Government claims to be listening to Aucklanders, but which ones?

Sunday, 8 March 2026

An aerial view of Auckland suburbs. It’s not sustainable for the city to keep sprawling out across greenfields, writes Connor Sharp.

Connor Sharp is a writer at Greater Auckland, an urban and transport advocacy organisation and registered charity.

OPINION: Everyone agrees we need more housing in Auckland and that it’s best located near transport options and places people work, study and shop.

This is precisely the point of Plan Change 120 (aka PC120): as well as restricting development in flood-prone areas, it puts more housing where it makes the most sense in our wonderful city.

With housing and transport as major household expenses – and Aucklanders’ savings at a national low – this is also a major cost-of-living issue for every generation.

So it is galling to see senior politicians (and, coincidentally, property owners) like Christopher Luxon, Simeon Brown and David Seymour vehemently opposing the plan to make Auckland more liveable for the rest of us.

Pedestrians walk through Hobsonville Point, a master-planned development in west Auckland often championed as an example of how to provide mixed-density housing at scale. (File photo)

They claim to have “listened to Aucklanders”. But which Aucklanders?

We’re still waiting to hear the wealth of public feedback on PC120. In the meantime, the so-called “government of yes” is amplifying misinformation from the usual suspects to say no to more homes.

The irony is that dropping the headline-grabbing number from 2 million to 1.6 million changes very little. That’s simply the nominal “planning capacity”, designed to enable a flexible, free-market approach to development – something self-styled libertarian Seymour supposedly stands for.

The number of actually buildable homes remains similar. It’s like a supermarket – no matter how many items on the shelves, your budget and trolley are the same. The problem comes when whole aisles of healthy options (in this case, neighbourhoods with ample infrastructure and good transport access) are removed to please a noisy few.

Which is the other problem with the backdown: it rewards NIMBY groups and councillors to keep scaremongering about PC120.

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, who announced in February that the Auckland housing target would be cut by 400,000 homes.

Genuine compromises that solve real concerns would be great, but these groups seem intent on preserving Auckland in amber. Everyone can see it’s not sustainable for our city to keep sprawling out across greenfields, putting us further away from everything and trapping more of us in traffic.

Likewise, the more central suburbs clearly have the infrastructure and transport options to support more affordable growth. Auckland will succeed when we work together with a collective vision for a city that works better for everyone.

Nobody wants younger generations forced to leave as the cost of housing soars out of reach. And we all want to live in a city with greater access to the good things, less traffic, and cleaner air.

One ray of light amid the recent argy-bargy: Minister Chris Bishop is looking at improving planning rules in the city centre, which is ideal for more homes, as it has substantial capacity in water and transport infrastructure – albeit it needs more schools and other social infrastructure.

It’s astonishing that we’re still debating intensification years after the process started.

The council’s creaky bureaucracy is somewhat to blame. But mayor Wayne Brown is right to reject the Government’s desire for a veto over Auckland’s housing plans. We need less chaos and interference so we can finally see some progress.

One more political fly in the ointment: a sudden pushback with minimum requirements for parking, from the likes of Simeon Brown. Parking minimums require new developments to include a certain number of off-street car parks per unit. Which may sound logical, but parking minimums have major unintended consequences.

Te Matawai, a Kāinga Ora housing development on Greys Ave in central Auckland.

For starters, they raise construction costs by up to $100,000 per housing unit, discouraging development as well as increasing prices. And with more people locked into a car-centric transport system, we all suffer more congestion and more emissions.

The removal of mandatory parking minimums in the Auckland Unitary Plan was a triumph and has led to many more affordable homes being built.

True, some suburban areas are filling with vehicles from new developments. This tells us two things – that development is happening in the wrong places, and that people need greater transport options along with housing.

PC120 solves the first part by prioritising development in the right places. To fix the second issue, we need real alternatives to driving: better public transport and safe routes for cycling and riding scooters.

The upside: we all benefit from greater transport choice because: a) not everyone can drive or wants to; and b) for those who need to drive, the more people there are using other modes, the smoother your journeys.

Behind all the back-and-forth, backdowns and not-in-my-backyarding, there’s hope.

We all want our premier city to be a place that everyone can afford to call home. And despite the recent climbdown, we’re still heading in the right direction.

Auckland is growing up to meet the 21st century, and not a moment too soon.