What those on the right who saw her as an enemy will never understand is that she was good for New Zealand. The way a country treats its weakest citizens is how that country should be judged. She knew that and by ensuring when she could that the weak had a strong voice she made NZ better for everyone. It's a massive loss.

There have been a number of pieces on the Money Laundering issue on Rod Oram's Interest.co.nz site. It has an impact on house prices here, no question.

How unusual that the media has taken the lazy option of clinging to the Nimby vs Progress narrative. Why bother looking the complex layers of the issue when they can run with good guys and bad guys.

I think we're at cross purposes John. The Gen-0 brigade have argued that Nimbies are keeping them out of the inner city suburbs where they want to live. My point is that apartments in Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Westmere etc. won't provide them with the cheap inner-city housing they want because the developers will lean towards the "luxury" end of the market where the profit margins are bigger. It MAY mean prices in the outer suburbs come down (although I'm not convinced) but they'll still be kept out of the inner city. There are a number of things we can do to protect diversity in central Auckland, sadly none of them are part of the plan.

The fact is having apartments at the end of streets on main roads makes perfect sense. Plopping them in the middle of tiny cresents (as suggested in the out-of-scope plan) doesn’t.

I can't believe we've allowed the Nimby vs Progress narrative to distract from what is really happening, it's a land grab that will NOT help the young or the disadvantaged into central Auckland. We all agree intensification needs to happen but lets not kid ourselves that private property development will help first time home buyers into "leafy" suburbs. The ONLY thing that will do that is a massive Social Housing scheme which we know isn't going to happen. I live next to 3 state houses in Westmere. Housing NZ doesn't support the PAUP so they can build more, but so they can flog the ones they have to developers who will build million dollar apartments. My neighbours will be kicked out and the gentrification of Westmere will continue. The developers are fighting for high value land as this assures the highest return (that's their business). If the Government was serious about home ownership equality they'd introduce policy that discouraged rampant speculation (local and overseas), they'd address the issue of "ghost" houses (in the order of 20,000), they'd stop the Chinese using our Realestate market to launder dirty money (see Interest.co.nz re this), they'd build more (many more) State houses/apartments for subsidised rentals, and then we could have sensible intensification (main roads, there's no need to build apartments on tiny residential streets as per the out-of-scope plan). Of course while we bicker about old vs young, they don't have to do any of this.