Auckland character rules stop building on 20,000 sections

Character protections for Auckland’s villas have stymied past development. Now moves afoot to strip character protection from a bunch of inner-city villas. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

Long stories shortest from our political economy on Wednesday, April 23:

1. Special Character Areas designed to protect villas are stopping 20,000 sites near Auckland’s CBD being developed. Reforms may ease the restraint. (See more below)

2. The IMF cut its global growth forecasts overnight because of Trump’s tariffs. (See more below in quote and charts of the day.)

3. The Government says it’s hired eight new doctors at Gisborne Hospital, but the doctors there say there’s actually been just one new hire. (See more below)

4. Meanwhile, doctors in Dunedin welcomed Health NZ quietly shifting back to a DHB-like system of 10 ‘service delivery networks.’

5. The Government has decided not to take any action against public servants implicated in decades of denial, minimisation and cover-up of abuse in state care, Newsroom’s Laura Walters reports.¹

6. Transpower has doubled the cost of its network upgrade in the upper South Island to $164 million. Consumers will pay for 75% of that through higher prices.²

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes from paying subscribers, we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing, although we’d love it if you subscribed to join The Kākā’s community and support making this journalism public. Students and teachers who sign up for the free version with their .ac.nz or .school.nz emails are automatically upgraded to the paid version for free. Our special offers right now are: $3/month or $30/year for under 30s & $6.50/month or $65/year for over 65s who rent.)

‘These villas are special. (More special than more homes)’