Hon Chris Bishop

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks, Murray, for that introduction.

It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you here in New Zealand’s capital city of growth, at this launch of the Project Auckland report.

Can I start by acknowledging my parliamentary colleague Hon Simeon Brown. He is unquestionably the biggest advocate for Auckland I know – and is a staunch advocate for you all around the Cabinet table.

I also want to acknowledge Project Auckland Editor Fran O’Sullivan, Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, and my former parliamentary colleague and boss Simon Bridges.

While I am a boy from Lower Hutt, I want to reassure you that I know and love this city, having lived here for two years, having many friends who live here, and am at the moment almost a weekly visitor.

Auckland is critical to New Zealand’s future. 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 grow and thrive.

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

Without question, the largest of these planned investments is a second harbour crossing.

In fact, it will be one of the most expensive infrastructure investments in New Zealand history.

Our existing bridge is old, and even with the clip-on lanes, it’s expected to struggle with forecast increases in demand.

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Despite the daunting cost, and the other challenges that come with the project, advancing an additional harbour crossing is a priority for this Government.

Right now, there is a barge in the harbour undertaking geotechnical, environmental, and utilities investigations of the Harbour floor – the first-time studies of this kind have been done.

NTZA are about to kick off early market soundings on this project, largely to help us make the decision every Aucklander is waiting for: bridge or tunnel. We expect to make that decision mid-2026.

Being realistic, this project won’t be built for a while yet – but Auckland doesn’t need to wait that long to experience a transformational transport project.

Everyone in this room knows the potential City Rail Link has to enable the growth Auckland needs.

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.

It is critical for the city’s future that we take advantage of CRL and ensure that the maximum benefits are felt by Aucklanders.

We must focus high density, mixed-use developments around CRL stations – with as many jobs, houses, services and amenities within walking distance as possible.

This approach is known as transit-oriented development, and has been adopted by the world’s best and most liveable cities – think Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore.

Cities that embrace transit orientated development 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.

And with CRL, we have a once in a generation chance to embrace this in Auckland. 

Consent decline

This is why I was so frustrated last week to see a resource consent application to build a $100m office building on K Road – within walking distance of the new CRL station – was denied by commissioners.

Frankly, this decision made me feel physically ill.

How can it possibly be that an 11-story building, which includes retail spaces and food and beverage stores, alongside office and commercial spaces for more than 400 people, is turned down in the centre of New Zealand’s biggest city?

The site it is currently planned to be on is a gravel pit. You heard that correctly. Our current planning laws are so fundamentally broken that a gravel pit in the CBD of Auckland is unable to be developed into a new office building.

The commissioners’ report said “The principal concern for the board is the scale of the development.”

Which might be more understandable if that was said about a development in a small regional town, but is astounding when there is a 20 story building within 100 metres.

Putting it simply, and excuse the RMA language, the commissioners when declining this application concluded that the adverse effects related to built form and appearance, streetscape, and historic heritage had not been sufficiently avoided such that the effects on the environment were considered ‘more than minor’.

This is precisely why we are scrapping the RMA, and replacing it with a radically more enabling system predicated on property rights. As you will have hopefully seen, I announced the architecture for our new system earlier this week.

A number of the changes we are progressing would have likely led to this K-Road development being approved rather than declined.

Our planned standardised zoning approach will help us move away from considering matters such as built form and appearance, or streetscape.

It will be clear what you can build and where, with fewer restrictions encouraging increased creativity in our built form – likely improving the look of our cities.

What I want to see in our new planning system is that development like this, due to its proximity to rapid transit and the central city, would be able to proceed without the need to gain approval at all - instead proceeding as a permitted activity through a standardised zone.

The other, more technical change we are proposing to make is the removal of what is known as non-complying activity status. The RMA states that a consent can only be granted for a non-complying activity if the adverse effects of the activity are minor, or the activity will not be contrary to objectives and policies of a plan.

In layman’s terms, this creates a barrier to some of these larger projects, with a much higher bar for approval, which sometimes is insurmountable.

This K-Road development was one of these non-complying activities. Remember that McDonalds in Wanaka that was declined a few weeks ago? Also a non-complying activity. That Southland windfarm that was declined last week? You guessed it: non-complying activity.

8-10% of all resource consent applications every year are for non-complying activities – and therefore face this sometimes impossibly high-bar.

By removing non-complying activities in our new system, alongside narrowing the effects considered in the planning system, we will making it substantially easier for these big projects to get approval. 

PC 78

Moving on from K-Road - another issue that has been causing significant uncertainty for Auckland Council, as well as Aucklanders, has been the ongoing saga with it’s current plan change process, known as PC 78.

Auckland Council has been progressing PC 78 since mid-2022. This was the vehicle that was intended to implement the National Policy Statement on Urban Development – more commonly known as the NPS-UD, and the Medium Density Residential Standards – more commonly known as the MDRS. Apologies for the acronym soup.

The idea was that the MDRS, which enabled more density in the suburbs, and the NPS-UD, which enabled more density around CBDs and rapid transit, were both meant to be adopted by councils quickly – and the last Government gave them new planning tools to achieve this.

This, however, did not quite pan out. Fast forward to today, years after these were introduced, Auckland Council are still going through their plan change process to implement them.

In fairness to them, there have been significant challenges along the way. Cyclone Gabrielle and flooding events, and the change in Government has now made the progress of PC 78 tricky, to say the least.

I think Mayor Brown put it best when he called the current situation “a bit like RMA gymnastics”.

Following the floods, Auckland Council has seen the need to address a number of new natural hazard areas prone to flooding.

Unfortunately, and frankly, annoyingly, the plan change process they had to use for PC 78, does not allow downzoning. It wasn’t envisaged at the time that councils would need to do anything other than upzoning using this process, and now they are stuck.

The other issue is the light rail corridor. Auckland Council left this blank in PC 78, anticipating new station location announcements, which obviously did not come, as we won the election, and scrapped this wasteful project as promised.

We also have also communicated changes to the rules around the MDRS, as we campaigned on, therefore changing Auckland Council’s approach to PC 78 yet again.

These things have left Auckland Council in a very confusing situation not entirely of their own making – although I do want to say, that if they had they delivered this plan change on the timeframes originally required of them, a number of these issues would be much easier to manage now.

With us about to introduce a new RMA system, and this having dragged on for frankly far too long already, we want Auckland Council to bank some quick-wins for density and development now. Aucklanders have waited for too long.

That’s why I can confirm today that I have changed my legal “direction”, made under the RMA, on Auckland Council on the timing and sequencing of decisions on PC 78.

This change will bring forward decisions on the city centre, by ten months from the previously required date of March 2026 to May 2025.

This will almost immediately support the enablement of thousands of dwellings and significant development potential in the heart of Auckland – where basically everyone accepts this kind of growth is critical.

We are able to do this because the city centre parts of PC 78 are discrete from the rest of the changes and have been through submissions and hearings already.

Locking in this part of the plan change as soon as possible is a massive win for our biggest city, and a massive win for economic growth.

For the time being, the remainder of PC 78 will still need to be completed by March 2026 as per the law.

I note that Auckland Council, in their submission on the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill, which is currently before the Environment Select Committee, have asked for changes to enable the immediate withdrawal of the remaining parts of PC 78.

As this Bill is currently before Select Committee, and due to come back to Parliament later in the year, I am unable to provide comment on whether these suggestions will be incorporated.

However, I can confirm this is something that is being considered as part of the Committee’s process, and I’ll have more to say on this in due course.

I am grateful to the work of Mayor Brown and his council in advancing housing and urban outcomes for our great city of Auckland.

In my experience, Mayor Brown has been steadfast in his support for sensible density in the city centre, in Auckland’s metro-centres, and near key transport connections. I want to thank him for his leadership, and for bringing sense back into the density debate in Auckland.

This situation has without a doubt been the most complex I have had to deal with as a Minister. If anything, it underscores the urgent need for our replacement planning system.

Aucklanders shouldn’t need a PhD in planning or a team of lawyers to understand the progress of a major zoning change going on in their backyards. Our new system will have plans that are much more streamlined and simple, clearly communicating what Kiwis can do on their own property, without the years and years of backwards and forwards. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, I want to repeat what I have said in my column in the Project Auckland report we are all here to launch today:

Auckland has a bright future. Whenever I visit Auckland, I get a palpable sense of opportunity knocking. Auckland 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 – I will now take your questions.

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