Housing Minister Chris Bishop has admitted the National Party’s promised housing reform won’t be fully implemented during this term of government.
In a speech to the Property Council summit in Auckland on Thursday, Bishop said "Going for Growth” and other reforms would only be bedded in “from 2027 or so onwards”.
This delay follows the National Party’s decision to abandon a bipartisan housing agreement, called the MDRS (medium density residential standards), negotiated from the National side by Judith Collins and Nicola Willis in 2021.
At the time, Willis said Labour and National had come together “to say an emphatic ‘yes’ to housing in our backyards”.
But new party leader Christopher Luxon sided with his NIMBY caucus colleagues in the run-up to the 2023 election and had Bishop announce an alternative policy after Luxon revealed his opposition during a public meeting.
National’s new policy allowed councils to opt out of the denser housing rules, provided they zoned their cities for 30 years of growth "immediately" — but, almost two years later, not a single council has formally adopted the policy.
Bishop said on Thursday the finer details of the policy’s first phase were still being worked through by officials and local councils should be ready to implement them in 2027.
This is partly due to a “sequencing problem” as the Government is also planning to introduce an entirely new resource management regime towards the end of next year.
“If we implemented [housing policies] straight away in 2026, councils would be forced to conduct expensive and lengthy plan changes — only to start all over again a year or so later once the new Resource Management Act (RMA) comes into effect,” he said.
“So, we’ve made the pragmatic decision to implement Pillar One of our Housing Growth changes as part of the replacement of the RMA”.
Housing reform and the new resource management rules will be implemented as part of the 2027 Long Term Plan cycle, or roughly four years after Bishop backtracked on the MDRS.
Slower but broader
The upside to delayed housing policy is that National’s reforms have the potential to be much more comprehensive than Labour and National had proposed with the MDRS.
An example of this would be the changes in the RMA reform which will standardise zoning across the country, allowing developers to easily build in different cities.
“Zoning is so balkanised that even large developers tend to stick to one or a few main centres as branching out requires reconfiguring to different planning rules,” Bishop said, quoting Motu economist Stuart Donovan.
New rules will prevent councils from layering regulations on buildings and may require compensation for anything above the standardised zone rules and environment limits.
“Councils are even getting involved with things as niche as whether it is possible for someone to see the TV from the likely location of their couch,” Bishop complained.
Cheap loans for now
As a stop gap measure, while waiting for local councils to complete their 2027 plans, the Coalition Government will offer cheap loans to developers wanting to build new suburbs on the rural fringes of New Zealand cities.
Bishop said the government-backed lender would provide low cost loans to a special-purpose funding entity during the development phase, which will later be refinanced by private lenders, with future homeowners repaying the costs through an annual levy.
“The development phase of a project is often the riskiest, and private financiers reflect this by charging higher interest rates,” he said.
However, these special loans would be offered at the rate the private market would charge for completed developments, with the Crown picking up the extra risk free of charge.
Cheap loans will be complemented by a rule change which will allow housing to be built on land currently classified as “highly productive” and suitable for growing food.
Bishop said a lot of the land in the category was in the lowest quality classification and should be freed up for housing to be built.
“Across the country, this will open up land for housing roughly equivalent to the size of the Waikato region,” he said.
However, this also means that rules allowing for urban sprawl will be put in place several years before rules which allow for denser and mixed-use urban development.
29 Comments
Privatising the gains, socialising the costs.
But it's all too late. The world we've known - the growth @ 3% forever one - is disintegrating. That process will be well down the tracks, well before '30 years'. Or even 3.
I hear you Power. My feeling is that we're on the path to a kind of Jonestown scenario - many living in makeshift cabins while all pitching in for the agricultural cause. They won't even own their own clothes. Everything shared.
relax...the sky isn't falling yet, these guys were bemoaning the "limits of growth" 50 years ago (PDK probably won't believe it however I even voted for them when I lived in Tony Blunts electorate)
...& in any case:
New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse | Globalisation | The Guardian
Maybe. Nevertheless, I can't see much hope for younger demogs in the near term to live the kind of life and enjoy the freedoms that the Boomers experienced. They're expected to slave away paying taxes for the boomers (and paying off student debt) while living dormitory lifestyles spending their hard-earned incomes on non-discretionary items where the labor exchanged for those goods / services at historic highs.
And when your ruling elite cannot achieve anything effectively and efficiently, it shouldn't give people any hope, regardless of their generation. Unfortunately the boomers can't think through these things beyond their own life experience, while the younger demogs appear to have turned to nihilism and hopelessness.
Unfortunately the boomers can't think through these things beyond their own life experience
All the better to keep having in depth conversations with that generation, open their minds to others views and ways of life. Repetition brings surprising results.
kknz makes the classic mistake
He assumes that because he hasn't died yet - he won't.
Well, that's the logic he posits. The Values Party manifesto (I have an original copy) still stands, markedly undated. But it was about future generations - lots of them.
kknz onlu traverses? One.
Prettty selfish... have to hope there are no offspring...
"I have an original copy"
...of course you do 😉
I also have original copies of Richardson's Making a Difference (not); Douglas' Unfinished Business; Bollards' Crisis, indeed most political tomes. Even as far back as J.T.Paul's Humanism in Politics and Lee's Simple on a Soapbox.
Nothing like being widely informed.
Richardson lol. She made a hellva difference alright. Destroyed the 90s, made Alice in Chains seem positive and cherry.
In 1984 I voted for her in my nievity. Bitter regret, a mistake I never made again.
“turned to nihilism and hopelessness”.
Holy hecka JC, definitely hard to argue the boomers didn’t have a sweet run (although I’m sure they will try!) but that’s a bit sad to have that mindset
As someone who's at least adjacent to that generation, I think the problem is the severing of the relationship between effort and outcomes. Work hard, grow your career, save carefully? You might be able to put aside 200k per decade if you get a favourable renting arrangement. Meanwhile they see others with 200k gains coming and going in months on the housing market, or in mere days in the crypto pit. And many of them expect inheritance from their parents, when it comes, to vastly outweigh any savings they can hope to accrue themselves.
When you see all that, why bother? Enjoying life now and hoping for some luck in future is just a better strategy that wasting your youth on the unreliable strategy of working hard.
On song HG. You highlight a few of the different dilemmas faced there. Imagine if the younger people took over the service trades industry and charged the boomers like wounded bulls on their invoices. The squealing and howls of protest would be piercing. Don't be surprised if the ruling elite would try to solve the situation by opening the floodgates to tradies from the subcontinent willing to sell their services for a song.
Many seem resigned to waiting for the boomers to die off before any meaningful change can take place. They could very well be right. But the boomer generation would have left a trail of socio-economic destruction in their wake.
When the youth vote, and see no meaningful change form this, it is easy to see why they give up. Small voices against more louder ones who know the system better. Then again, the youth have not the instilled duty of the boomers in exercising their right to vote, and thus don't exercise their power in numbers.
I'm missing the relevance of the Trotter column this links to: 'after letting his opposition to the arrangement slip during a public meeting'. I guess the opposition-slipper is Luxon rather than Bishop, though the sentence is a little muddy.
Sorry, it is buried quite deep in Trotter's column. I couldn't see that we'd done a story about the meeting itself. It was indeed Luxon.
So what is the definition of a developer to qualify for these cheap loans?
Sleazy?
Max Key?
Wow, because of his tobacco spruiking days I was always worried that his pro housing pro urbanism talk was a very cynical smoke screen. This makes my suspicions worse...
(Watch his old Phillip Morris clips if you want to understand his prior form)
I hope this doesn't kibosh Chris Bishop's granny flat survey evaluation. If I recall its due for some form of public release in July25. Hopefully hard and fast amendments to the Building Act and RMA if required. No council opt outs. One of the biggest issues, certainly here in NP, is the ridiculous requirement of no building closer to a road boundary then 3m without a resource consent. Council money making racket.
How do the council make money on a set back from a road?
They charge for a resource consent
Don't they just cover costs? I just checked the new plymouth long term plan (page 101) and regulatory functions (including consents) cost $16 million to run and $12 million came from.fees and $4 million from rates so those overall functions don't recover their costs. Ratepayers cover the difference. I'd be surprised if consents as a subset of all regulatory functions was turning a profit and cross subsidising other regulatory things.
I'm not sure if a 3m set back is good bad or otherwise, guess I'd need to understand the rationale for it before having an opinion, but I doubt the purpose is to make money.
I suspect regulatory functions is too broad and easy to hide non-recoverable costs. Its an easy way for council to up fees and say its to cover costs.
A startling characteristic of this government is the sheer number of summits, reviews, commissions, plans, regulation changes and lot's of grand ideas ... but not a single funded project with a private sector NZ construction firm that is signing contracts, hiring staff or investing in equipment.
Apparently we need to wait and see if overseas pension funds are interested in funding all of this before we can get started. Sounds like a plan - which I guess is the problem.
They could have just continued with all the projects that they stopped when they got into government and achieved a much better economic outcome for the country:
Kainga Ora was building 6000 high quality homes a year. How long did it take for them to build up that productive capacity? How many builders, plumbers, electricians and apprentices was that providing work for? Is there any other business in NZ with that level of capacity and delivering what Kainga Ora was delivering?
Long planned infrastructure projects like the Ferry's and port side infrastructure, like hospital and school upgrades and rebuilds that were driving growth and investment in the private sector by offering long term stable multi year project pipelines - were all stopped very suddenly.
That adds up to years and millions in sunk costs to design, plan and tender for those projects and the billions in lost future opportunity for all the private sector business involved.
The government is an investment leader in the economy so if it decides to divest in NZ, it is likely that the private sector will follow that example.
Absolutelty correct that Housing NZ builds were stopped. Unqualified civil servants handling housing projects and renos. Two housing projects in New Plymouth of bespoke archictecturally magnificent apartment builds. One is complete (opposite PnS) the other about a 1km away, about 2/3rds complete. Haven't investigated what HNZ paid for the land but if what has been commented on before on interest, grossly overpaid.
Another two renos on houses where it is possible to build up more housing units on the section and house more people. Wasting money on old state houses.
That has nothing to do with civil servants who are just as capable as any one in the private sector of achieving good or bad outcomes. It's perfectly normal to have some difficult projects in any large scale public or private sector pipeline of construction and building work. A rational and economically literate thing to do would be deal those projects specifically and keep all the good projects and the pipeline of work feeding into the economy and maintaining productivity capacity in the building sector.
As an added bonus we would be getting 6000 new homes a year being delivered right now and into the future but not anymore. When it comes to assets that the country desperately needs - it really shouldn't matter who's building them. Right now I don't see the private sector stepping in to fill the gap or meet demand.
Keynes,
"and lot's" " the Ferry's" I only wish to be helpful. lots is a plural, so shouldn't have an apostrophe before the s, while ferries is the plural of ferry and again, should not have an apostrophe. Had you written say, the ferry's propellor fell off, then an apostrophe would be required.
Todays quote on this article.
"Economics is a very difficult subject. I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running."
~ Ben Bernanke
And yet if you receive some money you will do one of two things with it....spend it or save it.
Difficult?
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