The Amended Act now contains several clauses which should do much to stamp out anti-competitive objections to applications. The Centre and others also asked for these same policies to be applied with equal rigour to the preparation of planning documents.

Unfortunately these submissions were ignored, apparently in response to submissions from property owners who wanted their existing investments in retail centres protected from competition.

Consequently the central premise of Smart Growth remains intact and new plans are full of proposals designed to protect existing centres from competition, most notably in Wellington and Hamilton, but any Smart Growth (now called ‘Spatial Planning’ or  ‘Place Based Planning’) documents have anti-competitive policies at their very core.

NBR Column – Putting the Brakes on Growth

The column opens:

The Government sees welcome signs of economic recovery.

However, many commentators welcome rising house prices as one of these signs of the recovery rather than an ominous sign of failure of supply. If house prices continue to rise because of restraints on supply, the Reserve Bank will have to raise interest rates. The New Zealand dollar will rise even further.

The false real estate market will dash any hope of an export-led recovery.

The impact of local government policies and actions cannot be ignored.

The False Dawn of Development Contributions.

Councils around the country are finding the international recession has driven the revenue stream from development contributions into a nose-dive. Councils collect these development contributions from families, entrepreneurs and companies supposedly to cover the general costs their developments impose on infrastructure for the district as a whole. (Financial contributions are payments made to compensate for direct costs caused by a specific development).

For example, Mayor Brown of the Far North District Council reports that during the 2008/09 year, development contributions had fallen from the forecast $11 million, to a mere $2 million. This 80% fall in development contributions implies a similar fall in entrepreneurial economic activity in the District. Where will all those World Cup visitors actually stay?

These development contributions, authorized by the previous Government’s ‘reforms’ to the Local Government Act, have become a major source of revenue for many councils, who are now facing similar shortfalls in the revenue streams built into their Long Term Community Plans.

Read the full column, Putting the Brakes on Growth, here