Politics
In new episodes of life imitating art, the Government sends in the giants.
Game of Thrones has a gentle giant named Hodor; the game of politics now has a giant of as-yetuncertain temperament called Huda. For the next little while we’ll be playing “spot the difference”. Hodor is a simple-minded hulk, but one who, through heft and muscle, can make himself tremendously useful if wisely and benevolently directed. Huda, the Housing and Urban Development Authority, unless wisely and benevolently directed – remembering we’re talking by politicians here – could become an absolute tyrant. Arguably, if there’s no tyranny, Huda won’t be doing its job. If this new political fantasy creation were given a costume, it would include a titanium breastplate and a spiked ball on a chain.
The new agency has been designed as a sort of morphing monolith, as much out of political desperation as calculation. Housing shortages in many districts have become so critical and costs so high that what was once a temptation to blast local planning and resource management rules out of the way has become a positive duty. Mayors are still talking hopefully about Huda operating collaboratively and consultatively, but the inevitability is it’ll be more like, “Fe fi fo fum/ Got my ’dozer, here I come.”
The authority will have the power to override local-body restrictions wherever the Government deems a timely development necessary. Any hopes it would be used only for new suburbs “somewhere out there” have been dashed. Huda will have free range, including within well-established urban areas.
Is this an abrogation of local democracy? Tick. Will it restrict or even squash the ability of locals whose amenity or asset values are harmed to stop or modify a develop- ment? Tick. Does it relocate a fair chunk of power from local government to central for an indefinite number of years? Double tick.
BUBBLING AWAY
Will it work? Well, it will build infrastructure and houses, which although not being strictly within the political definition of “affordable”, will, in time, help ease the supply side of the housing bubble. The funding will take place off local bodies’ straining books, for which they should be thankful, because it means less rating pressure and more freedom to spend on other things.
The housing will probably come with a special supra-rate impost, estimated at $1000 a year, to repay the infrastructure cost. Unless unforeseen snags emerge, it seems workable. It’s beyond debate that the country needs more housing, and the private sector has been unable to step up. There’s a strong argument for the state to get things rolling. Private construction participants in Huda will hardly be out of pocket, but there’s no creeping privatisation of infrastructure included. The chief political risk of Huda is local disruption and usurpation of rights – but made worse by the widespread impression that at least it’s in aid of housing the poor. It isn’t. The Government let KiwiBuild, now part of Huda, get mashed in with its rhetoric on homelessness. That confusion will endure. Huda will indirectly help by reducing housing and rental pressure over time. But we’re in for a saga of concrete and steel, skirmishes and conquests over many seasons before its net contribution can be assessed. We may rue the urban sprawl and the suburban rat runs it could end up creating.
A change of Government could truncate its rampage. But binding contracts to complete any builds undertaken will prolong its life, so whatever happens in politics, this giant will bestride the land for quite some time.
When Huda is considered alongside the announcement last week of the Government’s freshwater plans, the local government sector might reasonably start to feel like Game of Thrones’ much-intruded-upon Wildlings. Councils are supposed to be sovereign domains, free of the yoke of
Councils may reasonably start to feel like Game of Thrones’ much-intrudedupon Wildlings.
Kingdom. But the old “One Ring To Rule Them All” riff keeps repeating. Resource management, urban boundaries, Huda, and now water management are being progressively prised out of local control.
SMELLS LIKE AMALGAMATION
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta chose the enchanting venue of the Māngere sewage works to announce consultation – which usually means “consultation” – on a new National Freshwater Standard, price tag $2 billion. The Government calls this policy area, harnessing management of drinking water, waste water and storm water, the Three Waters, which sounds so fantasy-genre, it’s a wonder there isn’t a logo complete with naiads.
The less romantic undertone is that local government has shown, not least by a mass-poisoning in Hawke’s Bay, that it’s unable to manage one water, let alone three, reliably.
Mahuta has asked them nicely for more joinedup water management, but it was code for war that, at Māngere, she repeatedly used the “Voldemort” word: amalgamation.
As it’s clear councils can’t scrape up $2 billion extra from rates, she asked them to find it through amalgamation-wrought efficiencies. She said the Government “doesn’t have an amalgamation agenda”, but the A-word is like battery acid to the very gut of local government.
Trying to herd or force councils into amalgamation would make Brexit seem like a vicar’s tea party. Rather than pick that fight, Mahuta’s intent seems to be to start gently massaging local government towards accepting some sort of centralisation of water management. She might have said, “If you can’t do it among yourselves, we’ll have to do it – not you, necessarily, but for you.”
Though the councils would experience centralised water management as a shattering loss of territory and agency, it could prove more effective and a great deal fairer. The Havelock North campylobacter debacle showed how complicated it is for local and
to regional councils to collaborate over complex and trouble-prone water processes. Water comes from, through and to all manner of places, for which responsibilities can get horribly confused. Its management is punishingly expensive for small councils, and provincial/rural ones with big territories but thin rating bases.
This can only end without a political turf fight if the Government frames centralised management as a partnership, but sets and runs all the rules.
Huda will be busy smiting landscapes with “affordable” homes, but we might eventually see its twin giant, Naiad: the National Authority for Innovative Aquiferous Development. Or something.
Aren’t we lucky they have professional acronymists for this sort of thing? Given some of the personalities involved, we might have ended up with a Housing and Urban Building, Redevelopment and Infrastructure Service.
Trying to herd or force councils into amalgamation would make Brexit seem like a vicar’s tea party.