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Campaign diary: Labor promises to eliminate the Resource Management Act (RMA), a nearly 30-year-old planning law often blamed for onerous regulation that raises the cost of building new homes.
“Overly restrictive planning rules are one of the causes of high house prices,” Labor leader Jacinda Ardern said on Friday.
“The workforce will continue to improve the availability of land for housing through better integrated planning and investment in urban development, infrastructure and transportation, and will set standards for quality urban design,” he said.
Ardern made the announcement from a construction site in Northcote, an electorate Labor would like to win back from National.
National’s Dan Bidois held a 1,310 lead over Labor candidate Shanan Halbert when the electorate last went to the polls in the Northcote by-elections following Jonathan Coleman’s resignation in 2018.
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Halbert recently received a blackout for misleading election pamphlets handed out to the electorate that falsely claimed that Labor had built “600 houses for our growing Northcote family.”
In fact, under Labor, Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities had only built 74 affordable homes in the area. The pamphlets were retracted late and Labor said they regretted the mistake.
Labor is trying to hold on to the mantle of being the affordable housing party.
The party has re-engaged with KiwiBuild, although now the plan is framed more as a way to maintain activity in the construction sector than as a way to solve the housing crisis.
The great goal of the party is now the RMA reform, which helps to reduce the cost of construction and stimulate the development of the private sector. Both major parties now agree to remove the RMA, although they are far from united when it comes to what it should be replaced.
Environmental spokesman David Parker said the RMA made consent too expensive.
“The current system is too expensive, takes too long, and has not adequately protected the environment,” Parker said.
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The Resource Management Law will be replaced by the labor policy.
The current regime is blamed for increasing construction costs.
The median council fee for a non-notified consent in 2018/19 was $ 2,128, while that for a notified consent was $ 18,414.
In its first term, the government commissioned a revision of the RMA, which recommended repealing the law and replacing it with two laws. The Labor Party has always been clear that it would carry the central recommendations of that report to the elections.
MARTIN DE RUYTER / THINGS
Labor leader Jacinda Ardern promised to build a large house.
A law, called the Natural and Built Environment Law, would simplify the many local government plans in each region, reducing the number of plans from more than 100 to just 14.
The other, a Strategic Planning Law, would establish long-term growth plans and streamline the central government’s growth policy.
The Law of Strategic Planning would be above the Law of Natural and Built Environments, the Law of Local Government, the Law of Land Transport Management and the Law of Response to Climate Change. Its objective would be to ensure that all planning parts of those laws are integrated together.
“Labor agrees that the number of local government resource management plans should be drastically reduced to one plan per region, and that there should be more national leadership to better protect the environmental outcomes of biodiversity and ecosystems,” he said. Parker.
“We will also adopt the recommendation of a results-based approach instead of the current effects control approach.”
A recommendation made by the RMA review that Labor was more lukewarm was the creation of a law that would allow city councils to begin planning for managed removal from coasts and areas vulnerable to climate change.
But Parker confirmed today that the Labor Party would seek to move that law out of line in the next three years.
There aren’t many details yet on what it will look like, but Parker agreed that it had the potential to create a big change in real estate.
It could allow city councils to plan a “controlled retreat” from areas vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This could look like the red zone after the Christchurch earthquake, with households receiving some compensation to move away from vulnerable areas.
That could be a controversial move, as it would likely mean some form of compensation for homeowners, which could prove costly. Parker said there is still some debate about how such a plan would be funded.
National also promises to repeal and replace the RMA, albeit with two different laws, one specifically for urban planning and the other to protect the environment. This is a model used by some Australian states.
Ardern ended his day with a stroll through Newmarket, Auckland.
It’s fair to say that planning laws weren’t on the minds of the dozens of people who flocked to Ardern to take selfies.
The crowd became so thick at one point that police had to briefly direct people out on the road to take selfies.
