Maurice Williamson: Auckland City Councillor on the vote to adopt a new housing development plan

Auckland Council is moving to allocate up to two million new homes in the coming decades. 

The council's Policy and Planning Committee voted 18-5 to pass the plan, which will see more housing near transport hubs and less in natural hazard zones.  

Councillor Maurice Williamson has compared it as a choice between a firing squad and lethal injection. 

He told Mike Hosking he’s a fan of intensifying along rail corridors and busways, but it doesn't make sense to go into suburban streets and force the building of “ghastly pieces of junk” when they aren’t needed. 

Williamson says there needed to be more consultation and negotiation around what the upper figure of builds would be. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Auckland Council voted to adopt the so called one
twenty plan yesterday. This intensification simple terms high rises focused
around public transport, replaces the idea of three three story
houses on a basic plot of land. Anyway, Morris Williams
and Auckland councilor is with us Morris morning, good morning,
eighteen to five? Good clear result was it tents?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
No, Well, it actually wasn't even eighteen to five because
the key clause Clause A, which was to get rid
of the old plan Chain seventy eight, which had all
the mdrs rubbish in it, that was pretty much unanimous.
The problem was we were being offered two choices. One
was ghastly and one was not quite so ghastly. And
it's been driven by the problem of the government or

(00:39):
insisting on planning to two million houses. Now they openly
say that, well, first of all, you've got to find
ou where they come with that number. And it turns
out if you took every plot of land and orcland
and multiplied by the three by three that is three
dwelling at three buildings with three stories on it, you'd
get to the two million. Now they're saying for the
next thirty year is we're going to need about another

(01:01):
two hundred and forty one thousand homes in Auckland turn
forty one thousand, and yet the plan is to build
a two million. Why is the two million important? The
higher you set that number, the more you drive intensification
right down into the suburbs. I'm a big fan of
building intensely along the rail corridors and the busways and

(01:21):
even things like the packering a highway and round the
town centers. All of that stuff I'm fine with. But
to go into sort of suburban streets and force one
ghastly piece of junk with no car parks, everyone's parking
in the street and so on, devalue everyone else's property
when it's not needed, didn't make sense. And I just
the government's lost the plot on it.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
In my dear Yeah, And is there a resentment within
the council that you've been told what to do from Wellington?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
There has to be, because you know, this should have
been a lot more of consultation, but a lot more
of negotiating around what that upper figure would be. If
we were working to a one point five million, you'd
still get all of what we're looking for in terms
of the rail corridors and around the rail stations and
so on, which I think is all perfectly sensible. But
you'd get rid of all of the three story three

(02:08):
dwellings on a parcel of land because it wouldn't be
necessary if you were working to a more realistic upper
limit the government. Still, i'd love you one day when
you've got a minister and say, how did you come
up with a two million? Where did that come?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, I'll ask Bishop next time he's on it's bushop
the menis is he the person that had the manage?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
If he could give you a reasonable answer for where
the two million come from, I'd be really surprised because
I can't get one from anyone.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
All right, So now we go to consultation and that
takes I mean, I think I'll be retired by the
time anything actually gets built. But there you go. Marris
Williamson out of the Auckland Council this morning.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
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