So why, you might ask, is this week’s column about Auckland? Well, don’t blame me for that ... blame the government, which took up most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday morning by going into urgency to progress two Auckland-related Bills.
Although it’s not much of interest to roughly three-quarters of New Zealanders, the government has been getting itself tied up in knots trying to work out how to build more houses in Auckland.
Hence, to the surprise of no-one, on Tuesday afternoon RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop rose reluctantly to ask the House to step on the gas pedal and debate the Resource Management (Auckland Housing) Amendment Bill and the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.
The former Bill alters Auckland’s city plan so that its minimum housing capacity is set at 1.4 million homes — which sounds a lot, but it sounded like a lot more when the initial number was 2 million.
The latter reforms governance of Auckland’s transport system.
Labour, not unnaturally, is highly interested in all this.
Firstly, it greatly dislikes urgency and it greatly likes anything which discomfits the normally unflappable Bishop.
It particularly likes the scent of coalition instability that this stoush has emitted as Epsom MP — and Act New Zealand leader — David Seymour has been deeply embroiled in all this.
Secondly, if the proposed new homes are not going to be built in Remuera, Parnell or Mt Eden — suburbs where people who are likely to party vote for right-leaning parties live — they might need to be built in places like Mt Albert, Mt Roskill or New Lynn, which are in electorates that Labour either holds or wants to win, so it is an issue for their voters too.
Thirdly, the Bills involve planning in general and the RMA in particular and there is nothing more than Dunedin MP Rachel Brooking — and here’s the southern connection — likes than a long, long debate about planning and the RMA.
If seeing the MP for Dunedin debating Auckland housing issues was somewhat surreal, seeing Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds leading off the second reading of the housing Bill was downright bizarre.
Rest assured Simmonds — whose electorate is about as far away from Auckland as it is possible to be and still be in the country — had not suddenly discovered a passion for the Blues.
Rather, as Environment Minister she was speaking on behalf of Chris Bishop, who was out of the debating chamber at the time.
Actually Simmonds, Brooking and indeed all of us, should take a passing interest in Auckland’s housing issues.
Although they have no immediate local impact, the speed the country as a whole progresses is dependent on the economic turbine that is Auckland.
If Auckland is listless, its citizens do not buy the food grown in the South, build with its lumber, or fly down for the weekend to drink the wine and visit the ski slopes.
If Auckland is humming, chances are so is the rest of the country.
Hence, Labour were actually going to vote for both Bills, but that did not mean that they did not intend to have some fun and annoy the government while doing so.
Bishop, opening the debate, forlornly hoped that people would not relitigate Auckland’s housing planning history and that in particular that they would ignore any previously suggested figures about just how many houses that might entail.
‘‘This idea that there were going to be 2 million homes in Auckland plonked down into the middle of wherever is not accurate, and it was never accurate,’’ he explained away.
‘‘However, it’s a lightning rod and I want to make it clear that the idea that the government will facilitate 2million homes to be built in Auckland, or that those homes would ever be built, is not accurate and was never accurate.’’
Fat chance, as Brooking very much wanted to discuss planning history and house numbers.
‘‘I want to be very clear that Labour absolutely supports more houses in Auckland,’’ she said encouragingly at the beginning of her reply, before plunging right into a rendition of The Way We Were.
She started with a pointed reminder that once upon a time there had been a bi-partisan agreement on achieving just that ... until there wasn’t.
‘‘Then there was a sniff of unhappiness from some of its Auckland-based MPs and they reneged on that bipartisanship after it had been passed into law.’’
Then she added an even more pointed reminder that once upon a time the number 2million had been bruited about — as had 1.6million, and now 1.4million.
‘‘What is it that this government wants to do? Why is it that ministers go to Cabinet meetings and ministers pluck numbers out the air and then change legislation that they’ve already changed in a very poor process, which we now are going to stand here and do all-stages urgency on because they cannot make up their minds and have proper, robust discussions at the outset and stand by their decisions?’’
And so on and so for many, many hours.
Simmonds shines
IT was a big week for Penny Simmonds, who was elevated to Cabinet as Minister for Tertiary Education and also Science, Innovation and Technology.
By Southern Say’s reckoning, Simmonds is the first Invercargill MP to make it to Cabinet since Ralph Hannan, who held the seat from 1946 to 1966.
