Maxim Institute researcher
Politics is a quest for immortality. Every politician is faced with the eternal question — will what I build endure?
In Ozymandias, the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley eulogised the statue of a once-great king:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
He might well have been writing about New Zealand’s decisive rejection of Ardernism. Christopher Luxon’s coalition has spent its first 100 days methodically euthanising the previous government’s flagship projects.
One prominent victim of the election is housing policy. Labour’s most significant response to housing unaffordability was the 2021 Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS): three dwellings, three storeys. Realising that any intervention needed to last beyond their term of government, Labour magnanimously reached across the aisle to National and the law was passed by a supermajority. Only Act dissented.
The then-leader of the Opposition, Judith Collins, said, “Today is truly a historic moment for New Zealand: a time when our two major political parties stepped up together to give Kiwis the right to build.” Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop championed a Labour government bill as a major step towards greater housing affordability in New Zealand.
The MDRS was secure as an enduring legacy of the sixth Labour Government.
Until it wasn’t.
Nearly two years and a leadership change later, Luxon announced at a public meeting, “I think we’ve got the MDRS wrong.”
Bishop, the staunchest advocate for National’s involvement in the MDRS, is now tasked with producing its replacement.
His alternative vision is more subtle but is all the more fraught for it. The MDRS was wide-reaching. It preferred intensification over sprawl, and it had limited carve-outs, running roughshod over much local decision-making. Bishop’s plan, by contrast, is agnostic on where and how the houses are built; councils just need to immediately zone for 30 years of growth.
The risk is that council autonomy results in a finessed definition of “30 years of growth”, which blocks development. Bishop points to financial incentives, such as GST sharing and his right to final sign-off as the Minister, as reasons to think his approach will work. As ever, the devil will lie in the details.
At one level, this is a disagreement about two rival visions for an urbanist nation. Force intensification or allow sprawl?
However, perhaps the more important difference is the two rival visions of political immortality. Labour sought to achieve that in Parliament, across the aisle. But that policy was subject to the whims of a new leader.
Bishop’s route seeks security elsewhere. The new plan hopes that council participation, and healthy financial incentives, blunt the most serious opposition. This urbanism by consent runs the risk of interest group capture, undermining the housing reforms before the foundations are laid. But should he get the details right and excise the devil, Bishop’s housing reforms rest on surer ground. Indeed, they might just bring him what every politician seeks: immortality.
