Except their fix won’t release more suitable land, it’ll release more unsuitable land. And we saw what that can look like in certain areas of Christchurch, so maybe we shouldn’t be so fast to talk about gutting the RMA as a “solution” just because we all acknowledge more land for housing is one step that will help.
The Greens and Labour still require more land to be released (or at least re-zoned for greater density). Where are these 100,000 additional houses going to be built? That will likely mean greater demand for land AND then even higher housing prices.
NZ people per hectare is low by World Standards for an urbanised society.
And that would be because we keep adding to the uneconomic sprawl of our cities rather than building up which, of course, increases the amount of land used per person thus decreasing the amount of land available faster.
So, yeah, under the delusional ideology of the right-wing we’d run out of land pretty quick.
The issue is an lack of central government vision on infrastructure (while importing huge numbers of people) which has led to the Auckland council not being able to release land for fear of making serious long term city design and transport mistakes.
It is politically expedient for greedy RWNJs to concentrate the blame for a lack of housing development at Auckland Council when the real problem is poor management by the National government in infrastructure modelling which has been compounded by poor immigration management over the last 9 years.
There definitely isn’t enough land for the 450 metre square ranch style dwelling with four car garage that the cabinets’ mates build. I mean you do need at least one hectare to put in a decent drive and a practice golf hole in the front yard.
Yes as well as the mythical ‘land crisis’ which does not exist (it’s a building crisis stupid, or more to the point the cost of producing a building in this country is well beyond the wages of most people to afford, so we have to import people in and create an economy based on a ponzi construction model)
– there is also the Natz and ACT idea that like pigs we fly around, because even if there were housing, then we can’t get around because some dimwits never put in public transport that people can afford that has links back to people’s houses so they can get home and works.
And to top it off, somehow every time it rains, sewerage goes into our beaches. This was supposed to be stopped years ago, but apparently in spite of all the extra water charges, extra compliance for everybody with septic tanks – this was never solved.
So for every person we now don’t have enough houses, they can’t get from A to B with absurd public transport and gridlocked roads and their shit goes into the harbour every time we have a huge down pour.
so the right wingers keep telling us….funny though even the off shore construction companies are complaining about the cost of building here…
And in Auckland for every house being demolished, another bigger one is coming up. (p.s. that’s not increasing housing, even though the figures record it as such).
The council love it and rubber stamp every consent – but again, it’s making housing less affordable and blocking out amenity – like sun – which in the age of solar and oil crisis is not going to end well as well as making future houses colder and damper and having to spend more on artificial heating options that increasingly people can’t afford. I guess that’s capitalism!
Apparently NZ has some of the biggest housing in the world. But even in Oz which has bigger houses, the cost of building is much less per square meter.
With the unaffordable unitary plan there was removing democracy, rubber stamping consents, losing greenfield spaces, removing character, but increasing density and sustainablility was missing.
In short there needs to be more homes that can be run cheaper allowed on the land not larger buildings.
And if anybody trys to put on a granny flat – no stone left unturned for the council to try and stop it.
Don’t even think about buying land and putting on a yurt to live in! You will be prosecuted even if it’s on a lifestyle block in the middle of nowhere.
Sadly in this country the government, local and central and more and more lobby groups are more interested in stopping many people being able to have housing and controlling it for profit and political reasons, while allowing richer people and businesses to do what ever they like with public resources.
The result. Auckland. Man made housing crisis and increasingly, less ways to solve it. We now have a pollution and transport crisis to go with the housing and job and wages crisis.
Oz govt desperate to shoreup is banking industries exposure to the Auckland housing market. First crims, now families foloowing their kids forced to goto uni in NZ. Both Nats and Liberals dont want a housing collapse on their watch. Though niether will anyone bother to build homes, less the class stratification of society turns round.
Martyn Bradbury has ruined the word “comrade” for me. He uses it so much, (often while attacking unions) that it has somehow devalued a term that I used to like.
This is the first I have heard of ‘keepcup’ as a reference to the Greens, and I follow quite a number of Green supporters. I rather liked the chart though.
Alone, Alone, All, All, Alone: To argue that the Prime Minister is the victim of her advisers’ failure to keep her informed may offer Jacinda some measure of exoneration – but only at the cost of casting her as a hopeless political ingénue. A star-dusted muppet, whose only purpose is to ...
In times of hysteria about the “World coming to an end” and “rising sea levels” so-called ‘Journalists’ who can barely spell words longer than four letters are having a ball! Though the majority of the Public have worked out that manmade climate change is nothing short of pseudo-science, and the ...
I don't want to give pblicity to certain parts of the internet that are better left to fester in their own irrelevance (I know, a bit like this place) but the listing of Chris Trotter as a 'author' on Cameron Slater's spinoff website, the BFD requires some explanation.Now, I don't ...
The text below is a Twitter thread by Heather Heying that explains the essence of sexual reproduction and it long evolutionary history. She is an evolutionary biologist and a “professor-in-exile” after she and her husband, Bret Weinstein, stood up to supporters of an enforced “Day of Absence” for white staff and teachers ...
With crunch time for new Zealand climate policy approaching, most of the New Zealand media have got on board with a global reporting effort to cover the issue. There's one strand of stories today about polling and what it shows about changing public attitudes to the crisis, but the strand ...
Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...
Current and former NZDF top brass are being publicly grilled this week by the hit and run inquiry over their public responses to allegations of civilian casualties. Previously, they've claimed there were no casualties, a position which led them to lie to Ministers and to the public. Now, they're saying ...
by Rafael D. Quiles (gender-critical gay man from Puerto Rico) The writing on the wall is right in people’s faces and people just don’t see it or don’t want to. What could actually possess a heterosexual male to want to feminize himself and claim that he is a lesbian? Because ...
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...
by the Redline blog collective At Redline we are very saddened to hear of the death of Magdalen Burns who passed away on the morning of Friday, September 13 (British time). Magdalen was a great fighter for the rights of women in general and lesbian women in particular, a defender ...
The Brexit issue has certainly brought with it a series of apparently difficult constitutional issues, many of them concerning the respective roles of the executive and parliament. Most of them arise because of the unwillingness of MPs, despite their professions to the contrary, to be bound by a constitutional rarity ...
. . This blogpost is different to my usual format of reporting on issues… Since July 1011, I have blogged on a variety of political issues; near always political and/or environmental; mostly highly critical of the previous National Government. Other issues included Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of ...
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...
The government has released its Arms Legislation Bill, containing the second tranche of changes to gun laws following the March 15 massacre. And it all looks quite sensible: a national gun register, higher penalties for illegal possession and dealing, tighter restrictions on arms dealers and shooting clubs, and a shorter ...
Private prisons are a stain on humanity. Prison operators explicitly profit from human misery, then lobby for longer prisons terms so they can keep on profiting. And in the US, prison companies run not only local and state prisons, but also Donald Trump's immigration concentration camps. Faced with this moral ...
When National was in power, they were very keen on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) - basicly, using private companies to finance public infrastructure as a way of hiding debt from the public. They were keen on using them for everything - roads, schools, hospitals. But as the UK shows, that "service" ...
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...
by Philip Ferguson Much of the left, even people who formally identify as marxists, have collapsed politically in the face of postmodern gender theory of the sort pioneered by American philosopher Judith Butler. For Butler even biological sex is socially constructed. “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps ...
The media is reporting that the (alleged) Labour party sexual assaulter has resigned from their job at Parliament, which means hopefully he won't be turning up there making people feel unsafe in future. Good. But as with everything about this scandal, it just raises other questions. Most significantly: why the ...
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...
Property developers think there is an "oversupply" of houses in Auckland:High turnover rates and falling prices may be a sign that there are too many new houses going in to some parts of Auckland, commentators say. [...] Property developer David Whitburn said there was a "bit of an oversupply" in ...
Labour Party president Nigel Haworth resigned yesterday over the party's sexual assault scandal. But while that's good news, its unlikely to take away the stench of a coverup. Because according to Paula Bennett in Parliament yesterday, pretty much everyone in the Prime Minister's office was involved as well:I have been ...
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...
There has been a lot of talk about Boris Johnson wanting an election, and he has blustered with great gusto about 'chicken' Jeremy Corbyn refusing one, but I think there are many reasons why he is secretly glad he has been refused the opportunity:The Tories are an utter rabble,tearing themselves ...
Scottish appeal court judges have declared that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful. The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the prime ...
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...
I understand there's some stuff going round about how the SIS "was removed from the list of public offices covered by the Public Records Act in 2017". The context of course being their records derived from US torture, which will be disposed of or sealed. The good news is that ...
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ...
Australia is burning down again, and meanwhile its natural disaster minister is denying climate change:Australia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, has said that he doesn’t “know if climate change is manmade”. Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to ...
Auckland Philippines Solidarity is excited to host Professor Judy Taguiwalo for a speaking tour of NZ in September. She is a well-known activist in the Philippines and was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship. Professor Taguiwalo briefly served as a Cabinet member under President Duterte but was forced from ...
This open letter to the Green Party was penned after an opinion piece by Jill Abigail, a feminist and founding member of the party, was censored by the Greens’ leadership. (Redline has reprinted her article here).The intolerance of the Green Party leaders and their acceptance of the misogyny of gender ...
Today is a Member's day, and David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill continues its slow crawl through its committee stage. They're spending the whole day on it today, though the first hour is likely to be spent on voting left over from last time. After that they'll move on ...
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...
During my time in the Pentagon I had the privilege of sitting down with military leaders and defence and security officials from a variety of Latin American nations. Sometimes I was present as a subordinate assistant to a senior US defence department official, sometimes as part of a delegation that ...
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...
Eighteen months ago, the government promised to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act, by explicitly affirming the power of the courts to issue declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. So how's that going? I was curious, so I asked for all advice about the proposal. ...
As the Brexit saga staggers on, the focus is naturally enough on the Prime Minister and his attempts to achieve Brexit “do or die”. But the role played by the Leader of the Opposition is of almost equal interest and complexity. The first problem for Jeremy Corbyn is that he ...
Last week, English Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly declared that he would rather die be dead in a ditch than delay Brexit. Unfortunately for him, the UK parliament accepted the challenge, and promptly dug one for him. The "rebellion bill" requires him to ask for and secure yet another temporary ...
Lost In Political Space: The most important takeaway from this latest Labour sexual assault scandal, which (if I may paraphrase Nixon’s White House counsel’s, John Dean’s, infamous description of Watergate) is “growing like a cancer” on the premiership, is the Labour Party organisation’s extraordinary professional paralysis in the face of ...
by Daphna Whitmore Every Sunday for the past two months unionists from First Union, with supporters from other unions, have set out to the Ihumatao land protest, put up gazebos and gas barbeques, and cooked food for a few hundred locals and supporters who have come from across the country. ...
Newsroom today has an excellent, in-depth article on pine trees as carbon sinks. The TL;DR is that pine is really good at soaking up carbon, but people prefer far-less efficient native forests instead. Which is understandable, but there's two problems: firstly, we've pissed about so long on this problem that ...
Canan Kaftancioglu is a Turkish politician and member of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Like most modern politicians, she tweets, and uses the platform to criticise the Turkish government. She has criticised them over the death of a 14-year-old boy who was hit by a tear gas grenade during ...
Hi there, just call me Tim.We face tough problems, and I’d like to help, because there are solutions.An Auckand District Health Board member has nominated me for as a candidate for the ADHB, because her MS-related pain and fatigue is reduced with hemp products from Rotorua. Nothing else helped her. If I ...
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has published their report on whether the SIS and GCSB had any complicity in American torture. And its damning. The pull quote is this:The Inquiry found both agencies, but to a much greater degree, the NZSIS, received many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who, ...
Bewhiskered Cassandra? Professor Hugh White’s chilling suggestion, advanced to select collections of academic, military and diplomatic Kiwi experts over the course of the past week, is that the assumptions upon which Australia and New Zealand have built their foreign affairs and defence policies for practically their entire histories – are ...
For most of the time I was a British MP, my party was out of government – these were the Thatcher years, when it was hard for anyone else to get a look-in. As a front-bencher and shadow minister, I became familiar with the strategies required in a parliamentary democracy ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh On August 29th a video in which veteran FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) commander Iván Márquez announced that they had taken up arms again was released. There was no delay in the reaction to it, from longtime Liberal Party figure and former president Uribe, for ...
Air New Zealand couldn’t believe its luck that this seemingly ideal piece of real estate had so far gone entirely unnoticed. Air New Zealand’s search for a site to build a second Auckland Airport may have made a breakthrough this afternoon, after employees scanning Google satellite imagery spotted a huge, ...
No-one on the anti-capitalist left in this country today puts forward a case that Labour is on the side of the working class. There are certainly people who call themselves ‘socialist’ who do, but they are essentially liberals with vested interests in Labourism – often for career reasons. Nevertheless, there ...
When National was in government and fucking over the poor for the benefit of the rich, foodbanks were a growth industry. And now Labour is in charge, nothing has changed: A huge demand for emergency food parcels means the Auckland City Mission is struggling to prepare for the impending arrival ...
Gayford, pictured here on The Project, before things got wildly out of control. A bold public relations move by the Government to encourage parents to vaccinate their children has gone horribly wrong. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appeared on tonight’s episode of Three’s The Project, where the plan was for her ...
Mr. Whippy’s business model has driven it down a dark road of intimidation. Residents in major centres around the country are becoming disgruntled by the increasingly aggressive actions of purported ice cream company Mr. Whippy, who have taken to parking on people’s front lawns and doorsteps in a desperate attempt ...
Today the government released its Action Plan for Healthy Waterways, aimed at cleaning up our lakes and rivers. Its actually quite good. There will be protection for wetlands, better standards for swimming spots, a requirement for continuous improvement, and better standards for wastewater and stormwater. But most importantly, there's a ...
Today I appeared before the Environment Committee to give an oral submission on the Zero Carbon Bill. Over 1,500 people have asked to appear in person, so they've divided into subcommittees and are off touring the country, giving people a five minute slot each. The other submitters were a mixed ...
Anti-fluoride activists have some wealthy backers – they are erecting billboards misrepresenting the Canadian study on many New Zealand cities – and local authorities are ordering their removal because of their scaremongering. Many New Zealanders ...
So, those who “know best” have again done their worst. While constantly claiming to be the guardians of democracy and the constitution, and respecters of the 2016 referendum result, diehard Remainers (who have never brought themselves to believe that their advice could have been rejected) have striven might and main ...
Following publication of this article, the Ministry has requested it to be noted that this supplied image is not necessarily representative of what the final house will look like, and it “probably won’t be that nice.” As part of today’s long-anticipated reset of the Government’s flagship KiwiBuild policy, Housing Minister ...
Over the next week or two we will be running three synopses of parts of the opening chapter of John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2016). The synopsis and commentary below is written by Phil Duncan. Marx began Capital not with a sweeping historical ...
The State Services Commission and Ombudsman have released another batch of OIA statistics, covering the last six months. Request volumes are up, and the core public service is generally handling them within the legal timeframe, though this may be because they've learned to extend rather than just ignore things. And ...
In 1994, I was editing an ambitious street mag called Planet, from a fabled office at at 309 Karangahape Road. The thirteenth issue of the magazine was published in the winter of that year and its cover embodied a particularly ambitious goal: the end of cannabis prohibition.I wanted to do ...
KiwiBuild was one of the Ardern government's core policies. The government would end the housing crisis and make housing affordable again by building 100,000 new homes. Of course, it didn't work out like that: targets weren't met, the houses they did build were in the wrong place, and the whole ...
As the climate crisis escalates, it is now obvious that we need to radically decarbonise our economy. The good news is that its looking easy and profitable for the energy sector. Wind is already cheaper than fossil fuels, and now solar is too:The levellised cost of solar PV has fallen ...
NZUS Council executive director Jordan Small welcomes the news New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will meet with US President Donald Trump in New York next week. ...
The recent NZIER report trivialises the significant role the dairy sector plays in New Zealand’s economy – and fails to look at the specifics of the Government’s freshwater package, according to DairyNZ. DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said ...
This week, the New Zealand Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) will jointly host a seminar on tackling the global spread of illicit weapons. ...
In a landmark judgment issued this morning, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the Southern Response Concealment Class Action will proceed issued on an "opt out” basis. ...
Mainstream media, as the purveyors of truth and source of balanced information, took another backward step today with the announcement by Stuff that most New Zealand organisations had joined 170 media outlets from around the world in the “Covering ...
The goal of one million Kiwis having basic conversations in te reo by 2040 is unrealistic if more is not done to get serious about reo acquisition says the Māori Party. “While small steps have been taken to bolster efforts to increase the numbers of speakers, ...
Changes announced today by the Immigration Minister to employer-assisted visas will help businesses, but more work is needed to boost economic growth says Business Central. ...
DairyNZ Chief Executive Dr Tim Mackle is welcoming today’s announcement that the Government will be streamlining the employer assisted work visa process to help businesses and farms fill skills shortages. ...
Lawrence Yule MP wrote to our Office with concerns about the Department of Corrections' approach to procuring design and build services for rapid deployment of prison accommodation. We have published our response to Mr Yule on our website . ...
That from the chair of the Wellington Region of the College of Midwives, Siobhan Connor, following the news that Hutt Valley District Health Board is targeting midwives from overseas to help fill gaps in maternity units. ...
70% of New Zealand’s surface water take is allocated to Meridian’s Manapouri Power Scheme. But when Environment Minister David Parker asked to exempt the Scheme from his Freshwater Action Plan, he didn’t tell Cabinet that. ...
The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that officers responded in a timely and appropriate manner as soon as they were aware that a fleeing driver had hit a pedestrian. ...
prevention and intervention. Following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s post-Cabinet press conference we are encouraged to see the acknowledgement of the mistakes made and the need to address this. The five points outlined in the action plan, which ...
A surge in teen vaping rates and a series of deaths being linked to vaping has resulted in a number of bans on the sales of flavoured Vape juice products in the United States. Though it is widely acknowledged that vaping is far less harmful than smoking tobacco, ...
The governments’ new environmental proposals will further accentuate the move of good, productive farmland into forestry according to environmental lobby group 50 Shades of Green. ...
17 September 2019: New Zealanders are acutely aware of the impact food production processes have on our planet according to new research released today by the 5+ A Day Charitable Trust. ...
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL is awarding three New Zealand climate youth groups with its Ambassador of Conscience award, its highest recognition for human rights work, previously given to the likes of Nelson Mandela, Ai Weiwei and Malala Yousafzai. ...
On 14 September 2017, the pipeline that brings diesel, petrol, and jet fuel from Marsden Point Oil Refinery into Auckland ruptured. It leaked jet fuel into rural properties and stopped the transmission of fuels into Auckland for 10 days. The rupture ...
Victims Advocate Louise Nicholas - Labour should have brought in “specialist support” “When there is a complaint especially a serious complaint of sexual assault, the first thing that should have happened was specialist support brought in to ensure ...
Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods says New Zealand is ‘not close’ to bringing in oil reserves after the attack on Saudi fields. “We would have to see prices rise by about $20 per barrel in order for some of those strategic reserves ...
New Zealand's new fresh water regulation rules will have no major impacts on the national economy, according to an independent report just out. The report by independent economic consultancy New Zealand Institute of Economic Research shows that dairying ...
Fish & Game New Zealand has welcomed the findings of a New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report, which rejects claims the Government’s freshwater proposals will have a significant economic impact. ...
The Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (COLFO) says the Government should take its proposed firearms legislation to the people with a touring Select Committee, as it just has with the Zero Carbon bill. ...
Water reforms and the long term sustainability of water will be a key focus at the Water New Zealand conference and expo this week (18-20 September) in Hamilton. ...
“Kiwi ex-smokers are mobilising against the Government’s plans to drastically limit vaping flavours. Flavours have been key to them quitting tobacco and they now just want other smokers to have the same chance,” says Jonathan Devery, co-owner ...
Oil company Tamarind Resources has reportedly halted drilling at its Tui oil field off the Taranaki coast after the first of the three planned wells came up dry and bad weather caused delays. ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the left-wing campaign group “ActionStation” to front up and be transparent about how much taxpayer funding it takes from the Government to underwrite its activism activities. Earlier in the month, the Taxpayers’ ...
The ‘ Unplanned ’ movie is here and Family First has secured one of the first screenings in New Zealand tonight. ‘Unplanned’ brings an eye-opening look inside the abortion industry from a woman who was once its most passionate advocate. All ...
James Renwick claim that NZ is failing on climate change is valid, and since James has been receiving widespread media coverage that we outline most of it again here now as we gear up for the ‘Global climate change conference’ beginning next week. ...
Protestors will be outside the venue of the fourth hearing for Operation Burnham Inquiry on Monday morning from 8.30am to give a message to former and current military officers as they arrive to speak about the ongoing coverup of the 2010 attack on ...
The long-running campaign against purported Chinese “interference” in New Zealand’s political system intensified in the past week following a five-day visit to Beijing by opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges. ...
National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett spent the week claiming a serious cover-up in the Prime Minister's office. She used parliamentary privilege to name three of the Prime Minister's closest advisors who, she says, knew about the sexual assault ...
Six months on from the worst terrorist attack in New Zealand history, Simon Shepherd asked Al Noor Mosque spokesperson Anthony Green how the Christchurch Muslim is community faring. ...
“The Game Animal Council is concerned that the Government’s second tranche of firearms legislation released today may contain unreasonable provisions that will unfairly impact hunters,” says Game Animal Council Chair Don Hammond. ...
Government policy work on the Carbon Zero bill highlights connections between climate change, carbon sequestration and agriculture. Water quality and allocation are also topical with the release of the Draft Policy Statement for Freshwater Management ...
DairyNZ Chief Executive Dr Tim Mackle is welcoming this afternoon’s announcement that consultation on Essential Freshwater has been extended by two weeks - but is calling on the Minister to go further. ...
DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle is calling on the Government to move swiftly to extend the six-week timeframe of the Essential Freshwater consultation. ...
Immigration New Zealand could really benefit from an large investment of money, comments Ms June Ranson, chair of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment (NZAMI) , a leading voice in the immigration sector. “Instead of spending $25m ...
In recent times there has been no shortage of commentary regarding whistleblowers, with the proposed amendments to the Protected Disclosures Act 2000. These are aimed at strengthening the protection available to whistleblowers in New Zealand. That ...
Gun Control NZ strongly welcomes the comprehensive gun law reform bill and calls on all political parties to support it. Gun Control NZ encourages New Zealanders to let their MPs know they support this Bill, submit to the Select Committee, and ...
Federated Farmers agrees with most of the steps by government to protect people from illegal or irresponsible firearms use. But concerns about pest control and the effectiveness of a register remain. ...
Today at Parliament the NZ Drug Foundation released Taking control of cannabis: A model for responsible regulation, a new report that shows how we can take back control of cannabis from organised crime. ...
It was another wild week in our favourite island paradise, as our remaining celebrities continued their quest to win cash for charity. Tara Ward power ranks. The bells of change have rung on Celebrity Treasure Island, and we’re now knee deep in an individual game of trickery, ping-pongery, and Tim-Tammery. The two ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Arthur Sinodinos will soon leave the Senate, and early next year take up the position of Australian ambassador in Washington. A former staffer and one-time public servant as well as a former minister, in this ...
The fishing industry is fighting back against claims its ad campaign is 'spin', saying protecting the Māui dolphin shouldn’t come at the expense of commercial fishers. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie Walters, PhD candidate in music, University of Adelaide Review: XXX Neon Sign, composed by Dan Thorpe, Rumpus Theatre More than perhaps any other instrument, the grand piano symbolises the classical music canon and its rigid traditions. Placing such an instrument centre-stage ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Leuzinger, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology CC BY-NDClimate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Conway, Senior Lecturer – Games and Interactivity, Swinburne University of Technology Two of the biggest tech companies in the world, Apple and Google, are launching cloud-based gaming services this year. Apple Arcade, due for release in two days, will ultimately go ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Marks, Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Strategy and Policy, Western Sydney University “How good is Gladys Berejiklian?” Prime Minister Scott Morrison asked a jubilant crowd of Liberal supporters on the evening of her March 23 2019 state election win. Only as good as her ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Charlson, Conjoint NHMRC Early Career Fellow, The University of Queensland This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) recently declared ...
Life insurance companies have been taken to task for being too slow to improve their culture and conduct by regulators, which appears set to lead to tougher regulation. ...
In this extract from a chapter called ‘Deep Time’ in Rebecca Priestley’s new memoir, Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica, Rebecca remembers her peculiar, legume-heavy, art-saturated childhood in Wellington. (And a note from the author: if anyone has a painting from Ruth Priestley’s Antarctic Dream series, Rebecca would love to hear from ...
The government is introducing a new employer-led work visa that it says will help plug shortages, reduce exploitation, and improve conditions for New Zealand workers. ...
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ACT has publically announced there is a housing crisis
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1703/S00293/fix-the-rma-fix-the-housing-crisis.htm
The crisis they are talking about was apparently created by the RMA. Still lala land stuff.
Not really. The issue is there is not enough land being released for houses. Even Labour acknowledges that.
Except their fix won’t release more suitable land, it’ll release more unsuitable land. And we saw what that can look like in certain areas of Christchurch, so maybe we shouldn’t be so fast to talk about gutting the RMA as a “solution” just because we all acknowledge more land for housing is one step that will help.
The Greens and Labour still require more land to be released (or at least re-zoned for greater density). Where are these 100,000 additional houses going to be built? That will likely mean greater demand for land AND then even higher housing prices.
No matter how much land is released there will still be a crisis – especially once we run out of land.
And that’s not even taking into account the economics of sprawl.
It’s not the lack of land that’s the problem but the fact that we’re not building up and going for higher density but more liveable cities.
We are unlikely to run out of land. NZ people per hectare is low by World Standards for an urbanised society.
And that would be because we keep adding to the uneconomic sprawl of our cities rather than building up which, of course, increases the amount of land used per person thus decreasing the amount of land available faster.
So, yeah, under the delusional ideology of the right-wing we’d run out of land pretty quick.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too
No.
The issue is an lack of central government vision on infrastructure (while importing huge numbers of people) which has led to the Auckland council not being able to release land for fear of making serious long term city design and transport mistakes.
It is politically expedient for greedy RWNJs to concentrate the blame for a lack of housing development at Auckland Council when the real problem is poor management by the National government in infrastructure modelling which has been compounded by poor immigration management over the last 9 years.
There definitely isn’t enough land for the 450 metre square ranch style dwelling with four car garage that the cabinets’ mates build. I mean you do need at least one hectare to put in a decent drive and a practice golf hole in the front yard.
Yes as well as the mythical ‘land crisis’ which does not exist (it’s a building crisis stupid, or more to the point the cost of producing a building in this country is well beyond the wages of most people to afford, so we have to import people in and create an economy based on a ponzi construction model)
– there is also the Natz and ACT idea that like pigs we fly around, because even if there were housing, then we can’t get around because some dimwits never put in public transport that people can afford that has links back to people’s houses so they can get home and works.
And to top it off, somehow every time it rains, sewerage goes into our beaches. This was supposed to be stopped years ago, but apparently in spite of all the extra water charges, extra compliance for everybody with septic tanks – this was never solved.
So for every person we now don’t have enough houses, they can’t get from A to B with absurd public transport and gridlocked roads and their shit goes into the harbour every time we have a huge down pour.
Ummm… no it isn’t a building crisis. Land by far makes up the majority of the rise in the cost of housing over the past few years
so the right wingers keep telling us….funny though even the off shore construction companies are complaining about the cost of building here…
And in Auckland for every house being demolished, another bigger one is coming up. (p.s. that’s not increasing housing, even though the figures record it as such).
The council love it and rubber stamp every consent – but again, it’s making housing less affordable and blocking out amenity – like sun – which in the age of solar and oil crisis is not going to end well as well as making future houses colder and damper and having to spend more on artificial heating options that increasingly people can’t afford. I guess that’s capitalism!
Apparently NZ has some of the biggest housing in the world. But even in Oz which has bigger houses, the cost of building is much less per square meter.
With the unaffordable unitary plan there was removing democracy, rubber stamping consents, losing greenfield spaces, removing character, but increasing density and sustainablility was missing.
In short there needs to be more homes that can be run cheaper allowed on the land not larger buildings.
And if anybody trys to put on a granny flat – no stone left unturned for the council to try and stop it.
Don’t even think about buying land and putting on a yurt to live in! You will be prosecuted even if it’s on a lifestyle block in the middle of nowhere.
Sadly in this country the government, local and central and more and more lobby groups are more interested in stopping many people being able to have housing and controlling it for profit and political reasons, while allowing richer people and businesses to do what ever they like with public resources.
The result. Auckland. Man made housing crisis and increasingly, less ways to solve it. We now have a pollution and transport crisis to go with the housing and job and wages crisis.
Oz govt desperate to shoreup is banking industries exposure to the Auckland housing market. First crims, now families foloowing their kids forced to goto uni in NZ. Both Nats and Liberals dont want a housing collapse on their watch. Though niether will anyone bother to build homes, less the class stratification of society turns round.
What’s the Greens favourite phrase? keep cup? eh?
Must be a Wellington thing?
Apparently a green alternative to disposable coffee cups
https://nz.keepcup.com/about-us/
They’re certainly a thing, but this Wellingtonian Green had never heard that name before, lol.
Also, I’m rather fond of the term “Comrade,” but don’t think Labour’s socialist enough to vote for. 😉
A few of us still use the phrase. Some others would die if they were described in this way …
Martyn Bradbury has ruined the word “comrade” for me. He uses it so much, (often while attacking unions) that it has somehow devalued a term that I used to like.
This is the first I have heard of ‘keepcup’ as a reference to the Greens, and I follow quite a number of Green supporters. I rather liked the chart though.
Thanks – that was lost on me as well. Never heard of them.
Ah. Thanks.
Probably a plastic one too.
The advertising claims the materials used make the cups are recyclable and sustainable.
I’d be interested in Marty Mars’ view on this. According to the chart he has a soul but is happy with the current government.
The two are mutually exclusive, I would have thought.
you missed
most people are idiots ]
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Or just vote Internet Party
The Maori Party *had* a soul. They sold it in exchange for ministerial limos.