After the success of the Stop Three Waters roadshow last year, the Taxpayers’ Union is hitting the road once again for a four-week, nationwide roadshow to hear and highlight the concerns of ratepayers and councils threatened by the Government’s proposed replacement to the Resource Management Act.

The itinerary will see Taxpayers’ Union team members visiting 30 local centres in a ‘Hands Off Our Homes: Stop Central Planning Committees’-branded van, from Invercargill to Whāngarei. The team will meet mayors, councillors, and MPs and ask them to sign a pledge to do everything within their power to resist the Government’s reforms.

Ratepayers at every stop are invited to meet the Taxpayers’ Union team and hear the commitments of local politicians to oppose these proposals. Local mayors, councillors, MPs will also be invited to address the public meetings.

Nine of the events will be jointly hosted with our friends at Federated Farmers who have been at the forefront of the opposition to the proposed planning reforms.

The full itinerary can be viewed here.

Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Callum Purves, said:

“New Zealanders are rightly frustrated with the cumbersome Resource Management Act, which restricts how we use our land and has fuelled a serious infrastructure and housing shortage, but this proposed replacement will make the situation much worse.

“Not content with seizing water assets from local communities, the Government is now proposing to grab planning powers from local councils and transfer them to fifteen unaccountable, undemocratic, so-called Regional Planning Committees. At this rate there won’t be much left for your council to do.

“These changes will significantly reduce local control over decisions affecting communities while introducing many new and undefined concepts that will likely lead to legal challenges through the courts. And this increased red tape and bureaucracy will simply lead to higher building costs for everyone.”

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