2020 Election: Labor follows National, promises RMA repeal to boost housing

The unions promise to repeal and replace the Resource Management Act (RMA) in an attempt to bolster the housing supply across the country.

The policy is very similar to that of National, which in December last year promised to scrap the nearly 30-year-old law and start over.

It’s something the Act has been pushing for several years, and a plan that the Labor Party has been hinting at for several months.

But Environment Minister David Parker said National had had nine years to make the changes and “did nothing.”

He said that the national government had made the RMA longer and more complex.

Labor has also pledged today to continue building homes and make it easier for first-time home buyers to get on the property ladder.

The party’s housing policy is a far cry from the ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful KiwiBuild plan that Labor proposed ahead of the 2017 election.

Instead of building 100,000 homes in 10 years, Labor has promised to deliver 8,000 new transitional and public homes by 2024.

But those houses have already been announced in this year’s budget.

In fact, much of leader Jacinda Ardern’s housing plan for housing under a re-elected Labor Party appears to be a continuation of what she has been doing.
Some new policy areas were announced today.

Labor has promised to introduce a code of conduct to ensure property management services meet professional standards, something that Consumer NZ and REINZ have called for.

The party has also promised to introduce Energy Performance Certificate ratings for residential buildings, so home buyers can make informed decisions about how much it will cost to heat and cool homes.

Labor’s commitment to repeal and replace the RMA means that the legislation will be scrapped and the next term will start again no matter who wins the election, given that National has already committed to the same.

The legislation, introduced in 1991, has been amended nearly 20 times and is close to 1,000 pages long, far more than most other laws passed by deputies.

Ardern said this morning that the Labor Party was committed to lowering barriers to housing construction, and that repealing and replacing the RMA would help.

Environment Minister David Parker said the “overly restrictive planning rules in current law are one of the causes of high house prices.”

“Governments have promised to reform the RMA for more than a decade. Labor is the party that really delivers.”

The current system, Parker said, was too expensive, too time consuming and did not adequately protect the environment.

Labor would replace the RMA with a Natural and Built Environment Law and a Strategic Planning Law.

National’s plan is very similar: it separates the law that deals with construction and planning from that that deals with the environment.