Briefly in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, January 16:
The Lead: PM Christopher Luxon is set to announce as early as tomorrow a scaling back of Housing Minister Chris Bishop’s vision of adding housing capacity to Auckland of up to two million by intensification in and around the CBD, train stations and bus routes, The Post-$’s Jonathan Killick reports and Matthew Hooton comments for NZ Herald-$ this morning.
The Sidebar: The U-turn is about to be announced by scaling back the Plan Change 120 rules designed to allow higher-rise building in parts of the leafy inner-city suburbs after a backlash from National voters thinking of voting for NZ First and ACT, who oppose the extra housing supply. Hear and see more detail and analysis below and in the podcast above.
Elsewhere in the news: A new Roy Morgan poll taken in the four weeks to December 21 has found the governing coalition of National-ACT-NZ First still ahead of the Labour-Green-Te Pati Maori Opposition by 50.5% (up 0.5 of a point from November) to 47.5% (up 2.5 points), after Labour rose 4.5 points to 32.5%, National was steady on 33%, NZ First rose one point to 10%, ACT fell 0.5 of a point to 7.5%, Green fell 2.5 points to 12% and TPM was unchanged at 2.5%.
In the Scoop of the Day: Jonathan Killick reports for The Post-$ that Luxon ‘made a captain’s call’ to reverse Bishop’s key intensification policy after a backlash from National MPs in Auckland.
In the Chart Pack of the Day: Stats NZ balance sheet data for the September quarter out yesterday showed the Government’s net interest costs are just 1.2% of its revenues, households actually receive about $3 billion more quarter in interest payments than they pay out and real incomes of the poorest 20% of households have been falling for most of the last year.
Today’s Deep-dive of the Day is from Jonathan Milne at Newsroom about how the Government’s rates cap will save households $2.79 a month, the equivalent of a can of baked beans.
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Luxon to gut Bishop’s housing intensification plan
