Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Housing Minister Megan Woods. Photos / NZME
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Housing Minister Megan Woods have gone to war.
At issue: the construction of denser housing along the route of the Government’s proposed light rail line from the city centre to the airport.
Also at issue: how to show respect to each other.
The war is being carried out by letter, although that hardly makes it less fierce. The latest broadside was fired on Thursday, but the whole thing blew up over a month ago.
That’s when the minister instructed the housing agency Kāinga Ora, in the official language of these things, to “assess Auckland Light Rail (ALR) as a potential Specified Development Project (SDP)”.
In essence, this meant that the route could be designated for housing with higher limits and more density than in other residential areas. It would also permit funding mechanisms not available to other housing projects.
It did not mean this would happen or even that it might happen in a hurry. But neither the mayor nor the council were consulted before the minister made her announcement.
Brown says he found out about the instruction, not from the minister, but from a staffer at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. He was outraged.
“This is not how you deal with the biggest city in New Zealand,” he told a council meeting on June 29. “It’s not partnership, it’s a bombing run. We should be telling them what we want.”
The mayor complained the minister’s instruction meant that “essentially a transport project is becoming a housing project”. In fact, the Government has long said a core purpose of ALR is to provide a mass or rapid transit line for massive housing growth along the route.
Brown himself seemed to concede that transport and housing are interrelated. Later in the meeting, he noted that the construction of the harbour bridge in 1959 had led to the fast expansion of suburbs on the North Shore.
Megan Tyler, the council’s head of strategy, advised the June meeting that the designation would be “a long process”. She said Kāinga Ora’s first step would be to “investigate whether the designation should occur”, and that it had until July 2024 to do this.
But the mayor was not deterred. He described Woods’ instruction as “an affront to Auckland Council that it’s done this way”, and other councillors supported this view.
“I feel this is a mugging and Aucklanders are being treated like mugs,” said Daniel Newman. His colleague Wayne Walker called it “outrageous, undemocratic and unfair”.
Christine Fletcher said it was “the equivalent of the Government dropping a nuclear bomb on Mururoa”.
Councillor Julie Fairey agreed the process was wrong and supported the mayor’s view that he and the council should be part of the planning process.
“But,” she said, “I’m not worried about the assessment and I’m not particularly worried about Kāinga Ora, having had considerable experience on my local board. They have become very community-focused. There is a lot of misinformation about the people living in Kāinga Ora housing.”
Councillor Shane Henderson agreed with her. Both of them suggested some of the complaints might be based on a fear of state house tenants, and/or simple opposition to denser housing.
Despite their concerns, the council resolved to ask the mayor to write a stiffly worded letter to the minister.
He did so on June 30, saying it was “totally unacceptable that without any consultation you have chosen to give Kainga Ora a directive that could essentially overturn Auckland Council’s planning responsibilities”.
Brown ended his letter saying, “I do not need to remind you that I was elected as Mayor of our largest city with a vast majority to ensure that Aucklanders decide what Auckland needs in the way of transport and urban form, and that your directive is exactly the sort of action that will be unacceptable to not only all of my councillors, but also to the population at large of my city.
“I look forward to being informed that this directive has been withdrawn and to meeting to discuss acceptable next steps for ALR.” He copied in the Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins.
Megan Woods replied on July 28, copying in Hipkins, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Transport Minister David Parker.
“As you know,” she wrote, “the Crown [is] due to make a final investment decision on ALR in mid-2024″. It was critical for this decision to “have as much clarity as possible” about how well ALR will be able to help in “delivering much-needed housing supply for Aucklanders”.
“While I appreciate this decision … may have come as a surprise,” she added, the Government had been clear since December 2021 that it would consider using “the tools available to SDPs” to beef up the house-building programme.
She said she and the Minister of Finance would “not be withdrawing our direction to Kāinga Ora”.
But she also said, “This direction is just the beginning of a consultative process for Kāinga Ora to work alongside Auckland Council.” The council was “anticipated” to be part of “the governance body of an SDP (should one ultimately be established)”.
Further, the direction to Kāinga Ora changed nothing in the relationship between Government and council in relation to ALR. The council was still expected to deliver a “comprehensive variation” to the existing Unitary Plan “to support the urban development outcomes critical to ALR”.
She noted that officials on both sides have been talking together and that the council “will receive regular updates and have opportunities to feed into the project assessment”.
Yesterday, at the end of a nine-hour meeting, Brown tabled Woods’ letter as a special business item. He was fuming.
Councillor Fairey attempted to clarify if he was angry at the process or the Government’s policy on denser housing. Was it Wellington telling Auckland what to do, or was it that housing development should not be fast-tracked on the light-rail route?
Brown replied, “Well, if we don’t show some response then we are just capitulating. This is a stealth bomb.”
Councillor Richard Hills, who was chairing the meeting, asked him to refrain from the bombing language.
Brown tabled a motion expressing “profound disappointment” at the minister’s letter. It asked him to write back, asking for her direction to Kāinga Ora to be withdrawn until everyone involved had agreed on the “next steps”.
It also noted the council’s commitment to “genuine collaborative partnership with central government”.
Then it declared that until the minister had “reconsidered” her position, the council would “not cooperate with ... Kāinga Ora”.
It would also “suspend all work indefinitely” on its own density plans and large-scale projects in the ALR corridor. It would advise Auckland Transport and other council agencies they should do the same and would consider stopping all density planning work throughout the city.
Several councillors urged the mayor to tone it back.
“This is tit for tat now,” said Fairey, “and I don’t think that’s helpful for developing our city. We can keep firing shots at each other or one of us needs to put down the gun and hold out a hand to move forward. I’d like that to be us.”
She added that if Kāinga Ora does take the lead role, there was an upside for the council. “They’ll pay for the planning stuff and we’ll still have a role.”
But others urged Brown to push on. Maurice Williamson said they were “not holding a gun to anyone’s head”, because they weren’t promising to take drastic action. Instead, all they were saying was, “‘If they are not prepared to withdraw, we will do this.’ That isn’t closing the door.”
In the end, Mayor Brown amended the motion: the council would not suspend its cooperation, but would “seek advice” in its intention to do so.
Brown said it was “the Cinderella solution”, a good compromise between two points of view. Councillors gently suggested he might be thinking of Goldilocks.
Councillors voted unanimously to support the mayor’s “profound disappointment” at the minister. But votes against the threat to pull out of the planning process were registered by councillors Hills, Fairey, Henderson, Angela Dalton, Alf Filipaina and Kerrin Leoni, and Edward Ashby from the Independent Māori Statutory Board.
Brown, a mayor not always been known for moderating his comments, said he had “never seen such a rude response from a minister, ever. Never.”
Megan Woods told the Herald on Friday morning, “The relationship with Auckland Council is critical to the Government and I will be meeting with Mayor Wayne Brown next week to find solutions on this matter.”
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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