Planned ‘biodiversity frameworks’ for local councils will serve as yet another regulatory hurdle to affordable housing, warns the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Requiring local councils to create a complex patchwork of new rules and processes surrounding land use is likely to drive up the cost of building homes, or anything else for that matter. If a landowner isn’t allowed to cut down a tree on their property, that will reinforce the artificial land shortage that drives the housing shortage.”

“Even if a landowner is ultimately given building permission, the time and cost of navigating yet another consent process will ultimately be passed on to the home buyer or renter.”

“The same applies to agriculture. Farmers tend to dread being told their land has been deemed an ‘outstanding natural landscape’ under the RMA. The last thing farmers need is to surrender more even more power to local authorities and iwi groups.”

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