A guest post on Kiwiblog by Nick Kearney:
Wayne Brown and John Glover are right, and it’s worth saying so plainly.
Their joint letter to Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop, warning that fast-tracked greenfield housing is being forced into places without the roads, water and wastewater capacity to support it, isn’t mayoral posturing. It’s the correct diagnosis of a genuine flaw in the fast-track legislation.
Chris Bishop’s proposed fix, letting councils update development contributions after a fast-track application is lodged, is a reasonable solution to a real problem. Nevertheless, it is a proposed solution by the government to a problem created by the government.
Watercare telling the Delmore panel it can’t connect water services near Ōrewa until 2050 is exactly the kind of problem the fast-track legislation created: It allows virtually no cross-checks and balances during the consent process.
New Zealand has a habit of acting in this manner.
We have issues that appear to be unresolvable through current legislative frameworks, and so the counter reaction is to swing the balance to the extreme in the other direction.
There is a project much closer to my home that deserves exactly the same scrutiny the mayors are demanding of fast-track housing: Ngā Wairau, and specifically the AF Thomas Park works at the heart of it.
This project takes the most used public golf facility in the country, nestled on ~42 hectares of public reserve and conservation land, and converts almost half of it into a wetland and flood detention basin.
All mature trees on the site will come down to make way for it.
The region, indeed the country, will lose accessible and affordable public golf probably forever, and certainly for somewhere beyond 10 years counting from today.
Costs are already moving in one direction, and so is the expected timeframe for the completion of the works.
Anyone who has watched an Auckland Council infrastructure project over recent years will know which way these numbers tend to move once diggers are on site.
The government is contributing 62% of the Stage 1 costs, estimated to be $112 million (including consent work). We all know that Crown budgets are also skin-tight.
The part that should trouble ratepayers most, though, is what the project actually buys them. Or should I say, what Council has told ratepayers it will buy them.
The Council’s own website proclaims that work in the Wairau commercial area “…are not included in the Stage 1 and 2 project scope due to the significant costs associated and ineligibility for the Crown funding.”
In other words, the commercial heart of Wairau Valley, the businesses the catchment is named after, gets none, or very little, of the flood protection this project is being sold on.
It is believed that of the 216 commercial properties affected by the terrible events of January 2023, 211 receive no benefit from the golf course project.
Further, a meaningful share of the “homes protected” figure that does get quoted includes Milford properties. Yet, of the 165 homes affected by the events of early 2023, in the surrounding area, 133 of them have been bought by council under the Category 3 scheme, with most of those being in Milford. Those houses aren’t being protected at all from the flood detention work proposed at AF Thomas Park. They’re already removed from the risk equation, because council itself already has paid to take them out of it.
That is not a small or minor technicality. It is the same failure the mayors are describing in their letter to Bishop – a project whose costs and benefits were never properly tested against each other, running ahead on momentum rather than analysis. That is what the fast-track legislation does.
The difference is that when a fast-track developer does it, council can at least point the finger at Wellington. When council does it to its own public reserve, its own regional public asset and golf course, and its own ratepayers, there is nobody else to blame.
None of this is an argument against fixing Wairau’s flood risk, or the flood risk of properties downstream. The events of January 2023 were real, and the catchment needs a genuine answer.
But a genuine answer starts with an honest benefit-cost case, published in full, that says clearly who is protected and who isn’t.
It means being straight with North Shore residents about how many years they lose their park, and their golf course, how the public conservation land will be remediated, and when and who pays for it, how the groundwater drawdown effect will affect local properties, and most pressingly whether the benefits outweighs the cost. The cost must include the net present value of the golf course over a thirty-year lease term, estimated to be in excess of $70 million dollars.
It is imperative these questions are answered now, and not leaving them “to be determined” for any fast-track consenting process, that is now showing to be very flawed.
Brown and Glover want Wellington to make sure infrastructure spending is properly costed before the bulldozers arrive. Simon Watts, the local government minister, climate change minister and local member of parliament, asked the same question of councils some weeks ago.
Ratepayers on the North Shore and throughout Auckland, and taxpayers (because they are funding 62% of the works) are entitled to ask both the government and the Auckland Council for exactly the same things, before all trees at AF Thomas Park come down; the wildlife decimated; the golf course disappears for however many years; and the conservation land becomes a barren wasteland.
Growth paying its way is the right principle.
It shouldn’t only apply to other people’s projects.
Disclosure: Nick is a lawyer practicing in Auckland and is the lawyer representing the leaseholders of Takapuna Golf Course.
Chris Bishop’s proposed fix, letting councils update development contributions after a fast-track application is lodged, is a reasonable solution to a real problem. Nevertheless, it is a proposed solution by the government to a problem created by the government.
Watercare telling the Delmore panel it can’t connect water services near Ōrewa until 2050 is exactly the kind of problem the fast-track legislation created: It allows virtually no cross-checks and balances during the consent process.
New Zealand has a habit of acting in this manner.
We have issues that appear to be unresolvable through current legislative frameworks, and so the counter reaction is to swing the balance to the extreme in the other direction.
There is a project much closer to my home that deserves exactly the same scrutiny the mayors are demanding of fast-track housing: Ngā Wairau, and specifically the AF Thomas Park works at the heart of it.
This project takes the most used public golf facility in the country, nestled on ~42 hectares of public reserve and conservation land, and converts almost half of it into a wetland and flood detention basin.
All mature trees on the site will come down to make way for it.
The region, indeed the country, will lose accessible and affordable public golf probably forever, and certainly for somewhere beyond 10 years counting from today.
Costs are already moving in one direction, and so is the expected timeframe for the completion of the works.
Anyone who has watched an Auckland Council infrastructure project over recent years will know which way these numbers tend to move once diggers are on site.
The government is contributing 62% of the Stage 1 costs, estimated to be $112 million (including consent work). We all know that Crown budgets are also skin-tight.
The part that should trouble ratepayers most, though, is what the project actually buys them. Or should I say, what Council has told ratepayers it will buy them.
The Council’s own website proclaims that work in the Wairau commercial area “…are not included in the Stage 1 and 2 project scope due to the significant costs associated and ineligibility for the Crown funding.”
In other words, the commercial heart of Wairau Valley, the businesses the catchment is named after, gets none, or very little, of the flood protection this project is being sold on.
It is believed that of the 216 commercial properties affected by the terrible events of January 2023, 211 receive no benefit from the golf course project.
Further, a meaningful share of the “homes protected” figure that does get quoted includes Milford properties. Yet, of the 165 homes affected by the events of early 2023, in the surrounding area, 133 of them have been bought by council under the Category 3 scheme, with most of those being in Milford. Those houses aren’t being protected at all from the flood detention work proposed at AF Thomas Park. They’re already removed from the risk equation, because council itself already has paid to take them out of it.
That is not a small or minor technicality. It is the same failure the mayors are describing in their letter to Bishop – a project whose costs and benefits were never properly tested against each other, running ahead on momentum rather than analysis. That is what the fast-track legislation does.
The difference is that when a fast-track developer does it, council can at least point the finger at Wellington. When council does it to its own public reserve, its own regional public asset and golf course, and its own ratepayers, there is nobody else to blame.
None of this is an argument against fixing Wairau’s flood risk, or the flood risk of properties downstream. The events of January 2023 were real, and the catchment needs a genuine answer.
But a genuine answer starts with an honest benefit-cost case, published in full, that says clearly who is protected and who isn’t.
It means being straight with North Shore residents about how many years they lose their park, and their golf course, how the public conservation land will be remediated, and when and who pays for it, how the groundwater drawdown effect will affect local properties, and most pressingly whether the benefits outweighs the cost. The cost must include the net present value of the golf course over a thirty-year lease term, estimated to be in excess of $70 million dollars.
It is imperative these questions are answered now, and not leaving them “to be determined” for any fast-track consenting process, that is now showing to be very flawed.
Brown and Glover want Wellington to make sure infrastructure spending is properly costed before the bulldozers arrive. Simon Watts, the local government minister, climate change minister and local member of parliament, asked the same question of councils some weeks ago.
Ratepayers on the North Shore and throughout Auckland, and taxpayers (because they are funding 62% of the works) are entitled to ask both the government and the Auckland Council for exactly the same things, before all trees at AF Thomas Park come down; the wildlife decimated; the golf course disappears for however many years; and the conservation land becomes a barren wasteland.
Growth paying its way is the right principle.
It shouldn’t only apply to other people’s projects.
Disclosure: Nick is a lawyer practicing in Auckland and is the lawyer representing the leaseholders of Takapuna Golf Course.
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