Kāinga Ora tenants accused of firing gun, threatening assault keep homes despite eviction bids
However, the tribunal adjudicator decided there was not enough proof the man made the threats, despite it being confirmed he was facing criminal charges after police found a firearm at his property.
The unsuccessful evictions appear to be speed bumps in Kāinga Ora's new policy of getting tough on state housing tenants.
In January, Housing Minister Chris Bishop declared the 'easy ride' for disruptive Kāinga Ora tenants to be over.
In March last year, the Government told the public housing provider to abandon its 'Sustaining Tenancies Framework'.
That programme first started in 2017 as a pilot in which Kāinga Ora staff were urged to try their best to avoid evicting tenants and instead work with them to overcome their issues.
Part of the policy's belief was that evicted tenants could be left with nowhere else to go, potentially leading them to cause more trouble on the streets or cost taxpayers more through poor health and medical expenses.
The new Coalition Government argued, however, that disruptive and threatening tenants were causing neighbours to live in fear.
They believed the threat of eviction would also 'spark behaviour change', forcing these tenants to behave better.
That tougher stance led to a five-fold increase in evictions.
A Kāinga Ora spokeswoman said about 85% of all its eviction applications to the Tenancy Tribunal were successful.
'Of the 88 applications we made in the past 12 months, 77 were successful,' she said.
However, the Hamilton and Nelson cases showed tribunals weren't rubber-stamping every application.
The spokeswoman said the tribunal needed a 'high standard of evidence'.
'While we always aim to meet that threshold, sometimes the evidence we are able to present isn't quite strong enough,' she said.
In the Hamilton case, tribunal adjudicator Jenny Robson questioned how reliable the neighbour's evidence was.
Robson noted that Kāinga Ora had presented evidence saying the neighbour - who was the grandmother of the teenage boy the tenant was accused of pointing the rifle at – originally gave a statement to police, saying she went outside to confront the tenant.
She told police the tenant then threatened to also kill her and shot off more rounds from his rifle.
But when Robson asked the grandmother what happened during the confrontation, she replied that the tenant ignored her.
'Her oral evidence was contrary to the statement she had given to the police,' Robson concluded.
The woman's grandson also didn't appear at the tribunal, meaning Robson was left to doubt the evidence presented.
The tenant himself refused to comment at the tribunal, saying he had pending criminal proceedings.
In the Nelson case, the tenant's clean record over four and a half years helped save her tenancy despite her admitting she threatened her neighbour.
The drama began when her boyfriend assaulted the neighbour's son on January 9.
The boyfriend was bailed with conditions to stay away following the attack, but allegedly returned to the woman's flat within two weeks.
When her neighbour called police to report the bail breach, the tenant overheard 'inflammatory language' about her boyfriend and confronted the woman, the tribunal said.
The tenant wasn't evicted because his neighbour was found to have given contradicting statements about what he did to police and to the Tenancy Tribunal. Photo / 123rf
'The tenant does not dispute she threatened to assault the neighbour. The video evidence of such a threat was conclusive,' tribunal adjudicator Michael Brennan found.
However, he noted that only one of seven neighbours had complained about the woman and she had not had run-ins before this incident.
He ultimately decided there were enough mitigating factors to let her off.
'I have given the tenant the benefit of the doubt this time, but she should be clear on how any future repeat behaviours … may not result in the tenancy continuing,' he said.
Ben Leahy is an Auckland-based senior journalist. He has worked as a journalist for more than a decade in India, Australia and New Zealand.
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NZ Herald
5 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Love this City: Helipads, Pukekohe soil, Dominion Rd buses, Monte Cecilia dogs and more
The court should be able to decide this quickly. If it rules in the council's favour, the couple will have to halt their plans. But if it rules for the Mowbray-Williams project, the council will draft a plan change to make it 'explicitly clear' private helipads in the suburbs are a 'non-complying activity'. If adopted, that will make them extremely difficult to approve. On Thursday, the council opted for this 'non-complying' route, instead of full prohibition as proposed by councillors Mike Lee and Kerrin Leoni. Lee believes he was 'ambushed' and the vote was a 'stitch-up', which will achieve little. But his colleagues voted against him, 15-7. They had several reasons for doing this and they all boil down to the same thing: they believe Lee's approach was doomed to fail but their approach could succeed. I'll be analysing this in full next week, but briefly: The council does not have the power simply to ban something on the spot. There's a legal process to follow and it usually takes about two years, perhaps double that if there are appeals. Some councillors said it was misleading for anyone to claim a vote this week would achieve that ban right now, or that it would stop Mowbray and Williams. The hearing into the Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams' helipad application was heard by commissioners Dr Hilke Giles (left), chairman Kitt Littlejohn and David Hill. Also, some councillors believe there are parts of some suburbs where a private helipad might be permitted. Definitely not in Westmere, they were completely united on that. But remote Hillsborough cliffs above the Manukau Harbour and remote parts of Howick were both mentioned. More significantly, councillors know the RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has instructed councils not to make any new plan changes because he has the whole act under review. They believe he will not allow a plan change to ban private helipads outright, but he might allow an exemption to make them non-complying. There's also a cost issue: a prohibition plan change could cost the council $1.5 million. Councillor Josephine Bartley had a question for one of the council officials in the meeting: 'Is it fair to say that it's a $1.5m risk for something we already know is not likely? That we won't win?' 'Yes, that's fair,' said planning manager Phill Reid. Councillors voted for the option they thought had the best chance of succeeding, and against the option they thought was, in effect, full of sound and fury, but signified nothing. But it's election time and several councillors are staking out their positions. Paving over Pukekohe paradise Vegetable grower Allan Fong with his elite soil land at Pukekohe. Photo / Trefor Ward The Government is proposing to amend the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) to remove the protections on 'class 3 soils' that prevent their 'inappropriate land use and development'. It will mean more city in the countryside. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop argues these soils are not as valuable as is commonly thought and there will still be adequate protection for the soils that are genuinely valuable for crops and other agricultural land uses. The NPS was introduced by the Labour Government in 2022; public consultation on the proposed changes closes this Sunday and a decision will follow soon. Soil experts have been making a last-gasp appeal for a rethink. 'The proposal is poorly considered and, if it goes through, would be an irreversible blunder of inter-generational scale, for multiple reasons,' says David Lowe, an emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Waikato. 'Future generations ... are being robbed of the potential productivity of versatile soils by people with a vested interest. The Luxon-led coalition Government has an ethical, moral and legal obligation to provide for future as well as current generations.' NZ Society of Soil Science president Pierre Roudier says class 3 soil 'represents the backbone of New Zealand's food and fibre production and high-value exports'. It makes up two-thirds of the land currently protected under the NPS-HPL and supports a wide range of primary production, ranging from dairy and arable farming to viticulture and horticulture. 'Contrary to popular myth,' says Lowe, 'New Zealand does not have large areas of highly productive soils.' Class 1 soils make up only 0.7% of productive soils and class 2 another 4.5%. 'The high-value soils of the Pukekohe-Bombay area have been facing 'death by a thousand cuts' over the past few decades under housing pressure,' he says. The area includes only 3.8% of New Zealand's total horticultural land but it produces 26% by value of our vegetables. Already in Auckland and Waikato, Lowe says, around 33% of the best land has been lost to urban expansion and the process is accelerating. He wants the proposed NPS changes abandoned. Roudier isn't so categoric. 'Research shows that the most pressing issue on HPL is residential lifestyle development, significantly more so than edge-of-city expansion,' he says. Lifestyle blocks, not new subdivisions. 'This type of development breaks up productive farmland into smaller, disconnected parcels, which not only makes the land harder to farm efficiently but also introduces new pressures because of 'reverse sensitivity' (when new residents in rural areas object to normal farming activities, leading to restrictions on farms).' People move to the country, then complain about the country (the same thing happens in central cities). RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. Photo / Calvin Samuel, RNZ Bishop doesn't necessarily intend to remove protections on all class 3 land. The regulatory impact statement on his proposals outlines four policy options, with complete removal being one of them. Roudier supports a 'more balanced option' that would allow councils to enable urban growth on class 3 land but protect it from lifestyle blocks. 'This targeted approach would support housing goals near urban areas,' he says, 'without opening the door to uncontrolled sprawl across the wider countryside'. Quality soils are a long time in the making. Typically, says Lowe, the timespan is 10,000 to 20,000 years. Some take 50,000 years or even longer: the elite soils of Pukekohe have taken several hundred thousand years to develop. Once gone, they're really gone. Halfway down Dominion Rd and stuck Dominion Rd is one of the busiest roads in Auckland. Photo / Alex Burton Auckland Transport wants to extend the bus lane hours on Dominion Rd and the business association is not happy. They may have Mayor Wayne Brown to contend with. Brown has identified road efficiency as one of his key transport expectations. That means doing everything possible to allow traffic on the city's arterials to flow smoothly. 'Smart' traffic lights that give buses priority and recognise and respond to traffic build-ups. The removal of car parks that block peak-time traffic. The use of 'dynamic' centre lanes, which change direction according to the morning and evening demand. On Dominion Rd, which is narrower than most arterials, the key is to keep those bus lanes moving. AT, supported by the Albert-Eden Local Board, isn't proposing anything drastic, like 24-hour bus lanes. All it wants to do is have the peak times start at 3pm instead of 4pm. One hour earlier, which recognises the build-up of school traffic. The Dominion Rd Business Association wants this 'immediately cancelled'. It says the move is 'a premature and economically damaging decision that threatens the livelihood of local businesses'. The bus lanes opened in 2015 and have been instrumental in preventing congestion from creating complete gridlock on the street. Four years earlier, AT predicted that extending the hours would not be necessary until 2041. But in 2011, AT did not reckon with the extent of population or vehicle build-up of the past 25 years. Gary Holmes, manager of the association, says: 'We are utterly dismayed by Auckland Transport's short-sighted proposal. The 2011 report clearly indicated that extending these hours to 3pm was a decades-away prospect, based on future demand. We do not believe the current traffic numbers in 2025 warrant it happening a decade and a half earlier than originally suggested.' Halfway down Dominion Rd, people stuck in traffic may beg to differ. Two things about making bus priority lanes more efficient: it works, and it's one of the cheapest things the council can do to improve traffic flows. There are still many more car parks for shoppers and retail staff in the streets all around that area. More savings at council Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson with the boss. Photo / Alyse Wright The council has an ongoing programme to 'deliver better value', which means finding ways to cut spending. It's run by the Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee, chaired by Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, and adheres to 10 'better value project principles' set out by the Mayor. After the committee's latest meeting, Simpson reports: 'We have halted several projects to reassess costs, which has seen several repriced considerably lower. This includes the Paremuka Dam culverts in Henderson, where the council retendering the project's contract reduced the construction cost from $3.4 million to $1.9m – saving $1.4m from the focus on value for money.' Staff have also stopped work on two other projects, Milford Marina and Long Bay footbridges, 'to enable costs to be reassessed and delivered lower'. Project manager Mark Townshend says: 'We want all staff consistently applying the principles to their work, so we see every ratepayer dollar used to deliver greater value across our projects.' Townshend says they do around 25 'health checks' in parks and community facilities each month, to see if the better value principles are being applied well. 'Supplier performance workshops are also under way, which enables us to partner with our suppliers to provide better value projects for our communities.' The mayor says the principles have saved $43.2m to date, which equates to not raising rates by 1.8%. Monte Cecilia Park: Dogs can roam, for now Dogs and their owners in the bowl of Monte Cecilia Park, where debate continues over whether dogs should be allowed off-leash. Photo / Owen McMahon Dog Lovers of Monte Cecilia, which says it represents more than 500 dog owners and allies, has gained an interim order from the High Court preventing the Puketāpapa Local Board from enforcing its on-leash policy. A full judicial review is to follow. Monte Cecilia Park is a very beautiful park between Three Kings and Hillsborough, with a large bowl in the middle that can't be used for sports, formal or informal, and has been for many years an off-leash area for dogs. The local board vote revealed a clear political divide. Community & Residents members on the right voted to remove the off-leash status; City Vision members on the left wanted it preserved. C&R has a one-vote majority, but City Vision has 88% of public submissions, a 1000-signature petition and the advice of council staff on its side. The board's decision 'unfairly penalises responsible dog owners and undermines the wellbeing of both dogs and the wider community', the Dog Lovers group said. 'We are committed to ensuring that Monte Cecilia Park remains a safe and welcoming shared space for all Aucklanders.' Board member Jon Turner, who is now a City Vision candidate for a ward seat on the governing body of council, says: 'Communities & Residents members ran on a platform of listening to the community, yet they have twice disregarded overwhelming public sentiment and clear staff advice.' C&R, for its part, is understood to be concerned about the views of some of the residents in a nearby retirement village. Warkworth development heading to court Map of the land Arvida wants the council to rezone for urban development. The yellow area is the proposed site of its new retirement village. The main Warkworth township is below the river at the bottom of the map; the golf course is to the upper right. Next month, the Environment Court will hear an appeal against the council's decision in March to block a private plan change allowing land development in Warkworth. The plan change is sought by the company Arvida, which wants to build a 198-unit retirement village on the edge of town. The council wasn't opposed to the village but objected to Arvida wanting 140ha to be rezoned. Arvida owns 55 of those 140ha. It plans to build on 22 of them and sell the remaining 33. That, as Mayor Wayne Brown said in March, casts Arvida as a land banker: it had bought a larger site than it needed and with the rezoning in place would be able to sell parts of it for a substantial profit. 'Why don't they just build the retirement village?' Brown said. The court hearing comes after talks broke down between the company and the council. Arvida says it wants the whole site rezoned to allow 'a more co-ordinated, master-planned approach to the land', which would 'address the growing and future demand for retirement housing in the area'. Arvida chief executive Jeremy Nicoll describes the process as 'frustrating'. The company believes the council was wrong to block the plan-change request, in part because that prevented 'a fair public hearing'. 'The plan change area adjoins the existing Warkworth urban area, is well connected to Warkworth's many amenities and will integrate with existing and planned infrastructure,' he says. 'This appeal is necessary because due process must be followed when it comes to making important decisions about New Zealand's urgent housing needs.' In March, Brown made his position clear: the council is empowered to make these decisions, and it would continue to do what it considered right, even under threat of legal action. To sign up for Simon Wilson's weekly newsletter, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Government should cut GST on food if it's worried about butter price – Fran O'Sullivan
The Finance Minister did not need to call Hurrell in to reaffirm that global dairy prices are at a high and that this would inevitably spill over to higher farmer returns and, in turn, boost regional and finally national economies. (That's the plus side you didn't hear about before the meeting). Or that any notion of Fonterra slashing its own margins was not going to happen. They are thin when compared with the margins applied by supermarkets to dairy products, and she knows it. The upshot is that Willis did seek explanations from Hurrell over the co-operative's pricing, which she of course accepted. Within days, she was talking up Fonterra and the surging global prices on the Mike Hosking show as a plus – as indeed they are when it comes to the impact on the New Zealand economy. Hurrell subsequently made it clear his company is not moving to a two-tiered pricing system: an export price geared to global prices and a subsidised price for domestic consumers. There was more besides. It was sensible for Fonterra to shut the issue down quickly. It currently has its consumer brands business on the market. Any suggestion of a move to a two-tiered system would be a complication to that sales process or indeed an IPO of that business if that ultimately turns out to be the Fonterra board's preferred option. But while there was an element of the performative to the Beehive shenanigans, it does underline how much 'cost of living' issues are a lightning rod when it comes to sparking domestic dissatisfaction with the Government. Willis later described her meeting with Hurrell as 'constructive and engaging', underlining the fact that Fonterra does not control retail prices and that the final price is set by supermarkets, whose contracts and pricing strategies vary. This was more grist to Willis' campaign against what she claims are supermarkets profiteering at the expense of consumers. Already, she has been working to reduce the barriers to entry for other competitors. Willis has been encouraged that the Commerce Commission has taken a case against grocery giant Foodstuffs North Island and Gilmours Wholesale to court over what it believes is cartel conduct. The regulator said civil proceedings would be filed against the big grocery suppliers under the Commerce Act and Grocery Industry Competition Act (GICA). Foodstuffs 'strongly denies' any unlawful conduct. The Commerce Commission has also levelled criminal charges against retailer Noel Leeming over what it claims is a misleading price-matching promotion. The company 'firmly' maintains it had not committed an offence and would vigorously defend itself against multiple charges of misleading customers under the Fair Trading Act. Put that to one side. Prices have escalated on multiple fronts: dairy products, meat and some fruits; electricity and gas, rates, insurances. But they have decreased on others: mortgage and loan interest rates, and some fuels. There is little point in trying to jawbone prices down. In many respects, the answer lies with Willis. If she is overly concerned, she could wipe the 15% GST from particular food items. This is the case in Australia, where its 10% GST does not apply to meat, fish, produce, cheese and eggs, plain milk and cream, bread, butter and other spreads, bottled water, tea and coffee, cooking ingredients and oils, or infant formula. In Britain, most foods are zero-rated. Many European countries have reduced value-added tax rates for food, typically running at 5%-7%. Basic foods are exempted in Singapore, there is an 8% rate in Japan, and in the United States some states exempt various food items from sales tax. The upshot is that New Zealand verges on being an outlier in this area. Any changes to the GST regime would, however, have an impact on how New Zealand's tax regime is perceived as being neutral. Farmers are not the enemy. There is much to celebrate from our rural sector, which will deliver nearly $60 billion in export earnings this year. The fixation on rising prices has also overly consumed the Prime Minister, who frequently talks about 'cost of living issues'. But this is not going to be solved in the medium term. The upshot is that, short of any intervention by the Government, consumers will just have to suck it up.
NZ Herald
10 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Tall towers versus volcanic views: The building blocks in Auckland's development
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, thinks viewshafts 'eviscerate hundreds of millions of dollars of economic value', as he put it in a speech in mid-June. In other speeches in recent months, Bishop has quoted a 2018 study which suggested the toll-booth viewshaft has cost the central city in excess of $1.4 billion. So he's decided to do something about it. Others say, hang on. 'Most cities,' North Shore ward councillor Chris Darby says, 'have few really unique features. But we do. We have the volcanoes. Being able to appreciate them as you move around the city is one of the special things about living here.' Darby's view is probably shared by most of his colleagues. Over the Super City's 15-year history, Auckland Council has shown no interest in making any significant changes to the viewshafts. Bishop points out that in 2016, the council was told quite bluntly by an Independent Hearings Panel (IHP) that it should rethink its approach in order to achieve greater economic efficiency and reduced opportunity costs. That panel had reviewed the viewshaft proposals in the council's draft Auckland Unitary Plan, the big new document that was about to become the city's blueprint for what can be built where. For the most part, it didn't want them eliminated. But it did point out that the council had done 'no sensitivity analysis'. That is, despite having the necessary technology, it had not looked at whether even 'slight changes' might 'significantly reduce [the viewshafts'] impact on development opportunities while retaining views to the maunga [peak]'. Nor did it have a method for deciding if any loss in floor area of new buildings was 'an appropriate trade-off for the values of any particular viewshaft'. 'In the almost-decade since,' Bishop said in a speech in February, 'this work has not been progressed.' The Government has now told the council it must produce a new zoning plan which allows for greater density, and it must be done, with public consultation, by October 10. That's two days before postal voting closes in this year's council elections. The council is expected to consider its position at a meeting on July 31 – and a fight is brewing. There are nearly 80 viewshafts in Auckland. They're mapped like slices of pie: wedges that emanate from a single point where a person can stand, like the top of Newton Rd, or from a stretch of road you can drive along, like the northern approach to the bridge. Building heights are strictly limited inside the boundaries of each wedge, so the view of the natural landscape is preserved, and this creates an overlay on the planning zones. As a rule, buildings inside a viewshaft require a resource consent and if they are to be higher than 9m they may be regarded as 'non-complying'. In this context, it is extremely difficult for such buildings to get a resource consent. Most viewshafts have been in place since 1977, after the Pines apartment block was built on the side of Maungawhau (Mt Eden) in 1969, causing a public outcry and changes to planning rules. The outcry over The Pines, a multi-storey apartment block on Mt Eden, led to the protection of volcanic views. Photo / APN Not that views of Maungawhau have been completely preserved since then: the Department of Corrections was allowed to build a bigger Mt Eden Prison, interrupting the viewshaft from the motorway that runs past it. Much of the attention still focuses on the views of that maunga, which isn't surprising: the nearby central city is where most high-rise development occurs. In fact, Maungawhau is protected by 20 viewshafts, including one from Devonport and one from the Z petrol station on Kepa Rd in Ōrākei. But views of Te Pane o Mataoho (Māngere Mountain), Puketāpapa (Mt Roskill) and the other cones are protected too. And it's not just the cones: views of the Waitākere Ranges and some other ridgelines are also protected, along with views of the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The rules have had a dramatic effect on the city centre. The Sky Tower and the council building on Albert St are just outside the eastern edge of the toll-booth viewshaft, which is known as E10. There's another viewshaft protecting the view of Maungawhau from the bridge itself, called E16. It roughly parallels E10. If you look at the city centre from the north, across the harbour, you can see the effect plainly: east of the Sky Tower, the city is built up. But west of the tower, the level suddenly drops. The Viaduct, Wynyard Quarter, around Victoria Park and up to the new International Convention Centre on Hobson St are all part of the central city. But there are no tall buildings. Constructing high-rise buildings on all this land is prevented by E10 and E16. Bishop thinks the toll-booth viewshaft is especially absurd. Drivers on a motorway are supposed to keep their eyes on the road. But councillor Richard Hills, the chair of the council's policy and planning committee, says: '50% of morning commuters going over the bridge are in a bus, enjoying the view.' Even some of the cars have passengers. 'Tollbooth' view of Maungawhau/Mt Eden, 1962 Toll booths on the northern approach to the Auckland Harbour Bridge in 1962, showing Maungawhau/Mt Eden in the background. The protected viewshaft applies to the stretch with the toll booths. But if it was moved slightly west, to align with the stretch pointing straight at the maunga, more central city would be freed up for high rises. Photo / Whites Aviation 'Tollbooth' view of Maungawhau/Mt Eden, today The same view today, showing high rises east of the Sky Tower but not to the west, with Maungawhau clearly visible. Photo / Jason Dorday The minister rests his argument against viewshafts on the economic advantages that come with housing and workplace density, especially near major transit stations and along transit corridors. 'In a well-functioning city,' Bishop told his Committee for Auckland audience, 'a floor filled with smart people working next to each other, in a building filled with floors of smart people working next to each other, unsurprisingly, enables greater economic opportunities for productive growth. Proximity encourages collaboration and innovation.' That's on top of the more obvious benefits of having lots of people living and working near train stations and rapid bus stations. More people equals better transit services, because there are more passengers to pay for them. And that takes traffic off the roads. Having lots of people living closer to town also makes their commute shorter, which also takes traffic off the roads. This has become critical in Bishop's thinking about the City Rail Link (CRL), which will open next year, doubling the capacity of Auckland's rail network. 'The City Rail Link is a game-changing investment in the future of Auckland,' he said on June 25. 'It will unlock significant economic opportunity, but only if we have a planning system to allow businesses and residents to take advantage of it.' Chris Bishop: the minister who wants to change Auckland's volcanic viewshafts. Photo / Getty Images Because of this, Bishop used that February speech to call for zoning in Auckland to abandon the six-storey limit around major transit stops, which defines the height of most apartment blocks. That will impact E10, E16, the Newton Rd view (E20) and several other viewshafts. 'We are going to need to go much, much higher than that around the CRL stations if we truly want to feel the benefits of transit-oriented development,' he said. 'My aspiration is that in 10 to 20 years' time, we have 10- to 20-storey apartment blocks dotting the rail line as far west as Swanson and Rānui.' You can see the prototype now, in the form of the 10-storey Westlight Apartments in Glen Eden. The Westlight apartments in Glen Eden tower over the surrounding suburb. Why is there no Westlight in Kingsland, which has a train station and several bus routes? Partly, it's because of the protected views of nearby Maungawhau. It's also partly because of a 'special character' overlay, put there by the council, which preserves older housing areas. Bishop threw down the gauntlet: 'How about if our aim is to make the 'special character' of suburbs be that they are thriving, liveable, affordable communities with access to regular and reliable public transport?' In May, the council adopted new zoning rules for the central city. They allow for more density, but they leave large parts restricted to six-storey heights. The minister's gauntlet was left lying on the ground. He responded quickly. 'The Auckland CBD plan could go a lot further, in my view. It is a real missed opportunity and in due course, the council is going to have to have another look at it, particularly around the viewshafts.' On June 25, Bishop and the Minister for Auckland, Simeon Brown, pulled out their swords. They jointly announced they will legislate to require upzoning for buildings of 'at least 15 storeys' in the 'walkable catchments' around the Maungawhau, Kingsland and Morningside stations and at least 10 storeys near Mt Albert and Baldwin Avenue stations. Fifteen-storey buildings are about 50m tall. Walkable catchments extend in a radius of about 800m, which is taken as the distance of a 10-minute walk. The walkable catchment for the Maungawhau station includes the New North Rd ridge, whose current medium-rise buildings are capped to maintain the viewshaft from Newton Rd, which is known as E20. Bishop's 15-storey ambition would almost certainly spell an end to E20 and could well mean the same for E10, E16 and other Maungawhau viewshafts. The minister says he doesn't want to eliminate viewshafts. But what does he want? The signals are mixed. 'Even just minor tweaks to existing viewshafts could materially lift development opportunities,' Bishop said in February. 'The 2018 study showed that rotating the E10 viewshaft just 4.5 degrees to the left maintains the view of Mt Eden for a similar amount of time, whilst saving the city 43% of the lost development opportunity cost.' By 'to the left' he means to the west. Views of Maungawhau would be preserved not from the northern approach to the bridge, almost back to Onewa Rd, but from the stretch of highway closer to the bridge, when the maunga is more in front of you. The 4.5 degree adjustment would free up significant parcels of land for high rises. These include some of the Wynyard Quarter and the Viaduct, the Fanshawe/Victoria streets block at the bottom of Nelson St, the TVNZ and Convention Centre block on Hobson St, and the block bordered by Queen St, Karangahape Rd and Symonds St. It also includes the northern half of Wynyard Point, if the council was ever to decide a sentinel waterfront tower should be built there. But that's all within what Bishop calls 'minor tweaks'. His talk of 'economic evisceration', the 'immense' economic and social rewards on offer and new 15-storey and 10-storey buildings near stations all suggest he has more sweeping changes in mind. In August last year, he told the Herald the biggest barrier to building on the Maungawhau station site was viewshafts. And yet, when the Herald asked him directly what he wants – how his hopes for all those tall buildings relate to viewshafts – he replied with a carefully worded written response. 'The bill will provide for a qualifying matters framework which will enable Auckland Council to modify these heights [15 storeys and 10 storeys] to the extent necessary to accommodate a qualifying matter (such as the protection of viewshafts) if this level of development is inappropriate. 'However, any lower heights would need to be justified in accordance with the framework. I intend to use my Direction on the new plan change to reinforce the legislative requirement that heights and densities may only be reduced to the extent necessary to accommodate one or more qualifying matters.' This seems to mean there will be more high rises, but viewshafts could become qualifying matters that limit their extent. To some degree. The debate has ever been thus. Density is easy: almost everyone says it's a good thing, provided it's done in the right places and in the right way. But defining the wrong places and ways, known in the legal language of town planning as 'qualifying matters', is a process that defeats even the most optimistic attempts at consensus. Character Coalition chair Sally Hughes. Photo / Alex Burton Sally Hughes of the Character Coalition, an umbrella group dedicated to preserving the character of the villa suburbs, says changes to viewshafts, special character or other zoning laws are not required because there are 'plenty of under-utilised sites' near the Kingsland and Maungawhau stations 'which are ready for intensification now'. Who doesn't think, when it's their own street, their own view, their own sun at stake: don't do it here, do it somewhere over there? The source of Bishop's thinking on viewshafts is a 2018 paper called City with a Billion Dollar View, written by Geoff Cooper, a former economist with PwC and Auckland Council. It was Cooper who came up with the toll-booth anomaly, the benefits of tweaking E10 by 4.5 degrees and that $1.4b figure for lost economic opportunity. Cooper is now the chief executive of the crown agency Te Waihana: the Infrastructure Commission and, at least informally, has the ear of the minister. Geoff Cooper, author of the report that got the minister thinking. As for Cooper's old employer, Auckland Council, it does not subscribe to his analysis of the economic damage done by viewshafts. The Herald talked to the council's manager of central area planning, John Duguid, about all this in May. Duguid said he doesn't see the need for higher buildings in the E10 viewshaft. 'East of E10,' he said, referring to the parts of the central city already built up, 'there's still a lot of development potential.' Duguid also said the toll-booth story is a myth: E10 has never been just for drivers queueing at the booths. Auckland Council planning boss John Duguid. Photo / Dean Purcell He thinks if it does need to be changed, 'it could be narrowed a bit'. If you squint, that sounds a bit like the minister's 'tweaks'. Even Cooper said something similar in 2018: he called for changes that would 'provide a middle path for city planners that reduce the cost, while preserving views'. But Duguid and the council seem largely intent on preserving the status quo and the minister wants change. The council, Bishop says, has been 'dragging its feet'. Let's back up a little. First, to note that the 14 prominent volcanic maunga of Tāmaki Makaurau are governed by the Tūpuna Maunga Authority, which comprises equal membership from Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau and Auckland Council. The Government will need a strong relationship with the authority, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and the other relevant iwi, if it wants to change the way we value, see and use the maunga of Tāmaki Makaurau. Second, to note the wider planning context. When the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP) was adopted in 2016, it preserved the viewshafts while also allowing for the 'character areas' Bishop is annoyed about. This provision has been used to protect the villas of the city fringe: the ring of suburbs that runs from Devonport across the harbour to St Mary's Bay, Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden and Parnell. In 2020, the Labour-led Government's National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) required councils in the larger centres to change their district plans (in Auckland's case, the Unitary Plan), in order to provide for more substantial housing growth than most had been willing to accept. This was followed by new Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) in 2021 and a revision to the NPS-UD in 2022. All were aimed at achieving greater density. In Auckland, the council responded by drawing up Plan Change 78 (PC78) and putting it on a slow track to approval. Most councils have now made their plan changes, but Auckland Council has completed PC78 only in respect of the central city, despite closing public submissions nearly three years ago. PC78 (Central City Zone) contains higher limits for development in some areas, but there is no rethink of the viewshafts or the six-storey limit more widely. This was largely supported in submissions from the public. Bishop is clearly frustrated. The minister speaks positively of the NPS-UD and says he will build on it, not abandon it. His Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill, which will speed up urban density, is back from select committee hearings and due to become law next month. In relation to the bill, Duguid says: 'Our working assumption is that applying 'qualifying matters', including maunga viewshafts, will still be an option, albeit with more onerous requirements to justify them.' On the other hand, Bishop wants those 15-storey buildings near Maungawhau, Kingsland and Morningside stations. The new Maungawhau railway station is the patterned building in the middle distance. Six railway lines run through tunnels under here, and now the enormous empty site is ready for intense developed over the next decade or two. How tall should the buildings be? Maungawhau mountain is away to the left. Photo / Sylvie Whinray And he has told the council: 'The Government is also considering whether further amendments to the bill to fully maximise development opportunities around other CRL stations are necessary, and I will have more to say in due course.' That is, station precincts on the Western Line won't be the only ones to get new height allowances. Ōrākei, Meadowbank and Glen Innes on the Eastern Line and Newmarket, Remuera, Greenlane and Ellerslie on the Southern Line are all no further away from the city centre than the Western Line's Mt Albert. Duguid and his staff have been busy preparing options for a council response to Bishop's pronouncements, for debate by the governing body of council on July 31. Defenders of the viewshafts have taken a persuasive lead role for many decades in the planning and consultation processes of Auckland Council and its predecessors. Prominent among them have been the Auckland Volcanic Cones Society and the Friends of Maungawhau. Roy Turner of the Volcanic Cones Society was the planner charged by the Auckland Regional Council with writing the original 1976 report on viewshafts. In March, he told the Herald that he likes 'most of what Chris Bishop is advocating, but with the cones issue, some of his justification is misguided'. Turner suggests we think about it this way. 'There is a massive area of open space in central Auckland called the Auckland Domain. An economist might calculate how many billions of dollars have been lost by not developing here. The public would respond by saying this is truly an Auckland icon: hands off, no way can we develop here. 'Quite right, but can't we have our cake and eat it too? Let's just take 10%. A few years down the track, on balance, let's take another 10%, for the same reason, and so on.' Others see it differently. At Greater Auckland, Scott Caldwell has attempted to distinguish between 'the good, the bad, the ugly' and the 'bit ridiculous'. Some viewshafts are blocked by trees, others emanate from places almost no one ever goes. Better to keep the trees and the views that really are valued? Caldwell's not against all viewshafts. Maungawhau as seen from Mt Eden Village, he says, looms above the street magnificently. He'd definitely keep that one. And he has a proposal. He points out that Instagram is full of maunga photos, but they're not of the maunga. Instead, they're nearly all taken by people standing on the mountain and looking at the view from it. These are the views we really value, he says, so they're the ones we should protect. Scott Caldwell suggests the more valuable views are from the maunga. This is a viewing platform on Maungawhau, looking across North Head to Rangitoto. Photo / Alex Burton If the Government changes the viewshaft rules in favour of economic growth, affordable housing, optimal use of transit or some other purpose, how big will the benefits be? We don't know the answer to that, but last month Bishop told the Herald he has instructed officials to find out. They're looking at 'the impact of Auckland's viewshafts on development capacity and economic activity across Auckland'. He added: 'I acknowledge there are also benefits, including to mana whenua, which are difficult to quantify.' Bishop wants the work done this year, although it will probably not meet the October 10 deadline for Auckland's new plan change. But, he said, 'it will help to provide a good evidence base for future plan development as part of the new resource management system'. That all looks like a message for the council: the work you could have done, and should have done, according to the Independent Hearings Panel in 2016, is now being done by the Government. If the council won't address the challenges and opportunities for growth and housing in Auckland, the Government will. If you don't build it, we will come. And we will do it for you. Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
