Hon Chris Bishop
Minister of Transport
Minister of Housing
Minister for Infrastructure
Minister Responsible for RMA Reform

Good afternoon. Can I acknowledge Ngāti Whātua for their warm welcome, Simpson Grierson for hosting us here today, and of course the Committee for Auckland for putting on today’s event.

I suspect some of you are sitting there wondering what a boy from the Hutt would know about Auckland, our largest city.

Well, let me reassure you that I know and love this city. I lived here for two years, many of my friends live here, and I am here almost every week.

Auckland is critical to New Zealand’s future and today I want to talk about how we create that future, with central government working alongside the Auckland Council and Auckland communities.

GROWTH

Let me start with the economic picture.

We are in challenging economic times. The government came to office with New Zealand in the midst of a prolonged cost of living crisis, with high inflation, high interest rates, and after years of profligate debt-fuelled government spending.

Turning that around is not going to be easy and it is not going to happen immediately.

We have made good progress. Budget 2024 started the repair job. Business and consumer confidence is returning. The OCR was cut by another 50 basis points on Wednesday, meaning mortgage rate relief for households. The latest Federated Farmers Farm Confidence Survey shows confidence surging by 68 points since July 2024 – the largest one-off improvement in sentiment since the question was introduced.

But there is a lot to do, and we need to be honest with ourselves. We have been slipping for years.

Our challenge as a country isn’t just about the last few years, or even the last decade.

We have low productivity growth, low capital intensity in our firms, low levels of competition in many sectors, challenges in attracting and retaining skills and talent, low uptake of innovation, unaffordable housing and a growing tail of New Zealanders leaving school without basic skills.

But stagnation and mediocrity is not our destiny.

Not if we make the right choices and not if we have courage.

Going for economic growth means saying “yes” to things when we’ve said “no” in the past.

It means taking on some tough political debates that we’ve previously shied away from. I’m going to talk about one today.

It means bold decisions which may look difficult at the time but which in hindsight will be regarded incontrovertibly as the right thing to do.

Managed decline is only inevitable if we let it be.

AUCKLAND GROWTH

So today I want to talk to you about Auckland and how important it is to our plans.

Auckland is New Zealand’s capital city of growth. It is home to one third of New Zealand’s population and contributes nearly 40% to our national GDP. It has higher labour productivity than the rest of New Zealand, and is home to some of New Zealand’s most exciting growth-industries, with 116 of our country’s top 200 tech firms calling Auckland home.

We are not going to be successful in growing our economy if we don’t think carefully about how we enable Auckland, as our largest and most important city, to thrive.

I have the enormous privilege of being the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, RMA Reform and now Transport.

I am determined to help build an Auckland that is a world-class, international city.

I make no apologies for being an urbanist. Well-functioning urban environments with abundant housing, transport that gets people where they need to go quickly and efficiently, and functional infrastructure, will do more to create a brighter future for Kiwis than just about anything else government can do.

Next year is shaping up as an exciting one. The first trains will run on the City Rail Link and the NZ International Convention Centre will finally open its doors.

The government is investing heavily into transport in Auckland, through new Roads of National Significance, new busways, and commuter rail.

These investments build on the significant progress made in recent years, particularly by National-led governments – think of Waterview, the Victoria Park Tunnel, and the starting of the City Rail Link.

A couple of weeks ago it was my pleasure to mark the start of the extension of the Auckland commuter network to Pukekohe, with the completion of the electrification of the line from Papakura to Pukekohe.

Later this year the Third Main line rail project will conclude, helping ease congestion and enabling faster train journeys.

The growth of the Auckland commuter rail network since the early 2000s has been remarkable and the government is keen to encourage that growth.

Because the reality is that congestion is choking Auckland.

The average Auckland commuter spends over 5 days in traffic each year. In fact, in 2024 the Auckland metro area had the highest congestion levels in Oceania. This means Auckland is less productive, less accessible, and less liveable that it should be.

Congestion stifles economic growth in Auckland, with studies showing that it costs between $900 million to $1.3 billion per year.

Congestion is essentially a tax on time, productivity, and growth. And like most taxes, I’m keen to reduce it.

The government will be progressing legislation this year to allow the introduction of Time of Use pricing on our roads.

We will send that Bill off to a select committee before the end of March and the public will be able to have their say on it.

There has been study after study into time of use pricing in New Zealand. It’s time to get on with it.

The framework we have agreed to will enable local councils to propose time of use schemes on their networks.

All schemes will be focused on increasing productivity and improving the efficiency of traffic flow in cities. Local councils will propose schemes in their region, with NZTA leading the design of the schemes in partnership with councils to provide strong oversight and to ensure motorists benefit from these schemes.

All schemes will require approval from the Government.

Any money collected through time of use charging will be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised. Councils will not be able to spend this money on other priorities.

The Government will prioritise working with Auckland Council on designing a Time of Use pricing scheme that increases productivity and reduces congestion.

Modelling has shown that successful congestion charging could reduce congestion by up to 8 to 12 percent at peak times, improving travel times and efficiency significantly.

AUCKLAND HOUSING

That brings me to housing.

One of the things I’ve been trying to emphasise since I became a Minister is that housing has a critical role to play in addressing our economic woes.

There is now a mountain of economic evidence that cities are unparalleled engines of productivity, and the evidence shows bigger is better.

New Zealand can raise our productivity simply by allowing our towns and cities to grow up and out. We need bigger cities and, to facilitate that, we need more houses. As our biggest city, Auckland has to be a leader in this mission.

As Housing Minister I am focused on getting the fundamentals of the housing market sorted.

The Government’s Going for Housing Growth agenda involves freeing up land for development and removing unnecessary planning barriers, improving infrastructure funding and financing, and providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.

Report after report and inquiry after inquiry has found that our planning system, particularly restrictions on the supply of urban land, are at the heart of our housing affordability challenge.

We are not a small country by land mass, but our planning system has made it difficult for our cities to grow. As a result, we have excessively high land prices driven by market expectations of an ongoing shortage of developable urban land to meet demand.

Last year Cabinet agreed to a number of specific actions it would take to free up land for development, which we’ve called Pillar One of our Going for Housing Growth Plan.

These include new housing growth targets for the country’s largest councils, new rules to make it easier for cities to expand outwards at the urban fringe, such as the abolishment of the rural-urban boundary in Auckland, a strengthening of the intensification provisions in the National Policy Statement on Urban Development including requiring more mixed-use zoning, the abolishment of minimum floor areas and balcony requirements, and making the MDRS optional for councils.

These changes build on the existing Auckland Unitary Plan, which evidence shows has made a real difference in Auckland.

It also builds on the National Policy Statement on Urban Development brought in by the last government, which we support.

I am focusing on the fundamentals because ultimately that is what drives price.

Very soon I will announce Cabinet decisions around better infrastructure funding and financing tools, so growth can be properly funded.

And I’ll also soon announce decisions on how we will replace the Resource Management Act, the giant millstone on the neck of the New Zealand economy.

CITY RAIL LINK

Speaking of infrastructure, let’s talk about the City Rail Link.

Without a doubt, the most transformative and ambitious project in recent memory in Auckland is the City Rail Link.

Under the feet of Auckland for the better part of a decade has been the most ambitious, and one of the most expensive, projects in the city’s history. Thousands of workers building 3.5 kms of tunnel to bring Auckland’s transportation system into the 21st century.

When I was made Transport Minister by the Prime Minister earlier this year, I said to my team that I wanted my first visit to be to see City Rail Link. To me, this project epitomises the opportunities in New Zealand’s transport future.

Once open next year, CRL will double Auckland’s rail capacity and reduce congestion across the city, enabling Aucklanders to get to where they want to go faster.

This will be huge for the city. The privilege of not having to worry about missing a train because another one is only minutes away is something, up until now, Aucklanders have only been able to experience in cities like London or Tokyo. But now it’s almost Auckland’s turn.

I’ve been down to the new stations. Aucklanders are going to be blown away. My prediction is that people will say what they always do once a big new project eventually finishes: why didn’t we do this decades ago?

It is critical for the city’s future that we take advantage of CRL and ensure that the maximum benefits are felt by Aucklanders. That’s why today I am pleased to announce a number of steps the Government is taking to fully harness the true benefits of City Rail Link.

LEVEL CROSSINGS

The first step is removing level crossings.

CRL will only achieve its true potential capacity by the removal of level crossings - locations where roads and rail tracks intersect.

Frankly, every motorist under the sun hates them, me included. They require the direct trading-off between road-user efficiency and rail-user efficiency.

Separating our train and roading systems by grade-separating level crossings greatly reduces traffic delays for motorists, while at the same time enables more frequent and reliable trains. It means that, in future, we can run many more trains on the Auckland network, without having to worry about disrupting the road network.

Crucially, it will also make our railways safer. In the decade between 2013 and 2023, Auckland saw almost 70 crashes – some of these serious, as well as more than 250 pedestrian near-misses and 100 vehicle near misses at level crossings across the city. That’s almost one incident a week.

Investment in Auckland’s level crossings delivers a faster, safer, and more reliable transport system. It’s a win, win, win.

Sorting level crossings in Auckland will take many years and cost a lot – but it is imperative we crack on with the job of doing the most important ones first.

I am announcing today that, subject to final approval by the NZTA board, the Government will be allocating funding for its share of the cost of accelerating the grade-separation of 7 level crossings in Takāanini and Glen Innes.

The work will involve building three new grade-separated road bridges at Manuia Road, Taka Street, and Walters Road; constructing new station access bridges at Glen Innes, Te Mahia and Takāanini Stations, and closing two unsafe crossings at Spartan Road and Manuroa Road.

Auckland Council has previously indicated that it is willing to fund its share of the cost, so this announcement will provide Aucklanders with confidence that the work will go ahead.

Removing these level crossings now also enables us to take advantage of already planned network closures and will hopefully avoid the need for disruptions to the rail network in the future to make these much-needed changes.

We are committed to the most efficient transport system in Auckland for everyone – no matter how you get around. For us, it’s never only about trains, or only about cars, or only about buses, or only about bikes. It must be all of the above – which is exactly why we are prioritising the removal of these level crossings

TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

As I’ve said, there are a number of actions being taken across the Auckland Rail network with a focus on transforming connectivity throughout the city. City Rail Link is just one part of it.

This ambitious programme of work will open up job opportunities, new investment opportunities, and new places to live and work.

It should also, in theory, result in a significant increase in development density in and around Auckland’s railway stations, especially those benefiting from City Rail Link.

We have to ask ourselves: are we doing all we can to fully take advantage of this multi-billion-dollar transport investment?

I believe that in order to properly unlock economic growth in Auckland, we must embrace the concept of transit-oriented development adopted by the world’s best and most liveable cities.

This approach promotes compact, mixed-use, pedestrian friendly cities, with development clustered around, and integrated with, mass transit. The idea is to have as many jobs, houses, services and amenities as possible around public transport stations.

This is not an untested theory: transit-oriented development has been adopted across the world in cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore.

Cities that embrace this approach consistently outperform those that don’t across multiple metrics: they experience increases in productivity, lower unemployment, higher population growth, increased availability of homes, and more stable rents.

A floor filled with smart people working next to each other, in a building filled with floors of smart people working next to each other, unsurprisingly, enables greater economic opportunities for productive growth. Proximity encourages collaboration and innovation.

Transit-oriented development creates exactly these kinds of possible agglomeration effects – for example, it has been shown that doubling job density increases productivity by 5 – 10%.

The evidence speaks for itself.

Let’s look at Stockholm, where development has generally followed the city’s main public transport corridors. There, the gross value added per capita grew 41% between 1993 and 2010. In fact, both Stockholm and Copenhagen rank as among the world’s top cities in terms of per capita GDP.

Across the ditch in Sydney, they have just opened their brand-new Sydney Metro development, which has been widely recognised for its successful integration of high-density housing and mixed-use developments. This project is expected to contribute around AUD $5 billion annually to the New South Wales economy.

To answer the question: are we doing all we can to fully take advantage of City Rail Link? The answer is clearly no.

So, today I am announcing that the Government will be kicking off a work programme to properly take advantage of the opportunities that transit-oriented development could have on Auckland, and what actions we can take in the short-term to better enable development clusters around City Rail Link stations.

Right now, Auckland Council is only required to zone 6 stories around rapid transit stops. We are going to need to go much, much higher than that around the CRL stations if we truly want to feel the benefits of transit-oriented development.

My aspiration is that in 10-20 years’ time, we have 10-20 storey apartment blocks dotting the rail line as far west as Swanson and Ranui. But for right now, we need to look at how to increase development opportunities around the inner core of stations.

Take Kingsland, for example.

Once CRL open Kingslanders will have a 20 minute travel time saving to Aotea station from the project. But Kingsland's population actually declined by 4.7% between 2019 and 2023; and while Auckland averaged 15,375 annual new builds over the last 5 years, Kingsland built just 22.

Compare that to Paramatta in Sydney. It too benefits by circa 20 minute time savings from the Sydney Metro project and has upzoned from a few stories to more than 60 in some cases.

Kingsland is still predominantly made up of single story dwelling zones.

How about if our aim is to make the special character of suburbs be that they are thriving, liveable, affordable communities with access to regular and reliable public transport?

For many families, the dream of home ownership looks a little different today. Many young families are now choosing to swap the station wagon for the train station, and the corner dairy for the cafe.

There will always be a place in New Zealand for the quarter-acre section and the large family home. But we have to be honest with ourselves: that place isn’t within a stones-throw of a transformational piece of transport infrastructure with the ability to shuttle tens of thousands of passengers each day.

We must allow Kiwis to make the choice that’s best for them. Permitting more development close to train stations and rapid bus routes supports those who want to live nearer to their work and their friends, just like the significant investment the Government is making in new highways and roads support those who want to live in our world-class towns and suburbs.

Change is inevitable. My job as a Minister it to make sure that change is shaped by the lives Kiwis want to live and the homes they want to live in.

VIEWSHAFTS

One barrier to proper high-density in Auckland, including around City Rail Link stations, is undoubtedly the current settings of the 73 viewshafts that have restricted the height of the city since the early 1970s.

In 2016, the Independent Hearing Panel for the Auckland Unitary Plan recommended further work on the viewshafts, including refining them to improve their efficiency and reduce opportunity costs. In the almost-decade since, this work has not been progressed.

Some of these viewshafts don’t make a lot of sense. The Unitary Plan protects the view from the tolling booths on the North Shore, so that those people sitting in their cars getting ready to pay their toll for the Harbour Bridge have a nice view of Mt Eden. Of course there hasn’t been tolling booths on the North Shore since the mid-1980s.

Forty years later, we are still protecting a view that would be considered dangerous-driving to admire. A study done in 2018, looking at this one view shaft – the E10 – showed that its cost was roughly $1.4 billion in lost development opportunities. This is just the impact of one of the 73 viewshafts.

It is worth stressing that the cost is almost certainly much greater than $1.4 billion. It only includes costs to the city centre, and about half the land under E10 falls outside the city centre. So add that on.

It doesn’t look at the positive externalities of intensification, such as agglomeration and other wider economic benefits. So add that on too.

It doesn’t look at public land, just private. Add that on.

And it’s based on 2014 land values.

And this is just one viewshaft.

I hope you’ll agree with me that the cost is immense.

Aucklanders and local mana whenua have always had a special relationship with the Māunga and Volcanic cones that their city is nestled between. It is right that we acknowledge and protect this special relationship.

But even just minor tweaks to existing viewshafts could materially lift development opportunities. The 2018 study showed that rotating the E10 viewshaft just 4.5 degrees to the left maintains the view of Mt Eden for a similar amount of time, whilst saving the city 43% of the lost development opportunity cost.

Today I can tell you that Mayor Brown and I have had discussions on this issue, and he said he is open to a fresh look at Auckland’s viewshaft settings in its Unitary Plan. We agree that the time is right to start the conversation. This is particularly relevant where the viewshafts impact the CBD and major transit corridors.

We are committed to trying to find a way though – alongside mana whenua - to get the balance right between economic growth, and the special role these Māunga play in the unique identity of Auckland.

We are not proposing to remove these viewshafts. Rather, we are recognising that as the city changes, and there will be areas where the viewshafts should change with it.

The tollgate viewshaft example above proves that it is possible to eat our cake and have it too. We can both preserve views and enable more development. That is the kind of change that a dynamic city requires to be the best for all its people.

CONCLUSION

Auckland has a bright future.

You have the country’s premier convention centre opening early next year.

You have City Rail Link opening later next year.

You have what are essentially new cities being built to your west, and to your south.

New roads are opening.

Congestion pricing is on the way.

And more housing is being built.

Whenever I come here, I get a palpable sense of opportunity knocking.

This city isn’t waiting: it’s getting on with the mission of growth.

It is bursting at the seams with opportunities – now, it is the responsibility of all of us to help make it happen.

Thank you.

© Scoop Media