"Chris Bishop’s primary responsibility is reforming the RMA. ... The bureaucratic class has magnificently undermined his agenda."

"[Chris] Bishop’s primary responsibility, other than completing Steven Joyce’s highway from Warkworth to Whangarei, is reforming the RMA. ... [G]iven how central the reform of the Resource Management Act has been to this government, it defies comprehension that National didn't arrive with a draft ready to go. ...

"The excellent folk at the NZ Initiative have done an analysis of the two proposed [replacement] laws [which eventually emerged]: the Natural Environment and the Planning Bills. Nick Clark, the researcher, concluded, '...in the translation from principles to legislative text, something has gone wrong. Key elements have been weakened, complexity has crept back in, and an extraordinary amount of the systems' substance has been deferred to secondary instruments that do not yet exist.' ...

"The desire to place property rights at the heart of the legislation has been superseded by placing mana whenua into their customary central role in managing the land. ...

"[Also, i]f passed, these bills will not be the final word. That will be left to ‘secondary legislation’, or regulation; binding rules made by the minister of the day that determine how the law is to be applied. The proposal is for parliament to delegate its authority to the executive with minimal oversight. This time next year, Minister Swarbrick could use this secondary legislation to mandate her own vision into reality.

"Did we vote for that? ...

"[T]he bureaucratic class ... has magnificently undermined his agenda. This should have been self-evident thirty months ago ... "

~ Damien Grant from his post 'Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown. How shall we assess his performance?'

RMA Announcement: Live blogging

1:23pm

It starts badly.

“A core failure of the RMA was the absence of clear direction from central government,” Mr Bishop says.

No. The core failure of the RMA is the complete absence of private property rights. It's starting position instead being: "You need our permission!"

This "reform" promises property rights, but it looks like it simply delivers more planning documents. And little more, if any, permission.

We're promised "fewer, faster plans"; "30-year regional spatial plans"; "nationally set policy direction"; and "planned national standards." So anyone who's ever said "the problem with this country is not enough planners" will be happy.

And what about property rights? “When you put property rights at the core and remove excessive government rules from people’s lives," says Mr Court, "the benefits will quickly follow." 

I'm still looking for how exactly property rights have been put at the core. I'll let you know when I find where he's put them ...

1:25pm

“The new planning system strengthens property rights and restores the freedom for New Zealanders to use their land in ways that affect nobody else." You keep saying that. Show me the evidence.

"Councils will be required to provide relief to property owners when imposing significant restrictions like heritage protections or significant natural areas." So apparently planners imposing restrictions still have more freedom to "use" your land than you do. Righto.

Not going well so far...

1:32pm

"More than 100 existing plans will be reduced to 17 regional combined plans that bring together spatial, land use and natural environment planning in one place, making it easier for New Zealanders to know what they can do with their property." That's not freedom for New Zealanders to use their land in ways that affect nobody else, is it Mr Bishop. That's the "freedom" to act under permission. 

So let me look at the specifics. I don't see "property rights" as a heading in the major release. So let me begin studying topic 'The New Planning System: Simplifying residential development ...

1:37pm

Blah, blah, "clear national priorities" woof, woof "land will be zoned" whitter, whitter "councils will have to ensure there’s enough land and infrastructure" wank, wank "regional spatial plans will guide future development "... It makes you wonder how anything ever got built here at all before town planning arrived here in 1928. 

<searching for "property rights" gives no hits in the document> <searching for "planning" gives me 18 hits>

1:46pm

"Certainty" is promised through "clear long-term spatial plans" telling investors what council planners will allow, and "front-loading decisions," whatever the hell that means. "This means clear rules and fewer surprises," says the boiler plate. Oh, and there'll be "A digital platform [that] will make it easier for you to access information, apply for consents, and track progress." That's nice, isn't it.

A key feature? "Standardised zones and overlays will make planning rules simpler and more consistent across the country." As if it makes a real difference whether there's 17 or 117 different zones and overlays telling you what you can't do. It hardly gives freedom for New Zealanders to use their land in ways that affect nobody else, does it.

"A new Planning Tribunal will offer you a low-cost way to resolve disputes, with limited council appeal rights." Possibly good, but there are still no details on this.

"Councils will also need to respond more quickly to private plan change requests, making it easier to unlock new areas for growth." Given the many problems with making councils respond quickly, how will this work? Given the cost of applying for a private plan change, how will this work?

1:59pm

The document says there will be "less need for consents." Why? is that because there's freedom for New Zealanders to use their land in ways that affect nobody else? 

No, it's because "councils will only be able to consider effects that have a minor, or more than minor impact on others or the environment." This, by the way, is precisely what the present "permissive" RMA allows. In other words, it's just the same.

It's also because, says the document, "design details that only affect the site itself, such as building layout, balconies or private views, won’t be regulated..." Except of course for the "guidance" supplied by several councils that tell you what they expect to see in your application. Oh, and "except in areas [which planners have decided enjoy] outstanding natural landscapes and heritage features." So much rurally where you want to build will still be policed to stop you fully enjoying your land; and many of the areas of our cities that were built before town planning came here will still be policed to keep them as museums. Nice.

So far I've yet to see much difference between the replacement and the original.

Let me look at the heading 'Making it easier to build and renovate your home' ...

2:13pm

Here's the promise: "The new planning system will support the Kiwi dream of improving your home or building a new one without unnecessary cost or delay." What's the reality?

"Standardised zones" blah, blah, as above.

"The public will only be notified about your project if the effects of it (the impacts like noise and shading) are more than minor." So, no different to current law then.

"Only people who are directly affected by a project can have a say." It's a lot of work to make this one small improvement.

"A new Planning Tribunal will be set up to help sort out disputes quickly and cheaply." Nice idea. But still no detail.

"You may be able to get ‘relief’, which means a form of support or compensation, if some planning controls or rules have a big impact on how you can use your land." I have a better idea, which would actually be core to protecting property rights. And it's this: outlaw every single planning control or rule that would have a big impact on how you can use your land. What about that?

This is all worse than a disappointment. Rather than a plethora of sackings of the unproductive, Bishop & Court instead propose to keep town planners hard at work. (Well, as hard as they ever get.) ...

2:32pm

Maybe I should have started with their "Overview" document instead of plunging into the details....

"Property rights" are mentioned seven times here, but only in the promises. "The new system is designed to unlock growth, reduce the costs of much-needed infrastructure, protect the environment and improve resilience – all while freeing up property rights so landowners have certainty and control over their land." That's a promise. Not a delivery.

The "expected outcomes" include "enhanced property rights through regulations that focus on only controlling impacts on the environment and other people." I'm surprised this is an "outcome" and not a guarantee. (And see above.)

"There will also be greater availability of relief," we are told, "if property rights are infringed." But here's the thing: the core is to make law that ensures property rights are not infringed.

"The proposed new system will make the enjoyment of property rights a guiding principle of reform," says the document, "so people can do more with their property." How? There are seven points under this heading including narrowing effects, simpler national rules, new national standards, binding environmental limits, better digital systems, and one Plan per region.

Not one of these seven, not one, gives any guarantee at all of protecting the enjoyment of property rights. I don't want one District Plan per region, I want none. I don't want simpler national rules, standards or limits set by planners, I want none at all, and I want the planners who write them unemployed. This idea of making the enjoyment of property rights a guiding principle of reform is less a guiding principle here than an incantation that, repeated often enough, will allow those sufficiently deluded to be convinced.

But it's not real.

The Bills promise "a fairer system for allocating resources," without defining whose those resources are, why a planner is entitled to allocate them, then admits that it will simply retain the RMA's approach to "allocation" anyway.

This is almost farcical.

The two new replacement Bills do promise "greater clarity and certainty," "clearer direction to decision-makers," and "mak[ing] the system more consistent and predictable." That's two of the four good things that objective law should do. (Protecting rights being the major one, of course, without which....) Big question still is: How?

"The Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill will each have a clear purpose statement that describes what the Bill does." Without seeing the Bill yet, that's just another promise not a delivery.

3:03pm

Am I being too pessimistic? Well, politicians have promised to "fix" this fucking thing for thirty years, and haven't. More than a generation.  They've pledged to "fix," "fudge," "reform," repair," "enhance," and at most they've made changes to make it easier for governments to build. So every promise to date has been bullshit, and this change will likely be the last chance in my lifetime for any genuine change.  To actually have property rights protected in law. And it doesn't look promising.

Tell me I'm wrong. Please.

xxx:00pm

Not much comment in the Twittersphere, which is perhaps a measure of how little interest there is? A few quips that might have legs. Worth pondering ...

It's possible that this last is the only real nod towards property rights—unfortunate really, since 'compensation for takings' is not by any means the same thing as protecting property rights, despite what some people still think.

9:31am:

Twenty hours after the announcement, ACT's Simon Court (said to be ACT's Under-Secretary for Resource Management Reform and praised by his leader as having "driven the change at a detailed level and his contribution is enormous") is barely anywhere to be seen. No press releases on the ACT website cheering about it. No tweets posting about it.  Just two patsy questions to the Minister, two five-minute speeches to the House about infrastructure and transitions, and a three-minute stand-up with his leader.

Is he embarrassed?

Pay no attention to the (mad) men behind the curtain [updated]

Readers here might remember I got some stick for calling John Key a fucking moron a while back. A fucking moron, specifically, for repeated calls for the Reserve Bank to juice up house prices again, just so home-owning voters will feel better again. Feel better again, and then vote National.

"The guts of what’s wrong," explained the moron, "is that the housing market is going down, not up" — and "then you have a negative wealth effect," and voters feel bad. And when they feel bad, they vote for the other team.

Classic short-termism.  Stuff rocket fuel into the economy, and then all things will be jake for the governing political parties. This, by the way, was Key's "one simple trick" while Prime Minister: ensure massive house-price inflation, no matter the economic and social dislocation, and then sit back and watch home-owners fooled into feeling better off, and borrowing and consuming more, regardless of the economic consequences. (Consequences for which we're all still paying, by the way.)

In the US, the discredited "wealth effect" — "a gussied-up version of Keynesian stimulus, only targeted at the prosperous classes rather than the government’s client classes" — is generally felt in the stock market. Pundits there are starting to get nervous about a soaring stock market with anaemic growth in the economic system itself, with "important implications for the path of America’s stockmarket boom and its economy."

The good times could continue, at least for a bit longer [says 'The Economist']. ... [But] might a wealthier society also take a harder fall? Bears would point to the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000, when a brutal stockmarket slump pushed America into recession. ... The stockmarket might be more of the economy. It still is not all of it.

It's not. And nor is the housing market. We can't get rich just by selling each other houses. (And kudos to one National minister at least who understands that.)

Yet David Stockman is concerned that nothing has been learned from the last major crash. 

Roughly 15 years ago it was reasonably well understood that the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 had been case of speculation run amuck on both Wall Street and main street alike. These credit and housing bubbles, in turn, had been fuelled by the massive money-printing sprees of the Greenspan and Bernanke Fed.

It might have been presumed, therefore, that the mad money-printers [at the US central bank] would have had second thoughts about the underlying cause of these great economic disasters—that is, the dubious Greenspan policy known as the “wealth effects” doctrine. In simple terms the latter held that if people felt richer owing to soaring home prices and their stock market winnings, they would spend more freely and fulsomely, thereby goosing the Keynesian cycle of ever more spending-sales-production-income-and spending, which was to be rinsed and repeated in an endless round of rising prosperity.

At the end of the day, of course, Greenspan and his heirs and assigns at the Fed turned out to be unreconstructed Keynesians and the wealth effects doctrine a monumental economic con job. The latter did not make society richer; it just made the rich richer. Or stated more directly, main street got inflation at the grocery store, gas pump and doctor’s office—even as the asset-holding class experienced unspeakable windfalls in their brokerage accounts.

Let's not repeat the same mistake again here — especially when local interest rates are already below our trading partners, with no noticeable effect on genuine economic progress. Please: pay no attention to the mad men behind the curtain.

UPDATE:

"The advocates of annual increases in the quantity of money never mention the fact that for all those who do not get a share of the newly created additional quantity of money, the government's action means a drop in their purchasing power which forces them to restrict their consumption. It is ignorance of this fundamental fact that induces various authors of economic books and articles to suggest a yearly increase of money without realising that such a measure necessarily brings about an undesirable impoverishment of a great part, even the majority, of the population."

~ Ludwig von Mises from an interview 'On Current Monetary Problems'

Bishop v Walker

I'm astonished to discover that we're starting the news week with folk still arguing about what Chris Bishop might have said about Stan Walker's alleged musical performance. 

Why is this even news?

Why is it still news?

And why should we care what either think of either?

I like simple principles. And on this question I follow a very simple principle. It's a principle that says "You don't look to a musician for their tips on politics any more than you'd look to a politician for their tips on music."

Which is very helpful advice, I think — especially if you enjoy the melodies of one Richard Wagner. 

If your favourite muso's slogans do resonate, mind you, that gives you a little extra. But you look to music for the emotion of it (or perhaps its danceable emotion) which lasts a lot longer than simple sloganeering.

So get on and enjoy The Clash and the Manics as much as you like without guilt.

Here's The Beat:

Four years of housing uncertainty. Thanks National.

Important to remember that on top of Chris Bishop's announcement this week of recommended changes to the Resource Management Act, unlikely you'd think to be passed before the next election (with all the uncertainty that that will generate), is his and his boss's other injection of uncertainty into housing — i.e., what the planners will and won't allow on a building site — with an admission, buried in a speech yesterday, that this uncertainty will persist until at least 2027!

Dan Brunskill spotted the admission tucked into the speech, calculating that "National's U-turn on the bipartisan accord caused a three-year delay to housing reform"! He explains:

In a speech to the Property Council summit in Auckland on Thursday, Bishop said "Going for Growth” and other reforms would only be bedded in “from 2027 or so onwards.” 

This delay follows the National Party’s decision to abandon a bipartisan housing agreement, called the MDRS (medium density residential standards), negotiated from the National side by Judith Collins and Nicola Willis in 2021.

At the time, Willis said Labour and National had come together “to say an emphatic ‘yes’ to housing in our backyards.” [And this gave every developer certainty.] 

But new party leader Christopher Luxon sided with his NIMBY caucus colleagues in the run-up to the 2023 election and forced [sic] Bishop to rush out an alternative policy after letting his opposition to the arrangement slip during a public meeting.

National’s new policy allowed councils to opt out of the denser housing rules, provided they zoned their cities for 30 years of growth "immediately" — but, almost two years later, not a single council has formally adopted the policy.

Bishop said on Thursday the finer details of the policy’s first phase were still being worked through by officials and local councils should be ready to implement them in 2027.

This is partly due to a “sequencing problem” as the Government is also planning to introduce an entirely new resource management regime towards the end of next year. ... 

Housing reform and the new resource management rules will be implemented as part of the 2027 Long Term Plan cycle [they hope], or roughly four years after Bishop backtracked on the MDRS.

Four fucking years! George Gregan would be proud.

Speaking of NIMBY numpties, here's Bishop's idiotic boss protesting a new apartment development on the site a of a decommissioned and abandoned mechanic's workshop:

RMA REPLACEMENT: The good, the bad, and the cattle

Chris Bishop has finally announced his chosen groups' recommendations to replace the RMA.

There's a lot to think through, so here are my first thoughts on their recommendations ...

The good (or not-so bad)

• Property rights gets precisely zero mentions in the RMA, and even less recognition. Here in this report however its gets exactly 25 mentions — a decent number — the first appearing almost as point one, after talking about how the two new Acts would be split up, and even before a section on Te Tiriti [Contents]

• That same hierarchy appears to be reflected in the "Goals." Remembering in law that earlier stated paragraphs/sections/clauses take priority over those stated later, the hierarchy given here is: property rights > separation of incompatible land uses > well-functioning urban and rural areas .> development capacity > infrastructure > natural hazards and the effects of climate change > public access > Māori cultural matters. So if property rights were well-defined and well-protected, that might be sufficient. But see below for the devil ...
• The two replacement Acts (one for environment, one for central planning) are said to "both ... be based on the enjoyment of property rights" [emphasis in the original]. This is stated as "the guiding principle." Good.
• "Both Acts," says the recommendations, "will include starting presumptions that a land use is enabled, unless there are minor or more than minor effects on either the ability of others to use their own land." Good. The devil, of course, is in the detail of how those "effects" are defined, and by whom.
• The RMA was said to be "effects-based," and so are these two replacements. So prepare to be underwhelmed. Yet whereas the RMA looked at ill-defined and undefinable "effects" like "amenity values," "natural character" and "such as the architectural style or colour of a neighbour’s house," this seems to be somewhat more objective. Somewhat. (The problem here being these "externalities" that they talk about, about which see more below. And the all-but certain prospect of regulatory creep to protect "heritage" suburbs and areas of particular "character.")
• "Better recognising property rights," says the recommendations, "requires a more certain regulatory environment so people can know as far as possible what they can and can’t do with their land." The intention is good. 
• It looks like long-existing activities to which new neighbours chose to come (such as speedway at Western Springs, for example) will now be protected. "That is, those that come to the nuisance should not be able to complain about it." Great news, if that's properly done.
• Providing a low-cost tribunal to whom to object to a council's decision is good. (But may not stay low-cost.) And providing "for rapid, low-cost resolution of disputes between neighbours" also sounds good. And that's all that we do need. Maybe a kind of "Disputes Tribunal" or "Small-Consents Tribunal" staffed by experienced part-timers to adjudicate simple no-bullshit disputes about rights to light, to air, to support and so forth based on earlier precedent. In other words, much like an early common-law court ...

The bad (or not-so good)

• The so-called "Expert Advisory Group" delivering these recommendations was established only in September 2024, and given only three months until Christmas to do their job — giving, as they themselves say, only a "short time ... for what is a very substantial task." Given that National in both government and opposition have been talking about "reform" for decades, it seems almost impossible to believe that's when this work first began. And yet, there's no hint from either Bishop or Simon Court (his ACT associate) of any earlier thinking around this. Which would be incredible, right?
• So no wonder "Further detailed policy work will [still] be needed to fully develop our proposals and address outstanding issues and areas of detail." In other words, don't get excited yet. Details .. devil ... etc.
• The Planning Act's purpose is not "protection of property rights" (i.e., part of the very purpose of government); nor yet is it "allowing property owners to exercise the peaceful enjoyment of their property while recognising that same right in others" (i..e, a recognition of where right-based boundaries lie, rather than some subjective "balancing" of rights). So whatever the press releases say, it's not a bottom-up law based on property rights. Instead, the stated purpose is: "To establish a framework for planning and regulating the use, development and enjoyment of land." In other words, it's top-down planning. As will be the related Natural Environment Act.
• The RMA was said to be "effects-based," yet we see how well that turned out! These replacement Acts are also said to be effects-based, with the effects this time "regulated ... on the economic concept of externalities." [Executive Summary, Recommendations, 5b]
• externalities, however, are essentially an anti-concept, i.e., an unnecessary, approximate, and and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept (much like "stakeholders" or "opportunity cost" are also); in this case it's an economists' way to avoid talking about property rights. And the real cause of many “externalities” is generally that private property rights have not been adequately defined, nor sufficiently well protected! (For example, if property rights are well-defined and well-protected, a downstream landowner could sue in a court of law for an upstream farmer’s action in dirtying the waters.)
• the presumption of the proposed Planning Act
• While both replacement Acts are said to "be based on the enjoyment of property rights," these rights appear to come as  gifts from the state, subject to "approaches to regulation standardised at the national level" and requiring a "justification report" if the"approach" has any departure from that. [Executive Summary, Recommendations, 5c]. And the refusal to recognise or allow ownership of Crown "resources," but only a license, give little motivation to protect that resource, while limiting the ability of these limited license-holders to sue in common law if the resource is damaged by others.
• In a sense this whole thing is irrelevant, since the whole country will still be zoned anyway — zoned according to town planners' predilections, with their own additional "overlays," "areas" and "precincts."  So fewer zones, to be sure: but does it really matter how many principalities it takes to make up a whole kingdom — the fact is that you still have to make obeisance to a prince. (Note here that town planning (with its zones) has only been around here since 1928, and you'll notice that most of those in that alleged profession prefer to live in places built before then. Ever asked yourself why that is?)
• Whatever the headlines might say, the recommendations here still favour inclusion of a Treaty Clause. Less ill-defined than before, to be sure, listing what is said to be "relevant aspects of the statute enacted in light of Treaty obligations." But still there, poisoning all objective law. 
• One of the worst part of the present RMA is the scope given to objectors from anywhere to "submit" on a resource consent application to oppose/delay/kill it off. It's not only unjust, it's illegitimate — only those with standing, in a common-law sense, have the right to object to any "effects" on their property rights (hence the importance of well-defined and well-protected rights.)  That focus on proper standing would, on its own, limit objections to those with a right to mount one, and also kill off the potential for illegitimate objections by trade competitors. But I see nothing here to substantially change this situation. And they still explicitly allow for "public notification" of activities or effects along the lines of the existing Act.
• Providing "for rapid, low-cost resolution of disputes between neighbours" sounds good. So why involve councils at all in disputes between neighbours? (And you can complete the thought by realising that's the only common-sense part of any "planning application.")   Since these Acts still call for council, however, their halfway-house proposal of a "Planning Tribunal" to site between council and Environment Court might at least save some applicants some money. (Unless of course it becomes just another layer in an already lengthy process, or so popular and so necessary — and staffing of these "expert" bodies so difficult — that the delay in being heard becomes unconscionable.)
• Finally, one of the many uncertainties under the present RMA regime is the uncertainty faced by land-owners when "ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga" no longer owned by iwi or hapu, but foisted on present land-owners on the basis of often non-objective oral histories or other unsubstantiated accounts. See for example Auckland's "Taniwha Tax," and other councils' "SASMs." The report nonetheless recommends "that future legislation should retain the existing RMA mechanisms for Māori participation and make further provision for Māori engagement." (The only improvement might be a recommendation for better record-keeping of the decision-making processes around these impositions.

The cattle

So they weren't given much time, and arguably in that short time came up with something better than decades of earlier meddlers and "taskforce" writers did. But who exactly wrote this report? 

We have, to list them all with their chosen "professions":

• an "environmental planner,"  
• an economist "with expertise in natural resource and environmental economics"
• a "resource management practitioner"
• the general manager of Tauranga City Council (infamous for their ill-named "Smart Growth" strategy that made the small city one of the least affordable in the country)
• and a "professional director" who chairs the kingitanga.

Nice. All folk who've made piles of money out of this ill-defined and poorly-written pile of excrement.

Chairing the group is a barrister, who's also made her career from that ever-giving trough labelled "resource management law." ( I was reminded again of Mencken's famous saying that All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it.")  

I looked in vain for someone in that list, anyone at all, who might be a business owner or developer who's had their balls in the planner's vice, or a land-owner begging for permission from these grey ones to use their own land. Not a hint of it. Just folk who've been making a killing over many years from their snouts being in that same trough. (There is one bureaucrat who's a policy chap from Federated Farmers — not a farmer although he grew up on one' —who's issued his own minority report essentially arguing for better definition and clarity, to limit the possibility of regulatory creep. )

So what to expect from that group?

To be fair, it's better than I'd expected.

But given how many decades it's taken to start turning this ship around, and this will be the one chance in all that time, it's not as good as it could be.

And there's still plenty of work to do (which is to say too much) for the various species these authors represent.

Furthermore, with the legislation not to be passed before the next election, I'd expect it only to get worse rather than any better. This, you'll realise, is the high point.

Here's the group's own table summarising their main recommendations:

NB: For a more mainstream view (some might say a "less-jaundiced" one) here are the initial reaction from planner Stu Donovan, who is focussed on affordable housing. And some short common-sense thoughts from Matt Prasad.

Another National tax grab

Leadership aspirant Chris Bishop headed to Auckland recently to tell us of the grand plans he will very kindly allow us to build. But before that, a new tax.

David Farrar kindly ssummarises. I unkindly fisk ...

Bishop says: "Congestion stifles economic growth in Auckland, with studies showing that it costs between $900 million to $1.3 billion per year. Congestion is essentially a tax on time, productivity, and growth. And like most taxes, I’m keen to reduce it."

Yes, congestion stifles economic growth. Yet little has been to arrest it. And over the last dozen or so years councils and transport ministries and bureaucracies have done everything to promote it, with transit lanes, bottlenecks, speed humps, speed restrictions, cycle lanes, bus lanes, no-right-turns, no-left-turns, pedestrianisation, beautification ... anything but combat traffic congestion.

Sit beside almost any major Auckland thoroughfare and you'll see that useable traffic lanes at rush-hours have nearly halved, while traffic has nearly doubled. A few nights back around 10pm a friend and I sat beside Hobson St — a near-motorway that once had six lanes or so allowing motorists to get out of the city on her motorways. Those lanes are now halved (with beautification works, don't you know, as part of John Key's bloody Convention Centre white elephant) and even at 10pm motorists were in a jam.

Will Bishop improve mobility?

Will he hell: he intends instead to make mobility more expensive.

Bishop says: "The government will be progressing legislation this year to allow the introduction of Time of Use pricing on our roads."

As commenter Bill says on Farrar's thread: "OK so another tax. Is there no problem the government thinks can’t be fixed without more taxes?

"We the motorists already pay for the roads with petrol tax and registration fees. How much of this money has been spent creating traffic bottlenecks, humps, removing free left turns etc? How is any of that helping with congestion? This latest tax proposal should be vehemently opposed. The money squandered on all the traffic obstruction should instead be spent on facilitating the uninterrupted flow of traffic. It sounds like they want to tax motorists to fix a problem that they themselves created. This is not incompetence, it is villainy."

Bill is right.

Bishop says: "Any money collected through time of use charging will be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised."

Bishop is bullshitting.

Nicola Willis is so short of the readies already that she'll be overjoyed to grab as much of this windfall as she can. And if not her, then as soon as things are "bedded down," your next finance minister will have his or her hand in your pocket to root around in your small change. Don't doubt it.

Bishop says: "Modelling has shown that successful congestion charging could reduce congestion by up to 8 to 12 percent at peak times."

As every hired modeller knows, modelling will show whatever the modeller's hirer wants it to show; it all depends on the parameters chosen for said model. Sure, make something more expensive and (depending on one's marginal utility) then less of that thing will get utilised. But if the marginal utility of getting around is high enough (and it probably is) then Bishop's new tax will just make getting around more expensive. And we'll still be congested. And poorer.

Bishop says: "New Zealand can raise our productivity simply by allowing our towns and cities to grow up and out."

Well, duh.

Some of us have been arguing for years that up-and-out will make Auckland both more liveable and affordable. (Productive? That's an odd one to claim.) But with developers and builders having to sit on their hands while Bishop's bureaucrats rewrite the RMA to say what councils will allow developers and builders to do — to relieve the uncertainty since Bishop and his boss canned the MDRS — it seems like we're as far away as ever. And that uncertainty is hardly making developers and builders more productive ...

Bishop says: "My aspiration [for Auckland] is ..."

You know, frankly, it doesn't matter a shit what Bishop's aspirations for Auckland are! Because given the piss-poor popularity of his boss, and the pathetically slow promise to abolish and replace the RMA (to protect property rights, we're promised, and to finally give some certainty to those developers and builders) then  it will be too damn late this term for any changes at all to be made, and next term he'll have lost his chance.

And this time, three years from now, we'll all be sitting here in exactly the same position.

Only by then we'll (maybe) have a new train set.

And we will have bloody Bishop's new tax.

"However much it offended the sensibilities of design snobs and planners, we were there because our shoebox apartment was better than the alternative."

"[I]n 2005, Auckland city was ... dotted with cranes, many standing up so-called 'shoebox apartments.'
   "The phrase was not meant as a compliment. They were derided as 'future slums' ... [which] ultimately led to a rule change ... making the minimum size of a two-bedroom apartment 70 square metres. ... [T]he change had a profound and lasting impact on apartment construction. ...

Chart by Apracitis Economics, from The Spinoff

"In 2005, I was only dimly aware of the furore, of the disgust shoebox apartments aroused. In 2005, I was living in one. ... In retrospect that apartment was where I started to get my shit together, started to have a sense that I could be something more than a fuckup....
    "The apartments were objectively ugly, though not so bad as they were made out at the time.
    "But the upside overwhelmed all that. I was right there in the city. ... It was what I needed at that time, however much it offended the sensibilities of design snobs and planners. I feel confident in saying many other residents, transient as we often were, felt the same way. We were there because it was better than the alternative. ...
    "Another characteristic of the inner city when I lived there was that homelessness barely existed. I remember vividly an extraordinary double-page feature in the 'NZ Herald' which looked at life among the unhoused then. It mapped specific characters, and if you spent a lot of time in the inner city, it seemed a near-complete survey.
    "The idea that you could now map the scale of human misery that a lack of housing has brought to Auckland is unimaginable. As the ’00s wore on, the GFC hit and the next decade began, the city acquired its current reality, with hundreds of people making lives on the streets of downtown and its fringes. It’s now a countrywide phenomenon.
    "That’s the backdrop of the reforms announced last week by housing minister Chris Bishop. I travelled into the city to see him deliver a speech about housing last week ... He spent long periods wading through the thickets of regulation, through the acronym soup of the MDRS and the NPS-UD, and paid compliments to Auckland’s groundbreaking 2016 unitary plan, which started the process of unshackling land for development and finally saw us surpass the heady mid-00s for construction of multi-units.
    "But the part which leapt out for me was not technical, it was moral. He announced an override of the minimum dwelling size standards – a return to plausibility for the kind of place I lived in 20 years ago. In front of a room full of people involved in construction and leasing, with tables for Colliers and CBRE and Crockers, he made a simple case. 'You know what is smaller than a shoebox apartment? A car or an emergency housing motel room.' That’s our current plan for dealing with people who don’t have a house, and it’s indefensible.
    "The rest of the reforms he announced are big. They are a continuation of an enormous body of work which started with Auckland’s unitary plan, was driven forward by Phil Twyford’s revolutionary NPS-UD which created a huge potential for urban density, and now reaches a powerful climax with Bishop’s 'Going for Housing Growth' package.
    "It’s not beyond criticism ... But to me those issues are less material, and likely to be less impactful, due to the return of the maligned shoebox."

~ Duncan Grieve from his post 'I lived in a shoebox apartment. I’m glad they’re coming back'

"...*if* Mr Bishop delivers on his promise."

"Far too many New Zealanders already suffer from serious financial stress because of the ridiculous price of houses. The problem is only going to get worse unless the Government delivers on the promise made by the Minister of Housing, Chris Bishop, who, in a major speech near the end of February, said the Government is aiming to get house prices back to where the median house price is between three and five times the median household income. To protect himself from the anger of thousands of property-owning voters, he did say that that was his ambition over the next 'ten to twenty years,' but if he is at all serious New Zealanders better get used to the idea that house prices will not be rising steadily year after year into the indefinite future.
    "Increasingly, as houses get older and in need of repair, and if the market is working as it should do, they will sell for less than they cost to buy.
    "But what about the land they sit on? Surely that won’t decline in value? Certainly there will always be land which has special appeal: that will quite likely rise in value faster than other prices and faster than incomes. But given New Zealand has a great abundance of land, section prices should be nowhere near where they are currently in most of our cities. That implies that section prices are likely to stagnate or decline from present levels if Mr Bishop delivers on his promise. [Yes, "if" - Ed.]
    "In an earlier article I quoted the case of a 455 square-metre bare section on sale in Drury – nearly 40 kilometres from downtown Auckland – for $842,000 including GST, or $1,850 per square metre. This is more than 10 times the average price per square-metre of sections in the US. This difference is caused primarily by the tight restrictions imposed by local governments on where houses are allowed to be built.
    "Those who demand that housing be confined within tightly prescribed urban boundaries – as is true in all our major cities – must be told again and again that they and they alone are primarily responsible for the appalling social costs arising from the outrageous price of housing in New Zealand’s major cities."

~ former Reserve Bank governor Don Brash from his post 'Perhaps house prices don’t always go up'

"You're free to build, but ..."

 

The National-led Coalition boasts that it will "fix housing" by bringing in rules requiring councils to zone enough land* on which land-owners are free to build sufficient housing to allow for the next thirty years of demand.**

Doesn't that sound great, you think. "Free to build," you say! 

The National-led coalition's housing honchos are either stupid, naive, or they think that we are.

As should have been obvious from Auckland council's passive-aggressive resistance to government diktats on the Medium-Density Residential Standards (MDRS), telling councils to "free up land" only works if councils are so inclined. If they are already so inclined, ministers wouldn't need to tell them. And if they aren't so inclined then, well, as Bryan Caplan points out in his new "graphic novel" Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, councils can hinder construction in dozens of other ways ... if it's so inclined. (And it is.)

For starters it could ...

Go tell Minister Bishop. (Or send him a copy of Bryan's book.)

* * * * 

* Zoning is a restriction on land telling owners that the planners know better than the owner (and would-be buyers) what should go there. How is it a restriction, you ask? If the planners' zone allows what the owner would do anyway, it's not needed. If it disallows it, it's not wanted.

** This presumes that the grey ones would even know, to any standard of meaningful proof, what demand would look like over the next thirty years. I mean, it's not like there's any thirty-year stretch in recent history they could point to and say "look, we got it right."

A fast track to cronyism [updated]

 

The media has been slow to pick up on this National-led government's new policy to help out struggling media organisations.

The policy is to announce, and string out, a steady stream of announcements of blatant knuckle-dragging cronyism, primary among them that Fast-Track Approvals Bill, whose invited-applicant list will be an ongoing gift to every media organisation looking for a colourful headline.

And no on top of that, just to drive home the message, is this weekend's gift to television personality and National Party fund-raiser Paula Bennett of the position of highly-paid chair of Pharmac — in the very week they announce a $1.8 billion increase in the unaccountable bureaucracy's budget to $6.3 billion. Her qualifications for the role? In the absence of a single one of any relevance, one would have to speculate it was her record fund-raising and chasing of donors to the National Party at the last election.

And speaking of donors ....  even the worst resourced newsroom should be able to turn out a veritable assembly line's worth of regular feature articles highlighting which party donors have been favoured with which fast-track approval by three ministers of questionable morals and fitness doling them out like largesse at a corrupt king's court.

As I said a few days ago, it's not a "fast track" for you or me or that small renovation you've been putting off for years as just too damned complicated to contemplate — it's a fast track for cronies and for government bulldozers.

How about we all get the benefit a fast track for our projects, little and large, instead of being tangled up in years of the red tape governments festoon around us while cronies enjoy all the fruits of political favouritism?

In the meantime at least, let's watch the media take advantage of the Government's gift. It should be one that promises to keep giving long after the Public Interest Journalism Fund gives out ...

UPDATE: Yes, of course, businesses need to be able to build. And so do you and I —and for too long we've been stymied in trying to build. But this isn't help for you and me — and when National and Shane Jones promise to "help business" that invariably ends up meaning "help particular businessmen." Just as it does here.

Getting better homes faster

 

New Zealand needs more houses, and less Resource Management Act.

Fact is, if houses are going to be anywhere near affordable again, New Zealand needs many more houses, and no RMA. 

Instead, we have RMA for several more years, and a housing/RMA minister (Chris Bishop) who's created uncertainty and fewer housing starts by allowing councils to opt out of the (formerly) bipartisan Medium-Density Residential Standards (MDRS).

What can you do now on many sites in New Zealand's major cities? Don't know, because councils haven't decided (or announced) where and how they might relax things. The uncertainty means that on many sites in major cities desperate for housing, nothing gets started at all.

What could you do under the MDRS? In simple terms (see pic above), you could build up to 3 dwellings up to 3 storeys high without having to even think about the Resource Management Act. It was far from perfect, but still the most permissive housing change from government since ... well, before I was born anyway.

But Chris Bishop has "fixed" that, hasn't he. Too permissive for Mr Bloody Bishop. Too many "externalities." Too urban.

Urbanist Malcolm McCracken has a simple solution however that even this housing minister could (should!) get behind. He calls it Graduated Density Zoning, so it's still a bloody zone, but one that allows owners who amalgamate sites to get extra density and height -- and by their amalgamation build better things and ameliorate the effects on neighbours.

By being larger and a more appropriate shape for multiple dwellings, such a site would also encourage better housing typologies to be built than the simple long 3-storey-"sausage"-arranged-along-a-single-driveway that means everyone's window looks into every neighbour's.  Things like perimeter blocks, garden apartments and the like, with better privacy, garden outlooks and less iunmpact on neighbours (so what's not to like?!).

McCracken has details:

I propose that a condition of a council opting out of the MDRS, in whole or just in certain suburbs, should be the requirement to introduce Graduated Density Zoning6(GDZ) to residential land that is zoned below three storeys. GDZ is where, when a developer buys neighbouring sites totaling more than the set threshold, e.g. 1400m2, they can automatically build to a higher density. The details of that can be debated but I believe GDZ should be introduced to enable better housing choice and new supply in every neighbourhood. While resource consent would be required, once the threshold has been met, three-storey apartments and terraced houses would become a permitted activity.

Adopting GDZ could provide several key benefits:

• Larger sites can make it easier to manage the externalities of greater density, which have been some of the driving reasons behind the backlash towards the MDRS. This should see fewer sausage flats on single sites, which generally have poor design outcomes and interaction with neighbouring sites. Larger amalgamated sites will enable greater master planning that considers the interaction of outlook spaces with neighbouring properties, limiting driveway crossings and the design of open and communal spaces.
• It enables the market to deliver greater density in areas of high demand and better match this with new supply. While councils can plan through future development strategies for ‘enough’ capacity to meet future demand, this is always based on a range of assumptions, which can never be completely accurate. Amenities and accessibility of an area, along with personal preferences, can change shifting demand greatly. We should design our system to be more responsive and flexible to meet demand. GDZ would be a step towards this.
• Enabling three storeys, as I have discussed many times previously, can enable greater housing choice to be provided. It also enables ageing in place, where you can find housing suited to your needs at different stages of your life within the same neighbourhood.
• It’s worth noting that this can also benefit neighbouring landowners, who could choose to sell together to seek greater profit, which is possible as an amalgamated site is generally a better development opportunity. This has occurred previously, including in Te Atatū Peninsula in 2020.

Until or unless the RMA is abolished, this could be a start.

Should we be excited?

Should we be excited when we read this in today's Coalition Agreement?

"Replace the Resource Management Act 1991 with new resource management laws premised on the enjoyment of property rights as a guiding principle." 

Or should we limit our enthusiasm when we see that the two Ministers responsible will be the underwhelming Chris Bishop and the thoroughly misguided Simon Court?

Still though, there is that hopeful phrase.

Eagerly awaiting more details ....

[Hat tip Roger W.]

How not to get more houses built (the Bishop/Seymour edition)

 

National's Chris Bishop and ACT's David Seymour have both helped cancel the one thing in recent years that (however imperfect) allowed us to build more houses. 

They argue instead that what people build is their business (not that of the property-owners who want to build) and that where people build should be restricted to where council decides (in its desultory way) to build infrastructure. To increase council's motivation to build, to move them from desultory to dilatory, Bishop and Seymour both declare a policy to give councils some of the GST from the house building that (eventually) results.

This will, say these budding urban planners, go towards building more infrastructure, and so, therefore, many more houses will be built! (You can almost hear the victory laps being run.)

Not so fast, says the phenomenon christened the Flypaper Effect.

The Flypaper Effect results when a dollar of taxpayers' money is sent to local government to spend. Turns out that "when municipalities receive additional funding, they don’t tend to spend it on improving public services, they tend to spend this money on special interest groups." And monuments. And if it's money from "above," as per the Seymour/Bishop model, they spend even more in more wasteful ways than if that dollar were raised directly from ratepayers (about which they're hardly parsimonious).

It's called The Flypaper Effect because essentially money sticks where it hits, i.e., "it sticks to that city and they use it [more] for interest groups and log-rolling and all of the rest of it," explains the economic paper outlining the phenomenon, and not so much for building infrastructure.

In simple words then: more monuments, not so much infrastructure => not so much infrastructure, not so much housing.

So it all rather makes a mockery of the Seymour/Bishop model for getting more houses built.

Idiots.

The Discomforting Solution to Homelessness

"PEOPLE ARE UPSET OVER THE homelessness problem in American cities," writes Jacob Hornberger. NZers are just as disturbed about our homelessness problem here. Visit any of our major towns and cities and you'll see the streets playing host to many poor souls unable to put a roof over their heads.

 

Most people pass them by, perhaps with a sinking sense of guilt. Or perhaps not. But the problem seems so intractable, so most do very little. 

If there's nothing to be done, why do anything at all? 

But there is something to be done, says Hornberger, and should be done by anybody who cares. Two things in particular, which you'll find at the bottom of the post. And could be done bloody quickly - iff there were a will.

But first, just think for a minute and compare two sorts of places. You see homeless folk on the streets when you walk the main streets of our major towns and cities. But think for a minute: do you see them so often, or at all, in any of the smaller towns or cities?? Even the poorer of our small towns and cities???

Hornberger grew up in what was officially the poorest city in the U.S. Located right on the U.S.-Mexican border, Laredo, Texas, his hometown, was also home to many new immigrants, both legal and illegal. And yet, as he says, for all the very visible poverty, "There was no homelessness. That is, there was no one living on the streets or in their cars, as we see in many American [or New Zealand] cities today."

Now, think about that for a moment. People say that poverty is the cause of homelessness. But if that’s the case, why wasn’t there any homelessness in Laredo?
    The answer is: At that time, there was was no zoning in Laredo. Anyone could establish low-income housing anywhere he wanted, including such things as trailer parks, low-priced rental units, and multiple-family housing.
    Thus, everyone was able to find housing at some price.

It's breathtakingly simple when you think about it -- and it's not because of any "wrap-around care" or any of the welfare buzzwords you hear that have been so unsuccessful at helping our own homeless folk.  And the simple fact is this: If governments restrict where and how many roofs can be put up (which is what zoning is designed to do: for the town planner it's a feature, not a bug), then there will be fewer roofs available for people to put over their heads. And those few will be at higher prices than they otherwise would.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-
Share Alike 4.0 International license.

I should point out that Laredo also had public-housing units (which, ironically, had been started by my grandfather). But even if the government had not entered into the housing market, there still wouldn’t have been a homelessness problem in Laredo.
    When I returned to Laredo after graduating from law school, one of our legal clients was a man who specialised in building and providing low-cost housing for the poor — for a profit. He would buy his building supplies in Mexico, where he could get them at a much lower price, bring them back to Laredo, and use them to build low-cost motels. His motel rooms were oriented toward the very poor. They were clean and simple. People could rent the rooms on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.     He always had a very high occupancy rate.
    He was free to situate his rental units anywhere in town. That same freedom applied to mobile-home parks. That’s because there were no zoning laws.

Take a short break and think about that again:  no homeless people because homes of all kinds (trailer parks, low-priced rental units, multiple-family housing, clean and simple motel units, mobile-home parks) could be situated anywhere in town. And they could be situated could be situated anywhere in town because there were no zoning laws.

Forgive me for writing this as if you, dear reader, were a six-year old. And for underlining those conclusions. But it seems as if those who refuse to understand this have less understanding of the world and how it works than even the most stunted young child. Allow builders the freedom to build where there is demand for it, and of the type that's demanded, and you will have more buildings at better prices that are warm, and dry, and occupied by those who were formerly homeless. That's the experience of places like Laredo. (Do you understand, Chloe Swarbrick, who walks past the homeless every day on K Rd, who says new homes should be built only in places town planners dictate. Do you even give a shit, Chris Bishop, averting his gaze, who says new homes should only be built where, and how, he dictates. Are you listening David Seymour, ignoring the waifs and strays around the less-leafy edges of his electorate, who says we must "fix infrastructure first"?)

That same freedom [says Hornberger] does not apply in cities where there is a homelessness problem today. I guarantee you: Show me a city that has a big homelessness problem and I will show you a city that has zoning.
    To protect citizens’ property values from such things as mobile-home parks and low-price housing, local officials enacted zoning laws. They figured that they could abolish “blight” by simply using the force of zoning laws to make low-cost housing illegal. What they ended up doing is producing a massive homelessness problem.
    Today, much of the anger that arises from the homelessness problem is directed toward the homeless. But what are they supposed to do — commit suicide? They can’t afford to rent a place in which to live because zoning laws have knocked out low-priced housing within the city.

Indeed.

Zoning only came to New Zealand in 1928 with the Town Planning Act (brought in by a conservative government, wouldn't you know). Back then, it was a relatively new phenomenon. But if you observe things today, you will notice that town planners and the like today much prefer to live in those places like Devonport, Ponsonby Parnell and the like that were built before town planners infested the country -- and the places that are built today based on town planners' rules are those like Albany and Manukau and (gulp) Hobsonville.

Unattractive. And (still) unaffordable by most measures. Especially to those sleeping on the streets.

Think about it.

AND THINK ABOUT THIS too, especially if you castigate homeless folk because "they should just get a job." Have you ever considered that government-mandated minimum-wage laws prevent them from getting a job at a wage that is lower than that government-mandated minimum? 

It's all very well for "Chippy" to crow about "raising the minimum wage," as if that has magically "lifted all boats" to that government-mandated level. But what he ignores, or hopes that you do, is that the real minimum wage is zero. Which is what most of those homeless are currently "earning." 

And most of those are only earning that because Chippy's much-touted raise in the government-mandated wages level simply places a large gulf between what they're earning, what they could earn, and what employers are allowed to pay them.

It's as if the Prime Minister were gloating about taking several rungs out of the ladder they might have climbed themselves, if he hadn't taken them away.

It would be one thing if they were free to get a job at less than the governmentally set minimum wage. In that case, one could legitimately say, “Get a job, you bum.” But when their labour in the marketplace is valued by employers at less than the artificially-set minimum wage, the state has locked them out of the labor market with its minimum-wage law. Thus, telling them to “Get a job, you bum” is nothing less than cruel and abusive. And if they can’t get a job, then how are they supposed to be able to pay rent for housing, especially when rents are exorbitantly high because of zoning laws?

It's a tragedy. But it's not intractable. It is fixable. It's fixable iff there were a political will to to do it.

Want to do something about the homeless? Tell your politicians to fix it. And make sure you tell them how:

(1) repeal zoning laws, and
(2) repeal minimum-wage laws.

National promises more housing uncertainty [updated]

 

DESPITE RISING INTEREST RATES and falling housing demand, New Zealand remains in the grip of its decades-long housing affordability crisis. 

“New Zealand is not short of land," said National's Chris Bishop yesterday, "but restrictive planning rules and a broken funding system have driven up the price of land and housing, creating a social and economic disaster."

He said this while announcing National would backtrack on its own bi-partisan policy to free up restrictive planning rules just a little bit in New Zealand's most unaffordable cities -- a policy that has already been successfully introduced, in association with the Labour govt, and operating for nearly a year. Those new "3-storey" density standards (called MRDS) are a blunt instrument, sure, but they allow city property owners to build taller housing in greater densities in larger numbers than ever before. They have been the only relaxation of restrictive planning rules since ... anyone can remember. And Bishop wants to overturn that.

What a fuckwit.

The MRDS standards were finally introduced only last year -- and more houses and apartments are already being planned and built and lived in under those new standards -- building up instead of out -- buyers seeing large falls in prices for entry-level dwellings, consistent with increased supply enabled by the MDRS and related changes. 

In the way of these things however, with the uncertainty this policy announcement will now make, almost all that planning will now stop while everyone waits to see what happens now -- with all the further implications for housing unaffordability.

What a complete fuckwit.

Christopher Bishop is backed up in this fuckwittery by both his leader, Christopher Luxon, who signalled the backtrack last week ("I think we've got the MRDS wrong," said the fuckwit), and by the leader of the opposition David Seymour, who on this issue abandons his pseudo-liberalism and becomes instead the "Minister for More Rules and Restrictions" -- and by Seymour's thoroughly confused deputy Brooke van Velden who says "The right answer is to leave planning to councils."

What a pack of total fuckwits. NIMBYs to a man and woman.

No news yet on how National's deputy thinks about all this, who's just been thoroughly undermined, i..e., Nicola Willis, who co-sponsored these relaxed density standards with Labour's Megan Woods -- a rare dose of bipartisanship and possibly the only good move on housing any politician has made in at least half a century. So good that all politicians bar those from ACT's illiberal wing could support it.

Oh yes, Bishop couched his announcement of backtracking on relaxing restrictions within cities with a policy to have planners "release" some land on green fields outside them*. Building more out instead of up. Eventually. (And probably easily averted by the planners' art.) But he's hanging his hat on the headline writer's spin that something is being done.**

National has form on this. Before he was elected as Prime Minister, National's John Key announced he would "improve housing affordability by ... changing the building regulatory regime ... and [fix] the Resource Management Act." And voters believed him. Of course, once appointed, that fuckwit did no such thing, watching instead as house prices soared, and planning and building restrictions mounted -- and he was heard to declare that the house price inflation he had helped create would "fix" the leaky homes crisis by inflating it all away.

Who cared what that did for first-home buyers. Certainly not the Prime Minister.

SO WITH HOUSING ONCE again a political football, we await an election to sort out which fuckwits where get to tell us where and how we're allowed to build, planning rules in and around our city are once again completely up in the air -- as they were while we awaited certainty around the MRDS. And without that certainty, it's impossible for developers and builders to make real plans, uncertain as they are as to how council's planners might be allowed to curtail them.

Sure, freeing up any land or planning restrictions anywhere will help housing affordability eventually. But it's not clear that the Christophers' city-edge botch-up is the solution, even if it were to free up anything at all.

Up or out? Why not both.

And why give those planners any bloody power at all?

* * * * 

* Bishop's policy is to require planners "to zone land for 30 years’ worth of housing demand." Those measuring whether this is achieved will be the same planners who wrote the rezoning rules - making it easy for planners to avoid. And he ignores that simply "releasing" land on its own does not necessarily make land cheaper.

The RMA's requirement for planners to undertake a cost-benefit analysis before writing new rules, easily fudged, and Auckland Council's continued fudging over the MRDS requirements demonstrates on their own how easy it is for planners to wriggle around these kind of requirements, and how willing councils will be to back them up.

UPDATE

** And Auckland Councillors are already "confirming" that no new land will be rezoned as a result of this -- the Auckland Unitary Plan, they say, already has all that Bishop asks for.