New Zealand's housing crisis has not just cropped up in the last few years. It has been developing in our country over decades. New Zealand has simply not built enough homes in the right places to meet the needs of New Zealanders. This makes our housing increasingly unaffordable. Our Government firmly believes every New Zealander deserves to live in a warm, dry, and secure home. This bill deals with one of the barriers to boosting housing supply: overly restrictive council planning laws. Rules that have stopped density in our cities, have outright banned them, or have required lengthy and costly haggling with council in order to make them happen. We don't for one moment think that this is a magic solution to all our housing woes in New Zealand, but we know that this is one piece of the puzzle that we need to put in place if we are to address our housing crisis.