Posts Tagged ‘auckland’

Protecting poor people: the call for a rent freeze in Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, February 3rd, 2023 - 187 comments

As property investors indicate an intention to raise rents, Renters United and 20+ community groups call for a rent freeze in Auckland.

Take Care Auckland and Northland

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, January 27th, 2023 - 129 comments

Heavy rain has caused severe flooding in Auckland, leading to evacuations, power outages, and high risk warnings of sewerage on beaches.

People are being urged to stay home if safe, and stay off the roads. Please also check on neighbours and people who may be struggling especially disabled people, elderly, those on their own, and those with young children and pets.

That eerie silence

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, March 26th, 2020 - 69 comments

Waking up this morning was a bit of an eerie feeling. The alarm went off as usual at 0700 (and the 0880 one just clicked over). Very little traffic noise. The quiet sound of the workstation and server fans was louder than the the remaining white noise from the traffic.

This post is here for you to share your first day under lock-down.

Postal voting – essentially dead

Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, February 25th, 2020 - 62 comments

Stuff has an article up about last years local body elections in Auckland. As usual  the interesting parts are at the end. But I have to reiterate – online voting isn’t the answer. As a programmer, I’d just call it stupid and dangerous.

Nats must hate Auckland’s building consents boom

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, July 15th, 2019 - 59 comments

The rate at which the building consents have increased in Auckland, and the shift to a more useful mix, has been incredibly fast. You can understand why National after their decade of failure for housing and transport have been targeting the authors of that success. It highlights National’s economic incompetence.

Northland politicians want to drop more trucks into Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 6:24 am, April 5th, 2018 - 75 comments

Politik reports that some mayors from Northalnd are upset that they aren’t going to get a four lane boondoggle to feed more heavy trucks into traffic chaos that is the Auckland isthmus. They can stick their trucks up their body cavity of choice and learn to love rail. We don’t need more traffic in Auckland until we fix the disaster that National have left us.

Closing the loops on oil spills and broken pipe lines

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, September 18th, 2017 - 211 comments

This isn’t what we meant by keep it in the ground.

Stupid myths on immigrant construction workers

Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, September 8th, 2017 - 31 comments

One of the dafter myths about the current burgeoning immigration industry is that we need skilled immigrants for the construction industry. As usual the talkback idiots are wrong. We don’t get many. We need more. We need to get rid of the migrant dross to get them. A Kiwibuild quota is a good idea.

Blind to the facts on Auckland rail

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, July 28th, 2017 - 59 comments

Ben Ross at The Spinoff “The government’s continued support of the road freight industry in preference to expanding the role of rail, in the face of the data in this report, makes a complete mockery of its claim to prudent economic management. It makes, instead, a pretty good case for incompetence, or cronyism, or both.”

Green perspectives on the Point England land appropriation

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, June 13th, 2017 - 64 comments

Modern Day Land Grab or Treaty Settlement?

Auckland 3rd most expensive for PT

Written By: - Date published: 3:37 pm, May 5th, 2017 - 14 comments

The same study that trumpeted Wellington as the most liveable city in the world, has Auckland as the 3rd most expensive for Public Transport, behind London and Dublin.

Stormy weather in the North

Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, April 13th, 2017 - 65 comments

You’d have to say that an Easter cyclone is one of those truly awful scenarios for Auckland. Forget the water. What happens when the Harbour Bridge and the Airport probably close? It is going to be a hell of an Easter on the roads and travelling. More extreme weather brought to you from climate change.

Stay on the treadmill suckers!

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, April 12th, 2017 - 32 comments

That is the Nats’ advice to aspiring Auckland house buyers.

Typhoid in Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, April 4th, 2017 - 76 comments

The typhoid outbreak in Auckland is very bad news. Now would also be a good time to reflect on NZ’s generally poor record on child poverty and disease.

Warnings on Auckland Housing

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, March 31st, 2017 - 60 comments

Warnings on the state of the Auckland housing market are coming thick and fast now. People who bought recently (at the peak of prices and low interest rates) are likely to get burned.

Jam tomorrow

Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, March 25th, 2017 - 85 comments

It’s too hard! We’ll do it later! Auckland airport rail is just the latest example.

There are no surpluses

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, March 14th, 2017 - 38 comments

There are no surpluses in NZ right now, not in any real sense. There is only debt, negative externalities and deferred costs.

Climate change, weather bombs, and the infrastructure that we need

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, March 12th, 2017 - 62 comments

The effects of climate change are here, now, playing out in the flooded north. We should be preparing, we should be hardening critical infrastructure like Auckland’s fresh water supply. Instead of building – you know – more roads.

Auckland NIMBYs refused

Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, February 14th, 2017 - 12 comments

If Auckland as a city wish to retain representative samples of our past, then we should concentrate on how to preserve those rather than trying to deny the migration that increases its population by something like 50 thousand people per year. This is a working city – not a museum.

Screwing more out of Auckland renters

Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, January 10th, 2017 - 12 comments

Already sky-high Auckland rents are set to rise further.

The cusp of something “special” in Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 12:47 pm, December 13th, 2016 - 29 comments

Could be that the Auckland property market is turning downwards.

Meanwhile, the Housing Crisis

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, December 7th, 2016 - 18 comments

Bill English and Paula Bennett won’t be thinking about it this week, but Auckland’s Housing Crisis continues to get worse.

RNZ Auckland Mayoral Debate

Written By: - Date published: 7:51 am, September 7th, 2016 - 14 comments

The first big debate in the Auckland mayoralty race starts at 8am today. Links in the post.

Voting closes on October 8. Phil Goff wins the mayoralty shortly afterwards.

The Million Dollar Minister

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, September 6th, 2016 - 14 comments

No denying the housing crisis now, Nick.

Labour’s Auckland Push

Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, August 30th, 2016 - 57 comments

Matt McCarten is to head a new Labour party office in Auckland. The party is going to take to fight to National in the city that decides the election. Yet another bold step from Andrew Little, who is looking more and more like the next PM.

Key: Crisis? What me worry?

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, August 30th, 2016 - 34 comments

John Key is defending his handling of Auckland’s housing crisis on the grounds that Auckland’s prices have only risen as much under him as they did under Labour.

So the prices that he said were a crisis in 2007, have risen by as much again, and thus… no problem?

Land banking – National gives up on housing crisis

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, August 29th, 2016 - 29 comments

As the average Auckland house price hits $1 Million, the Special Housing Areas fail, and Real Estate agents openly promote land banking, what does National do? Why, they give up, of course.

The Spinoff: Housing crisis costing Nats

Written By: - Date published: 7:23 am, August 27th, 2016 - 14 comments

The Spinoff: “Lose the top of your party vote in Auckland, with Labour making ground, and the picture for the general election in 2017 looks like, walks like and quacks like a crisis.”

Fleeing Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 12:34 pm, August 24th, 2016 - 71 comments

Spinoff: “The Spinoff/SSI survey reveals the extraordinary impact of housing crisis on residents of New Zealand’s biggest city – and the extent to which Aucklanders blame foreign speculation.”

The Unitary Plan: Rodney’s Dream

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, August 7th, 2016 - 59 comments

Rodney Hide must be sleeping well, because Auckland’s proposed Unitary Plan will deliver all he and his NACT patrons ever hoped for. The Council should reject the Plan in its current form, cherry-pick those aspects consistent with a democratic and liveable city and sheet home the responsibility to those that created the mess.

Unitary Plan – affordability requirements removed

Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, July 28th, 2016 - 63 comments

What are the Nats doing removing a proposed requirement for affordable housing – exactly the housing that Auckland desperately needs!?

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