneous, nonsense reasons that councils go through in order to stymie housing growth. People think it’s just private developers who get the run-around from council staff—it’s not; it’s also Kāinga Ora. The thing that really gets me is that this is for social housing for the most vulnerable tenants in our community—often extremely vulnerable people. You would have thought that councils should be bending over backwards to make sure those developments can get off the ground and actually get up and running, but Kāinga Ora gets the run-around big time from councils, and I’m pretty infuriated about it, as you can probably tell. Anyway—

Tamatha Paul: Build Arlington!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that? In Wellington? Don’t get me started on Wellington, because the same problem happened in Wellington with Dwell Housing in Kilbirnie. I’ve publicly talked about Dwell Housing being given the run-around from Wellington City Council about social housing in Kilbirnie, from memory. The council asked a whole series of things, and it took them like 18 months to get resource consent for social housing—leave aside the funding issue, which I know the member’s concerned about. You can’t actually build anything without resource consents. Don’t get me started.

This is part of the reason why Resource Management Act reform is before Parliament, because everyone is affected by nonsense council decision makers giving people the run-around and focusing on things often internal to sites. You might notice the new planning legislation removes, from the purview of councils, stuff internal to a site. The way your living room faces, where your TV faces, the size of your bedrooms, all that sort of stuff—those are not legitimate roles of the planning system. They’re not. The planning system should be focused on externalities, not on things internal to a site. The colour you paint your front door—

Tamatha Paul: No, minimum room sizes are.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: And orientation is.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —is not a relevant decision for planners. This constant desire—well, if you think it is a legitimate role, you’re welcome to those views, but—

Tamatha Paul: Well, can I take a call?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, no, hang on a minute. Anyway, I’ll stop. TRC have made a submission. The appropriate place for them to work that through with the council is the independent hearings panel. I’m sure they will make an oral submission.

In relation to Panmure train station, it’s exactly the same point. They will make a submission around that; this is a decision for Auckland Council and the Independent Hearings Panel and the communities of Auckland as to exactly what happens there. The other point that’s worth noting is that just because a plan says something is a permitted activity or it’s easier to go up to a certain height limit, it doesn’t mean you can’t do that if you want to. You’ve just got to go and get a resource consent, and there’s a whole process around that as well. We are liberalising the rules in this plan change and through this bill and the subsequent PC 120. Theoretically, you can go and get resource consent for all sorts of things in all sorts of places as long as you can get it through the council, so TRC will be in that position, too.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (09:20): I’m going to go specifically to this, but just on that answer around councils, there were some valid points you were just saying. I agree councils shouldn’t be the handbrake to housing and they shouldn’t be able to control every little element and aspect of development. But there are some important precedents or rules that councils can set; things like minimum room sizes. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a space like in South Korea where you’ve got tiny little boxes that people have to live in that are underground where people get no light, no fresh air, nothing, and they’re living in tiny little boxes. So there is some argument for council to be able to stipulate things like that, but not things, like you say, like the concrete matching the grass or the colour of the door—totally agree on that.

Right, so to the bill, my question is around page 3 of the bill. Clause 6(8) says, basically, that for the purpose of calculating the housing capacity, Plan Change 120 is using the same capacity modelling methodology as was used under Plan Change 78, and that’s what I really want to ask questions about. In the debate on the first reading and second reading of this bill, there was a bit of debate about what are the underlying kind of statistics or modelling data that underlies this change. I note that we’re carrying over the assumptions around capacity modelling from Plan Change 78 to Plan Change 120. I’m sure we can agree, hopefully, that migration patterns or expected demand in terms of housing or population may have changed in the conditions that existed under Plan Change 78 and the conditions that exist today. I’m interested to know: what’s the rationale between carrying over that modelling, because it may have fundamentally changed now? I want to test that assumption.

What is the model that’s being used? Can you talk to us a little bit about what that methodology looks like? The other assumption I want to test with you is assumptions around capacity and this concept of “latent capacity”. To tell the committee what that means, latent capacity refers to the belief that existing urban networks contain unused capacity that can accommodate additional development without equivalent investment in new infrastructure. I know that the Minister responsible for RMA Reform has been talking about infrastructure and that we need the right infrastructure to accommodate the growth and so on and so forth, so I want to ask what are the underlying assumptions as to the transport capacity, the education capacity in terms of the schools, the hospitals, the green spaces, the libraries and community facilities—all of the things. Because I think both me and the Minister would, I hope, agree that in intensification you have to also provide for community spaces as well. Otherwise, you’re just literally going to be living in a—to use the phrasing that you might use, maybe—socialist Soviet block of towering social housing or whatever it is.

Cameron Luxton: Brutalist architecture.

TAMATHA PAUL: I just want to test—yeah, brutalist Russian architecture or whatever—what the underlying capacity assumptions actually are because that’s a really important part of this conversation. My understanding is that there’s not yet been a conversation specifically about at what point in the population growth or housing development enabled by this plan will it trigger upgrading or recalibrating the infrastructure that exists. I’m keen to hear, just to be super clear: what are the underlying assumptions around infrastructure capacity now? And what’s the plan when this modelling eventuates, if it does? Hopefully it does.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:24): Let me start with that last point. I mean, the key point here is we’re not master planning Auckland in this bill, OK? Auckland Council is planning Auckland and that is a really important thing to just remember. There are no underlying assumptions in the bill around where the infrastructure is in Auckland. That exists now and the council has that information and they are the appropriate body to work that through with local communities. It is true to say—and officials have done some analysis on this—that the new Plan Change 120 that is now under way is better calibrated to where the existing infrastructure is than Plan Change 78, for example.

Plan Change 78, at a high level, had 2 million homes spread broadly throughout Auckland in a much more blanket way. This focuses the intensification much more tightly around where the infrastructure is, in a broad sense. That’s obviously not true for some areas but, in a broader sense, the officials have indicated—and Auckland Council’s indicated this—where the big waste water and stormwater networks are, where the existing infrastructure is, where the busways are, where the City Rail Link stations are, for example. Broadly, the housing capacity is more closely calibrated to where the existing infrastructure is.

As to future infrastructure, that’s a forward-looking decision. As I think the member knows, having capacity in the system is one thing; actually turning the capacity into actual houses depends on any number of different factors from market economics to immigration, supply, demand, bank interest rates, finance—all of those things. And another big factor is, of course, infrastructure. If there’s no infrastructure there to support it—like if you can’t actually connect to a waste water network, for example—you basically can’t build, so you need the infrastructure there as well.

Again, the importance of this plan is to indicate where the growth will be so that that can sink into the infrastructure planning to make sure that the infrastructure goes into the right place. So there is a symbiotic relationship between capacity and infrastructure and we’ve got to do both at the same time. That is, actually, what Auckland is doing right now. The central interceptor is near complete and is under way and is going to be big for Auckland. Watercare has got a huge bow wave of capital investment coming, for example. That’s the biggest constraint in Auckland. And, of course, the Government got the City Rail Link opening, the Eastern Busway—the last stage of that’s just been signed off. We’re making progress on the north-western busway, for example. At some point we are going to have to deal with the Dominion Road corridor. Members may disagree, but Auckland Light Rail in its previous guise was not the right model for that. It got too big and too expensive.

Shanan Halbert: On your terms.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that?

Shanan Halbert: On your terms.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Respectfully, no one really supports the idea of a massive overground underground at-grade all the way to the airport and all the way to the North Shore, which is what it became. I mean, the solution for that corridor started life as, basically, a $300 million tram which was probably defensible and supportable and it ended up as a $30 billion—and counting—massive transport project that the country can’t afford. Now, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I would tend towards the $300 million option rather than the $30 billion option. We are going to have to confront that in due course.

In relation to the member’s other points: look, just in terms of South Korea and minimum apartment sizes, the member’s right around sanitation, that is dealt with separately in our legislation—the Building Act, as my colleague Cameron Luxton says. I have a bit of a libertarian view about this. It’s not a legitimate role of the planning system to say to communities, “You are not allowed to live in a shoebox apartment because we as a council have decided that shoebox apartments are bad”. Shoebox apartments are not necessarily bad. If there’s a market for them, people will build them and people will live there. If there isn’t a market for them, people won’t live in them.

Likewise, people should be able to make the trade-off about a balcony or not. There’s economic research to suggest that minimum balconies in apartments, for example, in Auckland, raise the overall cost of an apartment by, roughly, between $40,000 and $60,000. Now, if you want to have an apartment, fine, go and live in an apartment with a balcony. But people and developers and communities and the market should be able to make the legitimate choice to decide, “You know what? I’d actually rather get into an apartment and not have a balcony.” People should be able to make those trade-offs because I’d rather people make their choice—and that raises housing choice. The fundamental thrust of this Government’s policy is housing choice. Shoeboxes, moderate apartments, luxury apartments, townhouses, terraces, bigger apartments, mansions. Just let people build. Just let it go.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I must say we’re broadening it out. It’s quite hard for the Chair to keep things narrow when the Minister goes very broad.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (09:30): Thank you, Mr Chair. The first thing I want to ask the Minister is whether he accepts that the stations that are being centrally dictated to build around are not City Rail Link (CRL) stations. For most of them, actually, the CRL ends and they’re the stations beyond that. Those stations have got no infrastructure around them. There’s no grade separation which means the trains could continue through, so it’s not actually possible for those trains to speed through those areas and get people there as fast as the CRL—those works that you would expect to be a commitment to upgrade at the same time as any focus centrally. For things like schools, which are centrally funded and centrally planned, we would expect to see those in the area of Mount Albert alongside this kind of focus centrally if that was the case.

The second thing I wanted to point out is that, while there is a new interceptor, the people building that have made it abundantly clear that it is not going to cope with the level of water in storms. It does not do that. There is no stormwater system in my area, and because it’s rock, there is a lot of space in that area where there is flooding that is very particular. I wanted to ask about the commitment in terms of the number of houses and whether there had been any attempt to look at the actual number of houses. This is something that I addressed in my submission under the old rules. It went out as a collaborative sort of effort to gather up the main points that were of concern to my constituency. One of them was this number: 2 million, 1.4 million. It’s just theory, because, in fact, there are a whole lot of places which cannot be built on because of flood issues. I appreciate there’s still the capacity to put that in, but has there been any investigation as to what the actual number of houses that can be built is?

I want to come back the Minister’s logic as I understood it. I know that we are both very interested in the book Abundance and the idea of taking zoning out of the equation and allowing there to be a lot more land available. It’s an interesting idea, but does the Minister concede that, at this point, we’ve got an absolute fail here? We’ve got a number with a big question mark over it about what that capacity looks like. Zoning will not be taken away in the same way, and, actually, we may have eroded the very fundamental concept here. There simply isn’t going to be a whole lot of cheap land available and a market produced for cheaper land, so we’re not going to see the cost of those houses come down in that way. I know the Minister has talked about how there will be other levers pulled for affordable housing in this area. I guess my constituents would be horrified by the idea of shoebox apartments. That’s not what they want in their community. They want well-planned community which has green space, which has a really good life for people living in it. I suspect most of them would reject that and be horrified that that was coming to their area soon.

I also want to ask the Minister about why, if there is this commitment here to build housing—and he said this is all about flexibility and actually practically getting it done—we’ve put a hold on the Wesley project, which was well planned, which was an amazing project. We should be very proud in Labour to have made it all the way to getting the shovels in the ground. It stopped, and that area has a whole lot of capacity for housing. It’s 11,000 houses, as I understand it, that could be built there, and they would be affordable. What is the relationship between this kind of legislation and putting a hold on that? Isn’t it possible at least to build houses we’re ready to build that are affordable, that are good for disability, that are all well planned rather than shoebox apartments, which is what the Minister seems to be offering instead? Thank you. I’ll let the Minister go, but I’d like to come back.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:34): Well, a few things here: one is that I encourage the member Helen White to talk to her colleagues about the economic evidence around upzoning, because she seems to be denying what is now broadly accepted by public policy experts: that upzoning and making greater use of the land we’ve already got improves affordability over time. As I said to her colleague yesterday, I refer her to the research of Dr Ryan McGreevy and others, and Dr Stuart Donovan, who found that the Auckland Unitary Plan broad upzoning—which is now internationally studied, by the way. If you go to New York, as I did last year, or go to other countries, or Australia, public policy housing experts basically now consider Auckland a paradigmatic example of how upzoning can improve affordability.

It is just true to say, almost certainly true to say, that Auckland rents are now lower than they otherwise would be as a result of the upzoning created by the Auckland Unitary Plan. That is just almost accepted as true. There are a few dissenting voices in the economics profession, but there aren’t that many. There’s also the occasional economist who’d tell you that rent control is good. There’s the occasional economist who’d tell you that tariffs are great and that free trade is a bad idea. They’re cranks, to be honest; most people don’t think that. The vast bulk of the economics profession thinks that one of the best things we can do for housing affordability is land supply and upzoning. That’s what happened in Auckland, and this is now the next step.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Correction: the loudest.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, feel free to disagree. I look forward to your speech.

To the City Rail Link, yes, it’s true that the City Rail Link stations in this bill are not “CRL” stations, but it’s a network, right? Once you put the CRL stations in place, it’s a network. In relation to the member’s constituency, over time, not straightaway—let’s get it open—there will be more—

Hon Rachel Brooking: When?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, good question. Over time, there will be more trains running at greater frequency and reliability because of the CRL investments and the rest of the rail network rebuild, which has been enormously painful for many parts of Auckland over the last five years, as we get ready for CRL. That deals with that point.

The member is right about schools. One of the things that’s frustrated me, as Minister of many things, is the lack of coordination between housing and transport and planning, and that’s partly why we’re creating the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT), so that rather than have five different Government agencies—in fact, more than that—dealing with all of these issues, we’ve got a focused central government repository and mechanism in order to do better planning, like the member talks about, and better master planning, in particular where the Crown is making heavy investments, Drury being a notable example, where, basically by accident, we are building a new city.

We are basically building a Napier in Drury. That has happened by accident, largely caused by private plan changes. The last Government decided to build new train stations, which was great—I’m not opposed to that—and then you’ve got the development contribution with the Auckland Council, which has gone up and down, and they’ve had an endless debate about that. Kind of by accident and a bit ham-fistedly, in a classic New Zealand kind of bugger’s muddle way, we have gone into building this new city without actually having thought very hard about how to do it properly. I agree with the member around that: we do that stuff really badly in New Zealand. That’s partly why we’re creating MCERT and setting up some new institutional structures around that.

I deny the member’s point—I just reject absolutely the idea—that zoning doesn’t matter. It does. It will lead to more affordable housing over time. The member might not like shoebox apartments, but the member has to accept that there are trade-offs. The more you stop development that the market will support and that people want, there are trade-offs as a result of that. It is just true to say that cities that make it harder to build housing, that don’t allow for the zoning, have worse homelessness than cities that don’t. San Francisco is the most notable example of that. It’s really difficult to build apartments in San Francisco. It’s really difficult for San Francisco to grow. They have the worst homelessness in the United States. Cities in Texas, cities with land markets where there’s freedom to build and where the zoning is loose and deregulated, have far less rates of homelessness. There are trade-offs—there are trade-offs—as a result of always demanding nice things, nice apartments. Everyone wants to live in a nice apartment. The reality is that not everyone can, and, actually, what people need are housing choices and housing options.

In relation to Wesley and some of the other large Crown investments unaffected by this plan change, the large-scale projects are proceeding, and the member’s colleague will be familiar with the Northcote development, which is the first large-scale project kicked off by the previous Government, which, again, is taking probably a bit longer than people would like but is now coming to its end. I understand the member may wish to comment. It’s been a very successful project in Northcote.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (09:40): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to come back. Since my last contribution, the Minister has raised many issues, and I would like to note that I agree strongly with some of what the Minister was saying about infrastructure and the importance of the upzoning and the intensification. I am interested in how he can say that this legislation, though, is the next step in making progress, because my reading of this is that this is a backwards step. Was the Minister referring to a forward step or a backwards step? That is my first question.

I’m also interested that the Minister raised a whole lot of issues around social housing in an earlier contribution, and so I would like the Minister to reflect on his planning bill, which he raised, and where the social housing goals are in that legislation to enable the sort of decision making that he was talking about in terms of councils. I would also be interested in the Minister’s comments where he was talking about the Resource Management Act (RMA) being the problem for social housing in not being able to get consents, when, of course, in the great city of Dunedin, there are a consented 41-42 apartments ready to go in Carroll Street, yet that is not going ahead because of funding. Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that, noting that the Minister brought up the social housing issue.

Now, going back to his answer to my question on clause 6(3), which is this “32.5% less”, he said, “Well, the council’s going to continue with all of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development and the railway stations, and so it’s likely going to get to 1.6 anyway.” Now, noting I had my question around the amount of work that the council has done in the past six weeks from this Minister’s speech, which had the 1.6 number, is he now telling Auckland Council, well, that’s fine, just go ahead with all the work that you were doing in that past six weeks, because, in fact, this is merely a minimum that we are setting? That is a separate question—I’ve got more.

Then I have another question. Well, if that is the case—go back to where you were six weeks ago, Auckland Council—can he also say, well, Auckland Council, if you want to go to the 2 million, that is your choice as well; you can ignore all of this legislation that is for some reason in all-stages urgency? That’s one set of questions.

I also then, related to this, want to ask the Minister who are the bureaucrats that his colleague Simeon Brown referred to in his second reading speech yesterday? The Hon Simeon Brown was saying over and over again that this is a Government that just ignores bureaucrats who get in the way. Was that the bureaucrats who wrote this regulatory impact statement that was based on 1.6 million, but the regulatory impact statement recommends the counterfactual, which is the status quo of 2 million—is that who Simeon Brown was referring to, or was it some other bureaucrats? What was the decision that this Government is now going against with this all-stages urgent legislation?

Now, moving to a related but slightly different topic, also related to clause 6, on page 3, there is a change at subclause (4), and it relates to Schedule 3C of the RMA: in 4(2) of the schedule, insert “or”. Now, I want to take the Minister through this. If you go to Schedule 3C of the RMA, clause 4—this is the requirements for the unitary plan if Plan Change 78 is withdrawn. We’ve traversed, to some extent, the 1.2 million, the 32.5 percent issue. There’s paragraph (a), which is this amount, this number—2 million, 1.6 million, 1.4 million, 32.5 percent less, in (a)—and then there is an “and” after (a). It says, “enable, within at least a walkable catchment of”, and then it lists some stations. We’ve got Mount Eden, Kingsland, and Morningside stations. Then there’s the heights and densities. As far as I can see, there’s no change to those named stations in the legislation.

But then at the end of that, it says “in all cases, building heights of at least 15 storeys in those locations”—and then this is the critical point. The critical point is that at the moment, after the list of the train stations and the 15 storeys, there’s an “and”: “(c) enable, within at least a walkable catchment of the Baldwin Avenue and Mount Albert Stations,—”, and then some heights and density issues. I think what this legislation is doing is it changes that “and enable” to an “or (c)”. I really want to understand how that works, if I’m looking at the right part of the schedule, and what the intention is of that difference between “and” / “or (c)” in terms of how (b) and (c) of that clause 4 of the schedule work.

I see the Minister is talking to officials here. I’m looking at the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Act 2025, which inserted the new Schedule 3C, so there might be some—I don’t know if it could have changed since then. But if the Minister can comment on his—clause 6(4), what is the effect of subclause (4) of clause 6 in terms of what it is doing to Schedule 3C and that “and” and “or”? What exactly is it? I mean, he might want to comment as well—we’re going to talk about the stations that are in and out. If he can talk to why it is those stations, why there’s an “or”, and if he considered adding in any other stations to these provisions at all.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:46): In relation to that last point, it’s essentially to clarify that the council can reduce intensification due to qualifying matters around those walkable catchments, which has always been the case and will be; qualifying matters like special character—it’s not actually listed in the Resource Management Act, but it has been used by the council, and we’re not intending to change that; infrastructure of waste-water qualifying matters—a whole range of other qualifying matters in there.

The member asks around is this a forward or backward step? Well, like, objectively, it is a forward step. The Auckland Unitary Plan allows for 1.2 million. With this, we’ll end up at about 1.6. It’s obviously not as high as 2 million, but it is undoubtedly a step forward.

The member asks around social housing. The key point is that social housing is just another form of housing. Its ownership and the resident type are kind of irrelevant. At the end of the day, they’re houses, and the planning system needs to enable all forms of houses.

In relation to the member’s point around the bureaucrats, I didn’t actually hear that second reading speech, so it’s difficult for me to comment on it. It would be fair to say that there has been an enormous effort between officials at the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and Auckland Council working very hard on this shared public policy problem in an attempt to get to a landing pad that the majority of reasonable people can agree with as a step forward for Auckland. I thank the officials for their hard work.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (09:48): Thank you so much, Mr Chair. I just want to pick up on some of the Minister’s earlier comments in response to Tamatha Paul’s questions. These are the kind of questions we would have been able to ask at the select committee, should this have not been brought in urgency. Particularly with the stuff in clause 6(3) around the reduction on the minimum housing capacity, basically, I wanted to ask if any work had been done on the modelling and changes around job creation as a result of this change. Basically, we know that unemployment is high, and the construction sector has particularly suffered as a result of this, affecting young people, Māori, Pasifika, people in our communities, including in Auckland. The changes to the minimum housing capacity will, obviously, mean, I’m assuming, that less job opportunities may end up existing, should we have kept the 2 million minimum homes required, as was previously planned. If any work has been done on modelling, job creation—I know the Minister has previously talked about how in his Government, the Government’s infrastructure pipeline, there would be a certain number of jobs created. I’m assuming that some jobs will be created as a result of this. Is there any information on this and the breakdown of who’s likely to benefit the most?

Secondly, I know that the Minister commented that he does not intend to be a master planner, or that this is not what this is intending to do, but I do want to pick up on the rationale for this change to the minimum housing capacity in relation to demographic changes. Does he believe that the current minimum housing capacity adequately accounts for any future demographic changes that may further increase the demand for housing, particularly in central suburbs? If no work has been done on this, I would like to understand why.

So just to recap, any modelling on job creation, and, if not, does he accept that the downgrading of the minimum housing capacity will likely result in less jobs available for people? And also around demographic changes. Thank you.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:50): Very briefly: no, in relation to the modelling around job creation, we haven’t done that, and, no, in relation to—I think the member’s second question was around demographic trends. I think the key point is that there is now going to be more theoretical development capacity in Auckland as a result of Plan Change 120, and, also, that capacity is better calibrated to the existing infrastructure. There is some analysis from officials that—as I’ve said a couple of times now—it is more likely that that development capacity will be turned into actual construction. As compared to the counterfactual of Plan Change 78, or indeed the medium-density residential standards before that, where the capacity was much more dispersed at a granular level. This concentrates in the better areas, I suppose you’d say, in terms of infrastructure capacity. It’s more likely that those projects are more economically viable, but we haven’t done any modelling around that beyond what I just said.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (09:51): Thank you, Mr Chair. First of all, I just wanted to reflect on a comment that the Minister made. I still don’t actually know how many real houses would be built, but I am really pleased to think that there is some work going on in that area of coordination of central planning in cities. That seems very sensible, and, obviously, has already been done in Wesley, but I won’t labour that.

I want to talk about the process that people who are in my constituency have to go through now. They’ve put in submissions—so this is new section 10B. They have put quite extensive submissions in, and a lot of them, and they were going through a process which is actually legislatively required—it’s a lawful process that they were going through. Now they are going to have to amend these submissions and get them ready in a shorter time frame.

What I’d like is a really practical explanation from the Minister of what they should do. I’ve got a meeting on this; I was doing an update on the plan changes, that was early May. That sounds like it might be too late for those people, so I’d like to know from the Minister: what do those people do if they’re concerned about things like stormwater capacity in their area, the connection to the facilities, because the Minister repeatedly suggests that those things are more present in that area than they are in places like Parnell. I know that there will be a lot of constituents saying, “Why here? Why not evenly spread in a ring around the circle of walkable patchment in the inner city?”, which is what a lot of other models have been—so it avoids the “doughnut”. I’d be really keen to know what the Minister has to say about that process.

Finally, just on process, I’d like the Minister to tell me about the process with the regulatory impact statement (RIS). I can see that it is almost screaming at us, the comments that they just didn’t have enough time to talk to stakeholders and they continue to think this is not a good plan. I’d like to know what process has been gone through and whether, in fact, when this RIS came out and those comments were made, there was any attempt, at that point, to allow consultation. This is February, and we’ve now had a full month passed. Was there any attempt to just mitigate the damage by letting there be a further process of consultation; if so, what was it? Thank you.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (09:54): The short point is it’s not for me to give advice to the member around how she deals with her constituents; that’s for her. The short point in relation to the submissions is all the ones that have been made are valid; everyone who’s made a submission will be offered the opportunity to amend or change it or update it. They will be able to do that, and that’s for individuals and their communities to make. I’d encourage her to be involved in that process as a local MP, as I know she will be.

The regulatory impact statement—I mean, the member herself says there wasn’t enough time; it is what it is, so to speak. We are making quick changes, but this issue has been extensively debated backwards and forwards and I generally think what everyone needs now is just some clarity and some certainty. It’s not an ideal parliamentary process; the member knows I don’t like urgency and I don’t like not sending bills to a select committee.

Hon Rachel Brooking: We don’t know that. You keep doing it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, yeah, I know that, but there are always good reasons for it and this is one of those examples where there is good reason for it.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, this is a situation where there has been no select committee, as has been referred to by the Minister. The responses have been broad, so it does enable us to ensure that it is well covered. Also, to members on my right, who I presume are seeking closure motions: I’d have the bill in front of you and realise there’s actually quite a bit to talk about, and be careful of not trifling with the Chair by asking too early for closure motions.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (09:56): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you for making that point. I know there have been heaps of questions around the underlying assumptions and the modelling used that in a housing capacity minimum that is enabled through this bill—well, OK, we’re changing out of the Chairs. I was just making the point that quite a few of us have asked questions about the capacity, the methodology, the modelling, and the assumptions that underly this bill. I just wanted to raise that you could target that question in so many different ways, so that’s why there is repetition—you could ask about migration, population, jobs, schools, transport, blah blah blah. That’s why we all continue to ask questions around those assumptions.

I’m actually going back to the Minister’s answers around the provisions in the bill that relate to Auckland Council and around the modelling methodology and capacity that is being enabled through this bill. I understand that the Minister’s been saying in his answers this morning that there are no underlying assumptions underneath this bill and that the matters of infrastructure required to accommodate a population enabled by this bill, or capacity enabled under this bill, is a decision for Auckland Council. Would the Minister agree that that’s been his sentiment largely, that this bill provides for flexibility for Auckland Council? He’s not paying attention. Is that right?

Hon Chris Bishop: I’m listening. I said yes.

TAMATHA PAUL: OK, cool. The problem with that, though, is—has the Minister considered this bill and those provisions that I just read out in relation to future changes to local government? I’m thinking specifically about the rates cap and I’m thinking specifically about Auckland Council’s financial position, which—look, you know, I don’t pay heaps of attention to what Auckland Council gets up to, but one thing I did learn about them is I’m pretty sure they’re at their borrowing limits in terms of borrowing for additional infrastructure. When or if the rates cap comes in, that’s really going to limit their ability—because they already can’t borrow any more, I believe, and they’re not going to be able to rate to pay for new infrastructure to accommodate for this projected modelling in this bill for these 120,000 houses.

It just seems to me really irresponsible that you’d provide for a minimum number of homes—and, obviously, Auckland Council are free to go above that if they want to, and I hope they do—but it seems there’s no thinking about how the Government can enable the infrastructure required to accommodate that population. I don’t mean that as in, “so don’t do it”, because you know and we know that we want more housing. That seems to be a question that hasn’t been covered and seems to be an assumption that is undermined by future decisions by this Government, relating to the funding and finance and revenue-raising capacity of Auckland Council and, indeed, every council in New Zealand. I’m interested to understand that.

On that, has the Minister considered using tools like land value capture? In enabling 1.2 million houses, you are creating value, so in this bill alone, you are creating value that didn’t exist before. A really great example, actually—I think the Minister might appreciate this example—is the example of Transmission Gully, right? When Transmission Gully was created—I want to get the exact figures—investment in Transmission Gully aided $6 billion in private gains, and the Minister probably knows that already. There’s a way that you can actually capture—not all of it but some of those private gains—that investment and that value and put that into the infrastructure required for this level of upzoning and densification.

I know that the main thrust of the bill is that this enables flexibility for Auckland Council, but there’s also a big question on the infrastructure support that central government can provide to Auckland Council to enable this number of houses to be built and to have the support around it. Have you considered land value capture, and how does a rates cap interact with—

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (10:01): The short point is, in relation to infrastructure, as I’ve said multiple times, now: those are legitimate issues for Auckland Council to deal with. The capacity and the new Plan Change 120, as has been indicated, will be more calibrated to the infrastructure and also the planned network infrastructure coming for Auckland. Obviously, there will be some changes to that over time, as you’d expect from any dynamic plan, but there is a heavy investment in infrastructure going on in Auckland, whether it’s in Drury or in the North West or in the central areas, through things like the Eastern Busway, City Rail Link most notably, as well. That’s a shared central local government responsibility. There’s legislation before the House right now to create an Auckland transport committee, which, again, is a central and local government partnership around a 30-year transport vision for Auckland, which I think has been widely welcomed as part of the Auckland transport reforms that the Government is advancing, again in partnership with the council. There’s a lot of work under way around that.

In relation to the member’s second point around value capture, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act (IFFA) is a form of that. I would prefer to use the term cost recovery because it doesn’t so much capture value but it does allow for cost recovery on the basis of infrastructure investment already made. The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Amendment Bill, which is before the Finance and Expenditure Committee right now makes some changes to allow the allow the IFFA to be used for public transport projects and for State highway projects, for example. It’s not currently allowed to be used for that. We are broadening out its scope. We went through quite a policy process around value capture instruments. In the end, we came to the judgment that the simplest thing to do was just use the IFFA, because it’s already there and people have got familiar with it, and broaden out its scope. That is in the IFFA amendment bill before Parliament right now. I hope the member supports it when it comes back to the House.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’ll take a call from the Hon Rachel Brooking, but what I am going to say at this point—not to this member but to the House in general—is that I want specific clauses and specific questions and not speeches, because it’s drifted into speeches. Let’s be really precise with the clause and what you’d like to know from the Minister.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (10:04): I’m going to start with a little mea culpa. My last question was referring to an “or” but I was looking at the wrong place of where the “or” was, which, of course, is the problem when you get all stages urgency legislation and you don’t get to see it until the day it’s introduced. Well done to the officials for preparing a semi-cogent response for the Minister to say to my question: “That wasn’t making much sense.” Thank you to officials who brief select committees on these issues where we could ask a lot of these questions to select committees—which, of course, we’re not doing today—and ask the Minister. I still do have questions on this topic—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): OK, so just for my benefit, having just changed over, if we can go to the specific clause because I’m not familiar with the piece.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Yes, we are on clause 6 of the bill, and I was looking at subclause (4) which is a change to Schedule 3C. We have already traversed, in Schedule 3C, clause 4, the change in the number. That is it at (a). Section 4 says, “Auckland Council must amend the unitary plan to—(a) provide at least the same amount”—that’s now changing to 32 percent or less—“and (b) enable, within at least a walkable catchment the Maungawhau …, Kingsland, and Morningside Stations and enable in at least a walkable catchment of Baldwin Avenue and Mount Albert stations,”—and there’s some stuff around that. Then it says, “(2) However, Auckland Council may amend the Auckland Unitary Plan to enable less development than that required by subclause (1)(b)”—and now it says “or (c)”—“or policy 3 if authorised to do so by clause 8.” This is in the legislation that was amended in August, which is now being amended in March.

The Minister just then, when trying to answer my question, referred to qualifier matters, and it was to enable those issues and see which is walkable catchments at Baldwin Avenue and Mount Albert stations to have qualifying matters apply to them. You find reference to those qualifying matters in section 8 of Schedule 3C to the Resource Management Act (RMA). The Minister just mentioned special character when he was talking about qualifying matters, and I haven’t gone back to section 77I(a) to (i) of the RMA to look at this, but my recollection is that special character is not a qualifying matter; that qualifying matters are Part 2 matters, and so that would be significant historic heritage, and special character has never met that definition.

This is very important in terms of the planned changes that Auckland Council is going to make because special character is something that has aggrieved lots of people for much time and there’s been some misunderstanding about when something is a Part 2 heritage issue and when something is something else. I can see the Minister wants to talk about this, but before he does, I’ve got a couple more questions that still relate to this clause 4 that is being amended by clause 6, subsection (4) and that is something that he didn’t answer: there are the named stations there, Maungawhau, Kingsland, Morningside, and then Baldwin and Mount Albert. Did the Minister, in making the decision to reduce the 2 million to 1.6 and then 1.4 million, consider specifying any other stations or any other transport infrastructure?

We heard contributions on this Eastern Busway and we’ve heard contributions about other transport issues, and I’ve already said that I agree with the Minister on his point around infrastructure and, where there is that good infrastructure, to make best use of it for intensification. So that’s my second question on this clause. Then, to remind the Minister of my question earlier, which was about the work plan of the Auckland Council. He said the 1.4 is a minimum; they’re going to have to do 1.6 anyway because of these stations that are required. In the past six weeks, the Auckland Council has been working hard for that 1.6. Can they just continue their work? If they can, can they just go to the back to the 2 million as well? I think these are really important issues to have on Hansard. I’ll let him answer those questions, and then I’ve got a different, specific question.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform) (10:08): As I think the member knows, special character is not listed in the resource management Act as a qualifying matter. Heritage is a qualifying matter, and there’s a long debate about exactly what heritage is and how it’s determined. The new planning system, as the member knows as well, will attempt to bring some clarity to this and certainly will lift the threshold for when heritage becomes something that the planning system should result should involve itself with, and we’re intending to make national direction around that and help clarify that because there’s a number of people—including councils and council laws—frustrated at heritage in the planning system.

Special character is a term of art used by councils pursuant to—I forget the exact subclause, but it’s the “any other matter” clause, which is the catch all for which special character has been shoehorned in and taken on a life of its own. The Government is not intending to change that, at least not through this bill.

Hon Rachel Brooking: So it isn’t an “other matter”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, yes, I mean, that’s the way it’s been interpreted. That’s the way it’s been interpreted and that’s the way councils have used it.

In relation to the other five stations: did we do any further consideration? The short answer is no. The Eastern Busway that the member refers to is a rapid transit station and rapid transit network, which is part of the NPS-UD mandatory upzoning. As part of my statement of expectations to the council, I have asked them to consider the northwestern busway, both the first but also the planned route, because I think it’s really important that we zone around the route, you know, in advance of it actually being built. I’ve asked them to do that, but, ultimately, how they do that is a decision for them.

The third member’s third question was in relation to the number: the short answer is yes; the council can just carry on with the plans that they are proceeding with because they were planning about 1.6 million capacity and that’s actually what they’re legally required to do. The 1.4 million will give them a bit of extra flexibility around it and if the council decides to do 2 million then the short answer is: yes, they can do that. That’s not an indication that they will do that, but, obviously, it is over to them.

Again, I just repeat what I said before, which is: what we’re trying to do is get central government and the Parliament out of this and delegate it down to the legitimate decision-making body for this, which is Auckland Council and its constituent communities and local boards. And within parameters—that we’ve talked about and canvassed now for a couple of hours—it’s over to them.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (10:11): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Minister responsible for RMA Reform’s invitation to talk about one of my favourite projects: the Northcote housing development. It’s reflective of our community and, really, planning in two halves. Planning, in a good sense is, in fact, the Northcote housing developments. Not only were the houses built but new schools, new water infrastructure, new recreational centres, new shopping centre, and that, in fact, enables what we call the “upzoning”, the discussion point today where we are able to intensify key areas on main arterial transport links for people to live, for people to build their families there, and for communities to thrive.

The fact of the matter is that in the game of two halves, that is our community, is on the other end, and Chatswood have been quite a vocal group of residents who are really struggling with Plan Change 120. They say that they don’t oppose intensification, but they really want to ensure that the right planning tools are in place, and the right infrastructure is in place as well. It’s quite a complex gradient of the particular community. If you’re looking at me in regard to which clause I’m talking about—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That was going to be my next question.

SHANAN HALBERT: —it’s clause 10C around decision making. There are some physically enclosed areas in Kauri Point Domain, Duck Creek, gully and bush corridors, Chelsea Estate Heritage Park, the New Zealand Defence Force Kauri Point base and the steep, unstable slopes in and around that particular catchment area.

The Minister says that this legislation isn’t planning Auckland; Auckland Council is doing that—and that is correct, in a sense, but we can’t devolve all responsibility and blame decisions on Auckland Council when, in fact, we have to stand up for some of them.

In this, it means that the two areas in our community aren’t comparable when it comes to planning laws. As an example, there’s a broad sweep around a 10 kilometre radius that’s been put around the Auckland Isthmus and that would capture both the Northcote housing development end and the Chatswood coastal area that would be implicated by this piece of legislation and the decisions that we make today. Hundreds of voices from the Chatswood community have spoken out and sent a submission through to Auckland Council as a part of that process. But here we are, in urgency, of course, and those voices and that submission haven’t, in fact, been heard. We haven’t been able to see those in terms of how that would implicate this piece of legislation.

Coming to the key points around how decision making is made, and some of the speeches yesterday articulated that this is a good sense of localism, that we’re enabling Aucklanders to make a decision, but I can’t actually see how, for the community of Chatswood, that they’re able to participate in this particular decision making when they are, in some respects, unfairly implicated by the decisions in this piece of legislation that will enable a 10 kilometre radius. I’m just wondering from the Minister, how he sees those two parts of the community comparable. What advice has he received, particularly in regards to Auckland’s North Shore? We’ve acknowledged in this debate South and West Auckland, I think there’s been the Eastern Busway link as an example, but across the North Shore, I haven’t heard any voices discussing how we will upzone key areas along the Northern Busway, prime areas for intensification, how these particular communities will be considered in their planning discussion, and what implications are there given the, somewhat, lack of infrastructure needs and coastal complexities that sit in and around that area.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (10:16): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a few questions for the Minister. I’m going to start with the first clause, which is clause 6 subclause (4). I think, my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has mentioned this clause, but I want to ask if (c) ,which is around the catchment of Baldwin Avenue and Mt Albert stations is captured; one of the things I was curious about is the way that (b)(ii) and (c)(ii) are not exactly the same. In (b)(ii), when we’re looking at Maungawhau (Mt Eden), Kingsland, and Morningside stations, (b)(ii) states: “in all cases building height of at least 15 storeys” in those locations, and for (c)(ii) for Mt Albert Station and Baldwin Avenue Station, it is at least 10 storeys. My first question to the Minister is: why is there a difference between the height of those two buildings when we’re bringing that into subclause(4) here, in terms of Mt Albert stations? I think that deserves a little bit of attention.

My second question is: under the current Watercare plans, Epsom and Mt Eden are currently the only ones where the water security level is that none of them are at risk but is currently being monitored. In this case, how would, in terms of some of the core infrastructure, would work, particularly when it comes to supply of, let’s say, fresh water or drinking water, be done under this particular plan or has any work been done around that?

My second question to the Minister is on clause 6(6), Schedule 3C replacing clause 5(6) and (7) with (6) to (9), and I want to, specifically, focus on subclause (9) here, which is page 3, lines 32 to 34. I want to check with the Minister, and this could be a really simple explanation, the term “city centre” is not used in the Resource Management Act at all. The only example I could find is in Schedule 3B where the term “city centre zone” is mentioned but not defined. Would the Minister be able to—just two quick questions: is “city centre” the same thing as “city centre zones”? And how is “city centre”, again, defined within the context of the Resource Management Act?

My final question to the Minister is on—now we’re moving on to clause 6(7)—and I wanted to speak to 10B first. This is my final question to the Minister for the time being: if this bill had a select committee stage, it doesn’t add any additional burden to the council because it will be considered Parliament and parliamentary process and people could be able to submit on changes to this bill, but instead, what we’re asking for is the provisions relating to Plan Change 120, and particularly some of the changes we’re seeing in this legislation will require the council to follow the process set out. This is specifically mentioned in 10B(1)(b), where “Auckland Council must follow the process set out in those clauses for Plan Change 120”. Now, we are already seeing a lack of funding towards our local government and for our councils, we’re also seeing a requirement for councils to have a rate cap, we’re seeing local government being stretched quite thin when it comes to resourcing.

I want to check, in terms of PC 120, would the Minister and the Government provide additional resources to Auckland Council to be able to full conduct the process set out in this in a way that allows for the kind of participation that is expected of the council. That’s my final question to the Minister.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (10:20): Thank you, Madam Chair. Going back to the discussion I was having with the Minister about special character—and this links to the amended Schedule 3C of the Resource Management Act (RMA) that was introduced last year—he said that any other matter can be a qualifying matter. I want to be clear about this, and I’m asking the Minister for advice. Section 77I(j) of the Resource Management Act says, “any other matter … if section 77L is satisfied”. Section 77L says, and I’m paraphrasing somewhat, that you can only have any other qualifying matter if there is some good reason for it, but that it requires a “site-specific analysis”, and that site-specific analysis should now allow for blanket special character restrictions.

Could I have an answer from the Minister on whether he expects that the law as it stands and what the Auckland Council have to plan for is that qualifying matters, if they relate to the “any other matter” qualifying matter, have to have a site-specific analysis? That’s one question. From his answer, it seemed that he was saying that you can just carte blanche do special character areas, and that is not my understanding of the law. If there is some change in this bill, then I really want to know about that, because that is very important for Auckland’s planning.

I do note, and he raised as well, this issue of his statement of expectations. In the amendments that were made last year in the committee of the whole House by an Amendment Paper, the Minister got all sorts of new powers under the RMA to do all sorts of things, which is one of the reasons we ended up voting against that legislation. One of the things is the statement of expectations. The Minister has done a statement of expectations, and that is referred to as well in clause 10A of this bill, and it has been gazetted. In it, the Minister does reference “Special Character Areas Overlay—Business, Residential and General” as being a qualifying matter. I’m very interested in how the qualifying matters under Section 77L of the RMA have to be site-specific if they’re relying on the “other matter” category, yet his current statement of expectations references “Special Character Areas Overlay” as if that is already a qualifying matter. How does that work?

Staying on the statement of expectations, I asked a question about the Eastern Busway and other transport infrastructure that is not specifically listed in Schedule 3C of the RMA—so those stations. The Minister said, “Well, I’ve got in my letter of expectations that we should consider other planned rapid transport stops.” My clarification here is that in that statement of expectations, it says, at (c): “When ensuring that Plan Change 120 gives effect to policy 3(c)(i) of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020, consideration is given to whether all planned rapid transit stops have been identified”, and he specifically includes there the northwest busway, which my friend will be happy about. Is this the statement that should also be including planned infrastructure such as the Eastern Busway, which I understand is very important in terms of Auckland Transport? Those are some questions.

I also want to ask about something that my colleagues from the Greens just touched on there about what is the city centre, and this is in clause 6(9), which says: “For the purposes of clause 4, housing capacity does not include the housing capacity in the city centre as at 6 June 2025 when the Plan Change 78 changes to the city centre became operative.” There is talk in the documents that go with the bill about the fact that the city centre has already undergone some rezoning in Plan Change 78. There is also discussion generally about how important that CBD area is, yet Plan Change 120 doesn’t hit on that CBD area, and I take my colleagues’ point about definitions around that, and I’m interested in the Minister’s answers. Madam Chair, I’ll just be very quick on this point.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yep, just very quickly.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Where does the Minister expect the Auckland Council to go with that CBD area, undefined as it is? Is there an expectation that this Plan Change 120 will look at that CBD? I say that specifically because there are areas like the Wynyard Quarter, for instance, that are not at the height that you might expect them to be under Plan Change 78 if you’re really trying to intensify that area.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (10:26): Moata rau ki a tātou katoa.

[Good morning to us all.]

It’s a beautiful day out there—it’s a great day, actually. As we know, Auckland is a very unique place, and as one of the very few members who has been responsible for property developments in Auckland, it gives me great pause to support and scaffold Minister Bishop on this matter.

Of course, our role is to set up the envelope and to enable Auckland Council to make decisions accordingly—especially for the hard-working voters of Chatswood and Chelsea. E mihi ana ki a koe e taku whanaunga [greetings to you, my relative], and those submissions from the North Shore. I’m sure there were one or two throughout this process. The Auckland City Council can have the ability to actively curate where growth occurs, and it will use the usual processes, with councillors to decide what changes should be made to the plan change.

In relation to the city centre—that’s quite a hot topic amongst the speakers today—that matter has been determined via Plan Change 78, and I recommend and implore members of this House to take some time to read through the work that’s been undertaken for Plan Change 78. Haere rā e te hoa.

[Goodbye, my friend.]

There was a question about whether or not the Government is prepared to invest more cash and resources and maybe make a grant to Auckland Council. Well, our recommendation is that Auckland Council, amongst other councils, use their resources more effectively and more wisely in these processes. It’s up to Auckland Council to figure out how to ensure that they carry out the responsibilities that they do have rather than always rely on the Treasury and the taxpayer to fund that.

Finally, the special character. There is no change. A side-by-side assessment will continue to be undertaken by council.

In relation to the Eastern Busway, what a great place, going out there to Pakuranga-rāhīhī and all the way to Takanini if you need to. That’s already been designated as rapid transit.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (10:28): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve been really patient—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yes, you have—I’ve noticed.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: —and listening. It’s because I want to reflect on some of the comments made by the Minister who has left the House. Thank you. I’m just going to ask my questions anyway.

In terms of what I’ve heard so far from other contributions, it’s great to have the bill before us to be able to scrutinise it. I want to raise the Auckland Airport and Māngere, because it keeps getting ignored in terms of South Auckland inequity and affordability. It’s actually a really important hub. Minister, if you were not aware, domestic trips into and out of Auckland Airport totalled 8.5 million in one year, and international was 10.5 million. That has a huge bearing on infrastructure, as you know.

I’m asking these questions, sorry, Madam Chair, under clause 10B. In terms of the intensification, one of the things that locals will know is their concern around the building height-to-boundary rules. In Māngere, it is really important for mana whenua and iwi in terms of view shafts and in terms of maunga. One of the things I want to ask, because the locals keep raising this point, is when you’ve got building planning requirements and then you’ve got natural volcanic cones, how will that nexus be considered in this piece of legislation, or is it a consideration?

My second question to the Associate Minister of Housing is in terms of major infrastructure. I’ve just highlighted what comes in and out of Auckland Airport in one year, in terms of passenger trips. The Minister said earlier that there is a market for smaller apartments. A number of people who work at the Auckland Airport precinct want to live close, because that would save a whole lot of things like traffic, and also intensification around homes and schools, and also building communities. My question to the Minister is: in terms of some of the options of housing, how will Auckland Council, under this provision, be able to be a bit more flexible? It’s not just about CBD, it’s not just about north and east and west; in South Auckland, where we’ve had to give up some of the land parcels, we want better community facilities and we actually want, as a local community, to appreciate the natural volcanic area, etc. There is a lack of infrastructure specifically for the South Auckland communities which need to be connected—we have a youth population who need to get in and out of the city centre for education and jobs, etc.

My question is around those two parts in terms of the relationship of the connectivity of Auckland Airport—people working and living around Māngere, South Auckland, and also in relation to clause 10B in terms of the height restrictions and building to height. Will that be captured, and has there been any consideration? I’d really like to hear that, thank you.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) (10:31): Thank you for the opportunity. I will be asking questions on clause 10C. Let me begin by quoting from the departmental disclosure statement: “This bill amends the Resource Management Act 1991 to reduce the minimum housing capacity requirements of the Auckland Unitary Plan by 32.5 percent. In effect, it reduces the requirement from approximately 2 million dwellings to approximately 1.4 million dwellings.”

One of the biggest issues I see as one of our local South Auckland MPs is Auckland Council’s guiding principles that housing capacity reductions would start with areas more than 10 kilometres away from the city centre, and that plainly puts communities such as mine into the firing line—communities like Papatoetoe, Ōtara, Flat Bush, and wider South Auckland communities like Māngere, Manurewa—for reduced housing capacity. The Associate Minister of Housing knows that South Auckland is already an area where homeownership rates are really low. It is already an area where deprivation rates are high, and one of the worries I have as a local MP is that we continually are asked—

Carl Bates: One of the few local MPs in the Labour Party.

Hon JENNY SALESA: That may be true, but that is actually not the purpose of this particular debate or what it is that I’m speaking about. If you would like to take a call, you’re most welcome to get up and take a call.

Just to continue on with my speech, the contrast for me as a local MP from South Auckland is really powerful, because the suburbs with the highest areas of housing stress, the lowest areas of homeownership, are the ones that are continually asked to take on these issues. These are also the areas where there is not as much railway link, and the bus routes for our workers are not as constant as they are for other areas. As local MPs, we are beginning to get not only phone calls but emails from our young people, from our workers, who cannot afford the petrol, and these are workers who need to get to and from work, and then they look at the bus routes and the train routes, and that is also not an option for them.

This is actually something that is a real concern, not just to South Auckland but to West Auckland as well. And some of our West Auckland MPs spoke about this last night. It can, I suppose, be argued that this was a bill that came through with 2 million dwellings, and then it was downgraded to 1.6 million dwellings, and now it’s 1.4 million dwellings. Who are the people who are most going to take that burden on? It is most likely South Auckland and West Auckland, as many of our MPs from this side of the Chamber have said. It can be argued that this could be seen as a transfer of planning advantage from poorer, younger, more diverse communities to older, wealthier homeowner areas.

Papatoetoe, Ōtara, Flat Bush—they are all beyond the 10-kilometre threshold that is used as the starting point for this housing capacity that is being reduced. South Auckland does not get the same City Rail Link - related intensification as other suburbs. Our communities have the lowest homeownership rates and the highest housing need in Auckland. This bill looks at entrenching a pattern where communities who are most in need of affordable housing options are the least able to get some advantage from what this bill will do once it gets passed.

My questions to the Minister: can the Minister guarantee that Papatoetoe, Ōtara, Flat Bush, Māngere, and Manurewa will not be disproportionately downsized under the revised framework? Second, what specific infrastructure investment is being offered to South Auckland in return for the uncertainty that this bill creates for our area? And, last question: why are communities with the lowest homeownership rates, the highest need, put first in line for capacity reductions?

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (10:36): I want to ask about clause 10B—in fact, really, clause 10A as well, because I am interested in a practical understanding of the process here where we are realigning the plan. I have a whole lot of constituents who I worked through a process with of putting in a submission on their area and their concerns. I am going through this and I can’t see that there is a time line for the council coming back with its notice for publication. I would like to know, in a practical sense, for constituents, what is the time line for the publication of the result for the notice that’s going out to my constituents, and for them to then have 20 working days to get their recalibrated submission in based on what is in that notice.

I’d just like to talk about two instances where I think this might be relevant. One is the Baldwin Street area—the Baldwin Park station that’s named here is an area where there is a railway crossing one way, and then you actually have to cross the railway line again, and they’re both flat areas. It’s very hard to separate those areas, and I’m interested to know if there was a change in plan here, because this is an area of 10 storeys, but it’s actually mandated under this legislation. What would a person in that area be subjected to in terms of time lines, in terms of getting in a submission under this process, given that I can’t see any time lines?

The other question is I have an area which is near Fowlds Park. It has been promoted on the last iteration of this plan as one that would go 15 storeys plus, but it is also an area where the council has just bought out the street because it flooded so badly. It is one that you’d expect the council to do but now it seems that this is going to be mandated, this area. I’d like to know from the practical point of view of those two cases what the process is that they’re going to have to go through, but particularly, realistically, what’s the time frame on this at each stage of that process? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Hon Rachel Brooking—but I’ll just say at this point that we’ve covered a broad aspect of the bill, and I know that this member’s been right through the detail. I’m just looking for some specific tidy-up pieces that the member would be looking to focus on right now.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (10:39): Thank you, Madam Chair, and, of course, we are in all-stages urgency and we haven’t seen this bill before—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I understand that, but we are getting a little broad.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Madam Chair, if I may go through, I have been talking about—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, no, I’m not directing that at the member. I’m directing that at the committee. I know the member is very specific, which is why I’m asking you to be very specific.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Thank you, Madam Chair. I will continue to be very specific.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: In my last contribution, I was talking about the statement of expectation and the Eastern Busway, and there was a response from the Minister that “Oh, well, the Eastern Busway is already designated.” My question is: is he referring to a document that’s related to this bill—so the gazetted statement of expectations—or is he referring to something else? Is he just saying there is a designation in process? Where is it that the Eastern Busway is designated—which is the word he used? Has there been a Resource Management Act designation or does he mean that it is already included and that Plan Change 120 has to intensify along that Eastern Busway? That is one question in response to the Minister’s answer to my question.

Sticking now on the Minister’s statement of expectations, clause 10A—this is in clause 6, “Schedule 3C amended”—is quite simple. It’s just saying that a reference to Schedule 3C is the amended Schedule 3C. That’s fine; that’s not my question. My question is a very specific one about subclause 3 which specifically relates to Gazette notice and gives the number of the Gazette notice, which is sl6084. There are also different provisions that enable the Minister to update that Gazettenotice—so that is the statement of expectations. What happens when or if that statement of expectations is updated through this reference number sl6084. What happens to that? That’s a drafting issue, and I presume that it can be updated. How does the mechanism work there?

I have another very specific question, and this is very important to the members opposite because that statement of expectations is a new instrument, introduced by that Government just last year, and it is overwhelming ministerial powers that go against this idea of localism and giving the council the ability to decide things, because they have to do what the statement of expectations says, and it’s just a little Gazettenotice that can change. It’s important because it does not specifically say “the Eastern Busway” in it, and it’s important for all sorts of other issues as well.

I also want to go to clause 10C, “Decisions relating to changed capacity requirement”. It says “(1) Auckland Council must decide whether to propose any amendments (the proposed amendments) to Plan Change 120.” So my question is: can Auckland Council decide not to propose any amendments, and if Auckland Council makes the decision not to propose any amendments, what happens to the subsequent clauses? The main point is: is it possible for Auckland Council to decide not to change Plan Change 120 in line with this legislation?

I go back to subclauses (5) and (6) of clause 6—so these are the amendments to Schedule 3C. Wha I’m looking for here is just some comfort, because subclauses (5) and (6) make changes to clause 5 of Schedule 3C, to the Resource Management Act, and they repeal some of those clauses, and I won’t go into exactly what they are. Then it’s got a replacement bit—you can see that there are some replacements here. On a quick reading of it, it looks like the bits that are repealed are basically replaced with this insertion, but it would be very helpful to have on record what it is that these little repeals in the new clause are doing and if there is anything material in that, and, if so, what is the reason for the material change. This is obviously stuff that we would spend more time on—was it in select committee? So if the Minister could answer that—it’s not a political question. It’s a simple request for the Minister to explain what this part of the bill is about.

I want to make a point on the CBD point that we were discussing with the Minister. He encouraged us all to read Plan Change 78. I want to clarify: is the Minister saying that everything that was done in Plan Change 78 is enough for the CBD? Because that seems to go against the comments that are made in the regulatory impact statement and other places about the fact that there is actually not very much intensification in that CBD area. If we are doing what the Minister who was in the chair was saying about how great intensification is, then surely there will need to be more done there—more than Plan Change 78. And what is the plan for that?

Finally—and I can see that everyone’s jumping up and down—I would also like the Minister’s comments on—and this is a bigger question; I’m going up a level here—how Plan Change 120 and these changes to Plan Change 120 will relate to changes that this Government is making to the Resource Management Act generally. I think that is a totally in-scope question, Madam Chair, because the council has been dealing with all of this, all these different things. So we had Plan Change 78 with the medium-density residential changes, and then we had the changes made just last year, and now we’re changing it again. Is it all going to be for nothing? Is the Auckland Council next year going to have to start again on everything, because the Resource Management Act will be changed into the Planning Act? That is really important when going back to an original question: why are we here in all-stages urgency if that is the case? Why are we making Auckland Council continue to spend tens of millions of dollars on planning processes that may be of no relevance and may be extinguished and just a year’s time? I think that is a very important question that has not been answered by anyone yet.

To recap, I’m asking specifically about their statement of expectations and where we are with the Eastern Busway. How does that statement of expectations change? And then the specific reference in the bill—what happens to that? Can the Minister also describe these changes that are going on and subclauses 5 and 6 of clause 6 of the Schedule to the Resource Management Act? Is it just simply a tidy-up or is it something material? Again, on the CBD, does he really think that Plan Change 78 is enough? Should there be more work on that? And how is this plan change going to relate in the longer term? In the longer term, I mean, the difference between when we were last here in August making changes compared with April or March, if we’re in March—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): It’s March in here.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: It’s March in here; that’s right. Is it all going to be up in the air again in another six months? That seems like a big waste of time. What is the Minister’s answer to that very important question.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (10:49): There’s been a number of comments this morning extrapolating the discussions about the great City of Sails. But I just acknowledge those comments around South Auckland, where I used to live, actually, down Churchill Avenue. Keep your cars locked at the Churchill Avenue location, 111—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Point of order. Could the Minister raise the microphone a bit? Thank you.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Thank you; it’s good to know you want to hear me.

So just in relation to volcanic cones, shafts, and various options that the first speaker made, those are considerations in planning. Auckland Council, by way of this bill and the following legislation, will have the flexibility to enable this. Ditto in relation to the infrastructure and homeownership matter. I note the comments around the 10-kilometre zone and communities outside the 10-kilometre zone, but through this bill, Auckland Council will have greater certainty and flexibility to deal with those issues.

In relation to Plan Change (PC) 78, the Auckland Council made city centre decisions as a result of the independent hearings panel recommendations and has made a full change. I know there’s been suggestion that maybe other changes can be made. Well, that’s not the intention of this particular bill, and the council has already made city centre decisions.

There was a question around time and how Auckland Council needs the time to consider changes, and that could be articulated in the Minister’s letter of directions in terms of time frames—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Expectations. The direction that sets the expectations.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Statement of expectations—or letter of directions?

Hon Rachel Brooking: Under the direction. The Minister has direction power.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: The statement of expectations.

Now, Auckland Council can decide not to change PC 120, but it does need to carry out the process and follow through the process.

In relation to the Eastern Busway, Auckland Council identified the Eastern Busway as rapid transit under the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and that’s been clarified. I think it was sl6084—was it 6084?

Hon Rachel Brooking: Yep.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Yep. The drafting stays the same. Then, finally, in terms of another question that was asked about whether or not Auckland Council can withdraw parts of the plan change via PC 120, yes, that is the case.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (10:51): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. Thank you. I wish to raise some questions to the Associate Minister of Housing in relation to Schedule 3C, specifically around clause 6, line 21, “An SPP panel”, but my questions go broad beyond that, and it’s really to do with mana whenua. What specific statutory protection exists in this bill to ensure mana whenua are partners in decisions affecting ancestral whenua? Now, the Streamlined Planning Process (SPP) panel, specifically the question is: what is the make-up of this panel? Is there any dedicated seat specifically for mana whenua voices, to ensure that mana whenua, all 19 they whakapapa to, every parcel of land in Tāmaki-makau-rau, the greater region as well as the CBD—to ensure that not only consultation but actual decision making includes Māori?

Again, I repeat that question: what specific statutory protection exists in this bill to ensure that mana whenua are partners, and what is the make-up of this SPP panel? Specifically, are there specific details especially for the make-up of that panel to ensure that there is a threshold for understanding on how to apply to Te Tiriti in the context of planning and urban design? You cannot dismiss the fact that Te Tiriti is integral to all our planning going forward.

Can the Minister also identify where in this bill mana whenua consultation is expressly required before zoning or intensification changes take legal effect. If the Minister is unwilling to accept a full consultation clause specifically ensuring mana whenua are actually sought not in consultation but in partnership to ensure that mana whenua rights do not overlap or do not get dismissed—now, I do understand that there is mention of, there is reflection of, Te Tiriti that exists in the current Resource Management Act; however, in this bill that we are debating here in the Chamber, there is no explicit clause that gives effect to Te Tiriti. There is great concern right across Tāmaki-makau-rau about the potential impacts that these subtle changes that—the Government says, rightly so, that we need progress; however, how does that impact mana whenua?

With regards to Māori housing specifically, papa kāinga—and I know that the Minister sitting here in the Chamber and answering these questions, the Hon Tama Potaka, is the expert, actually, in papa kāinga. When we talk about the design and planning, where exactly are any support systems to ensure that the make-up of the 1.6 million houses that are mentioned here, that are purposed in Plan Change 120—is there scope to address rising crises of housing and homelessness across Tāmaki-makau-rau? Is there potential to ensure that part of these houses, these new builds or existing builds, are ring-fenced for Māori specifically in Tāmaki-makau-rau—more so papa kāinga, the construction of papa kāinga in its truest essence, not in the form of high rises or town houses? As the Minister is aware, papa kāinga is about community, yes, but it also is about cultural practices in its purest form, and that exists in the dwelling of each whānau, each whare that our whānau live in.

The specific questions around papa kāinga—a series of them: can the Minister point to any provision in the bill that expressly enables papa kāinga and multi-generational Māori housing models? Does the Minister accept that standard intensification models do not always reflect Māori ways of living as whānau? Thirdly, would the Minister support a targeted amendment enabling papa kāinga as a permitted or controlled activity in relevant zones? Koirā aku pātai.

[These are my questions.]

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (10:56): Thank you for those important and insightful questions and comments. In terms of the panel composition, which is appointed half by the Ministers—the Minister responsible for RMA Reform and myself as the Minister of Conservation, with my other pōtae on—and half by council, at least one of the appointees from the Ministers has some significant expertise around Māori involvement in the planning space and Māori development.

In relation to the consultation, the existing Resource Management Act (RMA) obligations will continue, and the Auckland Council has extensive processes around engaging with iwi and other groups within Auckland, such as the Tūpuna Maunga Authority, so it’s expected that they will continue, as Auckland Council, to maintain those processes through Plan Change 120.

Finally, about papa kāinga—which is a very important take, actually, and I’m appreciative of the member raising that—many of the papa kāinga are actually built on Māori freehold land, and there isn’t a huge amount of Māori freehold land in the Auckland City Council boundaries. There is some, especially that big farm out at Waiheke, actually, and some land out at Maraetai and out through Āwhitu. But a papa kāinga national standard is being formed right now that will enable greater papa kāinga. There are iwi and other groups that are already involved in developing papa kāinga, such as up at Kupe Street and Takaparawhau. They’ve been liaising and engaging with builders like GJs and others to deploy papa kāinga not just for kaumātua but for whānau and for others, and those are taking place already. We hope that the new papa kāinga standard will better facilitate and expedite greater papa kāinga and, of course, enable whānau to have healthy and wealthy lives in Tāmaki, heading our waka, heading our tangata. Kia ora tātou.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (10:58): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Part 2 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Schedule be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Schedule agreed to.

Committee of the Whole House

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we come now to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2, the debate on the title and commencement.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (11:01): Thank you, Madam Chair. This the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill, and, certainly, this bill is amending the Resource Management Act—again. On that point, I think it is good that we are referring to the Resource Management Act. I do note, however, that the Minister was reticent to give me answers about the changes to that Resource Management Act, and, in fact, that Resource Management Act was changed by this Government only last year to do changes to Auckland housing. Also, I did not get an answer about what the point is of this amendment going through all-stages urgency right now if everything is going to be undone by future changes to the Resource Management Act.

I would ask the Minister if he would consider changing the piece in brackets—“(Auckland Housing)”—to the “Resource Management (Making the Council Run Around in Circles Again) Amendment Bill”.

Hon Simon Watts: Come on, that’s not serious.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I’m hearing that it’s not serious. Well, I will tell the Minister of Local Government that this is very serious. I have not had answers to questions about how much money has been expended on making these changes and whether it will all be for nothing because, once we get this Government’s new planning reforms, they’re going to make the council start again. This is a very relevant point, as is another issue that the Minister of Local Government might be interested in, and that is the influence of the Minister—not that Minister, another Minister—in terms of the statements of expectations and general interference that can happen.

We’ve heard a lot of bravado from the Government members that this bill is, in fact, about Auckland Council having all the flexibility in making decisions, but, again, I have not got straight answers on what happens to the statement of expectations and whether that changes. Again, I ask the question: would the Minister consider “Resource Management (Auckland Housing but the Minister is Still Making all of the Decisions) Amendment Bill”? An even simpler one would be: “Resource Management (Auckland Housing Flip-flop) Amendment Bill”—

Hon Simon Watts: Oh, this is ridiculous.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Here he goes, from the other side, but, of course, we were here in August just last year. Here we are in March—how many months is that? August, September, October, November, December, January—the House was out of action a bit there—February, March: wow, it took seven months to change it, but, in fact, only one month to change from what the regulatory impact statement was talking about, after the barbecues, which was 1.6.

Maybe this should be the “Resource Management (Auckland Housing Amended by Barbecues but Then Some Additional Flip-flop in Cabinet Just on Monday) Amendment Bill”? Or should it be “(Auckland Housing Costing Auckland Ratepayers a Whole lot of Money Because This Government, This Cabinet, Cannot Decide on What it’s Doing)”? We don’t even know if this will be for anything—if there will be any change.

Sam Uffindell: What’s the question?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: What’s the question? The questions are whether the Minister will consider my more accurate titles for what this bill is doing. I’m talking about the title, Mr Uffindell.

It is that there may be no point in us being here doing all-stages legislation, pretending it’s still March when, in fact, today is 1 April in the rest of the world. What a good day to be discussing such a piece of legislation, because there may be no point to this legislation. The Minister did not clearly answer my question about whether or not the Auckland Council can just ignore it and go ahead. Why is it that we are here on a Wednesday morning, when we could all be being productive in our select committees, but instead we’re back here because this Government has chosen to flip-flop, and what a week of flip-flops we’ve had.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (11:06): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to ask about the commencement date, because I am seriously concerned about the swift nature of this piece of legislation coming in, given that we have had so many changes and there has been so much of an investment, a genuine investment, by people in their submissions to the council. There is a process they are going through at the present time, and it’s a process that has got legal status. It’s a really important one, and while I appreciate that there are other parts of this bill that suggest it can be truncated and that it can be moved around, etc., I would like the Minister to consider whether we change the commencement date so that it comes into force after the process of collating and looking at the submissions of Aucklanders.

We’re wedded to local democracy in words. The practicality is that those submissions are an expression of local democracy, and we should have faith in the people of Auckland to tell us what the issues are before we bring legislation to bear in a central space, because we’ll get it wrong. It’s not like we haven’t got it wrong. Let’s face it—we have to face the fact—we’ve got it wrong over and over again. It’s almost ridiculous how many times this piece of legislation has changed, and it has changed swiftly and it has been ineffective as a result. I would like the Minister to consider putting a pause on this for one year or until the point when those submissions have been collated and the knowledge from them has been assessed. That is not, I think, an unreasonable thing for Aucklanders to expect, particularly the people in my area, who are the most affected here.

I gave an example when I was asking a question, which never got answered in the last part, about one area in my electorate. It’s got 15-plus storeys scheduled in it. This will engrain it further. In that area, the council bought out the very properties—recently, it bought out the whole street—because of flooding concerns. It is seen as inappropriate to build, but that same area on the plan, I can see, is designated for 15-plus storeys. Those people in that area put in a submission. Of course they did. They all put in submissions saying that it makes no sense, can it be taken into account, etc. I’d like to see that work done first before we look at where the houses need to be, because it changes the numbers fundamentally. If you can’t build a 15-storey property on the edge of Fowlds Park, it changes the numbers.

I’d also like to see time for the transport issues to be resolved. For example, the area that I talked about in Baldwin Avenue is flat. It has got two different pathways for the rail line. They need an overpass. It’s a very expensive operation because apparently flat areas are extremely hard to build on and extremely expensive. I’d like that resolved before Baldwin Avenue station goes into this mix. It’s got 10-plus storey buildings proposed for it. They might be completely fictitious. If I was the council and KiwiRail, I’d just look at that area and think, “There’s no way that we’re going to be able to do this economically. Why don’t we stop this, close the station, and make it further away? Why don’t we take it off the agenda?” I see no attempt to get that.

I would like that period of the commencement date to be pushed out in line with gathering that wisdom for a process that is well under way. Apparently, we’ve spent $20 million on this process. That all goes on the rates. It’s quite a significant amount of people’s rates. I’d like to have time to do that. I’d also like to see a collaboration between all the parties in this Chamber on what the solution looks like, quite frankly; I don’t think there’s been half enough of it. I think it’s mad that, on something this important to Auckland, there hasn’t been a level of collaboration. In fact, what we’re seeing here is something in urgency, in such a short period—I don’t have answers to my questions. The Minister hasn’t even told me what this looks like for my constituents in terms of—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (11:11): Madam Chair, we intend to use the title the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill and for it to come into force on the day after Royal assent for the rest of the bill and deemed to have come into force for clause 65 of Schedule 12 on 9 October 2025.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (11:11): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (11:15): on behalf of the Minister responsible for RMA Reform: I move, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This is a practical bill. No matter if you go to Calthorpe clothes out of Māngere or the hard underbelly of North Auckland—i.e. Upper Harbour—or the soft squishy part of the North Shore, out in Devonport, or out in those wealthy intelligence suburbs out at Manurewa and GI and Panmure, and, of course, one of my favourite parts of Auckland, Maraetai-Beachlands—beautiful place—it restores flexibility. It supports better decision-making, it enables delivery, it supports housing supply, and it makes better use of infrastructure investment—city regional deal coming. It respects local conditions, it strengthens New Zealand’s economic performance, and it gives Auckland—no, not Hamilton North; Auckland—the ability to move forward. Not only that, it reflects the kind and generous support of people like Christine Fletcher to move our great city, the city of sails, Tāmaki Herenga-waka, Herenga-tangata, forward.

For those reasons, I commend this bill to the House and say that it delivers something that Tāmaki-makau-rau and the Auckland planning system needs right now. It allows the council to respond to evidence, local conditions, and community input, whether or not it’s the member opposite’s friend’s building housing out at Middlemore, out at Hospital Road, that will continue to enable strong growth—Oriini, e mihi ana ki a koe e te tuahine [Oriini, I acknowledge you, sister].

It also delivers something further than that; it delivers on things that matter. When the planning system is overly rigid, it becomes harder to respond to evidence, local concerns, and local conditions, and outcomes can get locked in even where the evidence supports a different approach. That’s not what a well-functioning planning system should do or needs.

At the centre of this bill is a small but very important change. By reducing the housing capacity requirement to approximately 1.4 million homes, the bill gives Auckland Council room to respond. It gives us a degree of dexterity and flexibility, and places like Maungakiekie, up those beautiful volcanic shafts and cones—

Sam Uffindell: The Cornwall Cricket Club.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: The Cornwall Cricket Club. It allows growth to be focused where it works best—around transport corridors, rapid transit, and centres, places like Howick, the hard streets of Howick and Botany Downs. It allows capacity to be reduced where intensification would create poor outcomes, whether because of natural hazards, floods—who can forget those Auckland Anniversary floods—infrastructure constraints, or other factors.

The bill does not reduce Auckland’s ambition for growth; it actually gives it ballast and supercharges it. The new capacity number remains a very high level of development capacity—1.4 million homes, people. That could be another 3 or 4 million people—well beyond what the city will deliver in the short or medium term; it’s a long-term picture.

It restores Auckland Council’s ability to operate, as the planning system is intended to do, to actively shape where growth occurs, rather than being locked into outcomes that do not reflect local traditions and local aspirations. That’s exactly what a responsive planning system should do, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re out in Henderson, the hard-working people of Henderson and that New Lynn, by my good friend Paulo Garcia, and “Mount Rascal”, Carlos Cheung—e mihi ana ki a koe—or, of course, my favourite suburb in Auckland, Ōrākei.

The benefits of this bill are practical and real. That’s what they are. For Auckland Council, the bill provides clear national direction alongside appropriate discretion. For people on Rewiti Street and Reihana Street, and Kupe and Kepa roads—Kitemoana Street, what a great place.

Hon Simon Watts: King Edward Parade in Takapuna.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Yes, that’s right, King Edward Parade in Takapuna. It allows the council to actively shape that growth, informed by evidence, submissions, and local conditions, rather than being constrained by a blunt, numerical requirement.

For the planning process more broadly, it restores discretion where discretion is needed. For builders and developers, it reduces risk by resolving uncertainty and avoiding projects being left in limbo—remember that, the old limbo trick? That matters because confidence drives investment, investment drives housing supply, and investment supports housing and homes and communities.

For renters and people who are trying buy their first home—and it is great to know that we’re at the highest level of first-home buyers for many, many years—it matters because the delays in the planning system ultimately mean fewer homes and higher costs. That’s what we don’t need for our children and for our mokopuna, and for those that deserve their own home in places like Māngere, in places like Maungakiekie, in places like Manurewa, and, of course, in places like the hard-working suburb of Glendowie.

For the economy, it matters, because Auckland matters. Auckland is New Zealand’s economic engine, despite the efforts of some opposite, and if Auckland is held back, the country is held back. That’s why enabling Auckland to grow and to grow well is central to lifting not only productivity and living standards but also wealth, health, wellbeing, and a sense of cultural affinity.

Auckland Council has already signalled how it intends to respond to the increased discretion this bill provides, and it’s not going to be dictated to by people from Dunedin. It has identified a set of principles to guide its work, including retaining strong intensification around metropolitan areas and rapid transit, and reducing capacity in less-connected locations further from the city centre and along lower-ranked transport corridors. We will not allow the representative from Mosgiel to tell us what to do in Auckland.

Those principles reflect the balance this bill is designed to strike. They show how planning judgment can be exercised responsibly. They demonstrate that restoring discretion does not mean abandoning structure or ambition, but they are not final decisions; they are the starting point. The council and the elected representatives will develop their preferred approach. They will release updated maps and provisions—this is not “Mapgate”, people—and invite public submissions.

Final outcomes will continue to be determined through the planning process—

Hon Willie Jackson: Take my jacket off.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: —informed by evidence, submissions, and the independent planning panel. Aucklanders will have a say—Aucklanders, people—

Hon Willie Jackson: Stop trying to dress like me.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: —not people from Maniapoto and Ngāti Tama, I say to the member opposite. They will have a say in how those outcomes are shaped. Central government will not be making those decisions. We don’t sit up here like Titans or gods, saying, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to mix the drinks over here. We’re going to mix the drinks over there.”—no, no, no, no. Aucklanders can mix their own drinks, people. That is Auckland’s plan; that is this Government’s plan. Aucklanders can mix their own drinks. Go the Blues—second only to the Chiefs.

This bill supports a broader vision for Auckland. Auckland must be able to grow if Aotearoa New Zealand is to prosper. It means saying yes more often. We are not a Government of no; we’re a Government of yes: yes to housing, yes to infrastructure, yes to transit-oriented development, yes to growth, and, importantly, yes to Aucklanders. It means making the most of major public investments like the City Rail Link—go the Wahs—and it means having a planning system that enables Auckland Council to shape growth responsibly, rather than locking it in to rigid outcomes and being told what to do like students in a classroom in Takapuna.

It means having a planning system that enables Auckland Council to move forward with a vision. This bill supports that vision, whether or not it’s up on Remuera Road, the tough streets of Remuera and Epsom—

Cameron Brewer: Yeah, yeah—mean streets.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: —the mean streets—and, of course, it is helping Auckland move forward as a more connected, more productive, more livable city, one that can adapt to change and respond to opportunity and be the global city that it’s destined to be.

This bill sits alongside the Government’s wider programme of wider Resource Management Act reform. It’s designed to deliver a new planning system that’s clearer, simpler, and more predictable—stand by, conservation is coming. As Auckland Council works through Plan Change 120, some requirements under the National Policy Statement on Urban Development are temporarily overlapping. This includes reassessing its housing capacity for future development strategy.

There’s little value now in requiring new planning and modelling work while the plan change itself is still being finalised and the new system is being established. This bill makes a targeted adjustment—where’s Dan Bidois when I need him?; waiata tautoko, waiata tautoko—[Interruption]—yes, waiata tautoko, mate—to remove that duplication in the short term by removing these requirements on the council—great Harvard grad.

The bill was addressed under urgency because delay would have had real consequences. Without this bill, rigid settings would have been locked in and, of course, Aucklanders would have been worse off for it. Opportunities to respond would have been lost. Urgency was used here to help resolve problems before they became entrenched, and not to avoid scrutiny. It was about getting the systems and the settings right, and decisions are still being made.

This Government believes in Auckland. It believes in Aucklanders. It believes that people who live in our largest city, our largest metropolitan area, can make the decisions they need to with the delegations and the responsibilities that the council has to again drive Auckland forward and not to be mired in a situation where the Government continues to mix the drinks.

To all Aucklanders here, near, and afar, thank you for leading our country into the future. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (11:25): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s so nice to start my speech with applause—thank you so much—from the members opposite. I am interested to hear the Associate Minister of Housing just say that this Government believes in Auckland, and I wonder: did this Government believe in Auckland only in March of 2026 and not in August of 2025? Is that what that Minister meant, because that Government is the one that introduced the capacity of 2 million homes just in August last year—August last year. This is a huge flip-flop from just August last year, and it’s a flip-flop from February this year.

It’s hard to keep up with, but, apparently, we have Christine Fletcher to thank for it, and that is what the Minister has said. Should it be the “Christine Fletcher Amendment Bill” that we’re all talking about now? The power of the barbecue and, in fact, the power of whatever happened on Monday in Cabinet—and it’s all changing.

We’ve also heard from the Minister just then that this bill is to create certainty and to be efficient and to make the best use of infrastructure, and I would like to have it on record that making the best use of infrastructure is a great thing to be doing. Certainty—well, wouldn’t be nice? But, in fact, all that this bill is doing—and efficiency. There was efficiency, too. I was getting away on myself so quickly there that I missed the efficiency point, but we’re all for efficiency, as well.

Unfortunately, this bill does none of that. That is not what this bill is about. We have had incoherent arguments from the Government about the wonders of intensification and lowering house prices—which we totally agree with—and then those members are saying that they’re reducing that intensification. It is not efficient because they also have not been able to answer the question of what happens if Auckland Council decides not to change Plan Change 120, which, by my reading of this bill, it can decide to do. Why then have we been in all-stages urgency if it doesn’t have to change its plan? That seems like a big waste of the time of this House and the expense that goes with that.

We also, on this efficiency point and the certainty point, haven’t heard from Government members about where Auckland’s Plan Change 120 as modified, or even as not modified—that’s their choice—will stand in a new planning system. We’ve had Ministers refer to the new planning system plenty of times in this debate, but we have not heard what certainty Aucklanders are going to have with these plan changes. I’d say that it could be—given the answers that we’ve had during this all-stages, urgent debate—that any plan change is a total waste of time because Ministers are going to roll on in and say, “Well, no. You’ve got to start all over again with our new legislation.”, and my sympathies go to Auckland ratepayers.

As the Minister has just mentioned, I am the member for Dunedin. My colleague Ingrid Leary is the member for Taieri, which includes beautiful, beautiful Mosgiel, which is not part of my electorate. But the ratepayers of Auckland are having to pay for this, and for what point, if the Government is just going to continually interfere and flip-flop on its own decisions—decisions made in August last year, which were different from the decisions made in December 2024, when the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill was introduced?

There was a position on the medium-density residential standards and all the backtracking on that, but then this Government, whilst they’ve been in Government, made decisions to introduce a piece of legislation in December 2024. They changed their mind through the select committee process, and that happened at some point in 2025. Then the Act was made with amendments in the committee stage at the last minute—the select committee had not looked at them—in August 2025, and here we are again. They really cannot make any decisions and this all might be a big waste of time.

In terms of talking about the lack of logic or the incoherence in the Government arguments, we also hear them say, “Well, this is about giving Aucklanders, who have to keep paying for these changes, some choice.” But we have not heard those Government members talk about some of those other changes that were made in August 2025 that enable ministerial interference. We had a brief discussion just before about the decision makers on the panel considering this plan. Some of those decision makers are appointed by the Crown, by the Ministers. That is not Wellington saying to Auckland, “Here we go, Auckland. You make all the decisions.” That is Wellington saying to Auckland, “with these people”.

Even more importantly, there is the statement of expectations that the Minister can just make by Gazette notice whenever he wants. That is a very powerful tool and that very much is coming from Wellington and not Auckland. So for members opposite me to say, “Oh, this is all of a sudden giving Auckland a whole lot of choice.” Well, it’s a whole lot of choice that is constrained. I mean, it’s not a whole lot of choice, is it? These are huge constraints that this Government is putting on those people in Auckland who have to pay for it and have no certainty, because all of the Planning Bill to come is up for grabs and this might end up nowhere at all.

We also keep hearing about these numbers, this 2 million, 1.6 million, as advertised six weeks ago, and now on Monday the 1.4 million. Whilst I don’t want to focus particularly on those numbers, I am interested in that process of how we got to 1.6 and then 1.4. We’ve had no explanation for that. We know that the council doesn’t necessarily have to make the change, so why are we here? I know I’m repeating myself, and I’m happy to repeat myself because there is no reason for us to be here. We are in all-stages urgency to do something that the Minister says isn’t particularly necessary because we are going to have those high-capacity numbers anyway.

But then we have this question of, well, that can’t be right. Surely, Cabinet made a decision to do all-stages urgency for a reason, and surely that reason is the noise that was heard from some of these areas that do not have the named train stations that they did not want to be intensified. Some people did not want that intensification to happen to them. There’s no clear wording in this bill that says, “No intensification in Parnell.” That’s not what happens.

What happens is that the minimum is set. The members opposite keep saying, “It’s just a minimum. Auckland Council can do more.” But, in reality, we know the politics of the situation are that where you have that minimum and know that that minimum can be met by the intensification around the train stations, then it is going to be very difficult for any local politician to say, “Well, in fact, we are going to go beyond the minimum. Even though all these train stations are going to affect that new lowered minimum, we want to go beyond it to do some real change in the parts of the city that are close to the central business district, in the parts of the city that we know will do the most for our productivity as a nation.”

Auckland is exceptionally important. It is our international city, and we need it to be like a city and to be enabled to do that. But what this legislation is doing is trying to stop that change from happening, and that is disgraceful. It is disgraceful that those members are trying to sell this as Auckland having more choice, when all it is, is increasing uncertainty and increasing the ratepayer burden.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (11:35): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, for this last third reading speech. Last night in the second reading speech, I had a good rark-up about the nimbies, but I’d actually like to spend this speech talking about some practical suggestions for how Auckland could enable and actually realise more housing—the housing that it needs—in a way that would really work for everybody. We are opposing this bill because of the step-backs from 2 million to 1.6 million to 1.4 million.

However, I do acknowledge that there is truth to people on the other side of the House who have said this is just a minimum and that Auckland Council can go further. From the reporting that I’ve seen from Auckland Council where the mayor says that 2 million would have been fine, I hope that those aspirations are fulfilled if Auckland Council want to do that, so I acknowledge that.

The Auckland Unitary Plan is actually really special. To quote from a friend’s unpublished work, so I had better not say their name, “The Auckland Unitary Plan represents one of the most extensive rezoning initiatives implemented in a contemporary metropolitan context, substantially increasing development capacity across the region.” That comment means in the world, in any metropolitan modern setting.

Even the Minister was saying this morning that when he has gone and spoken in New York and other cities at housing symposiums and conferences, even international experts refer to the Auckland Unitary Plan as an example of really big, bold, transformational rezoning in order to make housing more available, and that’s to be applauded. Let’s recognise that this bill rolls back that ambition, but this is a minimum entitlement, so Auckland Council can build on that if they want to.

Now, anyone in the planning world—or as Simon Court might say, the SimCity nerdy planning world—there’s a bit of a GOAT or greatest of all time, a bit of a legend. His name is Gehl. Everybody knows about Gehl. He’s an urban planner who has really influenced the way that modern Western, and probably Asian, countries and cities think about urban planning. His whole thing is that density and intensification and allowing more houses and cities and towns and regions is not simply about the numbers of dwellings that we enable but also about the quality of the environments that we’re creating that people live in.

I really love this quote as well from Cervero, another urban planner, who says that density cannot succeed in isolation. That’s really what I want to talk about, because in the committee of the whole House stage this morning, it was really clear to me that this bill and the housing that it enables is really not underpinned by any understanding or assumptions around infrastructure capacity.

I’m not saying that in a way to say, like, the infrastructure is not there or the infrastructure is already at its maximum capacity, therefore we should not build. It’s a point to be made that the Government really has to have a hard think about what kind of infrastructure they’re supporting in order to support more housing. I think everyone in the House can agree around that, but there was very much a vibe from the Minister that, “Well, Auckland Council can think about that, that’s a problem for Auckland Council.”

The problem with that is that my understanding is Auckland Council are at their borrowing limit. They have been stretched to the max. That might be down to a number of reasons. I imagine it was very expensive for them to have to deal with multiple massive natural disasters: Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods. That would have maxed out a lot of their capital expenditure planning into the future. As I said earlier in the morning, I don’t pay an awful lot of attention to Auckland Council because it’s not my city, but I imagine there have been decisions in the past and in the present that have meant that Auckland Council can’t borrow more money. Many councils are in this position where they don’t have a lot of headroom in order to borrow for the infrastructure that they need to accommodate these growing populations. So I really think the Government needs to think really hard about how they will support Auckland to fund the infrastructure that will be needed to accommodate this additional 1,400,000 people.

I really want to bring into the room the rates cap because you can’t consider this bill without considering the plans that this Government has for local government, which is that they want to cap rates; they want to limit the amount that councils can raise revenue through rates. So if Auckland Council want 2 million, apparently, according to the mayor, this Government is saying, “We will give you a minimum target of 1.4 million.” That’s all good and well; that’s great, we want more housing. But if nobody is considering the fact that Auckland can’t borrow and there might be a rates cap, you’re in a really bad situation where you’re going to put a whole lot of people in homes and there is not going to be the transport, the schools, the hospitals, the green spaces—all of those things to accommodate that growth. Now, the Minister, in response to those concerns, said that there is the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Amendment Bill, which is before the House, that might be able to address some of those concerns. That’s great, because that’s the conversation that we really need to have.

As I was saying earlier, when you zone for more housing, you instantly create more value. Let’s look at the Avondale Racecourse. That was zoned for a particular purpose, and now, through this change, it will be rezoned for housing. Overnight, that increases the value of the Avondale Racecourse land by millions of dollars—maybe even a billion. There is a way that Governments and councils can capture some of that added value, as a result of decisions by public institutions, and they can put that value back into the infrastructure required to accommodate that extra housing. Even neoliberal Governments and councils across the world, in places like London, Sydney, and Vancouver, know this. They understand that higher density brings more economic activity into a city and a town. They know that.

It’s really weird that in New Zealand there’re still some of these attitudes that are against densification, when densification is really great for the economy. But it’s only good if the Government and the council actively intervene in that process. You can’t just sit by and let the market do it, because the market and those developers are not going to pay for the required water works, road works, and all of the added pressure on the infrastructure system. So that’s where the Government and council need to be proactive to capture some of that value to invest.

An example I gave this morning is that when Transmission Gully was built, it created $6 billion of value in private gains—$6 billion. The Government, when planning Transmission Gully—and I acknowledge that it was Labour- and National-led Governments that were part of that lifecycle of Transmission Gully. If you captured just a small percentage of that $6 billion to invest into waste water, green space, environmental stuff, whatever you want to spend it on, that’s a really good use of regulatory and financing powers to improve the public good and the amenities that we all enjoy in our living environments.

I just want to point to another couple of examples of how we can do things well. Zoning is about sharing the load. It’s really important that everybody in a city shares the intensification burden—that all of us do our part. I talked about Epsom and Remuera last night. I don’t really want to get rarked up again, so we’ll leave it at that. But I do want to point to some good examples and solutions. We need to consider land value capture. That is what I was just talking about. We can also look to cities, like Vancouver and London, where they have zoned for more housing, but they stage their development and they link the number of consents to timing and funding of upgrades of infrastructure. So when, let’s say, a suburb in London gets a certain number of consents and they build, say, an additional 10,000 houses, at that point that will trigger an additional investment in the transport infrastructure, a new park is built, and some new pipes are invested.

What we’re saying is: yes to more housing. Can we please have a conversation about how we fund the infrastructure to support that housing? Thanks, Madam Speaker.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT) (11:45): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the third reading of the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill. It’s really good to see that this bill is going through urgency.

I was listening to the Labour member’s contribution. On one hand, she was complaining about this bill going through urgency, and, on the other hand, she wanted more houses built. I think they need to go and make up their minds about what should happen; whether they want to support this bill going through as soon as possible or they want to oppose building more houses. They actually didn’t want urgency, but, on the other hand, they want more houses built as soon as possible.

I do understand there is the importance of a select committee process, but the main purpose of the select committee process is to hear from people. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that as soon as this planning was out—of 2 million dwellings in Auckland—there were lots of people emailing us. There was a huge amount of correspondence that was received by me and many, many of my colleagues in the ACT team, and not only by email; people were reaching out at public events, as well, and sharing their views about the initial announcement. I had many one-on-one conversations, as well, with many, many people—those who share their conversations.

I don’t understand why some members in this House, on that side, think that if people live in East Auckland, or people live on the North Shore or in some other suburbs that they mentioned in their speeches, that their voice should not count. Why should only the voices of some people they like count? People living in East Auckland, if they come and share their experiences, that voice should count. And yes, I am a list member of Parliament based in Pakuranga and I’ve heard from many, many families in Pakuranga, those who have shared their experiences of very, very local infrastructure failure. I’ve had families reach out to me who have had their backyard flooded. Not just that—I had a family reach out to me because it wasn’t just their backyard that was flooded, the house was flooded as well and the water was really filthy. So they didn’t have to just pump that water out; they had to get their whole house sanitised.

I’m asking: do we ignore those voices? No, not because of where people live do we just ignore their voices; everybody’s voice should be equally valued. That is what we have done. We have listened and that is why we have scaled it down from 2 million houses to now 1.4 million houses.

I don’t want to mention any names of these families, but I do want to mention one person and that person is Janet Dickson. She is the chair of the Howick Ratepayers and Residents Association. She had a really good meeting with me, and I must say that she really nicely articulated the concerns of the local community. I must say that she did a really good job of representing the concerns of local communities in Howick and Pakuranga. This process is about listening. This process is acting on the basis of what we hear from people, and it is not the first time that the way we want to approach things sometimes changes after what we hear from people. That is what the Parliament should be doing, and that is what every member in this House should be doing.

This is about streamlining our planning rules, and scaling back is a good idea. The ACT Party is supporting this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (11:49): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it’s been interesting to listen to this debate about how many future potential buildings that we might have, whether it’s 2 million, 1.6 million, or 1.4 million. I think it’s interesting to reflect that this is about potential future over an extended period of time. A lot of those will never come to pass because the owners of those properties don’t want to develop them or don’t want them to develop them in a particular way up to the maximum size. That’s normal. That’s why you aim for a potential number that’s way, way higher than you think you actually need. So we are not looking to have 2 million houses, we’re not looking to have 1.6, and we’re not looking to have 1.4. We are simply providing the capacity that there are 1.4 million choices, 1.6 million choices, 2 million choices—2 million choices that people can choose from to develop those, to provide the housing stock that we think a future Auckland might need.

Just to put it in context, we’ve currently got about 600,000 dwellings in Auckland. It’s taken 180-odd years to create 600,000 dwellings. Unless we’re going very, very, very fast, we are not going to be getting 2 million anytime soon. If we do, God knows what the country is going to look like. The question really is also, if you ask Auckland, if you go and talk to Wayne Brown and say, “Do you want growth at that level?” I suspect the answer will probably be, “Actually, no, we don’t.” Certainly the infrastructure can’t cope with it, the shape of the city can’t cope with it, and the rate of change and the pace of change will be too great.

This bill doesn’t change—and I think we’ve had acknowledgement from the Opposition—this bill doesn’t change the ceiling. If Auckland wants to zone for 2 million extra houses, it can do that. All it does is it takes some of the pressure off and it says, actually, all you’ve got to do now is to zone for 1.4 million, plus some of those areas around the City Rail Link, etc. We’re actually reducing the pressure on Auckland to do that, to upzone. I do note that if you look at the map that’s there at the moment, there are some pretty significant opportunities within Auckland which are not upzoned at this moment in time, which could be upzoned at a future time. They need to be allied with infrastructure, and they are also the way of paying for some of that infrastructure. There are still some really exciting possibilities and choices that Auckland needs to make. I think that we need, as a Parliament, as a Government, to be walking alongside Auckland.

As I said, there are opportunities for upzoning allied with transport and infrastructure investment. The key, though, is that we capture—and we’ve heard that in some of the discussion before, and I said that earlier. The key though is we capture the upzoning value so that we can use that value uplift to pay for some of that infrastructure. Because, if you try and do that through the taxpayers’ purse, the reality is it’s going to be unaffordable. Projects won’t happen and we’ll end up with a city—and a country—which is sub-optimal, as a result. Because what happens in Auckland doesn’t just affect Auckland, it affects the areas around Auckland, it affects the country as a whole.

It’s really important that growth pays for growth. As I said, the advice we’ve had from the Infrastructure Commission—I will repeat that, what I said in the earlier debates—is that the Infrastructure Commission has been very plain in that growth at the moment is not paying for growth. It’s not even close. They’ve said between 30 and 50 percent is their best estimate, which means between 50 and 70 percent is paid for by existing ratepayers, existing taxpayers. We need to do a lot better than that. Developers might scream blue murder about that, but if they’re not paying it means the existing tax payer, the existing rate payer is paying. That’s a problem. On that basis, even if you like the growth, you could actually understand why the existing ratepayer or taxpayer might have an aversion to that growth, because they’re paying for the lion’s share of it.

The other point I wanted to make in that aspect is about the role of greenfields. So when you plan a city—and the extensive amount of planning that’s been going on in Auckland, and this is true elsewhere as well—councils will go through an extensive process with their communities to develop a plan. Then, from left field at some stage, you know, maybe 12 months down the track, 24 months down the track, somebody says “I wanna do a brand new greenfields development.” I don’t know quite why we encourage that, why we permit that sort of thing to happen so easily, because they should have got into that process and said, “Look, as part of your overall picture, your overall thinking for your city, we think this area needs to be developed and this is how the infrastructure all works together.” But that doesn’t seem to happen; we still seem to permit that. And I know that—maybe not so much Auckland Council, although I know they’re not that enthusiastic, but a lot of councils really have an aversion to greenfields development coming from left field, particularly after they’ve spent literally years and years and years with their communities planning their cities. So I raise that issue.

The next issue I just wanted to talk about is partnership. We need to make sure that Government is working with councils. I had a wee amount of time working in a council or being part of a council, and so often Governments—doesn’t matter whether they were red-led Governments or blue-led Governments—did things to councils and usually said to the councils, “You’re gonna pay for it as well.” It makes life really difficult if the rules keep chopping and changing. Literally, as I said in the earlier debate, during the development of the Wellington City district plan, the Government intervened twice. Literally, as we were about to go out to consultation, or go out to a major part of that—and we had to go back and rearrange a whole lot of things. It’s really, really unhelpful. So we need Governments—whether they are red-led or blue-led—to work with councils, to walk alongside councils.

I’ve made the point that we—the next piece of legislation, I think, we’ve got coming to this House is the Auckland Transport legislation. One of the things that does, aside from getting rid of Auckland Transport and putting things back into the council, is the development of a 30-year strategy. Now, we don’t do 30-year strategies as Governments; Governments need to be thinking much longer term, and that’s across all aspects of what we do. Many areas need that big, long-term thinking. But that Auckland Transport Bill says that Government and the council will walk together in developing a 30-year transport strategy. In developing a 30-year transport strategy, you also have to have a 30-year plan for your city, the shape of your city. And that’s what you should be doing. Those two things, transport and urban development, have to work together—and all the infrastructure that supports that. So we’re sort of part-way into that partnership, but we need to do a lot more of that as this bill progresses and as thinking progresses.

The other area, which I’ve mentioned several times, is growth in the city. So we are now at the stage where we are at less than replacement. So, you know, births versus deaths, it’s gonna start turning around. In fact, our population would slowly decline over time except for one big lever: it’s migration. It is not the council who’s in charge of migration, it’s the Government. And Government—doesn’t matter, again, whether it’s red-led or blue-led—does not have a long-term, coherent, demographic and migration strategy. That means that we would regularly say to councils—and I’ve been on the receiving end of this—”We want you to plan for 30 years’ growth”, and we will go, “Well, how much is 30 years’ growth going to be? Because you’re the ones who hold the levers.” So Government, again, needs to do some serious long-term thinking about how many people we’re providing for and where they’re going to go.

In that, I would note that—and I gave a speech quite some time ago—so much of migration goes to Auckland. And the question you ask is, “Is that necessarily a good thing?” If you look at the size of Auckland in comparison to the population of the country as a whole, Auckland is one of the biggest, I think it was, I worked out, other than—you leave the city States out, you know, the Singapores and so on, Monacos, those kind of things—but Auckland was second only to Doha, prospectively, as a proportion of the entire population of the country. Now, when you’re an outlier, you should really be thinking, “Are we an outlier for good reasons or an outlier because it’s just happened to us?” It seems to me that what we are doing in this country so often, not just in this area, is that we’re not creating the future that we want, but we’re just stumbling into it. We’ve got to do a lot better than that.

Just to finish off, there have been some comments made about Auckland, and quite a few comments made about Auckland as an engine of growth. And yes, that’s true. But I would remind you that the vast majority of our export revenue does not come from our cities, it comes from our rural area. The population of our rural area, broadly, has not gone up; the population of our urban areas has. The question I put to you is: whether in fact that means that our rural areas are carrying more and more people in our urban areas? Unless we do something to boost the export revenue generated by those urban areas—you know, through science, through digital technology, through whatever it might be—we are not going to be a more productive, more wealthy society.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: We’re not productive because we put it all in housing speculation.

ANDY FOSTER: So we’ve got some real challenges in that area as well. I’m not quite sure what Dr Xu-Nan is saying, but I’m sure it’s good.

This bill really is leaving for Auckland the opportunities for it to decide how it grows, for it to decide what the shape of the city should be—and that’s the way it should be. But for Government to walk alongside of Auckland, particularly in transport and investment and infrastructure, so that together we can create a great city as part of a great country. This really is about trying to grow the shape of a city, the shape of a country that we should be aspiring to, not merely stumbling into. I commend the bill to the House.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (11:59): Let me begin with this truth: Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland is in a housing crisis. That much is not in dispute. Heoi, for too many whānau across Tāmaki-makau-rau, the dream of a safe, secure, affordable home remains out of reach. Too many tamariki are growing up in overcrowded homes. Too many rangatahi are couch surfing or on our streets. Too many wāhine and whānau are still living in motels, garages, and cars. We all know the urgency of the need. However, urgency must never come at the cost of justice. In less than 24 hours, this House is passing a significant housing legislation for Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland under urgency, without select committee scrutiny, without public submissions, and without proper consultation with mana whenua and Māori communities. That is not good lawmaking and that is not good housing policy, because urgency narrows the room. And when the room narrows, Māori are the first pushed out.

Urban Māori do not have planning consultants on retainer; they do not have legal teams ready to respond within 20 working days to complex, shifting planning proposals. Urgency does not accelerate Māori participation; it filters Māori out. For generations, decisions about our whenua have been made to us, around us, and over us. The people of Tāmaki-makau-rau know that history deeply. From Ōkahu Bay to South Auckland, Māori communities have long lived with the consequences of planning decisions that prioritise development over people and density over belonging.

While this bill speaks the language of housing supply, the question we must ask is very simple: supply for whom? More houses on paper do not automatically mean homes for Māori whānau, Pasifika whānau, or vulnerable families. We know from previous Resource Management Act housing reforms that the Government’s stated objective is to accelerate supply in high-demand cities, but supply without equity can simply deepen inequality. Without affordability protections, without anti-displacement measures, without explicit pathways for papa kāinga even in urban centres, and without whānau-led housing, this legislation risks reproducing the same exclusion that has locked Māori out of homeownership for generations.

The people I represent are not asking for special treatment; they’re asking for fairness. They’re asking that housing law in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland recognise that Māori housing is not only about units and zoning maps, but it’s about whakapapa. It’s about connection to whenua. It’s about keeping whānau close to their marae, to their kura, and to their communities. It is also about growth. What does that growth look like when Māori are continually locked out from decision making? The urgency of this bill restricted and real, reasonable, robust debate from everyone—from 1.6 million people of Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, from the 250,000 Māori that call Tāmaki-makau-rau home, and from this very House.

If time had been granted, Te Pāti Māori would have proposed, in time, amendments that give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, require meaningful mana whenua consultation, protect communities from displacement, enable papakāinga and multigenerational housing, require reporting on Māori housing outcomes, and ensure that this House remains accountable for the impacts of this bill. Those were not unreasonable amendments; they were practical, principled, and they were grounded in the lived realities of the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. If this Government is sincere in its commitment to solving the housing crisis, then it must also be sincere about who that solution serves.

Housing policy that does not reach those who are most in need is not reform; it is rhetoric. Te Pāti Māori and their MP for Tāmaki Makaurau simply do not support this bill in its current state, or in any form, because it has not gone through the correct processes that not only give rise to the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau, but acknowledge, honour, and respect Te Tiriti o Waitangi and respect the 19 mana whenua of Tāmaki-makau-rau and the greater isthmus of Auckland. It has not considered what the impact will be to Māori communities now and in the next 30 years. E kore rawa mātou e whakaae ki tēnei, ka mutu.

[We will never agree with this, furthermore.]

For that reason, we do not support this bill. I stand here for Māori housing justice and our mokopuna, and, basically, that’s our bottom line.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (12:04): This bill has, effectively, always been about protecting the wealth of rich people in leafy suburbs, who have long fought to maintain their status as people who live in areas that are simply inaccessible for everyday, working people.

Dan Bidois: Come to Northcote; you’ll see some everyday Kiwis there, my friend.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I would invite the members of the Government, who I think are inviting me to Northcote, to realise that the political discourse behind this bill comes from Government Ministers, effectively, caving into wealthy constituents who do not want to see intensification in some of our inner city suburbs where young people are locked out of opportunities there for affordable housing.

It’s hard to take the Government’s claims of committing to increase housing supply seriously when they are gutting public housing programmes left, right, and centre, including in our biggest city.

Hon Tama Potaka: That’s not true.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: The member just in front of me just said it’s not true. It is true; they are gutting public housing programmes. It is happening. We are seeing, in Auckland, empty lots where public housing should have been—housing that would have been for some of our lowest-income people who are currently often waiting for months, if not years, on the social housing register. The wildest thing about this is that this bill continues to put the onus on neighbourhoods such as West and South Auckland, who are facing the brunt of youth unemployment and the current impact of the fossil fuel crisis, to be the ones to carry the load when it comes to intensifying the biggest city in the country.

The Government had the opportunity to do intensification well while enabling more people to live in our city centre suburbs. They also had the opportunity to continue moving towards having fewer homes in flood-prone areas, but we can’t do that without adequate housing supply, particularly in those very same neighbourhoods that are affected. If the Government is genuinely so concerned about having adequate public infrastructure in those areas that resist intensification, we could instead have a central government that works with local government to ensure that we have the public transport infrastructure that our city deserves.

It was telling to hear the Minister in the committee of the whole House talk about light rail for Dominion Road; I haven’t seen this Government put forward a case that genuinely commits to actually building light rail on Dominion Road in a way that is achievable and realistic. The Greens, when the Labour Party was in Government, were very clear that we did want a more affordable light rail option for our biggest city through Dominion Road—ideally surface light rail—which would have been delivered sooner and more cost-efficiently. All these things can absolutely happen and be put in place, but this isn’t a bill to enable this. This is a bill that caves into some of the Government’s wealthiest constituents while leaving behind young families who are locked out of seeing themselves having secure tenure in our city suburbs.

I also want to acknowledge that in the committee of the whole House—and this is why the use of urgency is particularly problematic—we had a Minister who told us that it was no analysis done on,for example, the change in job creations from the downgrading of the minimum housing supply that will now be put in place from 2 million, to 1.4 million homes. We know, obviously, that if you’re requiring fewer homes to be built, you’re going to have fewer jobs being made available, and the security of those jobs will also be lower. Yet there was no analysis done whatsoever on this.

There was also no updated analysis being presented to us on, for example, how changes in migration patterns and population changes are informing these changes. All these things could have well been unpacked at a select committee. We could have asked for that advice. We could have had that unpacked in a more evidence-based way, but this Government does not care about evidence; it does not care, actually, about low-income families struggling to access secure housing. This Government will continue pandering to wealthy few—particularly, in this case, in leafy suburbs—and will keep locking out low-income working people from having secure housing. You don’t have to believe me; you can just look at the Government’s housing programme, the cancellation of public housing, and the lack of enablement of affordable housing for our low-income families. The Green Party will not be supporting this bill, and we’ll keep fighting for adequate supply of affordable housing and intensification done well.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (12:09): What some people on the other side of the House want to call flip-flopping, we want to call listening to our neighbours. What other people want to call caving in, we call respecting the views of everyday Kiwis. For people on the other side to talk about South Auckland, well, I’ll tell you about the residents’ groups in South and East Auckland—the residents’ groups of Wattle Downs, of The Gardens, of Waiata Shores, of Conifer Grove, of Flat Bush residents’ groups. We’ve listened to them; I’ve taken their views to our hard-working, listening Ministers, and I’m proud that we’re a party that listens. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (12:10): What a shocking speech from that member—what a shocking speech. It’s unbelievable that that she would treat such an issue with such contempt and not put any effort into her speech. But then the Minister’s not even here—not even here.

Hon James Meager: No, you can’t say that.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I can’t say that? I did. My apologies, Mr Speaker, just in case you were going to warn me.

This is a serious issue, but Chris Bishop has slapped Auckland in the face once again—no doubt about that—by ripping up his housing intensification plans, all because of David Seymour. Seymour’s rich, leafy suburb homeowners put the pressure on Chris Bishop because they didn’t want to be forced to live next door to multi-level housing. That’s what it was all about. We all know what happened there. The pressure went on Mr Bishop, so he cut Auckland’s housing limit to 1.4 million—1.4 million, having cut the Plan Change 120 capacity from 2 million to 1.6 million.

After all the talk from Chris Bishop, all the talk about what he was going to do in Auckland, how he was going to look after Aucklanders and workers and everything else, he buckled—he buckled to the ACT Party, who said, “Oh, no, no—not in our neighbourhood. Not in our neighbourhood. Oh, it’s just terrible. We can’t be in this neighbourhood.” It’s a kick in the guts for many Aucklanders trying to find a home, and it’s an attack, as Wayne Brown just said, on the Auckland Council, all because ACT and National nimbys in the leafy suburbs have been unleashed, basically, on Chris Bishop.

Chris Bishop has buckled—buckled. After all the big talk, all the bravado from this Minister, he totally buckled in the end, collapsed so much that he sent Tama Potaka in to save him. So much for the great urbanist Chris Bishop, that we now have to water down housing intensification, basically, to suck up to the right-wing nimbys. That’s what this is all about. I think that we’ve pointed that out through this debate.

Chris Bishop wants to tell us he’s solving Auckland’s housing crisis, but what he’s really done is invent a new political sport, and it’s called backward progress—that’s what we would call Chris Bishop’s new sport. It’s such a nonsensical and humiliating move from Chris Bishop. We were told intensification was the answer: build up, build smart, make room for people. Then along comes Chris Bishop with a plan that says, “Yes, more housing; but also, less housing; but also, don’t worry about it.” That’s what we ended up with, Chris Bishop, in the end. It’s just crazy.

This Government talks endlessly about decentralisation, letting communities make their own decisions, but when Auckland Council actually tries to plan for growth, suddenly it’s, “No, no, no, not like that.” Apparently Auckland can make its own decisions, as long as they’re the same decisions Wellington already made.

Let’s talk about the numbers. We had capacity for more homes, more density, more opportunity. Now we’ve quietly shaved that back—not enough to fix the crisis, but just enough to say, “Oh, we tried—we tried.” It’s the policy equivalent of turning up to a marathon, jogging 200 metres, and then just asking for a medal. That’s what this Government is doing.

It is a sad indictment, and New Zealanders are waking up. They’re waking up to this useless coalition Government who buckle at every turn. They buckle when it comes to tobacco lobbyists. They buckle when it comes to oil and gas lobbyists. They buckle when it comes to ACT supporters who put the pressure on the Minister Chris Bishop, who had all the talk in the world and buckled. This is what this Government’s all about. That’s why they’re crashing in the polls. Crashing—26 percent in the last poll last night. What a shocking poll result, and we’re watching very closely if there’s going to be any moves in terms of leadership. Sadly, no one on that side of the House is a contender.

Meanwhile, young Aucklanders are still locked out of the market, rents keep climbing, and the dream of affordable housing drifts further away, probably to a low-density suburb somewhere. What’s the plan? Here’s the key: what’s the plan? Let’s clarify. Less ambition and a lot more spin, because in the end, this isn’t a bold reform. It’s a cautious retreat dressed up as leadership, and Auckland deserves better than a housing policy that builds confusion faster than it builds homes. Kia ora.

Dan Bidois: Mr Speaker?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The Hon Jenny Salesa—this is a split call from call No. 8.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) (12:15): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill is disappointing. I know that the Minister, the Hon Chris Bishop, tried. He tried really hard to keep the number of dwellings at 2 million, and, unfortunately, that number has been downgraded, initially to 1.6 million dwellings, and then we know that Cabinet—this is according to an interview of the Minister earlier on this morning—actually agreed to downgrade that number to 1.4 million houses.

It is actually a lot of our folks in not just South Auckland but West Auckland that get to take on that extra burden of where these houses, which—we know that Auckland is our largest city. It is our largest city, and I think the approximate number of folks that live in Auckland now is about 1.6-1.7 million people, and it is projected to continue to grow. With that growth, it is actually really practical, and it is great that there is planning for the future, to ensure that there are more homes built.

However, when the numbers like this keep on being dropped, that actually does not provide certainty. It certainly doesn’t provide certainty for developers and it certainly doesn’t provide certainty for Auckland Council and not certainty for the families who are locked out of homeownership, including many in my electorate in Panmure-Ōtāhuhu. We agree that Auckland definitely needs to grow; however, it does not mean freezing change in the leafy suburbs that already have excellent infrastructure while shunting that growth into communities that are already carrying an infrastructure deficit.

The wider framework that this bill introduced makes sure that intensification will actually not happen in some suburbs. Even though the legislation does not actually spell out which those suburbs are, we kind of know what those suburbs are likely to be. It is the ones that have the City Rail Link (CRL). It is ones that already have good schools, good water infrastructure, frequent public transportation, and strong political representation. In many of those areas, the message from Government seems to be: “Don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere else to put this housing growth.”

Now, that somewhere else is too often South Auckland and West Auckland. In my area, it is Papatoetoe, Ōtara, and neighbouring areas of Māngere and Manurewa. It is those communities that are more than 10 kilometres out of the CBD of Auckland, and it is the areas with the highest deprivation rates. It is the areas also with many of our youngest populations.

In terms of infrastructure deficit in South Auckland, anyone who spends time in our areas knows that there is already congestion. There are already buses that are not frequent or direct. The train stations are also not treated as seriously as the shiny CRL stations in the city. Overloaded stormwater systems cannot cope with heavy rain, and we already saw the effects of that during the Auckland floods.

When this Government comes to the House with a bill that reduces the overall capacity requirement and tells Auckland Council to make it work, what they’re really doing is making it easier to say no to intensification in comfortable suburbs and harder to say yes in communities like mine in South Auckland. If the Government was serious about growing in the right places, this bill would be paired with a plan to address and fund the infrastructure deficit in South Auckland.

Labour opposes this bill, because Auckland cannot solve a housing crisis by aiming lower. We oppose it because it shifts the burden and opportunity away from those who are already having the most and towards those who already have the least. We oppose it because it entrenches in Auckland, where some suburbs are, effectively, protected from change while others are told to grow without the infrastructure, the buses, the rail, the parks, the schools that they need. I do not commend this bill to the House.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (12:20): It is a great day for communities right across Auckland, from Mount Roskill to Unsworth Heights, to Takanini, to my suburb of Northcote, Chatswood, Beach Haven, Birkdale, even Northcote Point where members opposite live. This is a great day for Auckland because it gives council the flexibility to determine where intensification should actually happen and occur in our city. Intensification where it makes sense; that is the key theme of this bill. And where it does not make sense? Certainly on flood plains, certainly on cliffs, and certainly where there is a lack of infrastructure.

It’s a very good bill. It’s going to allow for intensification across the City Rail Link, across main arterial routes, across the CBD, and, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): It’s a five-minute split call.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (12:21): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I begin, may I take one moment to acknowledge the passing of Sir Barry Curtis, who was the Mayor of Manukau City for 24 years. He is someone who has served his community with heart. He’s been a champion for many communities and has stood for the expansion of marae in the area, in South Auckland, and has stood for mana whenua having a greater voice in planning, which the example has been followed around the country. Moe mai rā, Sir Barry. We acknowledge you and your service to a place which you loved.

It’s appropriate to acknowledge the service of our mayors, of our council, when we’re considering the huge scale of the challenge that Auckland has in developing a city that we can be proud of in the future. That, in 2040, when we are celebrating 200 years of the modern conception of our nation, we can also look at a city which has grown and which we are proud of on the world stage. That is a challenge that only the two major parties can grapple with; that only National and Labour can find the kind of long-term cross-partisan consensus which leads to the funding and financing of infrastructure that we need; that leads to the planning reform that the city needs, but, unfortunately, we’re seeing a stepping back from that collective obligation that we have, that can only be reached by the two major parties. Nowhere else is it possible to introduce that tension in the system—not at local government level, not within the minor parties, not within any other place is that tension going to be resolved for those long-term challenges. And yet here we are.

Unfortunately, after years and years of growing public call for longer-term planning, for taking the short-term politics out of the planning for infrastructure, and for the sort of planning reform that would enable greater supply of housing, now we are back here having set an aspiration which was reasonable and that there could have been long-term consensus around for the enablement of 2 million homes in our city to grow over the long term. Now, we are back here with a law that takes that down; that says that that aspiration was too much; that our hopes for first-home buyers to be able to buy their homes in Auckland City, and for rents to come down over the long term, was too far. And we have members on the other side of the House who have lorded that because they know they have an election coming up and they know they have communities who will be hurting because of this. Yes, you’re right that we need to listen to those community groups. Yes, you’re right that we need to listen to ratepayers’ associations who want to have a say, but the answer will never be giving in to those short-term incentives over those long-term areas that we know desperately need attention.

When, after every election, both major political parties stand up and they—politicians from both sides—say, “Yes, we need longer term planning. Yes, we need consensus. Yes, we need to find cross-partisan support, remember this debate, which was about exactly that and the fact that we couldn’t find it. It’s so disappointing for those first-home buyers who will lose out because of this, and those areas in our city which are ill-equipped to soak up the intensification, which they are already being asked to bear, which will continue to be asked to bear more—I’m talking about those areas in South Auckland and in West Auckland, which are poorly provisioned for stormwater, for roading, for transport infrastructure already, and will now face more poorly planned infill housing because that is the alternative to large-scale intensification; the sorts of apartment buildings that we could have had along the corridor, the Eastern Busway, which will be harder and harder for councillors at the Auckland Council level to argue for in the coming years.

It’s not just about now, it’s about the politics of the next decade, and this bill that sets an unambitious limit will make it very, very hard to realise the aspirations of those communities, even with them campaigning alongside the locally elected representatives, even if that were possible in today’s modern environment, where exactly the people who need us to stand up for them are working two jobs, grandmothers and grandparents raising children, and cannot participate in it at that local level. They needed the central government politicians who battle for the centre and who are battling for the rights and interests of most New Zealanders—most New Zealanders in the middle, who are struggling but can afford some assets and want their children to afford some assets; this was the moment where we could have advocated for their interests, and, unfortunately, that is not what this bill does.

And what about the rest of the Government’s building reforms? Labour has supported those because they will enable supply of more housing. That all hinged on the ability to reform the planning process, which is now no longer happening to the extent that it should be. All of those reforms, which enabled supply, will not be able to have the effect. And this is a National Government, where in the days of Keith Holyoake, they would have voted for something like this, they would have voted for more homeownership. They’re turning away from that legacy, and they’ve become a party that will fight for entrenched interests.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (12:26): Before I begin, I want to acknowledge all the residents who have taken the time over the past two years to share their feedback and concern on both Plan Change 78 and Plan Change 120. Your voices have been heard and they matter. As your local MP, I’m proud to work with you, advocate for you, and see this bill as a victory for the people of Mt Roskill. I also want to make special mention of councillor Christine Fletcher and Puketāpapa local board chair Roseanne Hay and member Fiona Lai for their strong advocacy for better and more thoughtful planning in our communities.

A key change in this bill is reducing the minimum housing capacity under Plan Change 120 from 2 million houses to 1.4 million. I’ve heard concern from the Opposition that this is limiting housing supply or taking decisions away from local government; in fact, this does the exact opposite. This legislation sets a minimum not maximum, and it returned decision-making power to the council, giving Auckland Council the flexibility to plan based on the needs and the voice of the communities.

Housing policy isn’t just the numbers; it’s about smart and sustainable planning. It’s about building in the right place, backed by the infrastructure to support it. If there is a demand, council can still enable more housing in the right places. Now, it is up to Auckland Council to work with Aucklanders, including people in Mt Roskill, to decide where growth should happen and where it should not. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): It’s a five-minute split call.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (12:28): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, well, well, look where we are. What an absolute mess this Government has made of the housing decisions that they purport to hold so dear to their heart. We are here, under urgency, all-stages urgency, deciding the housing policy of our biggest city.

And why are we in urgency? I was here for some of the committee stage; I’ve yet to hear a good answer and I think the reason is—we all know why—that Minister Chris Bishop has purported to be an urbanist, has purported to support intensification, but every time anyone of his Cabinet colleagues or other coalition partners looks at his proposal around housing, he loses another 200,000. We started off with 2 million, then we had 1.6 million, and now, in the House, that’s 1.4 million. As the days were going to tick by in select committee, who knows how many fewer housing opportunities Aucklanders would have had with the input of ACT, with the advice of David Seymour and the local constituents who do not have the same vision of intensification that we know is needed for Auckland; with the people like Christopher Luxon, losing their nerve and not wanting more houses in Auckland, we would have gotten fewer and fewer. So, as he is leader of the House, we’re in urgency because he wants to get this through, but, sadly for Aucklanders, it is a much weaker proposal that shows that he has lost the fight around intensification in Auckland—because make no mistake: this bill will result in less housing opportunities and fewer houses for Aucklanders. That’s what this bill will do.

If we look at the history of this, we have had Auckland Council doing the heavy lifting in relation to planning for Auckland, and despite what this Government is doing today, we see them again frustrating Auckland Council through not only taking their unitary plan and saying they have to fundamentally change that, but they’ve said, “OK, now then we’re going to have the Medium Density Residential Standard.” We’ve seen flip-flopping from Nicola Willis, supporting intensification, to her then being overruled again by some of the conservative voices in her caucus.

Then we saw Plan Change 78—I think it was. There are so many different numbers here. Then we saw Plan Change 120, and we thought we had the policy moving forward for Auckland housing but we were wrong. This was going to be changed again and again for no good reason that Aucklanders can find out, and this is a huge disappointment because we need more houses in Auckland.

We know that housing is fundamentally important to people. When we were in Government, we had a Housing First policy. We believe that everyone has the right to a warm, dry home. We believe in homeownership, and we believe that the way to get there is to allow more housing. But what have we seen from this Government? We have seen the watering down of opportunities for people to build houses—and it’s been said again and again in this House. When we talked about 2 million houses, we were talking about opportunities for those people who own those properties to consider planning decisions on their own property.

It’s so ironic that we have seen the libertarian party in this Parliament decide that people do not have the right to do that and will not have the opportunity to build on their own property despite the fact they may want to. So it is just quite ironic that we have landed in this place, where, once again, we’re seeing this Government turn their back on an opportunity to create more houses for Auckland.

Of course, it goes without saying that these decisions around housing need to be carefully planned. They need to be not put in places where they’re going to be at risk of natural disasters. They need to be put in sensible places where there is opportunity for them to be close to public transport networks and close to all the things that people need in their lives. There needs to be careful planning around that.

What we’ve seen from this Government is the opposite of careful planning. We’re seeing them once again pass the buck to Auckland Council, so every time someone has an issue with planning, they can say, “Well, it wasn’t our fault. We passed a bill and said it’s Auckland Council’s decision to put in place everything that needs to be considered when planning is in place.” So it’s all going to be Auckland Council’s fault. We’ve already seen “mapgate”, where the Minister and the mayor were having a public stoush over the whether Auckland Council is going to spend more money doing very, very complicated maps that the Minister said would be so easy, and it’s not the case. So, again, we see this Government turning its back on housing.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (12:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Here we are, rewriting Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland’s housing plan through urgency unnecessarily. Over the past few hours, we have debated the merits of this particular legislation without hearing the voices of thousands of Aucklanders via their submissions, who sent them in in good faith to enable Auckland Council to hear their views on housing intensive intensification in the future of Auckland.

I go back exactly three years to when Megan Woods and Nicola Willis stood on a stage together in a bipartisan way, making a commitment to growing the number of houses in Auckland. That is what New Zealanders wanted to see between this party and that party, because anyone that understands infrastructure in Auckland knows about the importance of bipartisanship, and of taking a joint approach to addressing the housing crisis, the housing needs, that we desperately need to resolve in Auckland. But three years ago, just prior to the election, the National Party bailed on that plan, the work that had been done, and, in many respects, the ideas that they had put forward that we supported. And here we are, three years later. We’ve gone from a plan that enables 2 million houses in Auckland to then 1.6 million as outlined in the impact statement, to now, low and behold, a plan, dropped before us last night, that only achieves 1.4 million houses and protects leafy suburbs as directed by David Seymour and Simeon Brown, in Epsom and in Pakuranga.

How is it fair for a city trying to address a housing crisis to enable young people to purchase their own homes in our largest city in Aotearoa, when suddenly these suburbs are exempt and suburbs like those on the North Shore aren’t exempt or aren’t having their concerns heard because this legislation has been pushed under urgency before hearing the submissions that thousands of Aucklanders have put up? How is that fair?

In Northcote, we understand what good design looks like. Under a Labour Government, we invested in increasing the number of houses, and—listen to this, Minister Potaka—we invested in good transport links, in schools being available, in recreational centres, and in water infrastructure. But at the other end, what we see are communities who have had loud voices on this issue, hundreds through the submission process, not be acknowledged through this Government’s forcing this legislation to go through under urgency. Their community has unique points of difference. They come from a coastal area that makes building and intensification in their relevant community far more complex than those that are in areas like Northcote that have good transport links, like the Northern Busway, and have the housing and infrastructure in place. And today I’m asking: where is their voice being heard in this legislation?

Most people in Auckland believe in upzoning areas. They understand the need for growth, but growth needs good planning, good design, good amenities, and good local schools in and around that. Today, the Minister responsible for RMA Reform put forward legislation that has fallen short in many respects. It’s pandered to politics today because this Government and the National Party are feeling the pressure of the polls that sit in front of them. Their more conservative members and their Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, and Simeon Brown have undermined Chris Bishop, as the Minister, and the decisions that he needed to make to unlock the housing issues that Auckland sees, but, most of all, to fulfil the urbanist mantra that he said that he believed in. This is a shocking outcome from a Government that can’t make decisions and cannot plan for the future.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie) (12:38): What a pleasure it is to take the final call on this excellent piece of legislation. At the heart of this legislation is one of the best parts of this House when it operates at its best—it is listening to the people, and that’s what this bill is about. It really is nothing less and nothing more. The fact is that the people of Auckland said, “Hey, we’d like some changes to this.” and we’ve listened and we are making those changes.

We have reduced the minimum limit—not the maximum limit—to 1.4 million houses. We have put in place a transitional system for those who were building under the previous plan change, Plan Change 78—the three by three rule—and we have ensured that the ongoing consultation process will be rigorous and will be complete. And that is why this is a great piece of legislation. It’s a great piece of legislation for Maungakiekie. It’s a great piece of legislation for Tāmaki-makau-rau. It’s a great piece of legislation for Aotearoa, and I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.

Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill

Committee of the Whole House

Part 1 Amendments to Parts 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, the House is in committee on the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill. We start with Part 1, the debate on clauses 4 to 11, amendments to Part 1 and 2 of the principal Act. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (12:41): As the Associate Minister of Transport, it’s a real pleasure to sit in the chair for this committee stage of the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill, and as the Minister for the South Island, I am particularly proud to stand here and support my “Northern South Island” colleagues in this important transport bill. Can I just begin this contribution by thanking the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for all its work on the bill. To the submitters who made their submissions and made their views heard, particularly those from Auckland, thank you for your contribution.

There is a widespread view that the current model for transport governance in Auckland is not working, and I think the Mayor of Auckland expresses this as strongly as anyone in this House possibly could. There is a lack of democratic accountability for transport decision-making in Auckland. Unlike other proud, strong regions around the country, in Auckland the unelected Auckland Transport board is responsible for most local transport functions usually performed by local authorities. I understand that public trust and confidence in Auckland Transport is quite low at the moment, and Auckland Council elected members have little say over transport decisions, despite being responsible for setting the rates that help fund the local transport system.

There is also a lack of long-term aligned transport planning between Auckland Council and the Crown. Duplicative planning processes happen across transport agencies, without coherent, overarching direction. The aims of this bill are, therefore, simple: to increase democratic accountability and to strengthen long-term transport planning between Auckland Council and the Crown. I do look forward to members’ contributions on this issue from across the House.

The structure of the bill is as follows: Part 1 amends Parts 1 and 2 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act—or LGACA, as I think we’ll all be referring to it throughout this bill, as an acronym—and then the Part 2 amends Part 4 of the Act, and Part 3 amends Part 8 of the Act. But I’ll go on to the general scope of the debate, in terms of the number of key policy proposals, because we don’t need to talk about the structure too much.

The bill does a number of important things. It establishes the Auckland Regional Transport Committee, or the ARTC, which is a joint Government and Auckland Council committee. It will shift most local transport functions from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council. It will reform Auckland Transport into a transport council-controlled organisation, or CCO—it’s a bit of an acronym city here this morning—which is focused on providing public transport services in Auckland. Within Auckland Council itself, the bill will confer specific transport responsibilities to local boards, and the bill also provides for a six-month transition period to allow implementation to take place.

I’ll also draw the committee of the whole House’s attention to an Amendment Paper in the name of Minister Bishop. That is Amendment Paper 564, which is on the Table for people if they would like to refer to it. The amendments are mostly minor in nature. They do things like replace references to Auckland Transport to Auckland Council in the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024. The Amendment Paper removes a clause relating to delegations by Auckland Council to the transport CCO, as it is inconsistent with an earlier clause. It clarifies the intended scope of one of the employment provisions, and it removes reference to Auckland Transport in the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Act 2025. The final amendment in the Amendment Paper provides a safeguard to ensure that local boards do not obstruct regionally significant transport projects or services.

The bill itself confers local boards’ decisions over matters that relate to identity of place and where community engagement and expertise are seen to be beneficial. The governing body makes decisions that are of regional importance and where a network approach is required to ensure connectivity and an efficient flow of traffic, including for freight and public transport, but there may be some times when regional and local decision-making intersect, and this amendment is intended to mitigate the risk of local boards obstructing regionally significant transport projects or services. The Amendment Paper makes a number of other changes that I’m sure members will talk to throughout this debate.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (12:46): Kia orana, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to take Labour’s first call in the committee stage of this bill. I just want to acknowledge the Associate Minister of Transport for a fairly comprehensive overview of the bill and where we’re going to head, albeit we’re at Part 1. Perhaps it was somewhat of an audition for tomorrow? I am looking over there and thinking, actually, he’s my pick for promotion tomorrow. There we go. I do thank the Minister for taking us through that.

One of the things that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee did make a change around, and it is in Part 1, is in relation to clause 4. Often when we come to the interpretation clause, a lot of that is, effectively, dealt to, but one of the changes that the committee did recommend, and unanimously—all the parties that are represented there were of the same view—was in direct response to submissions received around the requirement for the new agency to pull together a 30-year transportation plan.

We’ll get to how that approval process comes in, between the Minister and the Mayor of Auckland, later in this bill, but one thing we did hear about was the need for the plan to be in a format that is accessible. This is very important, because what was referenced was the fact that if a plan is being pulled together that is seeking to meet the needs of all of Auckland, an important part of that would be for those folk in the community who have a disability to be able to engage effectively as part of that process.

My first question to Mr Meager is whether he is satisfied with the definition, in terms of the interpretation in the new clause 4(3), “ ‘accessible format’ means a copy of a document in an alternative form that gives persons who have a print disability access to the document”. Is he satisfied that that is, effectively, a catchall that covers the various needs of those who may have a disability? It is around print; there is nothing there that talks about audio, audiovisual, or visual issues. It may be that the Minister is actually comfortable that the acknowledgment of those who have a print disability means that it, effectively, can encourage perhaps non-traditional means, as some might describe them—I’m not describing them as that myself.

The second question is further down, in relation to clause 8. This is about the functions and duties and powers of local boards. We all knew, when the committee was working through this particular bill, that the arrangements for Auckland are discreetly different than for any other community in New Zealand. They are the only community to have a local board set-up. One of the things we did spend a wee bit of time on was ensuring that the local boards, vis-à-vis the governing body, had the right form of responsibility to be able to deliver for the transportation needs of their local communities.

When we see, under clause 8(2), there’s a change in “allocated” to “conferred”—and that might just mean that, actually, for all intents and purposes, it is exactly the same thing, but it’s more around the responsibilities that are conferred upon or given over to the local boards. That means, perhaps, I assume, that local boards could choose to do something about it or not do something about it, whereas an allocation implies that there needs to be some sort of positive action around taking up some opportunities.

Now, that change in terms of the powers has also been inserted further, as they relate to not just undertaking the functions but being able to exercise those that are conferred, under new paragraph (db), inserted by clause 8(2).

I think I’ll just leave those questions now. I’ve still got some more to go.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (12:50): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate having a chance to contribute to this committee of the whole House, because I have an amendment on the table. This is Amendment Paper 568. Look, the reason for this amendment, and I’m hoping the Minister will have a chance to speak to it after my brief contribution—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I think the member—is this Part 1, or is your amendment for Part 2?

CAMERON LUXTON: Clause 14.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I believe it’s Part 2, clause 14. See it as a practice run.

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (12:51): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just in response to the new definition of “accessible format”, I think the term is broad enough to encompass a situation where if someone has a disability related to the ability to digest or comprehend print documents, an alternative form is made available, an accessible form is made available. We think it’s broad enough to encapsulate a broad range of disabilities that might impact someone, whether that is visual or comprehension. As long as something’s provided in a format which makes it accessible, that would meet the test, I think, in that section.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Dr Tracey McLellan—and I’ll just indicate to the member I will be interrupting at five to, so if she does have a question, then she might like to time it around that.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour) (12:52): OK, well, bearing that in mind, Mr Chair, I will select a question that can be delivered in a very concise manner and limit my opening statements to another section where I may give them a little bit more airing.

Let me just skip straight ahead and note one point before asking my question. If I look at the regulatory impact statement, I think one of the key constraints on the analyses that have been done with this bill is clearly stated that there were not the normal opportunities to, essentially, consult with the public. That’s notwithstanding the fact that the Minister and the Mayor of Auckland were afforded the opportunity to have lots of conversations, so it’s not a criticism, per se; it’s just noting that public consultation perhaps didn’t happen in the way that it could have.

I want to also pick up on my colleague Tangi Utikere’s question about local boards, because it is an unusual situation compared to the rest of the country—21 local boards; they have a lot more powers, so to speak, than what we might be used to elsewhere in the country. I just had a very specific question about whether the Minister can just give us a brief—given the time that’s remaining available to us—little bit of commentary about the policy that sits behind this in so far as whether the changes better align Auckland with transport governance arrangements elsewhere in the country, or whether this bill, he feels confident, strikes that right balance between what the local boards are now empowered to do versus the coordination that’s going to be required to make sure that those are integrated correctly within the broader sense.

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (12:54): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think, speaking generally, the changes in this bill will allow for more direct decision-making at an elected representative level. In terms of some of the comments made around consultation at the start, of course we had the select committee process, and the Mayor of Auckland I think was pretty forthright and vocal on this being a focus of his throughout his election campaign. These kinds of issues, I think, have been aerated and circulated around Auckland—and I’m sure Mayor Brown would point to his significant mandate as a justification for having aerated these issues—quite thoroughly. Of course, the select committee process also had the opportunity for people to make quite a significant contribution as well. I think that was the gist of most of that.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, the Government has indicated that it wishes to end urgency. Therefore, the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill and reports that it has made progress on the bill. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, the House is adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 12.56 p.m.