Labour cans roads that could have unleashed masses of new homes because it worries needlessly about govt debt and hasn't got a housing-rich carbon cutting plan. Plus a hoon with Thomas Coughlan
The Turkey's will never vote for Xmas. Until there are enough votes in renters and others who would benefit from policy changes all governments will do everything possible to keep house prices rising and big vehicles cheap.
Jacinda, Grant and co are nust better than the others at sounding empathetic. They don't actually do squat. Seriously, how can it cost $750m + to build a bridge to cycle and walk over the harbour. Why not build PT and heavy road tunnels and give some of the existing bridge to carbon free transport.
As Usual too little and too late. Zero transformational thinking. Incapable of looking to future with no double cab utes and very few owning cars and circulating autonomous vehicles you call up with your device. Road toll would be 10 not 400 as drivers are the problem. Elderly White Privileged people are our main impediment to planetary change. Rich, entitled and living on 20th century economic discredited theories which have lead to the gross inequalities we are politically incapable of solving. We stopped the divine right of kings. How about looking at the divine right of Capitalism!
The lycra-clad bike riding cohort up in arms about having "their roads" taken off them. REALLY. Show me the money they paid for them. Most of the roads were bullt long before they came along. Many of whom are blow-ins who have not paid a cent towards towards infrastructure that existed at the time of their arrival
Usage of cars and bikes isn't mutually exclusive, I own one sedan, one ute, one bike (no lycra). I only use one at a time but I pay two lots of registrations & insurances. I used to pay to drive over the coat hanger but no longer live in Auckland. Does everything have to be "Us" against "Them"?
I lived in Hillcrest for 15 years travelling back and forth across the bridge daily, including the period of time we had to pay the toll. On several occasions we came to a dead stop right at the top of the bridge due to a crash. On windy days the car would, in sympathy with the bridge, rock up and down vertically about 1 metre. Thereafter I avoided driving across the clip-ons. Best of luck to the lycra-clad enthusiasts
Roads are for people getting from A to B fiscal tools used to pay for infrastructure don't grant any group more or less say in their use.
People use all sorts of vehicles on the roads and when people have multiple viable options to get from A to B many will choose not to use cars. Supporting multi modal transit and a denser, mixed use development pattern is better for everyone including people who need to use cars as it reduces congestion.
More lanes and more roads brings more congestion. More separated cycle infrastructure and reliable public transport reduces congestion. If you don't understand induced demand and factor it into your thinking about roads then you are frankly anti-science and a crank.
This culture war that you (and Bernard to some extent it seems) are so keen to push is a waste of time, you aren't defined by your mode of transit. Everyone suffers when multimodal transit is not provided for - people have longer waits in traffic, worse health outcomes, more road deaths. Everyone benefits when it is provided for.
This isn't about people in lycra vs others. People who cycle in countries with good cycling infrastructure who dealt with this stupid false dichotomy decades ago, don't consider themselves cyclists, they're just people who use a bike to get around sometimes. It is these people who the infrastructure is for - regular people trying to get around. Not some lycra-clad strawman that you have dreamed up while sitting in traffic.
In deciding that a Climate Crisis demands response ahead of a Housing Crisis has this government considered the downstream effect that they may be depriving future homeless of the vehicles needed to sleep in?
Perhaps those young will vote next time and together with some more of us old farts who were just hippie enough will give Labour the rudder they seem to be lacking.
You make a good point about the lack of transparency around the priorities and the analysis. A proper long-term analysis of the costs of a housing shortage should be weighed against the proper costing of the need to buy expensive carbon credits if we don’t meet our carbon targets.
Hi Bernard -this is a great analysis except for the analysis regarding the impact or role of Utes and greenhouse emissions. NZ could reduce the impact of transport emissions almost overnight by 15% if it imported ethanol or some other biofuel and blended it with existing fossil fuel feedstocks. I agree that this would not solve congestion - but there are a whole range of strategies that the Govt can take to reduce GHG emissions in the short term and rethink its response to the climate change emergency. I will be surpised that many of these will be addressed in the CCC report on Wednesday. The CCC and the minister have a very narrow view on climate change mitigation measures.
What is an Freebate if not a subsidy? There are many new technologies that are driving down the price of renewable fuels than can substitue for fossil fuels. The price arguement is no longer applicable. Take a look at my website giffordconsulting.co.nz. It is more about a culture change as you keep saying.
Thanks John. The ‘magic’ of a feebate scheme is that the Government and taxpayers in general don’t have to stump up with any money. The deal is Ute buyers pay extra and it’s redistributed in the form of lower costs for electric vehicle buyers.
Where is NZs population policy? If we continue to flood 70,000 to 91,900 new people into NZ year on year, sooner or later the impacts become acute - as they have done. The analogy of 'rats on a wheel' is fitting as we ever-try to alleviate symptoms of ever-more people with no end in sight of the massed arriving migrants wanting to escape their own grossly over-crowded home countries. All of NZs underlying infrastructure including water, sewerage, hospitals, schools, GPs, road networks are now overloaded. Concern about one or two cancelled new roads is concern about a symptom of the problem without addressing the root cause - when the borders reopen we need to pause inwards migration with the exception of filling actual skill shortages. NZ probably has enough skilled bottle store managers now....
The point about a population policy is well made. I keep asking Kris Faafoi and others why it’s not considered. Politicians of all flavours very reluctant to touch it.
I think that Labour & national do indeed have a population policy, as evidenced by 20 years of the migration patterns they have overseen, but it would lose votes to admit it. I don't deny we need to offset an ageing population by importing young-ins. But my trips to over-crowded India and China, in particular, convinced me that we would be wise to limit population growth.
Thank you for identifing the root cause of the housing crisis. No amount of newbuilds for investors will house the disenfranchised poor. The price signals that make housing a tradeable commodity milked for capital gains must be fixed. Make high end housing less attractive as a store of compounding wealth by taxing deemed income: see St John and Baucher: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rfR6Jx-v7kTyWBnAjDlHH7Lm2tsNgeH0/view.
Thanks Susan. Will look forward to that. One of my initial worries about the deemed income approach is the difficulty explaining it to the public. But I’ll have a closer look.
Five seconds on the theft of the Waters Depreciation Sinking Fund. The Finance Professionals remain silent. Who and where are the Auditors. Where are the Finance Academics who remain forever silent. It is a career ending situation for all concerned. At the very least the Government should require all Sinking Funds such as depreciation to be deposited in a Government Specified Fund that can only be drawn down for replacement. Mahuta is on the right track.
Phil Goff is pushing back against the 3 waters proposal. Strewth. Auckland has been pumping sewage into the Waitemata for 60 years. Still not fixed
This is not about these articles but about your podcast with Peter. Such good talks but what I have trouble with is the emphasis on Tiananmen Square. Terrible things happen everywhere but why do we only emphasise and have an anniversary for other’s, usually a dictators, action. We don’t have an anniversary for Kent University, for the west’s invasion of Iraq, England’s invasion of India or for France’s genocide in Africa etc etc. To me this is just a way to reinforce our dislike for a different politics system and reinforce our own. And in truth we only dislike them because the wealthy, who control our media, tell us we shouldn’t like them because our way is the ONLY way.
Thanks very much for your columns on this topic. A few thoughts. 1. Who needs houses? This discussion is going to be very limited until the information envisaged in the NPS-UD 3.23(2) is available. At present there is a strong incentive to suppress this information e.g. the PCC deal with Gillies Group. 2. In the next planning round in Porirua I think the onus is on the GWRC and Kainga Ora to show how a strategy of intensification in walkable neighbours will deal with multiple small property owners as well as the change in culture that you mention. 3. Describing the RBNZ bond buying as a dirty secret seems dubious. It is one of the best decisions in the last 18 months and has never been a secret. Perhaps the facility has been underused. The dynamics of the Treasury 'auction' of bonds through a club of banks is more likely to involve dirty secrets.
You haven’t mentioned the impact on business all this flip flopping with policy is having. That’s twice now the Omokoroa Highway has been going ahead/not going ahead. How do businesses plan for the future when there is so much uncertainty?
The Turkey's will never vote for Xmas. Until there are enough votes in renters and others who would benefit from policy changes all governments will do everything possible to keep house prices rising and big vehicles cheap.
Jacinda, Grant and co are nust better than the others at sounding empathetic. They don't actually do squat. Seriously, how can it cost $750m + to build a bridge to cycle and walk over the harbour. Why not build PT and heavy road tunnels and give some of the existing bridge to carbon free transport.
As Usual too little and too late. Zero transformational thinking. Incapable of looking to future with no double cab utes and very few owning cars and circulating autonomous vehicles you call up with your device. Road toll would be 10 not 400 as drivers are the problem. Elderly White Privileged people are our main impediment to planetary change. Rich, entitled and living on 20th century economic discredited theories which have lead to the gross inequalities we are politically incapable of solving. We stopped the divine right of kings. How about looking at the divine right of Capitalism!
Patrick
The lycra-clad bike riding cohort up in arms about having "their roads" taken off them. REALLY. Show me the money they paid for them. Most of the roads were bullt long before they came along. Many of whom are blow-ins who have not paid a cent towards towards infrastructure that existed at the time of their arrival
Usage of cars and bikes isn't mutually exclusive, I own one sedan, one ute, one bike (no lycra). I only use one at a time but I pay two lots of registrations & insurances. I used to pay to drive over the coat hanger but no longer live in Auckland. Does everything have to be "Us" against "Them"?
At least you didn't claim it was your road
I lived in Hillcrest for 15 years travelling back and forth across the bridge daily, including the period of time we had to pay the toll. On several occasions we came to a dead stop right at the top of the bridge due to a crash. On windy days the car would, in sympathy with the bridge, rock up and down vertically about 1 metre. Thereafter I avoided driving across the clip-ons. Best of luck to the lycra-clad enthusiasts
Great points on the sense of entitlement about public assets and decisions about how they’re used.
Roads are for people getting from A to B fiscal tools used to pay for infrastructure don't grant any group more or less say in their use.
People use all sorts of vehicles on the roads and when people have multiple viable options to get from A to B many will choose not to use cars. Supporting multi modal transit and a denser, mixed use development pattern is better for everyone including people who need to use cars as it reduces congestion.
More lanes and more roads brings more congestion. More separated cycle infrastructure and reliable public transport reduces congestion. If you don't understand induced demand and factor it into your thinking about roads then you are frankly anti-science and a crank.
This culture war that you (and Bernard to some extent it seems) are so keen to push is a waste of time, you aren't defined by your mode of transit. Everyone suffers when multimodal transit is not provided for - people have longer waits in traffic, worse health outcomes, more road deaths. Everyone benefits when it is provided for.
This isn't about people in lycra vs others. People who cycle in countries with good cycling infrastructure who dealt with this stupid false dichotomy decades ago, don't consider themselves cyclists, they're just people who use a bike to get around sometimes. It is these people who the infrastructure is for - regular people trying to get around. Not some lycra-clad strawman that you have dreamed up while sitting in traffic.
See here for example: https://youtu.be/vMed1qceJ_Q
In deciding that a Climate Crisis demands response ahead of a Housing Crisis has this government considered the downstream effect that they may be depriving future homeless of the vehicles needed to sleep in?
Perhaps those young will vote next time and together with some more of us old farts who were just hippie enough will give Labour the rudder they seem to be lacking.
You make a good point about the lack of transparency around the priorities and the analysis. A proper long-term analysis of the costs of a housing shortage should be weighed against the proper costing of the need to buy expensive carbon credits if we don’t meet our carbon targets.
Hi Bernard -this is a great analysis except for the analysis regarding the impact or role of Utes and greenhouse emissions. NZ could reduce the impact of transport emissions almost overnight by 15% if it imported ethanol or some other biofuel and blended it with existing fossil fuel feedstocks. I agree that this would not solve congestion - but there are a whole range of strategies that the Govt can take to reduce GHG emissions in the short term and rethink its response to the climate change emergency. I will be surpised that many of these will be addressed in the CCC report on Wednesday. The CCC and the minister have a very narrow view on climate change mitigation measures.
Thanks John. Sounds simple, but I’ve got a feeling biofuels have been looked at and don’t stack up without subsidies. Z Energy has mothballed its biodiesel plant. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/z-hibernates-beleaguered-biofuels-plant
What is an Freebate if not a subsidy? There are many new technologies that are driving down the price of renewable fuels than can substitue for fossil fuels. The price arguement is no longer applicable. Take a look at my website giffordconsulting.co.nz. It is more about a culture change as you keep saying.
Thanks John. The ‘magic’ of a feebate scheme is that the Government and taxpayers in general don’t have to stump up with any money. The deal is Ute buyers pay extra and it’s redistributed in the form of lower costs for electric vehicle buyers.
Where is NZs population policy? If we continue to flood 70,000 to 91,900 new people into NZ year on year, sooner or later the impacts become acute - as they have done. The analogy of 'rats on a wheel' is fitting as we ever-try to alleviate symptoms of ever-more people with no end in sight of the massed arriving migrants wanting to escape their own grossly over-crowded home countries. All of NZs underlying infrastructure including water, sewerage, hospitals, schools, GPs, road networks are now overloaded. Concern about one or two cancelled new roads is concern about a symptom of the problem without addressing the root cause - when the borders reopen we need to pause inwards migration with the exception of filling actual skill shortages. NZ probably has enough skilled bottle store managers now....
The point about a population policy is well made. I keep asking Kris Faafoi and others why it’s not considered. Politicians of all flavours very reluctant to touch it.
I think that Labour & national do indeed have a population policy, as evidenced by 20 years of the migration patterns they have overseen, but it would lose votes to admit it. I don't deny we need to offset an ageing population by importing young-ins. But my trips to over-crowded India and China, in particular, convinced me that we would be wise to limit population growth.
Thanks Bruce. I agree they have a policy, accidentally, and without debate or consent.
Thank you for identifing the root cause of the housing crisis. No amount of newbuilds for investors will house the disenfranchised poor. The price signals that make housing a tradeable commodity milked for capital gains must be fixed. Make high end housing less attractive as a store of compounding wealth by taxing deemed income: see St John and Baucher: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rfR6Jx-v7kTyWBnAjDlHH7Lm2tsNgeH0/view.
Thankyou Susan. Interesting idea. Done a comparison vs a simple broad-based land tax on all land above a certain value?
We are working on a paper that should explain why land tax is an inferior approach. I will send when completed
Thanks Susan. Will look forward to that. One of my initial worries about the deemed income approach is the difficulty explaining it to the public. But I’ll have a closer look.
Five seconds on the theft of the Waters Depreciation Sinking Fund. The Finance Professionals remain silent. Who and where are the Auditors. Where are the Finance Academics who remain forever silent. It is a career ending situation for all concerned. At the very least the Government should require all Sinking Funds such as depreciation to be deposited in a Government Specified Fund that can only be drawn down for replacement. Mahuta is on the right track.
Phil Goff is pushing back against the 3 waters proposal. Strewth. Auckland has been pumping sewage into the Waitemata for 60 years. Still not fixed
Great point about auditors and the effective theft from future generations by not investing accumulated depreciation.
We have already got a fund ( the NZSF) that is supposed to help future generations-- why not use that
This is not about these articles but about your podcast with Peter. Such good talks but what I have trouble with is the emphasis on Tiananmen Square. Terrible things happen everywhere but why do we only emphasise and have an anniversary for other’s, usually a dictators, action. We don’t have an anniversary for Kent University, for the west’s invasion of Iraq, England’s invasion of India or for France’s genocide in Africa etc etc. To me this is just a way to reinforce our dislike for a different politics system and reinforce our own. And in truth we only dislike them because the wealthy, who control our media, tell us we shouldn’t like them because our way is the ONLY way.
Thanks very much for your columns on this topic. A few thoughts. 1. Who needs houses? This discussion is going to be very limited until the information envisaged in the NPS-UD 3.23(2) is available. At present there is a strong incentive to suppress this information e.g. the PCC deal with Gillies Group. 2. In the next planning round in Porirua I think the onus is on the GWRC and Kainga Ora to show how a strategy of intensification in walkable neighbours will deal with multiple small property owners as well as the change in culture that you mention. 3. Describing the RBNZ bond buying as a dirty secret seems dubious. It is one of the best decisions in the last 18 months and has never been a secret. Perhaps the facility has been underused. The dynamics of the Treasury 'auction' of bonds through a club of banks is more likely to involve dirty secrets.
You haven’t mentioned the impact on business all this flip flopping with policy is having. That’s twice now the Omokoroa Highway has been going ahead/not going ahead. How do businesses plan for the future when there is so much uncertainty?