Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on tackling Tauranga’s growth struggles

Tauranga’s congestion challenges, falling building consents and social housing shortages. Those are three hot topics the Bay of Plenty Times asked Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about during his trip to Tauranga on Saturday, visiting to Mount Maunganui Surf Lifesaving Club and Tauranga Racecourse for the Ultimate Mazda Japan Trophy meeting with Deputy PM and Racing Minister Winston Peters. Sandra Conchie reports.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the Coalition Government wants to make “10-year city and regional deals” with councils on critical infrastructure and Tauranga will likely be “one of the first”.

He made the comment during a Saturday interview with the Bay of Plenty Times about the city’s growth struggles including transport and congestion as well as shortages of general and social housing.

He said there was a “massive infrastructure deficit” across the country including in Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty.

“We want to be one of the leading small, advanced countries on Earth by 2040. And part of that means having modern and reliable infrastructure and our new draft policy statement on land transport details how we intend to do that and it will also help unlock housing growth.”

The Government has pledged to spend billions building 15 new “roads of national significance” four-lane highway projects including Takitumu Northern Link Stage 2 and Tauriko West State Highway 29 upgrade in the Western Bay.

Luxon said accelerating the investment needed for these projects would mean being prepared to do things in “new and different ways” including funding and financing mechanisms, to get critical infrastructure built quicker.

“If you look at the toll roads we have now, including the Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway, people are prepared to pay the toll because it has funded the infrastructure and the project was brought forward and delivered quicker. We need to get some of that scaffolding around infrastructure management in a much better way.”

Tauranga has New Zealand’s other two toll roads, the Tauranga Eastern Link and Takitimu Drive.

Luxon said the Government wanted a 30-year pipeline of infrastructure projects – “not just ideas but proper projects”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon visited Tauranga on March 23.

“We also want to have 10-year city and regional deals and since Tauranga is such a high-growth area it is likely to be one of the first areas we would agree with local government on what is the critical infrastructure needed to support this region.

Luxon said for example the State Highway 29 upgrade would ultimately lead to thousands of new homes.

He said the big question was whether this road should be built when the Government could afford it or whether it should use public-private funding, toll roads and other funding mechanisms to get the infrastructure started sooner and therefore get those houses built and communities established sooner.

Tauranga social housing

Asked about the case reported by the Bay of Plenty Times on Saturday of diabetic amputee Geri Stantiall, who has been stuck in Tauranga Hospital for 17 weeks because she could not find an accessible home, Luxon said he could not comment on the specifics of her situation.

“What I can say, is that yes, we have major challenges with our social housing as there are about 25,000 people on the social housing waitlist across the country.

“What we need to do is to make sure Kāinga Ora continues to build more houses and importantly, we also need to power up the community housing providers as well so they can meet people’s extra needs and be able to put better pastoral care and wrap-around supports around them.”

That could be organisations such as Accessible Properties – which owns most of Tauranga’s social housing after buying it from the National Government in 2017 – Māori property trusts, iwi, the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity, he said.

Diabetic amputee Geri (Geraldine) Stantiall, pictured with her daughter in Tauranga Hospital. Photo / Alex Cairns

“What we have got to be able to do is to find a way to get them the capital.”

Other community housing providers who had raised funds privately to invest in social housing may want to partner with the Government as well, he said.

Luxon said the Government had directed Kāinga Ora to speed up tenanting almost 600 homes available for rent, and to get rid of unruly tenants because those on the waiting list “deserved their shot”.

“We live in a country of rights and responsibilities and if you don’t value the house and your neighbours, I’m sorry we’ll have a series of escalations that will mean you could end up losing that house.”

Building consent slowdown

The Bay of Plenty Times reported last week building consents had plunged in Tauranga, with 29 issued in January compared to an expected monthly average of 93 – stoking fears of a worsening housing shortage.

Luxon said the real challenge in housing in New Zealand had a lot to do with the system created over the last 30 to 40 years.

“We have to stop running the country like it’s 1975 and think about how other small advanced modern economies around the world manage their planning and resource consenting.”

He said major cities needed to consent and rezone 30 years’ worth of housing growth; councils needed to be incentivised to participate in and speed up that growth; and the resource consent process that had “blown out” in costs and time delays needed reforming.

Building consent approvals have slowed down in Tauranga. Photo / George Novak

“That was why we repealed part of the Resource Management Act before Christmas and two weeks ago announced the Coalition Government’s new one-stop-shop fast track consenting regime.”

The regime intended to speed up resource consents for major infrastructure projects of regional and national significance and to help grow the economy.

Luxon said this meant whether projects were of national or regional significance they could get started quicker and completed “much faster”.

Sandra Conchie is a senior journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post who has been a journalist for 24 years. She mainly covers police, court and other justice stories, as well as general news. She has been a Canon Media Awards regional/community reporter of the year.