Auckland candidate calls for tax revolt over Bishop’s housing intensification legislation

Tuesday, 23 September 2025

As an election collides with a council vote on the future of Auckland’s housing stock, candidates in the central suburb of Pt Chevalier debate open defiance of government legislation. An incumbent councillor reveals she’s speaking to a lawyer and believes many others will too, reports Jonathan Killick.

“Why is council so completely ineffective in its ability to petition government?” asked independent candidate Matt Zwartz.

He was addressing a crowd in the Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa Ward, where the left-leaning City Vision and centre-right Communities and Residents (C&R) tickets have traditionally vied for domination.

Right now the two sides are locked in a debate over whether to respond to government legislation by adopting a new zoning plan that would see 10 to 15 storey buildings in the “leafy” central suburbs.

And each has a long-serving incumbent in Julie Fairey and Christine Fletcher.

Zwartz asked of the crowd: “Where is the council pushing back against [RMA Reform Minister] Chris Bishop and why aren’t they doing more?”

Debate MC Russell Brown queried incredulously: “So, just flout the law?”

“Laws are made to be broken,” returned Zwartz. “Perhaps we could withhold our taxes until they listen.

“The outcomes are going to be expensive no matter which way we look at it, and it will be ratepayers who end up paying the cost of it.”

“We're the biggest regional economy in the country and maybe we can find ways to twist their arm.”

It might seem like an extreme position, but behind it is a sentiment that is currently seething in the supercity as a moral imperative for affordable housing clashes with a desire to protect the city’s heritage.

At the debate, C&R incumbent Christine Fletcher revealed she was “seeking legal counsel” ahead of a critical council vote this week, in which she intends to argue for an amendment in open defiance of Chris Bishop.

“Most people have a fear that they're not doing justice to their property, so they feel that they've got to go and contract a lawyer to try and prepare things,” Fletcher told The Post.

Last month the Government enacted legislation allowing Auckland Council to opt out of Plan Change 78, which otherwise would have seen three dwellings of three storeys by right in most of Auckland.

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has framed this as giving a “choice” to Aucklanders, suggesting it was in response to the council’s desire to be able to ‘downzone’ in flood-prone areas. But the city’s councillors do not see it that way.

That’s because the legislation also requires the council to come up with a plan for an equivalent two million homes ‒ much of them along the central suburban train lines ‒ and notify the plan by October.

The resulting Plan Change 120 will be voted on by councillors on Wednesday in what is sure to be a fierce debate.

Fletcher said she had obtained “independent counsel” because she believed there was a third legal option ‒ ignoring Bishop’s deadline.

“This isn’t just because I don't like it and I’m having a hissy fit. I am trying to find a genuine pathway towards creating a better plan.”

Fletcher said she was “utterly in favour” of intensification near train stations, but said a goal of an immediately zoning for two million homes was “frankly nuts”.

“Why are we doing this in such haste with such madness?” she said to the crowd.

“We need to go back to central government and say we need a little bit more time … let’s just pause on that, taihoa and actually get the modelling right.”

City Vision’s Julie Fairey told the crowd it simply wasn’t an option, and suggestions otherwise were disingenuous.

“We have to be realistic and honest with the community about what the situation is,” she said.

She later told The Post: “I feel there has been some misinformation shared here.”

“Even if there was some kind of legal loophole, the minister will close it … Christchurch tried to be cute about it and they got overruled by the minister and it cost them $6 million.”

But Fletcher said councillors “owed it to Aucklanders” and “the greater good” to try.

“It’s very easy to say, ‘they made me do it’. But I don’t accept that and I think good judgment says we need more information.

“This [intensification] has got to be done carefully and sequentially once the infrastructure is in place … That just seems so obvious to me, but it’s turned into this monumental scrap.”

Fairey told The Post that while PC120 might be a dead rat that Aucklanders have to swallow, PC78 in comparison was a “rotten dead rat”.

“I think there's an opportunity here for a plan change that helps us to start to address flooding issues … and there's actually a lot of opportunity through the submissions process, through the hearings for further change.”

“I’ve been really disappointed … there’s been a lot of oxygen, media and political, given to the character [housing] issue … when some Sandringham locals are really concerned about flooding.”

Brown halted the debate and asked for a show of hands from the crowd as to who actually knew what the zoning meant for their own homes under the new plan ‒ and around four put their hands up.

“OK see, that's a little bit alarming, isn't it? We're kind of arguing over something that people don't really know about,” he said.

But independent candidate John Leach said he had recently moved from a house “into intensification” and he believed that Auckland was “getting poor quality developments”.

“Basically anybody with a big section can stick some houses on it. They don’t have to look at providing an aesthetic or anything for residents.

“My house overlooks the motorway, and while we can’t hear the motorway, I can hear my neighbour fart.”