A partial NIMBY victory

TLDR & TLDL: The NIMBY pushback against the bipartisan ‘Townhouse Nation’ bill has been partially successful in downsizing the height of the three-storey buildings being allowed consent-free on a section.

But it could have been worse. The National-Labour-run Environment Select Committee said it wanted to cut building heights by even more, but were a bit worried it would reduce the number of extra houses being created by the accord, which was the aim in the first place. (See the details and more below the paywall fold. Also look out below for an explainer on why we should care about our flattening bond curves.)

The bipartisan ‘Townhouse Nation’ accord to allow three three-storey homes on sections as of right has been watered down slightly in select committee. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKaka

Elsewhere briefly in the news this morning:

• Auckland reopens this morning in ‘red’, ending a 107 day lockdown, while most of the rest of us are in ‘orange’ (with the exception of Northland, Gisborne, Whanganui and Rotorua);

• Rhythm and Vines postponed its three-day music festival planned for the last three days of December until Easter 2022;

• The Ministry of Health gave 70,000 exemptions to people unable to download and print their vaccination passes in time;

• Christopher Luxon appointed Simon Bridges as his Finance Spokesman and dropped National’s previous adoption of a ‘split’ role between ’Treasury’ and ‘Finance’; and,

• IKEA bought land next to Sylvia Park to open its first NZ store.

Later today and tonight, I’ll be watching for:

• US jobs (non-farm payolls) figures for Nov, where economists expect jobs growth of about 563k in Nov, up from 531k in Oct;

• whether in the next 24 hours the US Senate passes the US House of Representatives’ bill passed this morning to avoid a US Government shutdown tomorrow (yes another crazy US political groundhog day);

• paid subscribers should look out for my weekly Ask Me Anything email invite for an hour’s chat with me in the comments about the week’s events at midday today;

• also, I’ll be sending you the invites for the weekly hoon webinar with Peter Bale shortly before 4pm – it’s also for an hour and we’ll discuss questions from subscribers in the last 15 mins, look out below the fold under the fun things for the link to the webinar.