“The Government’s current dispute with councils regarding the Urban Development Bill is the result of Phil Twyford’s failure to cut red tape on a broader basis,” says New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke.

“In Opposition, Phil Twyford said that National’s Special Housing Areas were a flop. But now he’s continuing exactly the same approach of singling out individual projects for special treatment, rather than making it easier to build everywhere.”

“Selective exemptions from council rules are, in effect, a form of central planning that will see unnatural densities of development in areas chosen on the basis of politics, not need.”

“If regulatory taxes such as the Resource Management Act were dialed back, allowing the private sector to close the housing supply gap across New Zealand, large-scale Housing NZ projects wouldn’t be needed in the first place.”

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