Neil Holdom: New Plymouth mayor on Minister Chris Bishop's plan to take power away from local authorities

New Plymouth's mayor is backing Government changes to take away power from local authorities. 

Housing Minister Chris Bishop says new regulation in the Resource Management Act would stop councils stalling housing developments. 

It would let him override councils on the grounds of their decisions negatively impacting economic growth. 

Mayor Neil Holdom says as it is, elected officials have little input in the development of district plans. 

"These things suck in millions of dollars, they're basically written by an elite bureaucracy of planners - and they've tied New Zealand up in knots."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's twenty four away from six now. On the subject
of councils, the Housing Minister Chris Bishop, as I told
you earlier, is giving himself new powers basically to change
local council plans by overriding councils. Cabinet has agreed that
they will change the RMA to let them get rid
of any provision in a local council plan that will
negatively affect economic growth, employment or development. Neil Holdham is

(00:21):
the mayor of New Plymouth and with us now, hey.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Neil get a head the Hey you doing well?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Thank you? Do you like this or no?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah? I just want to acknowledge Minister Bishop for listening.
I went and saw him shortly after the coalition government
formed and articulated our frustration with the planning process. The
reality is that elected council members have very little to
no involvement in the development of district plans. These things

(00:49):
suck in millions of dollars there. They're basically written by
a kind of elite bureaucracy of planners and you know,
we have had very limited influence on them, and they've
tied New Zealand up in knots. They've delayed housing essentially
the way the process of planning works. I mean, your
post district council spent about eight years developing and finalizing

(01:13):
a district plan. And the processes you bring in commissioners,
you pay them huge amounts of money. They sit there
and run the process for you, and at the end
of it you have two choices. You either yes or no.
There's no no ability to change it. If you change it,
you're exposed to court action, millions of dollars down the drain.

(01:33):
And actually we've ended up with a district plan that
you know, is full of things that are just difficult, annoying,
and it just panders to a kind of elite group
of planners and lawyers that bogs New Zealand down. And
you know, it's these layers of bureaucracy and rules are
cutting down our ability to do stuff. We've got limited

(01:54):
capital and it's been eroded by these processes and compliance
with you know, with the best intentions, we've just buried ourselves.
Minister Bishop has listened and he's basically come up with,
you know, with it, saying it's going to take a
couple of years to fix this stuff. But in the
interim we're just going to pull the cork out of
the bottle, and I think good on.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
The we need to change the way that we do it.
I mean, rather than going through that whole kafuffle that
you just explained, shouldn't we do something like have one
giant plan for the country that can be tweaked if
you need to tweak it for your area or something
like that, rather than having every single council go through
this for so many years.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Look, I think that regional plans instead of you know
where I am there. You know there's three district councils
and a regional council and you know regional plans because look,
Auckland is different from Tuttanaki is different from Southland. So
I think there we don't need whatever it is seventy something.
I think you know a dozen or fourteen across New Zealand,

(02:53):
but with some common threads. I think that there should
be some elements of plans that are the same across
the whole of New Zealand. And I think Minister Bishop
has listened. He's trying to simplify these things because I mean,
I'll go back to it's this concept of layering rules
and regulations. I think it's really good that we think
about the environment. And if you think about the first

(03:13):
rules that that sort of came in and said, hey, look,
you know you don't necessarily want to put a chuck
shed in the middle of town by you know, in
a in a suburb, that sort of thing. But what's
happened is we've just piled on regulations and we never
took any off. And now you know when you when
you go to stick a spare room on the back

(03:34):
of your house and then you find you've got to
spend five grand to get a planet to look at it,
and then they go, oh, actually, i'm not sure about
your fire alarm system. Well let's get an independent consultant
in there to do a thing, and you can pay
for that. And then they go, actually, I'm not sure
that that that I believe that things, so I'll get
my own one and then I'll charge you for that.

(03:55):
And we just you know, a year later and you're
twenty grand in the hull and all you wanted to
do was chuck a spear room on the back. May
you speak my language?

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I love it, Thank you mate, Really appreciate your
insight there. Neil Holdham new Plymouth mayor. For more from
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