Month: November 2023

 

Writing regulations on how to write regulations

Returning Effective Power to the Citizenry

Something has gone terribly wrong in New Zealand. The practical Kiwi-can-do attitude that got things done seems to be dying. Getting anything done has become encumbered to the point where the social fabric is breaking down. As one examines what’s changed, it becomes clear it is the culture of government. Where once the elected representatives represented their constituents, walls have been built between the people and the system that governs.

The balance of power is skewed toward the ministries and the PM and Cabinet, where the democratic principle of elected officials voting their electorate is lost. To restore the balance of power, rules on voting instruction need to be changed, and the electorate MP’s and Ministers need their own staff of well-informed researchers to give them an independent assessment of the information provided (or not) by the Ministries and government agencies to the MPs and Ministers.

End party whip telling Electorate MPs how to vote

 

Change: Prohibit party line voting by Electorate MP’s; only permit party votes by List MPs

Why: As demonstrated by the first MMP government where one party held majority power, the PM and an inner circle of senior MP’s undermined the fundamental principles of democracy. The voters elect electorate representatives to speak for them, not for a political party. When they give a party vote, they are supporting the party platform.

What this policy will do: It limits the power of the party whips. The electorate MP’s will take their direction from their electorate, not the party. As members of a party, electorate MP’s can be expected to have a particular affiliation, but as representatives of the people, they cannot be told how to vote by the party.

Independent MP Researchers

 

Change: Fund three Office of MP researchers for each electorate and ministerial office

Why: To become an electorate MP one must win a vote of the people. To become a list MP, one must rise through the party ranks. Neither requires skills in understanding what law and rule making is about, and too many MP’s find they rely on the government agencies – the ministries – for advice. Unfortunately, such agencies have their own internal interests that are not necessarily aligned with the public interest. For MPs to remain informed, they require independent advice under their sole control. Not control as a party, but for each electorate or ministry.

What this policy will do: Each electorate and ministry is funded to employ three law & rule researchers. These researchers would have no political alignment, and would generally be expected to be inherited by the subsequent electorate MP or Minister, regardless of party, although they would serve at the pleasure of said MP and tender their resignation at each election. Their job is to learn and inform their MP as to the detailed workings of the government agencies that impact MP their role (electoral district or Ministry) independent of the information supplied directly by the agency. In effect, the researchers become a form of checks and balances with full right of enquiry into any matter within the Executive branch of government – with no impediments of privacy, state secret (with some limits on overseas-intelligence information) or commercial sensitivity.

Citizen Advocate Services for Electorate MP’s

 

Change: Each electorate MP has 3 funded citizen-services staffers with right of enquiry into any agency

Why: Accountability has broken down. Government agencies use privacy as a shield to avoid accountability. They limit contact with the public to telephone numbers with long holding time, answered by uninformed staffers reading from the same web pages available to the public. Decision-making is anonymous and unaccountable.

What this policy will do: Citizen Advocate Services (CAS) would fund three “fair go” type staffers to cut through the agency barriers. One of the staffers should be a practicing lawyer, qualified to bring legal action to require agency compliance without delay. CAS would have full enquiry authority, not put off by claims of privacy, commercial sensitivity or other barriers. Agency personnel or contractors who obfuscate or obstruct would be subject to negative reports on their personnel file that would be included in promotion, demotion or termination reviews.

The Shield of Privacy and Commercial Sensitivity

Increasingly, accountability requests for information directed to central and local government agencies are deflected with claims of privacy and commercial sensitivity. While government officials have a personal right to not become the subject of public scrutiny, their roles should not be able to use privacy to avoid accountability for their action or inaction), errors and omissions, misuse and abuse of their powers.

Further, in contracts with the private sector, too often claims of commercial sensitivity are used as shields to block legitimate public criticism. In contrast, in many local governments in the United States for example, private sector tenders for government contracts – including sales presentations – are open to the public and often read/attended by competing vendors. The presenting vendor hates it, but the upshot is their competition improving their product or service to win the next contract, thus the people get more bang for their buck. Everyone adjusts to the new open-reality, and quality of life improves for all as a result.

NZ’s laws which obscure public transparency must be replaced to ensure the public knows what its public servants are doing behind closed doors.

Drastically cut privacy & commercial sensitivity

 

Change: Open almost all government functions to public view, available without censorship, omission or obfuscation – and do so using government web pages open to everyone.

Why: Transparency is uncomfortable for anyone except the most outstanding performers. But discomfort is what brings about improvement. A transparent government becomes the focus of what is called crowd-sourcing, where private citizens become unpaid researchers focusing on inefficiency, waste or even wilful corruption. They do for free what media used to do when advertising in newspapers supported independent investigative journalists.

What this policy will do: The privacy laws will be amended to greatly restrict invoking them in public matters. Further, penalties for obfuscation, obstruction or delay will become personnel offenses that go on the personnel file and may result in penalties, demotion or dismissal. Privacy may protect a person’s name, where it is clear they may be unfairly targeted, but never their office. Most tenders and contracts with the private sector will be published online and all presentations captured in video and posted online. Government accounting will be published online, down to the transaction level, where a claim of privacy will require the same legal process as procuring a search warrant – permission of the court.

Regulation and Associated Costs

The cost of compliance with laws and regulations is becoming onerous; to the point where it is polarising NZ into a comfortable class who dislikes the cost of compliance but can afford it, and a struggling class who finds they are locked out of an adequate standard of living due to the excessive rules and regulations.

Tax versus User Pays

Problem: In democracies, people pay tax because they value certain services that benefit the public good. However, over time, the State begins to see taxes as its right, as the obligation of the people without accountability for how well those taxes are invested in the public good. More recently, the neo-liberal concept of User Pays appeals to elected officials because it takes some public services off the books.

The checks and balances of elected officials protecting the people’s money is lost as User Pays uses divide and conquer tactics where individuals face demands rather than the taxpayers as a whole. User Pays creates a monopoly lacking any effective checks on agency dictates.

Demands for fees, charges, contributions and levies are passed on to individuals, and in projects with fixed budgets, the government cut comes first, meaning the money needed for the applicant’s project is reduced, or in many cases, those costs are passed on to the final customer in the form of higher prices where it becomes a de facto tax. This has now  become such a problem that public interest is damaged. For example, affordable housing has been regulated to the point where housing is no longer affordable by 90% of prospective first home buyers and 77% of Kiwis agree home ownership in New Zealand is financially out of reach.

Change: Significantly cut back on User Pays as a revenue source for central and local government. User pays fees must be clearly shown to benefit the applicant. 

This change is proposed as part of the Citizen Advocate Services (CAS) described above. On its own initiative, or through citizen-request, CAS may demand a fiscal impact report of any User Pays. CAS may demand a change to the charge (including requirements for private consultants)  to  require the public benefit is paid by the taxpayer through agency funding.  Fiscal impact includes not only charges by the agency and requirements for costly consultants, but also the cost of time and the cost of distracting the people from their work. Time and stress is as much a “tax” as fees, charges, levies, fines and 3rd party charges.

What this policy will do: On a real-time basis as the people encounter regulatory costs that are alleged to benefit the pecuniary interest of the person (user pays) but the person feels part or all of the benefit is in the public interest, said person may complain to any MP’s CAS (typically their electorate MP or the respective minister), and the CAS must investigate, and if it finds the complaint to have merit, to order the costs be properly apportioned. The agency may appeal the decision to the district or high court, but the respondent will be the office of the MP, not the complainant.

Redefine how public risk is covered

 

Problem: One of the adverse effects of the leaking home crisis was the determination that as the sole remaining party, under the principle of joint and several liability, territorial authorities were found to be liable for billions of dollars in damages caused by rotting buildings. In response, local governments radically increased the cost of building consents, demanding extreme detail with every risk covered by consultant reports.

This especially is the case where the agency (including local government) perceives a liability risk in making a decision. To reduce their risk, they require consultant documentation that is paid by the applicant. With no cost control, these fees, charges, contributions and levies are passed on to the public, where it becomes a de facto tax. This has now  become such a problem that public interest is damaged. For example, affordable housing has been regulated to the point where housing is no longer affordable by 90% of prospective first home buyers and 77% of Kiwis agree home ownership in New Zealand is financially out of reach.

Change: Significantly cut back on User Pays as a revenue source for central and local government. User pays fees must be clearly shown to benefit the applicant. 

This change is proposed as part of the Citizen Advocate Services (CAS) described above. On its own initiative, or through citizen-request, CAS may demand a fiscal impact report of any User Pays. CAS may demand a change to the charge (including requirements for private consultants)  to  require the public benefit is paid by the taxpayer through agency funding.  Fiscal impact includes not only charges by the agency and requirements for costly consultants, but also the cost of time and the cost of distracting the people from their work. Time and stress is as much a “tax” as fees, charges, levies, fines and 3rd party charges.

What this policy will do: On a real-time basis as the people encounter regulatory costs that are alleged to benefit the pecuniary interest of the person (user pays) but the person feels part or all of the benefit is in the public interest, said person may complain to any MP’s CAS (typically their electorate MP or the respective minister), and the CAS must investigate, and if it finds the complaint to have merit, to order the costs be properly apportioned.

Fiscal Impact of Regulation

 

Problem: Regulation is out of control. Rules are made in Wellington with no consideration of the cost, time and hassle that accompany them. The feedback loops that would make regulators aware – if they cared – do not exist. Consultation rarely reaches, must less listens to, the ordinary person impacted by proposed rules. The upshot is making life unaffordable for the majority of Kiwis.

Root causes: At one time, government presumed personal responsibility and regulation existed to control greed, ignorance and mistakes. In the past two decades, primarily in the name of health & safety, regulations have taken on a life of their own. 

Regulations can becomes a de facto tax on the public, to such a scale the public interest is damaged. For example, affordable housing has been regulated to the point where housing is no longer affordable by 90% of prospective first home buyers and 77% of Kiwis agree home ownership in New Zealand is financially out of reach.

Change: On its own initiative, or through citizen-request, CAS may demand a fiscal impact report of any new regulation, at any time, including long after the regulation was put into effect when the public becomes aware of the costs. CAS may demand a change to the regulation to lower the fiscal impact, or require the cost is paid by the taxpayer through agency funding, not as user pays unless it can clearly be shown the pecuniary interest is apportioned its respective costs, and the public interest is paid by the public. “Fiscal” includes not only charges by the agency and requirements for costly consultants, but also the cost of time and the cost of distracting the people from their work. Time and stress is as much a “tax” as fees, charges, levies, fines and 3rd party charges

What this policy will do: All regulations must be subject to a validation test and if they fail, are to be eliminated and replaced by valid regulation. The terms health & safety will have precise meanings and require the regulation is written in a way that impacts the bad actors, but does not interfere with the rest of the affected people.

The Public Service

The pubic service has grown in size and at the same time is closing itself off from the people it ostensibly services. Far too many public servants – rebranded as officers, team leaders and senior managers – now take a degree in public service, then build a lifetime career within government, having no real-world experience in the industries they regulate. They have no understanding of the impact of their output on the regulated. Further, they are not held accountable for their errors, omissions or failures, and as their LinkedIn profiles show, they move from one government job to another. This needs to be changed.

Agency Personnel Sabbaticals

 

Problem: When agency personnel lack “real-world” experience, and are cocooned in a silo culture reinforced by their peers but isolated from public feedback and blowback, they make decisions that adversely impact the people. With the agency-made cultural insulation, they feel no pressure to inform themselves to make good decisions, but instead dig in and use the protections and resources of their agency to frustrate the people.

Need: The policy on fiscal impact addresses the situational matters, but the deeper problem is wilful ignorance. Learning is the cure for ignorance, and it comes through exposure to the persons affected by the agency’s acts (or non-action). The silo protections must be broken down, and this begins with exposing the personnel to the impact of their acts. This is not done by classes or seminars, but by sabbaticals, paid by government, in the field. 

What this policy will do: For two months before starting any public service job that has any impact on the public, and one month every second year, the public servant shall be paid to take a sabbatical and work in the sector that is impacted by the acts of their department/team within the agency. The CAS will organise the sabbaticals, and if the volume is too great, additional CAS staff funding shall be provided to MPs to manage such citizen-services.

Personnel Accountability

 

Problem: Agency personnel are not personally accountable for errors, omissions, failures, fiscal blowout, bad  policy, bad planning, bad execution, bad management, waste, inefficiency or bad performance, except in personal matters (e.g bullying, sexual misconduct, etc.). In some cases, as can be seen on their Linked-In profiles, they move to a new job in another agency of government. There are no rewards for risk taking, and no penalties for failure.

Transparency: The internet makes public disclosure of all acts far simpler.  Require each agency to post its performance in detail so members of the public may analyse and identify the many ways agencies fail to deliver best practice with maximum value in terms of time, money and stress, including identifying the job titles responsible for the failures.

This will require significant change to privacy, commercial sensitivity and personnel accountability policies. 

What this policy will do:

Open Information: Eliminate commercial sensitivity. If a business wishes to do business with the government, it must be prepared to fully disclose the contracts, and all payments available on line. Eliminate privacy as a shield for withholding information. For an agency to claim withholding, it must appeal to the court and pay both its own costs (out of its budget) and those of the people challenging such withholding. Open information is essential for the people to root out bad agency performance

Accountability: When bad performance is discovered, the CAS shall take up the case and identify the responsible personnel. Such findings shall go on the personnel employment record, and shall be considered for all personnel reviews, including salary, promotion, demotion and termination. The record shall be cross-agency so any person applying for any government job shall have their full record, including adverse performance findings, considered for any position funded directly or indirectly by the people.

Elections, Money and Influence

People do not contribute large amounts of money to political campaigns because they love democracy. They expect a quid-pro-quo. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is political campaigns in the USA where it never stops. It is expected of a member of Congress to spend half their time – 4 hours a day or more – raising money for their next campaign. This has not been the case in NZ, but it is increasing. This needs to be changed and with technology its easier to change.

Electoral Reform

 

Problem: Money buys influence. This creates inequity in government as pecuniary interest trumps public interest

Need: Tax-paid elections – A law on election reform would establish the channels through which all candidates make their pitch, with clear rules to block money for influence. 

What this policy will do:  The Internet plays a much larger role in elections, and it is the easiest to regulate. The government establishes an election web page provided for free to all candidates. It shall have three tiers

  1. Established parties – parties that have been in Parliament in at least one of the past three terms
  2. Small or emerging parties – parties that can show a membership of 200 or more
  3. Individuals – persons who put their name forth to gain a platform

For tier 1 parties, a tax-funded budget shall be set for hoardings and tier 2 a smaller budget based on membership.

The same shall be provided for mailers and a fixed budget for professional video presentations, paid for and sent by the electoral commission. The videos are recommended to follow the 1-3-18 format, meaning 60 second commercials, 3 minute elevator pitch and the 18 minute TEDx talk with each candidate allowed ten of each set to address the top ten issues in their mind.

Volunteers may door knock and hand out the official mailers, but no other printed matter.  Volunteers may assist people in voter registration. Parties may call public meetings, with tier one and two funding for hall rental. Elected officials shall be prohibited from calling official meetings (ostensibly discharging their duties as MP’s) during election season unless specific dispensation is granted by the electoral commission.

No persons may pay for or provide electioneering material outside of the official process, except for advocacy on matters of policy that do not promote a particular party or candidate.

The right of reply to media editorials shall be accorded to any candidate, including Tier 3.

Platforms disallowed as mandates

 

Problem: During the election, political parties publish lengthy platforms read by very few, and then claim their planks as mandates when elected. This undermines democracy except for platform planks that had a high level of public debate.

Need: As part of election procedural reform, include in the law that platform planks are not mandates unless they had a high level of public debate. 

What this policy will do: By placing the intent in the law, mandate claims are delegitimised, and while a party in power may do whatever they want, they risk adverse blowback when they try.

Outlaw lobbying

 

Problem: Lobbying is the sale of influence. A person develops an inside track within a party, and then crosses over into a consultancy where they charge private persons to gain access to the elected and appointed officials. 

Need: People do need access to their elected and appointed officials. Officials need feedback including technical or complex information. Without it bad policy can be made. However this should not come with a price.

What this policy will do: Make lobbying illegal. Expand and fund the office of Ombudsman to include access specialists available to any and all persons. The specialists must be competent (and highly paid) so they can separate out the inappropriate applications from ones with merit. In most cases, merit means public benefit, but it also can mean improving the private sector so it is more competitive – thus indirectly benefiting the public. The specialists would not only evaluate, but would translate applications into the most effective form for an official or representative to digest and act upon. Essentially, the specialists become lobbyists paid by tax dollars. 

Public Impact Advocate

Corruption is pecuniary interest masked as public interest

When the rotting house crisis hit NZ, the government of the day knew they had to do something. Unfortunately, there were no MPs with much experience in the building industry, and the likewise the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment lacked expertise in construction. They turned to the very industry that had caused the crisis in the first place. While the media and pundits blamed “cowboys”, meaning small, independent contractors with a ute, dog and cellphone, facts showed the failure came from the big players who advocated untreated radiata pine, no-eve buildings and designs that allowed water in, but did not dry out before the wood started to rot and the building began to mould.

Those industries were represented by lobbyists in the form of trade associations, and they took advantage of the ignorance of elected officials and public services in MBIE to write rules that served their pecuniary interest at the expense of home buyers. It hit at every level, and created the affordable housing crisis.

Need for a Public Impact Advocate at the Table

When standards are written, the Committee should include a public-impact specialist, deeply knowledgeable in the particular industry, armed with the power of veto – meaning their role at the committee table is to say No, on behalf of the people who have to pay in time or money because of how the rule is written.

Every committee, department, agency and other government or quasi government agency should have an ex-officio advocate. These the powers must extend not only to when the rule is written, but after the fact, when the public encounters the barrier created by government and makes a formal complaint. Bad rules, complicated rules, rules that require consultants to negotiate simple processes, unfair rules, rules that demand significant delays and rules that can be rewritten to achieve the same outcome without red tape should all be fair game for the public impact advocate.

Independent Authority

The Authority should be funded with tax dollars, and each political party in Parliament shall appoint one representative to the Authority Board to serve four-year terms. The board’s charter should make clear it serves the people, not the politicians or the power structure, and its staffing should seek out well-informed specialists who understand their particular industry but are neither beholden to it, or have an insider’s relationship with it.

The authority should be empowered to actively solicit public feedback where government is seen as the problem not the solution. This includes local government and special entities. It should be granted the power of investigation, where claimed barriers of commercial sensitivity, confidential information or privacy have no standing.

The authority shall have negative authority only – to say no, to cancel. It may identify changes that would not attract a veto, but not impose them. It may however, take matters directly to Parliament with recommendations for new law. The authority should have the right to take personnel matters to the personnel’s senior management. In some cases, bad rules are promulgated by problematic public servants. They may need education, or in a personnel review, found unsuited for the office they hold, or unsuited to work in government. There needs to be a mechanism to identify such people and remove them from positions where they do not serve the public interest.

This practice is an inherent conflict of interest:

 We invite organisations that represent the views of a large – usually national – group with a common interest in the area being addressed by the standards solution to nominate a representative for the committee. We review nominations and select committee members from them.       Standards NZ

Yet Standards NZ seems oblivious because it is so normal in NZ. 

The Fox Guarding the Hen House – (cc) by John Cole, NC Newsline

Case Study: How standards are written

The above quote in the cartoon comes directly from Standards NZ web page on New Zealand standards development. There seems to be no awareness either of the inherent conflict of interest, nor any examination of the outcomes that create barriers to competition and substantially increase costs to ordinary Kiwis.

The policy of Standards NZ is to establish a committee made up of representatives of the trade organisations that advocate for the pecuniary interest of their members. This is a bit like inviting the foxes to design and build the chook house.

The outcome is Fortress NZ, where artificial barriers to overseas competition are erected. NZ’s population and geography is the size of the US state of Colorado,  thus companies that make far superior and more affordable products, due to their economies of scale and higher standards (especially in the EU) take one look at NZ and give it a pass – just what the committee members want.

Small scale entrepreneurs try to import better products – such as German made joinery, but the barriers prove insurmountable. BRANZ testing must be conducted and paid for before the small-scale importer can earn their first dollar. The local competition will pull every string they can – and there are many – to thwart the competition. The upshot is the affordable housing crisis. The losers are the struggling class. In the end, many middle-level earners give up and move to Australia.

The same game rigging has stifled the financial markets, where FMA rules tilt the playing field to the big banks and the sophisticated investors. Ditto the food industry, and soon the natural products industry. Even the classic car industry in NZ, that was world-renowned, has been killed by the draconian repair certifier rules.

GOVERNING:

The affordable housing crisis

Solutions:

For the entry level, mobile homes.

For volume production: MarketTowns

For government reform: Reform User Pays

The affordable housing crisis did not come about by accident. It came about by a perfect storm unintentionally created by government. It is simple to state, hard to fix.

Price:Income Ratio: When the median household price exceeds a 3:1 ratio with median household income, housing becomes unaffordable first for the poor, then at it heads toward 10:1 for the lower middle class as well as young adults,  uni graduates with too much debt, elderly who failed to build home equity (by renting or by divorce), older women, Māori, Pasifika and other disadvantaged groups. Eventually society polarises into the haves and the have nots.

The answer is to get the ratio back to 3:1. This means increasing the supply of homes causing the market to drop and aggressively examining every contributing factor that raises the cost of zoning, financing and constructing new homes.

Land Supply: For every new family (net) there needs to be one additional single-family home. When planning was done by civil engineers this happened. When universities started training environmental planners, environmental protection improved, but land supply contracted. Result, higher prices for subdivided land.

Consenting costs and time: Developers say more than half the job of subdivision is securing permission. The RMA does not enable people and communities, it is a cash cow for councils and private planners. Extensive reports do not protect the environment, but they do increase costs.

Requirements: Consenting requirements add to cost without demonstrable benefit. The councils have no checks and balances, so they place demands that developers must do… and pass on to the end customer, meaning higher land prices.

Development Contributions: In theory if a developer makes money and it costs the taxpayer to subsidise the developer profits, the developer should pay a contribution. But in practice, it has become a cash cow for councils and further increases land prices.

Revenue Conflict of Interest: At one time, consent fees were low because the benefit of resource consent compliance was deemed a matter of public interest. Now councils fund their consenting departments through revenue they collect, and senior management pressures staff to generate billings. This has been tested, and it is an abdication of the role of the public service.

Building Consent Liability: Since the leaking home debacle, councils are terrified of liability, thus they set out extreme documentation requirements to ensure they are not exposed. The costs of third party consultants is added to the cost of housing, further raising above the 3:1 ratio.

Lobbying by Pecuniary Interest: Architects, engineers, the Master Builders Association, the many trade associations representing building materials, components and services have successfully lobbied government for monopolistic protection. In the name of health and safety, the rules are designed to supress competition.

Fortress NZ: In a country the size of the US state of Colorado, MBIE has written a building code that requires compliance to NZ standards written by advisory committees comprising of representatives of trade associations. No surprise that this creates insurmountable barriers to competition. What overseas supplier that meets higher international standards will spend the money to secure BRANZ compliance for a market of 5 million people?

This is an essay. Grab a cuppa, settle in for a long read on a laptop or larger. It shows why housing is 10X income, not 3X.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING: How we got into this mess in the first place

The two-decade creation of the perfect storm to make housing unaffordable

Why is housing unaffordable? Bad law, bad regulation, ignorance, legal-corruption, greed & cronyism… a perfect storm 20 years in the making.

Problem

Why housing is unaffordable (a perfect storm)

From Civil Engineers to Environmental Planning grads

About 2o years ago, something happened in district councils. Older civil engineers who administered the RMA began to be forced out by a new generation of university graduates with degrees in environmental planning. Where the old guard focused on infrastructure to ensure greenfield expansion matched population growth, the new breed of planners had been taught to value the environment over rezoning for new housing. The result was predictable. The cost of zoned land rose.

https://www.waikato.ac.nz/study/campaigns/environmental-planning

This needs to be fixed. Universities need to rethink the curriculum. Yes, protecting the natural and physical environment is important, but either government has to set a zero-population-growth policy (unlikely) or it has to remove the bias against rezoning greenfield for growth. This can be done (see the post on MarketTowns), but it requires an overhaul of both the curriculum, and the fundamental bias of the faculty.

Then at a policy level, councils need to adopt resolutions that require planning accommodate population growth with a target median house price to median household income of 3:1. If the councils find this too hard, then resolve to ask Kainga Ora to use its powers under the Urban Development Act 2020 to identify and implement new towns.

How Councils are funded

Rates are supposed to fund projects and services the public needs but the private sector will not supply. But there is a limit to what the voting ratepayer can support, a limit lower than what council senior management feels it needs to support its offices, salaries, perks and actual services and long-term investment. User pays is an attractive alternative because it only impacts those trying to do something, such as develop a greenfield into a new tract of homes and shops.

But those costs are passed on to the end buyer; the family buying the home, the business person leasing a shop, office or restaurant. As a result, not only does the cost of the facility increase, but overall prices go up. The reason a cup of coffee costs $5 is not because the cafe is creaming it, but because the landlord keeps putting up the rent to recover the costs in the building, including fees and rates.

There is no way to politely say it. Councils have become greed machines. Senior management resembles budget airlines looking for ways to charge for everything, like 1 kg over weight bags or a window seat. Why? Because the planning and building departments are self-funded. User pays creates an inherent conflict of interest. It’s spiralled out of control.

This needs to be fixed. The basic principle of user pays needs to be limited to demands solely where the benefit falls to the developer. The need for affordable housing is a public benefit where the associated costs should be funded by the taxpayer on a national basis and the ratepayer on a council-jurisdiction level. This requires a law change.

How Building Materials are approved

Decades ago the building industry consisted of skilled tradies who knew how to construct buildings suitable for the NZ climate using proven building materials and methods. Consents were simple and low cost because they relied on an industry knowing what it was doing.

But then corporatism infused itself into the industry. Corporatism is big business hiring efficiency experts to find ways to cut costs to increase profits. Flat roofs and plaster cladding suitable for Mediterranean (read dry, low humidity, no driving rain) climates cost less to build. The industry convinced the government to permit untreated Radiata pine, a sapwood that rots easily, to be used for framing. The upshot was the leaky homes crisis, and the 5th Labour government, whose Minister of Housing was an academic, brought in the Building Act 2004 that caused building consents to skyrocket in price.

The Act required all building materials to be approved. To write the NZBC (NZ Building Code), committees were set up where MBIE invited representatives of trade association to write the drafts. No surprise that the trade associations promoted the pecuniary interest of their members by establishing de facto barriers to competition, both making it too expensive and arduous for superior offshore materials to gain approval for a market the size of the US state of Colorado, and for home-grown entrepreneurs seeking to challenge the established order.

This needs to be fixed. Competitive pricing for building materials is in the public interest, and the cost of approval should be paid by the public, and it should be expedited so approval takes weeks, or months at worst, not years. Overseas approvals should not require replication in NZ, but should be accepted unless it can be shown they clearly do not fit the NZ climate. The building material cartel should be regulated where anti-competitive practices are a crime not only subjecting the business to fines, but holding the responsible personnel criminally responsible.

Further, in establishing advisory committees to write the draft rules, the principles of Wisdom of Crowds (see here) should apply. If trade associations are represented (which does bring industry expertise), they should be offset by consumer representatives skilled in ensuring the proposed rules are solely in the public interest and do not use rules to favour the interests of the trades.

How Building Practitioners are Licensed

In the aftermath of the leaky homes crisis, the large corporates and trades blamed “cowboy builders” when in fact it was the large corporates and the mass-production trades using defective, but BRANZ approved products and building methods.  The Master Builders association lobbied for licensing, ostensibly to get rid of the cowboys. The upshot was a tripling of the cost of skilled construction labour.

Some builders quit because they had been attracted to the industry due to a learning disability – they could not read. They were experts at hand work, but could not pass the written tests brought in by the new regime. Others quit because it was all just too hard. Easier to take an indoor job in a building supply store. Those who stayed on logoed Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP) on their new utes, as they found their newly-state-sanctioned careers paid more than many white-collar jobs.

This is now resulting in a new approach to house making. Instead of bespoke construction on site, factory manufacturing that does not require LBPs is rising in popularity. Buildings are now assembled, not constructed, on site using factory-made components, such as FrameCad light-gauge steel panels, with further interest in modular design in which the rooms are made in factories and stacked on site like Lego blocks.

The LBP program needs to be fixed, but the pecuniary interest is so great it is unlikely elected officials will take it on. Instead, the building industry needs to move from the 18th century to the 21st. The whole approach to how the housing market works needs to be reinvented. Mass manufacture of buildings using Computer Assisted Design so they do not look bland or cookie-cutter is the answer. Leave the LBP approach to the bespoke construction industry of homes for the comfortable class who have no problem paying millions.

Solution

How to make housing affordable

Use the Urban Development Act 2020

In the 5th National Government, 2009-17, Building and Construction Minister Nick Smith proposed the Urban Development Act. It proposed to create an Urban Development Authority (UDA) that would bring all aspects of major development projects (matters of national interest) under one authority.

Land acquisition, rezoning, financing, building of infrastructure, building consents and construction that is otherwise a gauntlet of multiple consenting and consulting agencies to the point where over half the cost and effort of real estate development is securing permission

Unfortunately, when the 6th Labour Government took over in 2017, it rebranded the Urban Development Authority as Kainga Ora and turned its focus to state housing for beneficiaries of the welfare system. With the 6th National Government prepared to take power, it is time to revisit the Urban Development Act and use its powers as originally intended.

Don’t tinker with the market, create an alternative

Manipulating the housing market to lower the price to income ratio from 10:1 to 3:1 would be devastating for home owners who would be tipped into negative equity. Increasing median income to 1/3 median house price will not happen in a global economy.

Instead, create new housing markets that target the 3:1 ratio. This is detailed in the post on Market Towns, although it does not have to be limited to that scale or type of development. The UDA powers are the key:

  1. Buy the land at pre-zone pricing (probably rural)
  2. Do not take a capital gain on subdivision
  3. Do not pay the council a development contribution
  4. Infrastructure costs paid by the taxpayer not the council
  5. Set up a pop-up factory to manufacture the buildings
  6. Target total cost to be 3X the projected income of buyers
  7. Where possible cut the cost of living, such as no need for cars.

Under UDA development is in the national interest. This means taxpayer paid, not user pays. Don’t burden the council, but make the development a profit centre for them, meaning it will pay more in basic rates than it will require in council services.

At the entry level, support mobile/modular homes

As discussed in other posts (see here) the 6th Labour Government declared an informal but devastating war on poor people who were leasing and buying mobile homes from the fledgling Kiwi industry.

Some were individuals making one tiny home on wheels at a time. Others were factories turning out dozens per month. Because they were mobile, they were not captured by the perfect storm that made buildings unaffordable. They were small, inexpensive and provided warm, dry, safe and durable adequate housing for people whose alternative was hidden homelessness (living in cars, tents, sheds, garages and overcrowded conditions). Until, reportedly in a cabinet meeting, the elected officials agreed they did not want American style trailer home parks in NZ, which trickled down to MBIE, MFE and MSD as a declaration of war on mobile homes (factory made) and tiny homes on wheels (DIY made).

This needs to be fixed.

  • Youth: Mobile homes enable the young to get on the property ladder, especially if lease to purchase is an option where 5-7 years rent gains ownership – enough to sell for a downpayment on land and home.
  • Homeless: They provide a much better alternative than putting a family of four in a hotel room in Rotorua for months or years even.
  • Tangata whenua: For the whanau on ancestral whenua, they can be manufactured in two weeks and installed on site in two hours while avoiding the problems of bank financing on Māori title.
  • Urban Pasifika, etc: Especially in South Auckland, certain sectors have large families overcrowded in homes designed for the nuclear family of the 1950s’. Permit mobile homes to be parked next to the family home to take up the excess demand.
  • Elder/disabled: For the family with a vulnerable elder or disabled adult child, a mobile home can be parked next to the family property to provide a modicum of independence while enabling necessary supervision. When the elder dies, the home is removed
  • Flood, earthquake: In a civil defence emergency, immediate housing is essential. Having a reserve of mobile homes that can be deployed behind ordinary SUV towing to site in 24 hours provides responsive capacity. Rather than leave in a carpark unused, lease such units to major airports where they serve as first-arrival or last-departure accommodations so they are clean and ready when an emergency arises
  • Essential workers: In tourist destinations like Queenstown or Waiheke, essential workers are living in overcrowded conditions or in cars or tents. Using Kainga Ora, zone for essential worker camps using mobile homes. Most will be young and for them, this will be a party zone. Ensure it does not spawn cross-boundary conflict.
  • Cycle Trail accommodation: Long distance cycle trails are becoming a major ecotourism option worldwide. NZ initiated its own version, but the tour operators must collect the riders at the end of the day and bus them to a nearby town. Instead authorise Kainga Ora to use its UDA authority to build mobile home campsites along the trails leased to cycle-tourism operators.

Housing and Communities

An integrated solution for many of the challenges facing NZ today

If we are serious about climate change, stop issuing resource consents for more transport-based development. Eliminate the need to drive.

Build MarketTowns

In every era but our own, cities, towns, villages and communities were based on some purpose of living that eludes the designers of our own time. People form communities not for justice, peace, defence or traffic, but for the sake of a good life… the pursuit of conviviality, citizenship and artistic, intellectual & spiritual growth.

The social pursuits of a good life shape how a community is laid out, how people encounter each other, how to balance public and private space, and to avoid design that disrupts. And how to make it affordable for all, ending economic polarisation.

The most important policy the 6th National Government can adopt: Of all the solutions listed on governing.nz, this is the one intended to have the greatest, most wide-ranging positive impact, addressing a host of challenges facing the nation, from environment to economic to social and cultural. It is a positive outcome, not a fix.

What is a Market Town?

A Market Town is an ancient development pattern where the social life is based on a self-supporting local economy. A thousand years ago, the basis was local agriculture. Today, technology has vanquished the tyranny of distance, enabling many to earn a living anywhere there is high-speed broadband. A local economy needs about 20% of its workforce to sell local to global (L2G) using the internet to import outside money that then turns locally 5-20 times before it leaves the local economy. With a critical mass of 10,000 people on 200 hectares total (85 hectare urban core surrounded by the greenbelt)  the economy supports over 200 local job types from accountants to zero-waste recyclers. None of these jobs require outbound commuting; it eliminates about 8,000 cars on the road. 

To get a feel for it, visit the preindustrial car-free towns of Old Europe. They are human-scaled, needing less land while providing a much more vibrant quality of life. The urban core is surrounded by a greenbelt to eliminate cross-boundary conflicts (the neighbours see only trees) and provide open space for local food, harvested rainwater storage, onsite wastewater processing, off-grid solar array, as well as sports and festival fields, a walk-to blue-collar industrial park and a motor-pool/freight depot to ensure the urban core remains car-free.

Until 2020, it was not realistically possible to build a Market Town in NZ. The number of approving agencies created insurmountable obstacles to new forms of development outside the transport-based development framework of almost every district plan in the nation. Seeking to put all under one roof, under the 5th National Government, then Building, Construction, Housing and Environment Minister Nick Smith sponsored the Urban Development Bill that became law in 2020. The 6th Labour government narrowed the focus of the Act to developing state housing, but the needed legislation is on the books. Now with the 6th National Government  taking control, no change in law is needed. All that is required is a change of focus by government to instruct the ministry to sponsor the first Market Town as a matter of national interest.

Imagine in Aotearoa
Mallorca
Verona
Cadaques, Spain

Characteristics of a Market Town

Details: The 21st century Market Town is a self contained local economy, thus it does not need extended three-waters pipes or widening roads. Its basic qualities include:

  • About 200 hectares of relatively flat, poor-quality greenfield land near a 2-lane road
  • Within 85 hectare urban core for about 4,000 3-floor attached townhouses – 10,000 people
    • Urban core divided into clusters (villages) of about 200 homes / 500 people each
    • Each village has a central plaza that becomes the community living room with development funded:
      • Daycare and primary school classrooms on the village plaza
      • Eldercare facilities for the infirm so they never have to leave their friends and family
      • Artist Guild Hall that supports about 25 members of the creative class to enrich the community
      • Village-owned cafe to provide affordable, nutritious, flavourful meals as a means of social bonding
      • Playground space by the cafe so parents can relax and converse while watching their children
      • Wharetapu to provide sacred space for celebration of rites of passage, sanctuary and contemplation
  • Surrounded by a 115 hectare greenbelt to prevent cross-boundary conflicts and site:
    • Motorpool for all motor vehicles, freight delivery and linkages – no cars in the urban core
    • Instead of 200 courier deliveries, three tractor trailer trucks deliver all goods once a day
    • Walk-to industrial park providing blue collar, clean-tech jobs and local manufacturing
    • Freshwater storage and processing – 100% rainwater harvesting from the urban core
    • Wastewater processing as a surplus resource with zero waste: biofuel, fertiliser and purified water output
    • Storm and filtered grey water storage for lower-quality water needs
    • Solar array and vanadium battery storage to provide 100% off grid energy supply
    • Sports and festival fields, garden allotments, protected native bush and productive growing
    • Surrounded by a native flora/fauna protection fence to keep out invasive species
    • Boundary between urban core and greenbelt includes a wall to keep pets out of the greenbelt
  • No less than 20% of the jobs/businesses sell local-to-global (L2G) to import money into the local economy
  • The majority of jobs/businesses are Local to Local (L2L) to facilitate a money turn of 5X to 20X
  • 20% of the housing is parallel market to ensure permanent affordable housing and block gentrification
  • 99% of buildings manufactured in an on-site, pop-up factory; keep price below $1,500/m2 including land
  • A complete, not elite community, intended to reflect national demographics, welcoming all but criminals
  • Using companies law, an elected body owned by the people that manages all local affairs
  • All internal costs self funded. Minimal burden on state services. , takes care of its own
    • The town builds its own public school classrooms, no capital burden on the Ministry of Education
    • Such towns inherent have a low tolerance for crime, less burden on Police, Courts or Prisons 
    • Eldercare is internally funded and operated, reducing the state burden of an ageing population
    • The local economy is structured to keep all able persons employed, with stand-by jobs when needed
    • The project requires seed funding, but this is repaid with interest. No burden on taxpayers
    • Ideal setting for attracting high-skill migrants as it offers a high quality of life with low cost of living
  • From the host council perspective, the town is a profit centre – generating more in rates than it costs
    • No need to widen the roads because the vehicle movement per day per household (VMD) is below one
    • No need to dig up roads or expand water or wastewater plants because all waters are managed within
    • The town funds & builds its own libraries, parks, halls, sports & festival fields, open to the general public
  • In order to prevent skyrocketing house values, once the prototype is proven, keep building new towns.

 

 

Open Architecture Micro Cars

In the mid 20th century – the early days of technology – computers were huge, expensive and proprietary, dominated by five global companies. Then the PC came along. It used open architecture in which specialist companies made high volumes of interchangeable parts. Where a mainframe could cost $1 million, a PC cost $1 thousand. That revolution happened began in the USA.

In the 21st century, another behemoth industry is experiencing the same change, this time coming out of China. Whereas large car companies turn out expensive motor vehicles using their own branded and expensive components, in China specialist companies are now producing open-architecture components which can be used to assemble microcars at costs comparable to personal computers. 

Waiheke as the first MicroCar Zone

Proposal to Minister for Transport: use your power of permission. It costs nothing, but does a lot of good.

 

$4,000 not $40,000

High-quality, feature-rich electric microcars are offered online for US$2,000 – about NZ$4,000 landed and cleared for road use – if the law allowed it. NZ can bring in 2 wheel mopeds, but not 4-wheel.

In a recent article, Transport Minister Michael Wood is quoted as saying “The key tradeoff and regulatory issue is around safety,” he says. “They almost all inevitably rate at the lowest safety rating of zero to one star. So that’s the policy challenge.”

Yes, mixing 50 km/h vehicles on 100 km/h roads is unsafe. Just as 30 km/h ebikes and scooters are unsafe mixing with cars on 50 km/h city streets. But there is a way to make the transition. Find a zone where the maximum speed is 50 km/h.

One-Star Car Safe Zones

Find a place where there have been no deaths from car crashes despite that place having the oldest cars, most one-star cars, indeed, the place where old cars come to die: The island of Waiheke.

Waiheke Island roads are mostly posted 30-50 km/h. Five-star safety is about speed; crashing at 80-100 km/h. Unlike the mainland, the whole of Waiheke can be made a 50 km/h max micro-car zone. All the rule has to do is to prohibit microcars going to town on the car ferry. 

Vehicles are NZ’s top import ($14.5 billion). NZ must sell milk powder to pay for its cars. Why import motorway-appropriate cars that cost 10-50 times as much as microcars for local, slow-speed transport? 

Cut impact of VMDs

Planners rule of thumb is 10 vehicle movements per day per household (VMD). Microcars will cut into VMDs – the short trips. On nice days, walkers will still walk, cyclists will still cycle, but on foul  days, they will take the microcar. Bus and train transport are for longer distances, not the micro-trips of micro-cars

Minister Wood argues micro-EVs could be in conflict with the government’s commitment to reducing kilometres travelled by privately owned automobiles – conversely encouraging people who walk, cycle or take public transport to use micro-EVs.

This is silly. People did not stop cycling when ebikes came out, instead a whole new segment of the population started ebiking, cutting VMD.

Waiheke as a MicroCar Zone

The other huge benefit of microcars is to make the roads “wider” without cost. At the Matiatia ferry, imagine repainting lines to change much of the parking space to micro-car size. Currently, Matiatia carpark is full by 8 a.m. Auckland Transport could double capacity by repainting the lines to microcar size… if the Minster says yes! 

But then, AT can do more. Invest in daytime solar canopies over the cars to provide daytime charging while the commuters are in town. Commuters will buy microcars.

  • Microcar make the commuter footprint smaller during rush minute
  • Microcars reduce road wear.
  • Microcar have a much smaller smaller environmental footprint when made.
  • Open architecture components (even batteries) are replaced; thus cars last longer 

 

 

It has to come from the top

Electric 2 and 3 wheeled mopeds (max speed 50 km/h) are legal in NZ, but not the safer 4 wheeler

Ask NZTA/MOT to make 4-wheel mopeds legal and designate Waiheke Island as the first Local Transport Zone allowing their use on Waiheke roads.

This may require a law change or an order in Council, but do it now.
First Change rules to Import
Add one word to the rule. Where mopeds are defined as 2 & 3 wheel, add 4 wheel. Then set specifications that the motors must be powerful enough to keep up their maximum speed (50 km/h) while ascending a 15° hill so they don’t spawn road rage. Write safety specs appropriate for 50 km/h speed. Work with makers to get microcars safe at 50km/h.
Next, limit use to Safe Zones
Safe zones means zones where the maximum speed is 50 km/h with clear boundaries to ensure they do not stray into unsafe zones. Waiheke Island is the ideal first safe zone. No one has died from car crashes on Waiheke because the roads are 30-50 km/h. It is the ideal place to trial the pilot.
Open-source solves problems
Lithium ion batteries are  costly. When they die the then-new $50-80,000 car is worthless. Microcars can take old fashioned lead-acid batteries that are not as efficient, but in a limited distance zone like Waiheke, this is not a problem. With interchangeable parts, micro-cars can be maintained by local people, kept running for decades, thus lowering their eco-footprint.

Low Speed Electric Vehicles (MicroCars) Videos

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New Regulation

LF class: A moped with four wheels and electric motor with a maximum speed not exceeding 50km/h; only permitted to be used in lawfully established Local Traffic Zones (LTZ). Also called a micro-car, with a maximum curb weight not to exceed 500 kg, not including battery weight.

Waiheke Island: Local Transport Zone

LTZ: Local Traffic Zone where Class LF are permitted on road. Waiheke as the first LTZ.

 

  • Speed limited to 50 km/h (factory-set by EV controller)
  • Able to climb hills at speed limit (sufficient power)
  • Not permitted on ferry (except on trailer/tow truck)
  • Possibly include Great Barrier Island in the first LTZ

Micro Cars (LSEV – Low Speed Electric Vehicles)

USA

In America, they are called Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) and Low Speed Vehicle (LSV) and they are legal on public streets

China

China is the largest manufacturer of micro-cars, using its efficiencies of scale to price them as low as NZ$4,000, landed and ready to roll.

Italy

Micro-cars have been in Italy  seemingly forever, and are not only seen in rural areas, but increasingly in historico central urban centres

Utility

Micro cars are not only for people. Small electric vehicles are used in historic zones where streets are narrow and speeds limited.

Regulation

What needs to happen

Two acts by government – one essential, the other desirable:

 

  • Essential: MOT to adopt a new class of motor vehicle to permit import and registration of 4-wheel mopeds
  • Desirable: MOT/NZTA to adopt a new road zone class: local transport zones 4-wheel mopeds are permitted on public roads. Designate Waiheke a LTZ

Why?

New Class: NZ/A has committed to electric vehicles and offers a $8,625 rebate on a new class MA, MB or MC electric vehicle. But with the cheapest new EV over $40,000, this scheme caters to middle-class earners with sufficient income to finance a new car. Further, unlike ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles, EVs age badly. When the battery range drops, it is not cost effective to replace it. While working class and beneficiaries typically purchase older cars – say 20 years old – EVs will be dead by that time. 

In contrast, new 4-wheel micro cars limited in speed to 50 km/h cost a tenth the price of class MA EV ($4,000 on road, finance about $40/week over 36 months*). This makes them affordable by everyone. And if the government decided to keep the new EV car rebate – it is larger than the on-road price of a proposed class LF 4-wheel moped. It would be cheaper to provide a 100% subsidy on a microcar than the current $8,625 subsidy on a class MA EV. And for people who live in low-speed transport zones, such as Waiheke Island, there is no need for a vehicle designed for 100 km/h speeds or 300 km driving ranges.

Further some microcars run on conventional lead-acid batteries, and there is technology in NZ/A (but not active) that can refurbish lead/acid batteries for longer-term use.  This means used LF microcars could have long lives, which offers a more sustainable footprint than a 10-year life span MA-EV.

New Local Zones: When a road is engineered for high-speed driving (60 – 100 km/h), some vehicles will drive that speed regardless of the posted speed limit. In NZ/A many such roads are the only way to get around. A small vehicle controller-limited to 50 km/h on a 100 km/h road is at risk of being struck, and is more likely to induce road rage by the faster vehicle. Further, a vehicle designed for 50 km/h will not have the same crash protection as one designed for double or triple that speed.

Overseas, the answer is to designate specific roads as micro-car permitted, something that could be rolled out in NZ/A. However, there is one location that is easier to implement the first local transport zone: Waiheke Island (and possibly Great Barrier Island).

Except for the 60 km/h Onetangi Straight (1.6 km), all roads are already 50 km/h or less. Because it is an island, controls are simple: Do not allow microcars on the car ferry except on a trailer or tow truck. This keeps them on Waiheke.

The benefits are more than lowering the carbon footprint. Waiheke roads are narrow and it is not cost-effective to widen them to national standards. Microcars are narrower and smaller, thus they take up a smaller physical footprint on the narrow road. At the ferry terminal, where parking is insufficient, microcar parking allows more vehicles without claiming more real estate.

Microcars are also much simpler, offering the opportunity for local folks to develop a local microcar industry – not requiring a billion dollar corporation to develop.

* regarding price, by the time add-ons are built in, the final price can be double, but still should be lower than the $8,625 EV subsidy. The core message here is a new LSEV (Low Speed Electric Vehicle) that is affordable by everyone, including those on the benefit, pension or as a first vehicle for a young person.

 

THE LAW

CURRENT: Class LA – e-Moped with Two Wheels

Class LA ‘Moped’ means a motor vehicle (other than a power-assisted pedal cycle) that has— (a) 2 wheels; and (b) a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kilometres per hour; and (c) (ii) a power source other than a piston engine

Class LA mopeds must meet requirements of vehicle classes LA Aren’t required to be regularly inspected for a WoF. Riders can hold any New Zealand driver licence (eg car driver licence) to ride a moped. Must wear an approved helmet.  

CURRENT: Class LB – e-Moped with Three Wheels

Class LB ‘Moped’ means a motor vehicle (other than a power-assisted pedal cycle) that has— (a) 3 wheels; and (b) a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kilometres per hour; and (c) (ii) a power source other than a piston engine

Class LB mopeds must meet requirements of vehicle classes LB Aren’t required to be regularly inspected for a WoF. Riders can hold any New Zealand driver licence (eg car driver licence) to ride a moped. Must wear an approved helmet.

PROPOSED: Class LF – e-Moped with Four Wheels (Micro-car)

Class LF ‘Moped’ means a motor vehicle (other than a power-assisted pedal cycle) that has— (a) 4 wheels; and (b) a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kilometres per hour; and (c) (ii) a power source other than a piston engine

Class LF mopeds must meet requirements of vehicle classes LF Aren’t required to be regularly inspected for a WoF. Riders can hold any New Zealand driver licence (eg car driver licence) to ride a moped. An approved helmet is not required, but all occupants must wear shoulder/lap belts when in motion Must have:
  • at least two high/low dipped-beam headlamps suitable for driving on the left side of the road
  • headlamps must illuminate the road in front for at least 30 metres
  • at least two brake lights on either side and one higher middle brake light
  • at least two red rear facing lamps that can be seen from 100 metres away when turned on
  • electric turn signals with front and rear facing lamps 
  • speedometer
  • windscreen and windscreen wiper
  • rear registration plate lamp
  • at least two rear reflectors that can be seen from 100 metres away when light shines on it
  • at least two rear view mirrors, including one on each door that gives a clear view behind the vehicle
  • good quality tyres. Tread pattern clearly visible across at least 3/4 of tread width around entire circumference
  • a horn that can be heard by other road users from at least 100 metres away (in normal traffic conditions)
  • mudguards
  • lap/shoulder seat belts to Land Transport Rule: Seatbelts and Seatbelt Anchorages 2002 
  • motor controller set to not exceed 50 k/hr
  • sufficient power to go up any incline at the posted speed limit for that incline when fully loaded*
  • not permitted to be driven on footpaths or cycle lanes unless specifically signposted
  • not to exceed 500 kg maximum curb weight not including battery weight
* Note: It is recommended not to include a power limit as, for example, is used in the MOT/NZTA definition for ebikes (300 W nominal). Power limits discriminate against heavy persons and tradespeople carrying gear. Further, it is dangerous if the power is insufficient to maintain the speed limit whilst driving up a hill. If the speed limit is 40 km/h up a hill on Waiheke, but the microcar slows down to 25-30 due to a lack of power, drivers behind the microcar will attempt to overtake, creating a dangerous situation. EVs use a controller that limits output, including cutting out or cutting back so the EV will not exceed a pre-set maximum speed. If Waiheke becomes a Local Transport Zone, it is anticipated that an initial buying group would be set up (as was done with the SlowCycles initiative where the motors were custom set to 300W) in which the group would specify NZ compliance , including maximum speed 50 km/h controller setting. This would be verified at the border compliance check. 

 

PROPOSED: Local Transport Zones

Class LF vehicles are only permitted to be driven in designated local transport zones (LTZ). The first LTZ to be established concurrent with adoption of Class LF is the whole of Waiheke Island (and possibly Great Barrier Island). Class LF vehicles are not permitted to be driven on the ferry boats except on a trailer or tow truck. Future LTZ may be designed by territorial authorities and NZTA.  

Links

https://www.theautopian.com/a-deep-dive-on-the-changli-and-similar-cheap-cars-like-it/

White Paper (click here for pdf)

Making Microcars on-road legal in Local Transport Areas

Summary

  • Cars (what NZTA calls Class MA) are designed to safely travel at speeds in excess of 100 km/h. That safety, performance and comfort comes with a huge economic, social and environmental cost. Cars are designed for high-speed roads. For travel in slow, local transport areas (LTA), cars are overkill – a waste of money and resources with an unnecessarily large footprint. For LTA, new, market-disruptive technology is emerging – new-tech that unfortunately is locked out of NZ by out-dated law & regs.
  • Today, a major new microcar industry is emerging in China. The car industry is experiencing the motor vehicle equivalent of the personal computer. To explain: In the 1960’s main-frame computers were internal architecture in which all components were proprietary to five major corporations – the equivalent of Toyota, Ford, BMW, Tesla, etc., today. Then in the 1970’s the PC emerged using open architecture in which specialist companies made high volumes of interchangeable parts. Where a mainframe could cost $1 million, a PC cost $1 thousand. What PC’s were to main frames, microcars are to the big-car industry – a market-disruptive shift in technology.
  • These new electric motor vehicles are solely designed for local transport areas. They are small, low top-speed (50 km/h) and extremely inexpensive (NZ$4,000 landed) with impressive options due to China’s economy of scale. China makes over 2 million microcars per year, with over 10 million on its roads. Microcars are perfect for LTAs.
  • However, the Land Transport Act 1998 is out of date. It is missing one number: “4” that would enable NZTA to develop regulations allowing 4-wheel microcar for use in LTAs. The Act defines a moped as a motor vehicle that has 2 or 3 wheels; and a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kilometres per hour. If the Act was amended to say 2, 3 or 4 wheels, this would enable NZTA to be responsive without the gyrations required to issue exemptions as it did for NZ Post with its 4-wheel moped, the Paxter.
  • This paper first seeks to make officials aware of this new technology that can be an important tool in fighting climate change, socio/economic polarisation and traffic congestion. It then proposes changing the rules to allow microcars in these LTAs.

Proposal

  • That the Minister and/or the Executive Council determine if an Order in Council, or amendment to the Land Transport Act 1998 Part 1(2)(1) Interpretation is required to enable NZTA to develop regulations permitting 4-wheel mopeds (also known as microcars, quadricycles and low speed electric vehicles – LSEV) on NZ roads.
  • That NZTA designate local transport areas in which microcars (4-wheel mopeds) are permitted to operate on public roads under similar rules to 2/3 wheel mopeds, except instead of motorcycle helmets, 4-wheel have passive safety equipment including seat belts, windscreen and car-type controls such as a steering wheel and foot brakes.
  • That the first local transport area is the whole of Waiheke Island – allowing NZTA time to develop rules for mainland communities where local roads connect to regional roads – unlike Waiheke where all roads are slow and local, with only ferry linkage.

Terms

  • Microcar: The technical term is Low Speed Electric Vehicle (LSEV) but LSEV is a mouthful. Also known as quadricycles, 4-wheel mopeds, neighbourhood electric vehicles, the simplest term, to be used herein is Microcar (limited herein to electric powered). A microcar weighs less than 500 kg (excluding battery weight), has four wheels and is designed to be safe at speeds up to 50 km/h – and is set at the factory with a speed limiter so it cannot exceed 50 km/h. An example of a microcar already on NZ roads is the NZ Post Paxter that is permitted by NZTA special exemption.
  • Local Transport Area (LTA): Common localities limited to 50 km/h (or less) roads with no high-speed roads encroaching into the common locality.

Principle of Governance

  • The most effective power of Government is the power of permission. Granting permission unleashes private initiative without cost to the taxpayer. Technology constantly evolves, giving people and communities new possibilities, but too often government regulation lags behind – rules become part of the problem. To avoid this, making government responsive to new technology becomes a paramount role of government and a duty of elected representatives to prod ministry officials into action.
In this proposal, new technology speaks to three major government concerns:
  • climate change & local/regional pollution,
  • affordable cost of living for struggling Kiwis
  • urban traffic congestion.

Context

  • NZ is polarising into two classes – the comfortable class and the struggling class. These classes are not defined by 20th political affiliations. Both the left and right political wings are, by their salaries, of the comfortable class, whereas the struggling class is too busy trying to get by to have time or interest in political identity.
  • Laws and regulations are made by the comfortable class who seem oblivious to the challenges facing the struggling class. The struggling class buys 20-year old cars. But as NZ shifts to EV’s, when the battery wears out at 10-years, that older car will be scrapped. The clean car rebate is a scheme by and for the comfortable class, but the trickle-down of old cars to serve the struggling class becomes collateral damage.
  • The top contributor to CO₂ pollution (47%) is the Resource Management Act 1991. This is because every district/unitary plan in NZ is based on the American post-war zoning model in which homes are in one zone, with work, shops, schools and services in other zones. To accomplish the mundane chores of daily life, people must drive.
  • The answer ultimately it is to build new self-contained communities in which all day-to-day destinations are within walking distance. Indeed, in 2023, there should be no new developments that are transport based – be it car, bus or train.
  • However, there are many communities that have local transport areas, meaning day-to-day access is on local roads with a 50km/h (or lower) speed limit. These local transport areas do not need $40,000 EV’s with its $8,625 new-car rebate. They are perfect for $4,000 microcars that can be afforded by the struggling class. Indeed, the new-car rebate is higher than the total on-road purchase cost of a new EV microcar.
  • Waiheke Island is a pure LTA. It also is an environmental leader – first to bring in 2nd generation ebikes and first to promote modern EV’s. It’s ideal for the first LTA.

Need

  • “Cars turn towns into mincemeat”, wrote A Pattern Language author Christopher Alexander. Cars have a huge physical, social and environmental footprint appropriate for high-speed driving, but overkill for local transport areas (like Waiheke Island).
  • Cars (NZTA Class MA) cost tens of thousands to buy, consume substantial resources to make and run, with a large physical footprint and dominate due to mega-car-company lobbying power. Cars have their place, but not in local transport areas.
  • EV’s are not the answer. With big batteries for long range and safety designs for 100+ km/h crashes, they eliminate tailpipe emissions, but not the other damage. Worse, while ICE cars have long lives (average in NZ is over 14 years, making older used cars affordable by the bottom half of NZ society), when the EV battery fails after 10 years or less, the car is scrapped, thus further squeezing struggling Kiwis.
  • New EVs cost too much for struggling Kiwis. The $8,625 rebate (subsidising middle-class, new-car buyers) is higher than the total cost of a microcar, landed in NZ. Brand new, impressively-featured microcars can be purchased off Alibaba for US$2,000. Put another way, if the rebate was spent on a microcar, it would pay for the microcar with cash left over. This means EVs for everyone, not just the comfortable class.
  • Microcars make roads “bigger”. Two can be parked in a single parking bay. Their on-road footprint is smaller, thus using less of the road. In places like Waiheke this is important as road-widening is not a realistic option. It could double the ferry carpark capacity with no new land set aside for parking – just paint shorter, narrower lines.

Order in Council or Amendment to the Act?

  • If Order in Council and legislative amendment were equally easy, amend the Land Transport Act 1998 Part 1(2)(1) Interpretation moped to include 4 wheels as in:
moped is a motor vehicle (other than a power-assisted pedal cycle) that has— (a) 2, 3 or 4 wheels; and (b) a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kilometres per hour; and (c) (ii) a power source other than a piston engine.
  • However, legislative amendments are not as easy as Order in Council, thus when NZ Post sought to make its microcars (brand name Paxter) legal on NZ roads, it secured a NZTA exemption. The Paxter exemption given would not fit well with the microcar proposal because it included permitting driving on footpaths (appropriate for Posties, but not for everyone) and required motorcycle helmets for drivers. Helmets make no sense when a low speed vehicle has approved seat belts and the physical crash protection of a car body. Seat belts hold the occupants in place, thus the extra 1 kg weight of the helmet creates higher incidence of neck injury because of its inertia. Microcars in slow-speed crashes offer more protection to the rider and passenger of a 2-wheeled moped. Also the Paxter has a motorcycle-type steering system. Today’s Chinese microcars use conventional steering wheels and car-type controls.

Regulation

  • Once the enabling legislation or Order in Council is sorted to permit microcars use in LTAs, regulations will be needed to ensure the actual designs that are imported are safe on 50 km/h LTA roads. As was seen when Lime e-scooters first came into NZ, there were problems with brakes that caused injuries and ACC claims. This can be easily addressed by clearly setting out NZ standards that must be met for a microcar to pass the border check, with NZS provided to the China factories to ensure vehicles safe for NZ roads. Given the price, all imported microcars are expected to be new.
  • Power: The current rule for 2/3 wheel electric mopeds sets no power limit, only a maximum allowable speed. The same should apply to 4-wheel moped/microcars. A power limit, such as the 1,500W for mobility scooters, or the 300W for ebikes, clearly was set by a person with little understanding of electrical engineering. Wattage varies constantly, and power caps discriminate against heavy people and tradies carrying tools and supplies. The much simpler regulation – easily enforceable – is to require the controller is set to cut off at 50 km/h. It’s simple and effective.
  • Speed: Further, the motor should be sufficiently powerful to enable the microcar to maintain the posted speed limit even going up steep hills (16%). If a road has a posted speed of 50 km/h and a microcar slows down to 35 km/h, drivers stuck behind seek to overtake, creating a dangerous situation. The standard should not define wattage, but require the manufacture certify the microcar can maintain 50 km/h on a 16% grade.
  • WOF: 2 & 3-wheel mopeds are not subject to WOF. 4-wheel should be the same. A WOF inspection is appropriate for high-speed vehicles, where an unsafe car can have catastrophic outcomes, but not for vehicles speed-limited to 50 km/h. While the comfortable class can afford a $75 WOF fee, for the struggling Kiwi, a $75 fee adds one more burden to their struggle to keep food on the table and the lights on.

Recommended Standards

  • NZTA sets standards for two and three wheeled mopeds. Similar standards should be set for 4-wheelers. Already, most of these features are on even the lowest-cost microcars. Minimum standards should include:
  • motor controller set to not exceed 50 km/h (cuts off power at 51 km/h)
  • sufficient power to go up a 16% incline at 50 km/h when fully loaded
  • not permitted to be driven on footpaths or cycle lanes unless signposted
  • not to exceed 500 kg maximum curb weight excluding battery weight
    • note: permit weight limit to be increased by NZTA as technology advances
  • two dipped-beam headlamps suitable for driving on left side of the road
  • headlamps must illuminate the road in front for at least 30 metres
  • two brake lights on either side and one higher middle brake light
  • two red rear facing lamps that can be seen from 100 metres away when turned on
  • electric turn signals with front and rear facing lamps 
  • speedometer in km/h
  • windscreen and windscreen wiper
  • rear registration plate lamp
  • two rear reflectors that can be seen from 100 metres away when light shines on it
  • two rear view mirrors, each of which gives a clear view behind the vehicle
  • good quality tyres and protective mudguards
  • horn can be heard by other road users 100 m. away (in normal traffic condition)
  • lap/shoulder seat belts to Land Transport Rule approved standard

Relation to government priorities

  • This proposed policy is consistent with the
  • Zero Carbon amendment to the Climate Change Response Act 2019;
  • Government concern with rising cost of living (especially local transport);
  • Concern about urban traffic congestion (too many cars, not enough roads);
  • Evidence showing Class MA EVs have a significant adverse environmental footprint due to the resources required to manufacture their components.

Links

 

 

Local Government: Stop using consents as cash cows

This one is complicated by the fact the RMA was recently changed. However, the principles remain the same. User pays is being abused.

Resource Management Act 1991

 

18A Procedural principles: Every person exercising powers and performing functions under this Act must take all practicable steps to(a) use timely, efficient, consistent, and cost-effective processes that are proportionate to the functions or powers being performed or exercised;

 

Section 36AAA Criteria for fixing administrative charges

(1) When fixing charges under section 36, a local authority must have regard to the criteria set out in this section.

(2) The sole purpose of a charge is to recover the reasonable costs incurred by the local authority in respect of the activity to which the charge relates.

(3) A particular person or particular persons should be required to pay a charge only— (a) to the extent that the benefit of the local authority’s actions to which the charge relates is obtained by those persons as distinct from the community of the local authority as a whole;

 

The RMA has become an important part of funding

In 2022, Herald senior reporter Bernard Orsman wrote a story entitled: $270m budget hole: Aucklanders set for steep rates rises unless big savings found. In it he wrote: Falling revenue from things like resource consents as the economy heads south next year is also adding to the deficit.

If one reads RMA Section 36AAA(2), this is a breach of the law. If the sole purpose of RMA charges is to recover reasonable costs incurred by the local authority in respect of the activity to which the charge relates then falling resource consents should have a neutral impact on the budget. 

The only way for an ordinary citizen to learn how actual charges are calculated and charged is to submit an actual consent application and see what happens. The director of a charitable trust focused on affordable housing did this, and the findings were disturbing.

Case Study One: Affordable Elder Housing

On Waiheke Island, the Waiheke Community Housing Trust raised funds to purchase a section to build three affordable elder homes they would lease. The budget saw a 100% budget blowout, due to charges, delays and required consultant reports by the Council. The final straw was a demand for a development contribution. Six months after the project finally opened  the trust was forced to sell the property and evict the elderly tenants. Far from enabling the people and communities, Auckland Council disabled them, crushed them, destroyed them.

When Auckland Council was asked to explain how they reconciled their charges to a charitable trust in the context of S36AAA (3) the senior manager for Resource Consenting replied in writing that Auckland Council considers every application to benefit the applicant, even a charitable trust that is intentionally building affordable housing to benefit the community.  This raises two questions:

  1. Why would the Parliament in its wisdom include S36AAA(2) if the Council’s position is right?
  2. How does benefit fall to trustees who will not live in the housing? 

When the council was asked these questions, they stonewalled.

Case Study Two: Local food and turning waste materials into surplus resources

Having witnessed the Waiheke Housing Charitable Trust debacle, and finding council officers refused to meet with or answer questions in writing as to how the social and environmental challenges could be addressed, the council advised another charitable trust director the only way to engage is to file a resource consent application. Having done so, the outcome was disturbing:

  • No way to apply for a consent without paying a 4-figure deposit
  • No controls over how the planners charge against that deposit
  • The planner charged 333 minutes to reject the application and take it from the deposit
  • The applicant asked to appeal the charges and was denied in violation of the law
  • The required appeal report was not written by the council despite numerous requests
  • It is believed the rejection was in error, but the Council simply stonewalls
  • It is clear the culture within Council is to “run the meter” in breach of s18(a)

Need for Reform

The proposed Labour reforms of the RMA are not reforms at all, but instead are ways to increase parasitical costs in property development. Real changes would include:

  • S36AAA(2) enforced. Councils must show charges are fiscally neutral, not funding overhead
  • S36AAA(3) enforced. No charges to community-benefit initiatives such as housing trusts
  • S36AAA(3) enforced. No charges for a rejected application (does not benefit the applicant)
  • S18A(a) enforced. Council must demonstrate efficient and cost-effective charges

Overhaul: A major overhaul of the culture of council planning is necessary. Central government should make it clear consents are not to be a new source of revenue. Further, if the laws need to be untangled to make applications user-friendly (not needing a private planner), enact them. For example, ban negative components where the applicant is required to cite every rule. overlay and national policy and then state it either does not apply or the effects are de minimis. Simple applications should be able to be written by a reasonably literate, non-professional applicant, and the planners instructed to not reject for lack of jargon. If the application misses a point, the planner should have the latitude to add the point and make the approval conditional on the amendment.

Rebalance: The purpose of the RMA is to enable people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural well being, health and safety while protecting and preserving the environment. Rebalance the Act by drafting clear instructions to council that:

  • Enable people and communities, not officers and private planning consultants and experts
  • Make economic well-being equal to environment in assessment
  • Same for social and cultural well-being
  • Define environment in a way that includes human habit
  • Do not use applicant fees to fund studies (such as required applicant-paid surveys on lizards
  • For every net immigrant family require (using UDA) one new house to be constructed
  • Boost the role of the Urban Development Act in doing major development using skunkworks*

Beauty: Finally, add beauty and love-of-place to the purpose of the RMA. NZ is a young country with a transient outlook. As countries mature, people build towns and villages, workplaces and homes not only to keep them warm and dry, but to enable them, and their future generations to enjoy a good life. This is why old Europe is so beautiful and American-style suburbs are so banal.

* Skunkworks is where a large and unwieldy institution like Kainga Ora sets up a small, highly focused team – in this case, using company-law – assigned to accomplish a single outcome – in this case to build new towns. Do not use private developers because their pecuniary interest is not, and will never be, aligned with the public interest. Do not use the civil service because public servants are risk aversive, wasting time, money and burning out good ideas.

 

NATIONAL PLANNING STANDARDS DEFINITION 

The new definition of building in the National Planning Standards is flawed. It was specifically altered to target the lowest cost housing solution for the poor, especially tangata whenua on Māori-title land, and Pasifika peoples in South Auckland, as well as young people unable to get on the property ladder except through a DIY tiny home.

WHEN HOLLYWOOD BIAS BECOMES GOVERNMENT POLICY

Under the 6th Labour Government, a high level political authority reported that in an informal discussion by Cabinet, it was resolved that mobile homes/tiny homes would not to be a part of the Labour government’s response to homelessness. The politicians around the table felt “trailer parks” were seen to constitute a hot-potato that the Labour government did not want to be associated with.

Trailer-house trash is a Hollywood cliché: a run-down trailer home park full of low-life losers, petty criminals, drunks and addicts. In a cabinet meeting, it is an abdication of responsibility to address the growing number of hidden homeless – people living in cars, tents, garages and overcrowded conditions by dismissing a viable solution because it might be seen as a political hot potato.

This informal resolution then was quietly passed on to the respective ministries, including MBIE, MFE and MSD, among others, who then began an undeclared war on tiny homes and mobile homes. In addition to adverse determinations by MBIE asserting chattel housing were actually buildings (undermining the fundamental basis of a thousand years of property law), MFE created a new weapon to block the poor from affordable proper housing by conflating real property (realty) and personal property (chattel) in the new National Planning Standard Definition of the word building. Four words slipped into a 56 page document have the power of law without any scrutiny, any review by Parliament’s Legislative Design and Advisory Committee or the Regulatory Review Committee.

Adding four words to a documents called NPS-Definitions is sure to put everyone to sleep except policy wonks… until the local council enforcement officer knocks on the mobile home door of poor person to advise them they either have to spend $20,000 to get a resource consent, or remove the mobile home from the property (and return to hidden homelessness). By then, it’s too late.

Mobile homes cost under $100,000, are warm, dry, durable and comfortable, providing bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and lounge in a compact and efficient design, and they are a private-sector initiative responding to a dire need as the price of buildings became unaffordable due to onerous regulation and a limited supply of new residential zoning.

The losers will be the poor, the defenceless, the ones quite invisible to the nameless, faceless MFE bureaucrats who inserted the four words into NPS-Definitions. Why? Because defining mobile homes as buildings catches them in a regulatory swamp that will kill the industry and return the poor to cars, tents and overcrowded conditions.

HOW TO FIX IT

Use the same definition found in the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014:

building means a structure that is temporary or permanent, whether movable or not, and which is fixed to land and intended for occupation by any person, animal, machinery, or chattel.

And if deemed necessary add new definitions for

  • mobile home: manufactured chattel housing
  • tiny home on wheels: DIY chattel housing
  • chattel shelter: shelter not fixed to land, including homes, workplaces, storage or other use; temporary and long-term.
  • repurposed shipping container
  • skid shelter: manufactured chattel modules

Begin by clearly restating the fundamental principle of property law to distinguish between chattel (personal property or movables) not fixed to land, retaining its own independent identity,  and realty: land or that which is fixed to land  with the intention of permanent annexation, that has lost its independent identity and become part of the land and title to it.

HOW IT HAPPENED AND HOW TO PREVENT IT  

MFE Minister asleep at the wheel

The Government introduced National Planning Standards (NPS), which are lesser instruments of government called for in RMA section 58B. As secondary legislation, they do not require a vote in the House or to be approved by the Governor General by Order of Council (a vote of the Executive Council). According to Legislation Act 2019 s67(d) such secondary legislation does not automatically trigger drafting by the Parliamentary Council Office (PCO), and it appears the contentious language was not vetted by the PCO but written by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) staff and presented to the ministers in Cabinet, in this case Hon David Parker (Labour) and Hon Eugenie Sage (Greens) for signature. 

Among the 22,000 words in the NPS standard terms are four words that should never have been handed to the Minister for signature, and on private enquiry, it was learned the Minister had no idea they were embedded in what should have been a standard, non-controversial document. To summarise, the following was embedded and is now law.

building means a temporary or permanent movable or immovable physical construction that is:
(a) partially or fully roofed; and
(b) fixed or located on or in land;
but excludes any motorised vehicle or other mode of transport that could be moved under its own power.  [emphasis added]

BACKGROUND BRIEF

Why did MFE do this?:

The earlier 234 page NPS background report  explains: 

…structures  that are located on land but not fixed to land on the basis that it is becoming more common for relocatable structures to be used that are not fixed to land. Shipping containers have been difficult  to manage under the RMA as it is their own weight that holds them down (they are not fixed to land)  and small mobile/relocatable buildings have become more common over recent times. 

This makes it clear the target is the increased use of both repurposed shipping containers and intentionally manufactured (or DIY) mobile homes and other relocatable chattel. Note the author calls them mobile buildings, which shows the writer lacks an understanding of the fundamentals of property law. There is no such thing as a mobile building.

All buildings are structures. All structures are realty. All realty is either land or that which is fixed to land and annexed to the title to the land.

If something is mobile, it is not fixed to land, and therefore by definition cannot be a building. It’s like calling a tree an animal.

Based on this concern MFE in its first draft proposed to redefine the words building and structure:

3.14.1 Proposed definition
 
Building means any structure, whether temporary or permanent, moveable or fixed, that is enclosed, with 2 or more walls and a roof, or any structure that is similarly enclosed
   
Structure means any building, equipment, device or other facility made by people and which is fixed to or located on land; and includes any raft, but excludes motorised vehicles that can be moved under their own power [underline added]

The problem with this is it is a breach of Legislation Act 2019, which says:

20. Words used in secondary legislation or other instruments have same meaning as in empowering legislation.

Structure is already a part of the RMA:

“Structure means any building, equipment, device, or other facility made by people and which is fixed to land; and includes any raft”.

Given this reminder they were proposing to breach the Legislation Act, in their second try, the NPS authors moved the “or located on” language from structure to their new meaning for the word building, which is not defined in the RMA.

Because they could not use their original definition (Building means any structure…), MFE explains that they invented a new legal term, physical construction, explaining that it would embrace not only structures but what property law calls chattel – things made by people that is not fixed to land.

Two problems

  1. The word construction refers to realty (real property) not chattel, so MFE failed to hit the target. 
  2. To redefine such a fundamental word at law as building is not something done by inserting a few prepositions into a massive document and failing to inform the Minister that MFE just upended a thousand years of common law and property law.

In support of the first point, the clearest statement of meaning is found in US law, where US Federal Government Statutes says:

Construction means construction, alteration, or repair (including dredging, excavating, and painting) of buildings, structures, or other real property. For purposes of this definition, the terms “buildings, structures, or other real property” include, but are not limited to, improvements of all types, such as bridges, dams, plants, highways, parkways, streets, subways, tunnels, sewers, mains, power lines, cemeteries, pumping stations, railways, airport facilities, terminals, docks, piers, wharves, ways, lighthouses, buoys, jetties, breakwaters, levees, canals, and channels. Construction does not include the manufacture, production, furnishing, construction, alteration, repair, processing, or assembling of vessels, aircraft, or other kinds of personal property 

It is likely that if the NPS meaning of physical construction was tested in High Court, it would be limited to real property and not include personal property (chattel) that is not fixed to land. Although it is more likely the court would toss the definition out entirely and instruct MFE to try again or to use the standard meaning, as best found in Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014:

building means a structure that is temporary or permanent, whether movable or not, and which is fixed to land and intended for occupation by any person, animal, machinery, or chattel.
 
structure— (a) means a thing made by people, whether movable or not, and fixed to the land; and (b) includes equipment or machinery

WHAT WAS MFE THINKING?

MFE clearly set out its thinking in the consultation documents prepared by MFE.

In this publication: April 2019 Ministry for the Environment publication (ME 1404) 2I Definitions Standard – Recommendations on Submissions Report for the first set of National Planning Standards, MFE wrote:

RMA plans seek to manage effects from buildings in the main where those effects are more long term than from, for example, a car parked on a section and used every day. However, where those vehicles no longer move (likely no longer used for transportation but for activities such as business, storage or accommodation) we consider they would have similar effects as buildings and should be captured by the definition. We therefore recommend excluding motorised vehicles or any other mode of transport that could be moved under its own power.

This is clear evidence the authors have no understanding of the fundamental difference between chattel and realty. A motorised vehicle does not become realty because it is used for such activities as business, storage or accommodation rather than transport. While they may have similar effects as buildings (although a building must meet a 50-year performance standard and tends to permanently alter the landscape), they should not be captured by the definition. Excluding modes of transport that can be moved under its own power is the wrong distinction, and has become a labyrinth of bureaucratic torture because the author appears oblivious to the foundation of property law.

MFE then continues…

We considered the alternative to exclude vehicles where they are used for business, storage or residential activity – but given the fact that the definition applies to facilities that are located on land – the definition would then have encompassed any business vehicles or even trucks when located or parked on land. We consider it is more certain to only exclude those vehicles that can be moved under their own power. 

The introduction of the test “are located on land”, as opposed to fixed to land, annexed to title and having lost their independent identity is the point MFE lost the plot.

EVEN SO, IT FAILS

The supporting narrative published by MFE shows the lack of proper legal training as they struggle to force chattel into the realty box. They would have preferred to use the word “structure” except the law clearly sets out that this limits the reach of the definition to that which is fixed to land. They write:

As referred to above, the removal of the word “structure” from the definition of building, decouples a building from the requirement to be fixed to land which is specified in the RMA definition of “structure”. 

So MFE invents a new term: “physical construction”:

We considered other terms which could be applied instead of ‘physical construction’. We tested the word ‘facility’ with our pilot councils and they queried the meaning and certainty of that word. They sought clarity about whether some items such as shipping containers, caravans, motorhomes or house trucks would come within the meaning of the term. We consider that part of the uncertainty about that word relates to the fact that ‘facility’ may bear the meaning of a larger building or complex often used for a public or community purpose (eg, educational facility or community
facility). We consider that the term ‘physical construction’ carries the meaning of a structure that is manmade and tangible, but it does not need to be fixed to land. While this is a new term, we consider that it is broad enough to cover all types of buildings without setting any parameters other than that there must have been some form of manmade construction. It will not be taken to exclude some items because they don’t qualify; as the word ‘facility’ may have been.

The word “construction” refers to the making of improvements (buildings and structures) on realty (real estate or real property). One does not construct a car, one manufactures it. One does not construct a mobile home or caravan, one manufactures it, if in a factory, or one makes it, if DIY. Therefore, it can be argued in High Court that “physical construction” is limited to realty, thus does not extend MFE’s invented new meaning of building to encompass its target.

Middle Level public servants working in a government ministry do not have the authority to decouple such fundamental words in law as building and structure. But they seem to be sufficiently ignorant of this limit on their authority that they made radical changes to property law and secured sign off from the respective ministers who were not alerted to the change.

The Problem with Writing Standards

New legislation has the benefit of vetting by the Legislative Design and Advisory Committee (LDAC) or the Parliamentary Council Office (PCO) that examines drafts to ensure they are consistent and understood by ordinary people.  Referencing Legislation Guidelines the 2021 edition, CHAPTER 14 Delegating law-making powers, Part 1: Is the matter appropriate for secondary legislation?, makes it clear when regulations become ultra vires. In particular:

The following matters should generally (or in some cases always) be addressed in primary legislation:… 
– variations to the common law. 

Redefining the meaning of building to include chattel (personal property) is a fundamental variation to the common law and one most unlikely to pass vetting by LDAC or PCO.

BREACH OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1993

The Human Rights Act 1993 part 21(1) requires any legislation or regulation be tested against it to ensure it does not contain prohibited grounds for discrimination. It can be easily shown that mobile homes are primarily an affordable option for classes of people overly represented in s21(1) including

  • Solo mums §s21(1)(b)(v) and §s21(1)(l)(i)
  • Māori and Pasifika, §s21(1)(f)
  • Disabled persons §s21(1)(h)
  • Elderly §s21(1)(i)
  • Unemployed §s21(1)(k)

The vast majority of persons living in chattel housing come from these disadvantaged classes. Redefining chattel housing as buildings means they must come under the compliance regulations of the Building Act 2004 as well as the RMA. The extra costs and delays required to meet the standards for buildings (which in many cases means suboptimal design compromises solely to meet standards inappropriate for mobile homes) prices those homes out of reach of the poor. 

Conclusion

The conflating of chattel and realty fundamentally alters the common law, and is likely to be found to be ultra vires – that a Minister signing off a standard that changes the common law to an opposite meaning exceeds his powers as delegated in Section 58B of the RMA.

A standard definition of building should be used – as best found in Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014.

If there needs to be new definitions for chattel used as shelter, as abodes and other purposes, they should have new, but familiar terms. And for clarity, fixed to land should include clear tests that respect case law and common law.

APPENDIX: National Planning Standards Definition

https://environment.govt.nz/publications/2i-definitions-standard-recommendations-on-submissions-report-for-the-first-set-of-national-planning-standards/

See Page 50

3.14.3 Analysis and recommendations

Relationship between the definitions of structure and building

The original definition of structure in the draft planning standards was included to capture structures that are located on land but not fixed to land on the basis that it is becoming more common for relocatable structures to be used that are not fixed to land. Shipping containers have been difficult to manage under the RMA as it is their own weight that holds them down (they are not fixed to land) and small mobile/relocatable buildings have become more common over recent times.

The majority of submitters were opposed the definition of structure and requested that the RMA version from section 2 of the Act should apply. We accept that there could be unintended consequences and difficulties with the draft version of the structure definition. We therefore recommend that the RMA version be included instead. For ease of reference the RMA definition of structure is as follows:

“structure means any building, equipment, device, or other facility made by people and which is fixed to land; and includes any raft”.

As a result of the adoption of the RMA definition of structure in the Standards it is considered necessary to remove the link to structure in the definition of building, to enable moveable or relocatable ‘buildings’ that do not need to be fixed to land to be captured by the definition. Instead, we recommend the definition include a requirement to be “fixed to or located on or in land”. This will enable both shipping containers and relocateable homes to be included – but still retains a land based requirement. By land, we confirm this has the meaning in the RMA (and in the Standards) which includes land covered by water. Therefore where the definition of building refers to being fixed to or located on land, this also applies to any buildings fixed to land covered by water.

Contrary to those submissions that requested only one combined definition of structure and building, we consider it is useful to have separate definitions. This gives councils the ability to address either or both as required. In addition, regional councils are more likely to need to address structures separately from buildings and so the separate definitions allow for this. Feedback from a regional council pilot council requested that the definition of structure remain so that structures in the coastal marine area could be addressed.

In addition, as a result of removal of the reference to structure in the building definition many of the exclusions that are often included in council plan definitions of buildings (such as retaining walls less than 1.5m high) do not need to be excluded in the recommended building definition; they are not captured by the term.

Submitters identified that the two terms are circular in that each refers to the other as ‘building’ was part of the structure definition and ‘structure’ was part of the building definition. We agree that this is poor drafting and the removal of the interdependency has resolved this issue.

We recommend replacing the word ‘structure’ in the ‘building’ definition with the words ‘physical construction’. The two definitions work together now so that that any building that is fixed to land would be captured by the term structure but not all buildings may be structures through the recommended use of the term ‘physical construction’ rather than ‘structure’ in the definition of ‘building’. We considered other terms which could be applied instead of ‘physical construction’. We tested the word ‘facility’ with our pilot councils and they queried the meaning and certainty of that word. They sought clarity about whether some items such as shipping containers, caravans, motorhomes or house trucks would come within the meaning of the term. We consider that part of the uncertainty about that word relates to the fact that ‘facility’ may bear the meaning of a larger building or complex often used for a public or community purpose (eg, educational facility or community facility). We consider that the term ‘physical construction’ carries the meaning of a structure that is manmade and tangible, but it does not need to be fixed to land. While this is a new term, we consider that it is broad enough to cover all types of buildings without setting any parameters other than that there must have been some form of manmade construction. It will not be taken to exclude some items because they don’t qualify; as the word ‘facility’ may have been.

As referred to above, the removal of the word “structure” from the definition of building, decouples a building from the requirement to be fixed to land which is specified in the RMA definition of “structure”. This would result in vehicles being captured by the definition if no additional changes were recommended. The submission from Christchurch City Council raised this as an issue. We do not consider that in the common use of the term “building”, vehicles would be considered to be included. We consider that vehicles (or other transport modes like railway carriages or boats) that come and go and are used for transportation should not be covered by this definition. We note that the Building Act 2004 includes in its definition only those vehicles that are “immovable” and “occupied by people on a permanent or long‐term basis”.

RMA plans seek to manage effects from buildings in the main where those effects are more long term than from, for example, a car parked on a section and used every day. However, where those vehicles no longer move (likely no longer used for transportation but for activities such as business, storage or accommodation) we consider they would have similar effects as buildings and should be captured by the definition. We therefore recommend excluding motorised vehicles or any other mode of transport that could be moved under its own power. We considered the alternative to exclude vehicles where they are used for business, storage or residential activity – but given the fact that the definition applies to facilities that are located on land – the definition would then have encompassed any business vehicles or even trucks when located or parked on land. We consider it is more certain to only exclude those vehicles that can be moved under their own power.

We acknowledge that there are other items that are moveable and have a roof and so could meet the recommended definition of a building. In particular, tents, caravans, and marquees would be included. We acknowledge that the definition of building is broadly crafted and councils will need to use subcategories or narrower application definitions and rules to manage or permit these items where required.

Certainty – and what constitutes a wall or a roof or similarly enclosed?

Submitters identified that in some buildings (for example aircraft hangers and Nissen huts) walls are not clearly identifiable and their identification can be debated. Circular buildings may only have one ‘wall’ and with a dome roof this may not even be clear such as in the example below:

 

Source: http://www.cosyhomes.net.nz/product/dome‐house/

To avoid the problem of having to clearly identify the walls in the type of dome house example above the phase “or similarly enclosed” was included in the draft standard. This phase was opposed by submitters on the basis that it does not provide enough certainty. As a result the recommended definition has included the phase “is partially or fully roofed”. Consideration was given to excluding any permeable roof on the basis that this then would exclude crop protection structures from the definition. However, it was considered that any exclusion for a permeable roof could result in a loophole in the definition. Is a roof that leaks a permeable roof? How impermeable would it need to be to qualify? This could make it difficult for compliance and enforcement purposes. We consider that it would be better for the plan provisions (rather than the building definition) to clearly enable crop protection structures or other similar structures if this is the desired outcome.

Relationship with the Building Act 2004 definition of building

Some submissions suggested using the definition of building from the Building Act 2004. This was considered in the draft standard but discounted on the basis that the definition in the Building Act serves a different purpose to any RMA definition of building. We agree with this. We did consider including the phrase from the Building Act definition of building “intended for occupation by people, animals, machinery, or chattels’. However, we discounted this because from an RMA effects point of view what a building is used for or whether it is empty or occupied is not relevant. Therefore we do not recommend the inclusion of such a reference.

Relationship with definitions in other acts

Environment Southland queried the relationship with the definition of building in the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014. That definition applies to heritage buildings within that Act and the definition in the planning standards applies to RMA plans. Where RMA plans address heritage buildings they may use a subcategory definition where required.

Broadness of the definition and inclusions and exclusions or size exemptions required

A number of submitters sought the exclusions of buildings up to a certain size (and not always the same size). This can be addressed though rules that permit small buildings (eg, any building that does not exceed 10m2 in area or 2m in height can be permitted). We consider that this approach will make plans easier to understand and use. Any related bulk and location rules could also be drafted to exempt small buildings from having to comply with things like setback requirements or building coverage calculations.

Other submissions sought clarification about what is included within the definition and many items were referred to. We consider that these can be addressed in rules where required. We acknowledge that will require many rules but we consider that the broadness of the definition is inherent in the meaning of building and where councils need to address specific types of buildings or even parts of buildings such as decks, it is clearer for users if this is located in rules rather than hidden in a definition. On the issue of decks, if free standing and without a roof, they may be addressed within the definition of “structure”.

Implications for plans of changes

In relation to amendments to rules that may be required, we acknowledge the extent of these and in consideration of that issue we have provided extended timeframes for implementation to allow councils to implement changes within plan reviews, if desired.

Additional points

In relation to the issue of whether a building is above or below ground, we recommend adding the phrase “fixed to or located on or in land” and this ensures that the definition does not differentiate between the two. Some buildings may be below ground and if councils wish to address these they may do so within their rules.

In summary, we recommend the definition of structure is replaced with the definition of structure from section 2 of the RMA. We also recommend the definition of building is replaced with the following definition:

Building means any a temporary or permanent movable or immovable physical construction that is‐

(a) partially or fully roofed, and

(b) is fixed to or located on or in land, but

(c) excludes any motorised vehicle or other mode of transport that could be moved under its own power.

Mobile Homes – Chattel Housing not Real Estate

Ending government’s war on poor people and their mobile homes

Timeless development models for our time

 

The hidden homeless are all around us

 

A home is a life-changing event for them

 

Home for elders with kids & grandkids next door

 

Mobile homes come in various designs

Made all over New Zealand

Summary: A mobile home is the most efficient and cost-effective housing for people who cannot afford market rents or home prices. They can be parked on land owned by whanau, family or friend, and when the need for them passes, they can be towed away leaving nothing more than bare soil. They are not buildings (fixed to land) but chattel (personal property). For decades, local governments left them alone, because as chattel, they did not fit the rules for real property. For the most part, they were purchased or leased by poor people. However, more recently, trend-setting, tech-savvy young people rebranded mobile homes as tiny homes of wheels, and began parking them in “nice” neighbourhoods where grumpy neighbours complained to their local council. Lacking clarity, some councils began to issue abatement notices and notices to fix, and when these were appealed to MBIE Determinations, there was a radical shift in interpretation. Government effectively declared was on mobile homes and their constituency, poor people. This war needs to be examined and stopped by elected officials.

Problem:  ;The number of hidden homeless – people living in cars, tents, garages and overcrowded conditions has grown over the past decade. The waiting list for state housing has exploded since 2017, increasing by over 400 families every month.

In 2018, Central Government proposed KiwiBuild, 100,000 new homes. As of May 2022, it’s built under 1,400. They cost too much, they take to long to build, and in the meantime the hidden homeless ranks grow.

Solution: Over the past two decades, a domestic mobile home industry has arisen – a one or two bedroom home with kitchen and bath manufactured in factories on a chassis trailer and towed to site. Made in two weeks, installed on site in two hours and cost under $80,000 or lease for $400 a week, with a lease–to-purchase option in 6-years. Especially in North Island, where the subtropical climate is amenable to small-home living, mobile homes should be the sort of home-grown solution the government would support. But the opposite is happening.

Governments war on poor people

Imagine you buy a car, and to get it on the road you had to pay $25,000 in registration fees that would take months to process. And during that process, any government official could demand changes to the design. That’s what happens when one seeks resource and building consents for a new building. Indeed $25,000 is sometimes modest, it could cost $50,000 and in some cases, after spending considerable money, be denied.

Mobile homes are not buildings, but the local government consenting departments apply the “duck test” saying if it looks like a building and is used like a building, it must be a building and therefore must have resource and building consents to be used. There is a certain irony that the duck test saying actually was about a mechanical duck, that looked, quacked and even poo’d like a duck but was not a duck.

Councils issue abatement notices and notices to fix. In most cases, the targets of their notices are poor and overwhelmed by the officers. They pay or cave.  A few, like Alan Dall, crowdsource to fight, appealed it to MBIE who backed the council and then to District Court, where the judge issued a scathing condemnation of MBIE and the council, finding for Dall. One would have expected councils and MBIE to back off after this, but they persist in their insistence that mobile homes are structures.

Government out of touch with reality

The regulatory ethos that has overtaken both central and local government takes the view that everything must be regulated, and under user pays, that their departmental funding for regulatory enforcement must be added to the cost of that which is regulated. Thus a mobile home that costs $80,000 can attract an additional $40,000 in both government fees, and consultant fees to write the application in a form the council will accept.

Planners no longer enable people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural wellbeing,  to quote the purpose of the RMA, they disable the people and communities. Councils no longer “play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach” as required by the Local Government Act 2002.

The fundamental problem comes from the policy of User Pays. While governments write noble values statements, the message from senior management to line staff is to place the pecuniary interest of the government – raising money through fees, charges, contributions and fines – over the public interest for which government exists.

Action required

Include mobile homes in the portfolio of affordable housing solutions. Do not classify them as buildings, structures or realty as long as they remain mobile. Work with the industry to ensure acceptable standards of health, safety and durability – noting that the industry already adheres to such standards because it is bad business to not… and because existing consumer and liability laws demand responsible design and manufacture.

Need to reform Local Government 

The Funding Mechanism for Local Government creates a conflict of interest

When pecuniary interest eclipses public interest in the culture of local government the institution fails in the purpose for which it was created

A recent headline in Business Desk read Builders say consents system is ‘broken’ . It is. It’s not just the Building Control Authorities (BCA), the council department that provides building consents. What is called council planning, the group that issues resource consents has become a self-funded bureaucracy that operates as an unaccountable monopoly.

And, in large councils, most notably Auckland, fines have become a revenue source: one 160 meter bus lane in Newmarket generates $12,000 fines a day.  Of course council officials replied: “…although AT had been clear bus lanes weren’t aimed at revenue gathering…” but then goes on to say “revenue from fines helped fund public transport, parking, road safety campaigns, walking and cycling initiatives and road maintenance… With Auckland Transport utilising the enforcement revenues collected in this way council is also able to allocate funding Auckland Transport would have otherwise needed, to other council services like libraries, parks, community centres, the Art Gallery, the Zoo, and other recreational facilities.” That sure sounds like revenue gathering, despite the prior disclaimer. And staying with Auckland Transport for a moment, during the COVID crisis, $863,170 of taxpayer and ratepayer money was spent altering lower Queen Street that was ripped out a year later. If that has been a private sector stunt, heads would have rolled.

The problem? Local government is no longer local. It is government by unelected officers, team leaders and senior managers who use standing orders, privacy and commercial sensitivity to erect barriers between their decision-making and the public they ostensibly serve. They are not held accountable for their spending, for their policies, for their revenue collection or their failures. Checks and balances including the role of the elected councillors and that of public consultation have been neutered. The bigger the local government, the worse the problems.

The problems are systemic. It’s not that bad people are running local government, it is the natural outcome of a closed system. Systemic changes are needed:

Remove pecuniary interest

 

Problem: The funding mechanisms for local government finds senior management passes the message down to operational staff that revenue generation by fees, fines, contributions and hourly billings are a council priority. Indeed some departments such as building control authority and resource consent departments are told they are self-funded – you want your budget funded? Go get the money.  This distorts the purpose of local government and contributes to adverse outcomes, such as the affordable housing crisis.

Solution: All fees, fines, contributions and other charges levied by the territorial authority are paid into a central trust fund. Each territorial authority then applies for a share of that trust fund as revenue sharing. The trustees of the Trust Fund will provide a base rate based on population adjusted by local cost of living, with a remainder paid as an incentive bonus based on success criteria. For example, coming in under budget and under schedule on a road project would earn a bonus. Fixing a road so it lasts longer would earn a bonus. The fastest turnarounds in building and resource consents would earn a bonus.

In some cases, the bonuses should not be awarded to the authority, but to the personnel who delivered success… this means the managers and staff directly responsible for the accomplishment.

Remove joint and several liability

 

Problem: The joint and several liability principle applied to the leaky building crisis completely changed local government culture from public service to risk control.

Solution:  Local government is established by Central Government. The buck stops at the top. All fiscal liability should be held by the State. But personal liability should remain with the individual not the legal fiction of a limited liability company. In other words, staying with the leaking building crisis, the State should have immediately stepped in – similar to how it does with ACC – and paid to stop the leaks before there is further damage, and with no money wasted on endless court battles. Then it should investigate who is responsible with no protection of limited liability where the culprit simply puts their company into liquation, in a take the money and run scenario.

The power of the State to deprive persons of liberty or property should not be broken by limited liability companies. If a company is liable, the money cannot escape to the investors, owners, directors, family trusts, etc. The natural persons can be held liable if they do not repay their takings with the only out being personal bankruptcy. In other words, instead of holding the tax and ratepayers joint and severally liable, pierce the corporate veil and hold the culpable individuals liable. And if that liability extends to council personnel, they too should be held personally liable, but only if it is clear they failed to do their job.

Require councils to obey the law

 

Problem: Example: RMA Section 36AAA sets out the basis on which councils can charge applicants fees.  The benefit must fall to the applicant as opposed to benefiting the community as a whole. This is ignored by council. For example, charitable trusts apply for consent to build pensioner housing. The benefit is to the community that otherwise finds its pensioners become hidden homeless. But the council charges are not only assessed, but in some cases become so onerous, both in donations the trust has to raise, and the years it can take its volunteers to prevail, that the trusts abandon the projects and sell the land to developers for comfortable-class housing. 

Solution: Require councils to obey the law. In particular, have a tick-box on the online application that takes the applicant to a Section 36AAA payment section where they can signal the application is a community-benefit application and not subject to fees. These flagged applications are then reviewed by a council official to confirm the claim and then processed without fees charged.

Restore checks and balances

 

Problem: Elected officials stand for office promising change, but when they are sworn in, they discover their powers are limited. They are provided reams of briefing papers by the Chief Executive’s staff who shape the debate in a form pre-decided by the administrative staff. The elected representatives are dependent on the executive for information and those who buck the system find they are cut off.

Solution: Assign an independent staff to each elected mayor whose job is constituent services. Complaints, concerns and queries by the citizens of each ward are directed to these constituency services advocates (CSA) who have full right of enquiry and direct access to every council staff member and consultant – not filtered through the chief executive or PR staff. Findings are reported to the mayor, but also to the ward councillor, as the CSA reports to both. Where possible, the outcomes are documented on a public web site controlled by the mayor and ward councillors, not the chief executive and their staff.

Dial back Health & Safety

 

Problem: Health and safety have become excuses for disproportionate regulation that punish the law abiding and safe in an ineffective attempt to change the behaviour of law breakers and the irresponsible. For example, lowering the speed limit to 30 km/h on a road engineered for safe driving at 50 km/h is unlikely to cause a hoon driving at 80 to slow down, but it will frustrate the safe drivers who find the new limit below the intuitive safe speed. It will however, become a new source of council revenue for speeding tickets, and foster increased resentment of local government. 

Solution: Provide a disputes tribunal chaired by ward councillors and the mayor’s CSA staff (see above) that may hear any complaint of a regulation based on health and/or safety that the complainant views as unreasonable or lacking effectiveness. Empower the tribunal to order the respective administrative staff to change or revoke the regulation (following due process of law that may require a further council resolution) to fix it.

Dial back on Commercial Sensitivity

 

Problem: Commercial sensitivity is used as a cover to avoid accountability, especially involving waste of ratepayers money. It’s public money being spent, any ratepayer or citizen should be able to see where it is going, and if it is value for money. Vendors doing business with council will complain, but they will get used to it, and the public will benefit as open information means more competitive services.

Solution: Place the entire accounting system, including all contracts on line, made available by password to any person on the voting role. This includes job titles, but not person’s names. It includes company names. For the few cases that truly do require redaction due to commercial sensitivity (or personal security), the applicant must demonstrate to a committee of the council (elected officials) why redaction should be provided.

GOVERNING. NZ..... To rule is easy, to govern difficult