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With most major political parties in favour of scrapping urban growth boundaries, land use regulations have captured a fair number of headlines over the past few weeks. And well they should. Read more
Whether on the sports field or in the boardroom, the adage that ‘if you cannot measure something, you cannot control it’ is well known. It appears Local Government New Zealand has taken this piece of wisdom to heart with the launch of their Excellence Programme. Read more
Wellington (20 June 2016): The New Zealand Initiative has welcomed the launch of LGNZ’s Excellence Programme, saying the introduction of a local government performance benchmark was overdue. The programme aims to independently rate participating councils on four criteria, using a simple ranking system. Read more
Thank goodness for Auckland City’s urban planners. Although the rest of us are unable to see past Auckland’s housing crisis, it is reassuring that they remain committed to a loftier vision. Read more
In New York City, a bottle placed on the curbside for recycling can find its way back into a convenience store, relabeled and refilled, within thirty days. In Auckland City, a bottle’s destiny is not so enduring. Read more
Auckland’s housing crisis produces some strange side effects. One of them is that the word ‘boarding school’ might acquire a new meaning. Read more
In the mid-2000s, when inflation was running hot and the Reserve Bank was having a tough time keeping things under control, the former Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr warned that monetary policy needed mates. Government made the Reserve Bank’s job even harder by running expansionary fiscal policy when labour markets were tight and inflation was a problem. Read more
Wellington (2 June 2016): The government’s draft national policy statement (NPS) on urban development, while a step in the right direction, will not fix Auckland’s housing crisis because it ignores infrastructure, according to The New Zealand Initiative. Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith today launched draft policy guidance under the Resource Management Act, which looks to force councils to zone more land for development when house prices breach a certain affordability threshold. Read more
Last week saw a rare conjunction. Almost all the political parties agreed that Auckland’s artificial rural urban boundary had to be lifted to free up land for housing development. Read more
Amid the rancorous debate about whether a land tax should be imposed on non-resident property buyers it is vital to remember what caused New Zealand’s housing crisis in the first place: a sustained lack of land supply. Far too often in the discussion on how to cool Auckland’s white-hot housing market the focus strays from this fundamental fact, and falls on demand-side factors. Read more