30 September 2015

In a recent set speech the Hon Bill English has once again attributed inequality, poverty and the lack of affordable housing within New Zealand to ‘planners’, citing Auckland as the ‘most evident indication of the problem.’

The regions of New Zealand face quite different pressures. Land availability and housing affordability are not typically problems that confront provincial New Zealand and yet poverty is very evident in our provinces. This in itself should suggest that there is no one single catalyst at work here, albeit planners who recommend planning regulations or the local government councillors who endorse or reject them. All of which operate within a nationally determined and owned planning legislative regime...

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