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
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.
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.
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....
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.
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
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.
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.
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....
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.
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?