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In just over a week’s time we will find out whether all the work that Environment Minister Nick Smith and his team have put into the latest round of Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms will ever see the light of day. That is when voters in Northland will decide whether to let the National Party maintain its effective majority in Parliament or opt for a bit of something different in the form of Winston Peters and New Zealand First. Read more

When Harvard economist Ed Glaeser delivered a public lecture on urban economics in Christchurch in 2013, hosted by Canterbury’s Department of Economics and Finance, he was asked whether Christchurch would really recover. The question wasn’t crazy. Read more

The recent announcements by Minister for the Environment Nick Smith that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is set to undergo a major overhaul is welcome news, representing the first meaningful policy change aimed at tackling the housing affordability crisis gripping New Zealand’s biggest cities. Although the detail on the changes has yet to be seen, the direction is promising as the RMA has long served as grit in the gears of the housing market, restricting sub-divisions, slowing the build rate, entrenching NIMBYism, while allowing fast growing councils to use it as an excuse to stall development and growth planning. Read more

Wellington has little to gain and a lot to lose by opting for a super-city, argues Oliver Hartwich. New Zealand’s local government units are typically already large by international standards. Read more

There’s a lot to like in Local Government New Zealand’s report on local government finances. The report gets one very important thing right: It’s time that central government moved to tie local government finances more closely to local government performance to encourage development. Read more

It turns out that you can both agree with Local Government New Zealand that we need to change how local government is financed, and with the Taxpayers’ Union that a lot of local governments could be more efficient. I think we can manage to hit both targets with one instrument in this case: fixing how local government is financed can help to make local government more efficient. Read more

One critical response to my 12 January 2015 Dominion Post article here on the need for the benefits from government scaffolding regulation to exceed the costs asserted that: This misses the point that that decisions about people's safety at work should never be based solely on money. There is a moral test that also needs to be satisfied. Read more

City planners have done terrible things to housing affordability. While improving the RMA is an important step in stemming the madness, it’s only a first step. Read more