The body representing the country's local councils is warning the Government that planned extensive changes to the Resource Management Act are being attempted in too short a timeframe.
Additionally, Local Government New Zealand, says that the plans announced by the Government last weekend may have "unintended consequences". And LGNZ is also hinting that the Government and the local authorities have not worked together in a particularly constructive way so far on proposed RMA changes.
Among the measures announced by Minister for the Environment Amy Adams were a requirement that councils provide a minimum of 10 years of urban land supply to cope with projected population growth. Those changes are to be implemented as soon as proposed enabling legislation is enacted.
The Government says that "a new matter of national importance will be added to section 6 of the RMA" to place additional emphasis on effective functioning of the built environment, including managing land availability to support population growth.
The improvements will "re-balance" planning decisions towards enabling more housing to be built in the right locations to support economic and social well-being.
Also, the presumption that subdivision is restricted unless permitted in a plan as currently set out in section 11 of the Act will be reversed, so that subdivision can be undertaken unless it contravenes a national environment standard, or a rule in a plan or proposed plan, and is not authorised by a resource consent.
There's also a proposal for a new "national planning template" that sets out the structure and key content all councils must follow in the development of their resource management plans.
Also, there will be a requirement for councils to monitor how they are delivering their functions and duties under the RMA. Additionally, it is proposed that the ability of central government to intervene on RMA issues will be "clarified".
It is planned for the measures to be put into new RMA amendment legislation, which will be introduced into Parliament possibly next month.
LGNZ President Lawrence Yule said the changes should add consistency across local authority RMA plans, "but the devil will be in the detail".
"We do not think the timeframes proposed are workable – particularly given the significant requirements to amend council plans to reflect the new principles of the Act.
“The Government would also be wise to carefully consider issues regarding any potential unintended consequences. We have already advised that some of the proposed changes will not deliver the outcomes intended,” Yule said.
The proposed reforms would need to be practical, workable, have clear aims and minimise costs to councils and most importantly ratepayers, he said.
"We also need to ensure that decision-making on resource issues remains with communities."
LGNZ wanted to ensure any new law tackled the issues in the best way "to make a real difference".
"We’re keen to work with the Government in a more constructive way than has occurred to date to get this right," he said.
“As well as working with central government, we will work with stakeholders; and foster media and public understanding of the consequences of a number of the issues," Mr Yule said.
Core components of the 2013 resource management "improvement package" as laid out by the Government are:
- A requirement for councils to work together to develop a single, electronically accessible plan covering all the rules in their area.
- A new national planning template that sets out the structure and key content all councils must follow in the development of their resource management plans.
- Two new voluntary planning pathways – a collaborative process for freshwater-related matters, and a new joint planning process for all other issues.
- Improvements to bring about earlier and more effective iwi/hapū participation in planning.
- A revision of the principles of the Act, through the updating of sections 6 & 7
- Improvements to central government tools for providing national direction on resource management issues and decision-making. This includes legislative changes to enable the Freshwater National Policy Statement to support a broader programme of freshwater reform.
- A more balanced approach to planning and consent decision-making. This includes providing access to lower cost, faster objections and appeals.
- New consenting rules and processes to improve timeframes for simpler consents and to provide incentives to make decisions early in the planning process rather than leave them to litigation down the track on individual consents.
- Improved consideration of natural hazards in resource management decisions.
- A clearer performance monitoring framework for councils.
- A stronger Ministerial intervention tool for use as a last resort. This will ensure legislative requirements and national direction are reflected in council plans.
- The removal of duplication between the RMA and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act.
Detail of the proposals is fleshed out in a published summary.
The summary says that the Government will have a statutory obligation to deliver the first version of the national planning template within two years of enactment of the Resource Management 2013 Reform Bill.
The national planning template will be developed by the Minister for the Environment (and the Minister of Conservation for matters that relate to the coastal marine area), with input from iwi and key stakeholders including Local Government New Zealand, councils and RMA practitioners throughout the country.
"Councils will be required to implement certain aspects of the template, such as standardised format, within one year of the template’s enactment. This will be achieved through the single resource management plan. Full transformation to the national planning template content direction will be required within five years."
All councils will be required to enter into and publish a council planning agreement within six months of enactment of the legislation. Subsequent agreements will be updated no later than 1 March after each local body election, the Governments's summary says.
30 Comments
But, er, you mean the government are actually about to change something? No more stagnation and endless arguing, I mean consultation and discussion? Golly gosh, what are things coming to? What will Sir Humphrey say? Words like daring and courageous come to mind.
What has John Key been drinking? Must be the Nelson beer. Oh, no that would produce a sleepy, slow sort of effect. Nelson's not called Sleepy Hollow for nothing, you know. What happened to "tinker and fudge", sorry I mean "change at a pace kiwis can go along with".
I'm shocked, shocked. Who would have thought?
This is "change at a pace Kiwis can go along with". It sure ain't Rogernomics era courage. Sir Humphrey's cautionary advice is showing in every other paragraph. What I want to see them do now, is outwit the Councils and the Sir Humphreys by saying, "fine, if you can't handle it we are going to set up a new system outside of your control, to handle it".
Just make it as easy to incorporate new municipalities as it is in much of the USA. Small is beautiful. The Super city was a huge mistake. Switzerland has myriads of small municipalities. So does France. Even within their cities. Each one is about the size of our "wards". Services for which there are economies of scale are contracted out.
There is a growing realisation (the only growth which can go forever is cranially-held) that we need to be structured to withstand energy-descent, which includes local food, a collapse of the fiat fiscal system, and a need for community resilience (ex money). Local need will always outflank a smaller (they can't ever be numerically bigger) selfish sect, the truth always outs in the end, and this putsch will be temporary.
That local awareness has to clash head-on with this last roar of the dinosaur - global growth cannot double from here, indeed in real terms it can't 'anything' from here. Clearly, those who tout 'growth' don't understand it.
The Adams religion is gone now - all it can do is damage - but in reality, there isn't the grunt or the time to do too much damage now. The moment you have compromise (collaborative) you have abandoned sustainability by some degree - but sustainability is absolute. The default without it, is unsustainability.
Pity there's no intelligent opposition.
There is a lot of intelligent opposition. Its just that they are not yet visible because they have worked out there is no point being distracted by getting involved in the farce that is the political process. There are many independent young thinkers who have travelled and see the propaganda aimed at the lumpen for what it is. These people are not on facebook and they don't follow rugby or support the breweries. They are leaders in their social groups and often have serious degrees behind them such as engineering. Maybe they brew beer or have great vege gardens. You must be lucky enough to know some of these people.
The "intelligent opposition" should do what PDK has done. Prepare for the post-energy future with their own self-supporting lifestyle block.
Wanting to impose policies on everyone, that everyone who knows anything about economics understands would be a miserable failure akin to the former USSR, just loses credibility for the so called "intelligent opposition". Utopian engineers and technicians and scientists who did not have a clue about economics and "unintended consequences" have done enough mass harm to humanity already without another re-run.
Really you mislabel. The intelligent opposition isnt the left, the planners etc. The ppl with your right/libertarian view and the left have the same outlook, ditto the planners you so detest...same mantra, growth, blinkers, large just a different colour, BAU no matter what. In terms of economics, well yes few except the far rightish even consider the school of austrians have terribly much credibility, economics has moved on, advanced.
regards
The Austrian School has no credibility?
Heck, probably 90% of the people who predicted the GFC were Austrian economists.
http://investorhome.com/predicted.htm
It is widely acknowledged among those who have bothered to look for "the most accurate predictions" of the crash in the USA in 2008, that the winner is “Austrian” economist FRED FOLDVARY with a paper, "The Business Cycle: A Georgist-Austrian Synthesis” published in an academic journal in October 1997.
Foldvary said (as “Austrian” economists do) that expansions in money and credit fuel malinvestments in higher-order capital goods and speculative cycles in real estate and land. But Foldvary has an additional advantage over most Austrian economists: he understands land economics and land market cycles. He takes land values and real-estate trends to be particularly telling indicators of unsustainable booms and impending busts. He applies the ideas to the historical studies of U.S. cycles, building on the idea of real-estate cycles by Homer Hoyt (1933).
From the final paragraph in Foldvary's paper:
"The 18-year cycle in the US and similar cycles in other countries gives the Geo-Austrian cycle theory predictive power: the next major bust, 18 years after the 1990 downturn, will be around 2008, if there is no major interruption such as a global war. The Geo-Austrian synthesis provides a research agenda that can test historical cases in more detail. Much work needs to be done on empirical studies linking the money supply,
real estate markets, and business cycle......"
There you go, pal. Hit me with your favourite gem of wisdom from your favourite economist and let's see how good it is.
Ludwig Von Mises’ most famous quote is:
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
What has to happen before people accept that Austrians have any "credibility"? Or for them to accept that Keynesians have none? It is incredible how many times a nonsense economic ideology can fail yet people return to it only because it says what they badly want to believe.
These are RMA not Building Act changes.....
Remove the chimney - why even involve the local ineptocrats? what value can they possibly add? Especially seeing as how the chimney is being Subtracted not Added. Chimney? What chimney? Unless of course t'was one a them old pre-inspection, pre-consent, prehistoric sorta chimneys, which were often Structural.....Even then - a few Acrow props and a 30" Stillson...
Decks - see Schedule 1 of the Building Act, and work within it. Every sensible person knows this, and many commercial operations (Fletcher earthquake repairs in Chch, and many verahdah/pergola/deck firms for example) make extensive use of this. Again, why bother the brown-cardies for a deck, fer cryin' in the sink? All these sorts of extensions are deemed 'low risk' up to a defined point (area, height etc) . MBIE itself in its recent criticsim of the Clueless Christchurch City Council Consent Confounders, made this very point. Use the risk-assessment approach and make use of the Building Act's entirely sensible guidance. Don't blindly (and inconsistently) foillow the 'rules'....use plenty of exemptions (yes, they are legally available) and save everyone a great deal of time, money and stress.
The government should now "checkmate" the Councils by adopting the Metropolitan Utility District system that works so well in so much of the USA.
If the Councils can't cope with the needed new development now, just let developers incorporate their own new municipality and recover the costs of the development however they like, including from their own "rates" revenue going forward.
Residents can and often do in the USA, decide to amalgamate with the adjacent major municipality sooner or later. But it is voluntary, and the municipality they are amalgamating with obviously has to be worth amalgamating with.
MIA I think the political calculation is probably quite complicated.
I think the voting public probably has a set of beliefs regarding property that is not consistent. For instance the majority might believe if asked a leading question that rising property prices increases peoples sense of confidence and consumer spending which is good for the economy. But then if asked is rising house prices is good for young people they might think differently. Or if asked if New Zealand will be better off by buying and selling the same houses for ever higher prices.
I think the political parties are in a battle to prove to the public they have a credible set of policies to deal with the 'housing crisis'. I think housing will be a major election battleground, so relying on the general feelgood house price rise political boost probably will not work.
But really who knows what sort political calculations are going through Keys head.
It is a tragedy that people have been led to believe that rising house prices are "good for the economy". Any boost to the economy is temporary and based on debt. Meanwhile, the actual wealth creating part of the economy, the tradables sector, tends to be shrunk by the same mechanisms that cause the rising house prices.
This adds up to the mother of all crunches to be faced somewhere later down the track.
Who can honestly still believe that the resumed rise in house prices in NZ since the brief flatline after the GFC hit, has done "the economy" a shred of good? 90% of the small business owners I know have suffered a decline in turnover since 2008 of 30% to 40%, which has not reversed.
The blunt facts are that a specufestors paradise local economy is poison to honest wealth creating business of all kinds. The distinction is becoming obvious in the USA, where at least we have two or more distinctly different sets of local economies to compare with each other. The low, stable house prices correlate to economic growth. The volatility correlates to stagnation.
And I still believe that a good number of people will vote according to "what is right" where their children are affected.
Many people vote according to their pockets when the people they are hurting are people they don't know or care about (eg "anyone better off than me"). But house prices are not like this.
... John Howard also took Australia into the Bush war on terror in Iraq ..... which seemed a swimmingly good idea initially , not so flash when the soldiers started returning in coffins ...
Voters don't reward pollies who screw up that badly ... as Tony Blair also discovered , in the UK ...
Well I disagree Hugh. Most home owners I have known over the years overwhelmingly enjoy their house prices appreciating. It is no coincidence that key's popularity has picked up again in the last year as prices have boomed. I predicted a couple of years ago that prices wouldn't boom again because I believed Key would tackle the problem. He didn't. Tony Alexander was quite right in predicting another boom as, despite his flaws, he has I believe a good understanding of the kiwi psyche around property. Hugh you've be saying for years that English 'gets it'. So if he gets it why has the action been so lame? The only reasons I can think of is that it's either incompetence or unwillingness (for political reasons) or possibly a bit of both.
True, Matt. People will make the right noises when asked in polls, agree in an academic kind of way that bubbles are damaging and that affordable housing is desirable for economy as a whole and future generations productive investment blah blah blah, but the lizard brain loves paper gains and wants them to continue. I think the majority belief is actually something along the lines of 'affordability is a good thing for other people, but only if my own house keeps going up and there are still renters I can lord it over'.
Exactly Kakapo. I admire much of Hugh's work but he is seriously misjudging the kiwi psyche. Yes young kiwis might overwhelmingly want action on housing, but I am sure if you looked at the whole voting demographic more people than not would like to keep seeing rising house prices
But this lizard brain approach only works if the government can;
A) Get the housing crisis off the news cycle or
B) Blame someone else for it. Easy target -Local Councils -that is what Brownlee does in Christchurch if he can't blame whingers and moaners.
If the government cannot do this and it is looking like they can't, then they have to develop creditable economic plans that satisfy the rationale brain.
Another political calculation that our devious pollies could be making is that by campaigning on supply side housing reforms they get to blame local councils for house price rises. And if they just talk but do not do, then they get the benefits of house price rises while being able to blame others for the costs.
So for Key, Bill and Hugh are a kind of political insurance. If there is criticism about the housing crisis or worse the bubble bursts he gets to blame useless Local government, while in the meantime he doesn't have worry himself about reforming how our Local government works.
"And rightly so".
So it would be better for house price median multiples to carry on up to 11 or 12 or 13 before the crash comes, rather than the government popping the bubble back at about 6 to 7?
It is better that the government did not act back when median multiples were 4 or 5, and let them go to 6 or 7 like they are now?
It would be better to keep the racket going like the UK has, for decades, so the rent-seekers who own urban land can get another $10 per square foot after 1 decade, $20 after 2, $30 after 3, and so on - compared to the falling rent per square foot that is typical of free markets without urban land racketeering by planners?
Remind me again, you claim to care about "the poor" and exploitation.....?
$7000 Resource and permits...not including geo tech and survey pegs... for a $33000 workshop/ shed where total coverage of the section once built will be less than 25%.
The cost to build another 3 bed room home +garage of far greater area was going to be far less.
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