1/ The elephant in the room, as it were, with National's flawed plan to make councils "free up land" is that it does nothing to control land-banking.

2/ Land-bankers own and control many thousands of acres of land that has already been zoned for housing. Land which could be developed right away.

3/ Councils' current zoning rules have been written so that permitted development will have certain characteristics: density, amenity, appeal, and so on.

4/ Forcing councils to change these rules, at the drop off a hat, will not lead to "better" outcomes. (And removing any appeals process will simply lead to unfair decisions that benefit to rich & powerful.)

5/ If we want to "free up land" for more housing then NZ must disincentivive land-banking... Where "land-banking" is the common name for "allowing private business to maximise profit by restricting availability of land for building new homes."

6/ Land-bankers can drip feed the number of potential sections into the market, allowing them to control demand & control their resale value. And if course, this feeds into the capital gain that land bankers depend on for their profits.

7/ Forcing councils to make more land available for housing, and forcing them to change planning rules, will change the value of that land. Forcing councils to rezone council owned land will prevent them from holding that land for the benefit of residents.

8/ So, what changes do we need? Of course, I have some thoughts...

9/ First up, we need to get land that is already zoned for housing onto the market, now! So, incentivise banked land to be released to market. Secondly, a rule change that would be useful for councils would be to allow them to charge rates on undeveloped-but-zoned land.

10/ This would allow them to raise capital to develop infrastructure needed by new communities.

11/ Predictably, National's policy making is lazy & ineffective, and we'll not solve the problems it claims it will.

Here endeth my Ted Talk