Hard News: So what now?
219 Responses
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Conclusion: there has to be an effort to create permanent, meaningful jobs in the provinces before any attempt to divert migration flows away from Auckland can have any impact at all.
But job creation -- beyond shoulder-tapping their close mates -- has not exactly been a priority for the current government.
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Moz, in reply to
Yet most of those people do not love the prospect of life in a sleepy village with few of their own culture
This, even though my culture is very Christchurch-compatible except in the very brutal sense that Chch is a very small town a long way from anywhere. There are probably more diverse restaurant options in the wee suburb I live in than there are in Chch total, because it's slowly changing from 1950's Greek/Italian (they're dying of old age), to Lebanese (retiring) to Afghani/Bangla/Indian (having kids) to African (arriving) with a dash of Viet/Cambo/Lao from the 1970's and Chinese/Korean from the 1990's. But they all run/use restaurants, and react to the market (our local "Thai" restaurant is run by Lebanese using Chinese cooks. We have Halal Thai because why not).
I'd love to live in Christchurch or even Nelson, but there's just no way to have a company like I work for in Nelson, and in Christchurch it would be hard - we would have to recruit new staff from Sydney or possibly Auckland, and the struggle we have finding staff in Sydney would be much greater because we'd be filtering out anyone not willing to relocate to NZ. Lower wages in NZ isn't an argument when you're trying to bribe someone to move out of Sydney. Hiring local staff is hard when you're looking for specialised skills, you really want to be one of several employers in that field, not the only one.
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Yet most of those people do not love the prospect of life in a sleepy village with few of their own culture.
I was in Kerikeri the other day, went to Bunnings, had some lunch looked at some boats for our next big adventure. On the way back we popped into Whangaroa harbour and had a beer or two, chatted with lots of interesting people.
The odd thing that I noticed was that only one or two of the people i spoke to were not English, a few years back that would not have been the case.
So, it seems quite a few do love the prospect of life in a "sleepy village" and they are not alone. -
Sacha, in reply to
Conclusion: there has to be an effort to create permanent, meaningful jobs in the provinces before any attempt to divert migration flows away from Auckland can have any impact at all.
Agreed.
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Sacha, in reply to
it seems quite a few do love the prospect of life in a "sleepy village" and they are not alone.
So why do we need to bribe migrants?
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linger, in reply to
“Sleepy village” life may well appeal to some immigrants from England, but they’re a small minority of those coming to Auckland. Kerikeri was actually included within Statistics NZ’s figures for Auckland (region) migration, but even so, Britons accounted for just 17% of the Auckland total (compared to 27% for the rest of NZ) from 1996-2013. If you found mostly Poms north of Auckland, that is not at all typical of the Auckland immigrant population, indirectly confirming that most Auckland immigrants aren’t looking for peace and quiet. (Sacha's point about cultural minorities seeking a local critical mass, leading them to stay in larger cities, stands, too; obviously, it's less relevant for Anglophone immigrants.)
I’d guess they were also atypical in terms of age: Auckland immigrants skew younger than those for other regions.
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There are probably more diverse restaurant options in the wee suburb I live in than there are in Chch total,
Have you not been back since varsity Moz? There's plenty of diversity in food in Christchurch now (although I'd rather the Vietnamese place round the corner was still the Dutch bakers I loved).
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Le Spinoff has a piece including actual video of the meeting - judge the crowd for yourself. Warning: highly biased story.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Let me embed Hayden Donnell's highly amusing report for you:
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* oops, I was wrong on one detail: while "Auckland region" is more extensive than the urban area, Kerikeri was included in the Northland region figures.
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Recent actions are helping the PM and cabinet pin housing problems on council, not themselves.
"The brutal reality is that Auckland needs to accommodate a lot more people. So [councillors] are going to have to address those issues. How they do it, I don't know.
"If they can't find a solution, would the Government do something? Well, technically. But I would prefer that the council found a way through its own problems."
Thanks a bunch, numpties.
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Marc C, in reply to
Yes, while there rests a lot of responsibility with Council, whose failings have become apparent, and whose idea of planning and process have also been shown (lacking), there lies one other MAIN responsible party in this, which continues to wash its hands in innocence.
Carrying on with the laissez faire approach, not using available immigration policy measures to adjust the inflow of new migrants, and especially leaving most regions to fend for themselves, with no significant planning, development and consultation, that is like a teen driver on steroids left in charge of a vehicle, while swinging a beer in one hand, and having the other one on an out of control steering wheel when speeding.
I wish that rather than just hammering on using generational issues and differences, on whether it makes sense to zone for more this or that residential development here in Auckland, more people should put their anger to the ones in charge in Wellington, just for a change. They even plan to sell thousands of state homes and land, to leave it up to developers and over-burdened, also limited finance holding “community housing” agencies to provide supposedly "social" and “affordable housing”, which will never bring the results under the given conditions we have.
We have a careless, irresponsible and even incompetent central government, that only steps in when it comes to vested business interests and looking after their better off voting mates, and that does not look at the long term future of the country and its people. Attack the government, thanks.
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Council releases update on process.
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Marc C, in reply to
From the IHP website – direct PDF link:
Panel’s response:
https://hearings.aupihp.govt.nz/online-services/new/files/GlkDeGat7zzO2rgdsTD8glD1qPa9LM2pn7OLmD3Sg1Gl
As I suggested in an earlier comment, from the Panel’s point of view it will be business as usual, and they will proceed with the hearing, leaving it to Council representatives to perhaps act within new limitations to their authority, as instructions from the relevant Committee or Governing Body may require. -
Sacha, in reply to
May be business as usual for the panel, but certainly not for council witnesses. The last paragraph of the Judge's response is crucial:
The presentation of evidence by persons who appear as experts must be in accordance with the Code of Conduct for Expert Witnesses. It is essential that a person giving expert evidence does so on an independent basis, and not affected by the position of the submitter calling that witness.
In other words, council's expert witnesses can not ignore the updated evidence that councillors threw out. The panel is not allowing council any leeway.
According to para 15 (c) of Council's memo to the panel:
Council witnesses (except for a small number who are not affected by Council's change in position) msay be placed in an untenable position where they are not able to comply with their obligations under the Code of Conduct for Expert Witnesses and support the Council's Resolution.
Because Council defined so many of their changes as out of scope, they have little left to talk about.
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Marc C, in reply to
I read both memos, there are some areas that need more legal clarifications. Council admit themselves, they need to look into this more closely and get back to the Panel. We got a lot of disaster talk from Council's leading planners before, I do not give every word they say all that much weight, also having followed the hearing, where they tended to change tune on an ongoing basis.
And besides of that, they have only themselves to blame, for trying to up-zone whole streets, where spot zoning by other submitters may only have justified a fraction of their harmonisation efforts to rezone.
So that is the price they pay, for being too bold in that regard. They should have done their homework before notifying a plan, e.g. capacity and feasible capacity modeling and so forth. Why did all that arise as an issue, the perceived lack of capacity, and why did this have to be done towards the end of the hearing process.
Council stuffed up, so now the can sob, while they try tidying up the mess.
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Sacha, in reply to
there are some areas that need more legal clarifications. Council admit themselves, they need to look into this more closely and get back to the Panel.
Council only has until tomorrow before they are due to give evidence.
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Ak 2040 spurn new peace-making efforts by Council. Article also shows the sort of image Mr Burton has been using to scare the public.
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Zach Bagnall, in reply to
Looks pretty good to me!
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Ak 2040 spurn new peace-making efforts by Council. Article also shows the sort of image Mr Burton has been using to scare the public.
Burton seems determined to burn everything to the ground.
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Sacha, in reply to
I've seen many other designs that appear more sensitive to their surroundings.
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Marc C, in reply to
Come on, that is just plain silly. Richard Burton knows what is being planned, he was one of the select few that sat in meetings with Council and with developers, Housing NZ and a few others, to agree on changes to development controls and density rules for MHU and MHS zones, and more. Some do not agree with this extra input, and these extra agreements, besides of mediation, which was also run by mostly only the major players, and almost NO ordinary residents and home owners.
Re that picture in the Herald, that is the kind of glossy picture stuff that Council spreads around, making people believe that nothing higher and worse will be built. It is highly misleading, as during the hearing Council agreed with developers and a few others to increase permitted storey heights for apartment buildings from 4 to 6 to 5 to 7, and in some cases they may be higher, that is in THAB zones and MHU zones. Council never shows pictures of apartment buildings higher than three storeys, I notice. It is mostly only three storeys maximum, and I am struggling to remember the few pictures with four storeys.
So how honest are Council then, when “informing” the public?
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Marc C, in reply to
That document found under the link in my last comment is OUT OF DATE, by the way, as there is upon past hearings now agreement between Council and some key large submitters on there being NO minimum dwelling mix, and for in general a minimum dwelling size of 30 square metres for all zones. Few keep up with what changes have been made, the notified plan looks very different to what Council has now proposed and pushed through (with developer and a few other submitters that agreed on most). This has nothing to do with this latest stoush re out of scope zoning, and was already ticked off in past hearings.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Burton seems determined to burn everything to the ground.
Did we expect anything less from a prominent spokesman for #GenerationRentier? For those of us discussing the issue on Twitter, I've come up with the perfect hash tag.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Le Spinoff has a piece including actual video of the meeting - judge the crowd for yourself.
Fuck me! That appears to be the Council's own webcast feed. And those mics are designed to be super sensitive to the person right in front of it while trying to minimise extraneous noise. Definitely yelling and shouting went on, and a lot of it. The only people "discrediting" themselves are the people who continue to say it didn't happen.
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