Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour said he will try to prevail upon the Auckland Council and Housing Minister Chris Bishop to make changes to the city’s new draft plan, which will reshape the city’s skyline, enabling 2 million homes.
He supported changes that would scale back plans to intensify areas of the city with old, poor infrastructure, such as Parnell.
Seymour said the new plan was flawed and has said he will lobby for changes – he told a public meeting last week that he and supporters must “impress” on Bishop “that this plan is not necessary, and will have negative unintended consequences“.
The remarks have echoes of the tiff between Act and National in opposition, when Act opposed the Medium-Density Residential Standard (MDRS), which came about as a result of a deal between National and Labour.
Seymour’s public opposition to those rules saw National’s Auckland MPs put under pressure to also oppose the policy. National eventually changed tack, and in 2023 took a policy to the election that allowed councils to opt out of the rules if they zoned for more housing in other ways.
Seymour told the Herald his opposition to this draft plan was different from the scrap over the MDRS, and that he supported large parts of the new plan, including allowing more development around transit corridors and around train stations.
Where the Act leader does have concerns is with development in areas which he believed had inadequate infrastructure, or in places where development could be patchy: it would make no sense to have three tall residential tower blocks surrounded by villas in Parnell, for instance.
Seymour told the Herald that “Chris [Bishop] has done a good job restoring some common sense to housing policy, particularly by removing the previous Government’s one-size-fits-all intensification rules. That was a big step forward”.
“At the same time, there’s always room to improve policy,” Seymour said.
“As a local electorate MP, I’m helping the Government by conveying my constituents’ concerns, and many are deeply concerned about whether infrastructure can cope with more intensification.
“They’ve seen serious flood damage, a major sewer-related sinkhole, and sewage leaking on to the shoreline. Understandably, they want to know that growth will be properly supported,” he said.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown pushed back, saying, “If David Seymour was really interested in improving things for Auckland, he would support the bed-night visitor levy, which even most Act voters support.”
Seymour made these criticisms known at a community meeting in Mt Eden last week.
Though he did not attend the meeting personally, because he was in Australia, Seymour had a message read to attendees, which said he and supporters “must impress on the minister, Chris Bishop, that this plan is not necessary, and will have negative unintended consequences”.
“Over the next few weeks, I will be transmitting that impression on behalf of my constituents, and I ask for your support in doing so,” he said.
Seymour’s message said, “Zoning more housing capacity well ahead of demand and, more importantly, infrastructure capacity, is a poor way to address housing affordability”.
On Friday, Seymour has a sold-out meeting scheduled in Parnell to discuss opposition to plans for the suburb.
The event description, on Seymour’s personal website, notes that Parnell’s infrastructure “is plainly not up to such intensification”.
“I also believe it will bring a significant change to the character of New Zealand’s oldest suburb.
“I need your support to pressure council to amend its plan to preserve the unique character of our suburb. This is urgent,” it said.
Seymour has another similar meeting scheduled in Remuera next week.
The Government has been taking heat in Auckland over the draft plan changes. The plan would allow Auckland to opt out of the controversial MDRS, which freed up large swathes of the city for three-storey townhouses.
Auckland Council was unhappy with those rules, and was particularly concerned it would see upzoning and densification to parts of the city vulnerable to hazards like flooding.
The new proposal has scaled that back, but has upzoned parts of the city further.
The council’s draft replacement plan includes allowance for 10- and 15-storey apartments in 44 town centres and along transport corridors, and will mean a loss of kauri villas and bungalows, to the chagrin of some current residents.
Bishop responded to some of the criticism in an opinion piece published in the Herald today.
The Housing Minister said the reality of the council’s proposal was “much less dramatic” than the desecration of tree-lined suburbs and raw sewage flowing into the harbour envisaged by some of the plan’s critics.
Bishop said the city’s housing was “unaffordable” and the council needed to zone for more housing. He said the new proposal was a “big step forward” from the MDRS and the plan that would have forced those standards upon the city.
The minister noted the council had itself asked the Government to put it back in the driving seat of plan changes, and the Government had agreed to that request.
He also said he wanted the council to think more about expanding outwards – something Seymour told the Herald he also supports.
“[T]he current council has a weird aversion to new greenfield housing – big new subdivisions on the city fringe.
“I am in favour of new greenfield housing, where the infrastructure costs can be recovered from new residents – and in my view, the council should be zoning more for this sort of housing. The new draft plan is a missed opportunity, but it is a draft – and they have a chance to improve it,” he wrote.
Bishop said the concern that the plan change would see two million homes drop from the sky was “frankly nuts”, as many of these homes would not get built or would take some time to get built.
“Almost 10 years later [since the Auckland Unitary Plan in 2016], only around 10% of that enabled capacity has actually turned into new housing. The idea that a plan change that enables two million homes is suddenly going to result in two million homes being built in the short-term is, frankly, nuts,” Bishop wrote.
The current plan is a draft. A final draft is set to be released in September, and if the council proceeds, there will be further chances for input from the public.
The law change – supported by Act – that made the MDRS optional, and kick-started the plan change process, puts Bishop in the position of being the arbiter of whether what the council was doing was sufficient.
Seymour told last week’s meeting that while the council had been given a deadline for the plan changes, “the only consequence for not meeting it is that the minister may intervene, or not”.
There appears to be almost no chance that Bishop would not intervene if the council failed to meet the deadline.
The council has until October 10 to withdraw all or part of the current plan and replace it with a new one that meets the density requirements set out by Bishop in legislation.
Councillors are set to vote on September 24 on whether to proceed with the draft replacement plan or the existing one.