Briefly in the news from Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Wednesday, December 10:
Housing, Infrastructure and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop yesterday announced his ‘Big Bang’ planning reforms, proposing a Planning Bill and a Natural Environment Bill to replace the Resource Management Act (1991).
The original RMA was amended dozens of times between 1991 and 2023, before being replaced by the-then Labour-led Government in August 2023 after six years of consultation and legislating through the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act.
Upon winning Government, Bishop immediately repealed those two acts two years ago and reverted everything back to the old RMA. Now, Bishop proposes replacing the RMA next year, nine years after the beginning of a full RMA reform, with two Acts that have the same names as Labour’s two Acts, except for the words ‘and Built’ and ‘Spatial.’
Labour says it can’t see much difference between the two sets of replacements, other than a requirement councils compensate landowners if they change the rules in a way that affects their property rights.
Bishop says his bills place a greater priority on property rights.
Elsewhere, Finance Minister Nicola Willis challenged former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson to a debate about fiscal policy and whether the current Government should be as austere as Richardson demands. Richardson accepted.
Meanwhile, Westpac threw a cat amongst the Government’s pigeons of hopes for a housing market surge in election year by hiking its fixed mortgage rates by around 30 basis points after a similar rise in wholesale interest rates in the wake of the Reserve Bank’s ‘hawkish’ final cut in the OCR a fortnight ago.
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‘Here’s another thing we cooked earlier’
It’s like deja-vu all over again.
