The many knives in Chris Bishop’s back
Friday, 20 February 2026
OPINION: Chris Bishop got onstage in Auckland on Thursday to do something no politician enjoys - back down. Again.
The housing minister had been a backer of the medium-density deal with Labour in 2021, but had been forced by his leader to back out of that deal as housing spokesman in 2023, as Christopher Luxon bowed to pressure from suburban constituents worried about having more neighbours.
Knife in back count: One.
Upon coming to Government he told councils they could get out of that deal if they zoned for the same number of dwellings - a face-saving measure that allowed Bishop to still fly a flag as the single MP most focused on getting more houses built.
This push resulted in plan change 120 - a much fought-over plan from Auckland Council that would zone for higher density housing across the city. When added to last decade’s Auckland Unitary Plan, this would technically allow for two million new homes - although there was no way this would actually happen, as that would require developers to buy up tens of billions of dollars of private land and decide to build on all of it at once.
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But that two million figure became a lightning rod. Residents of lovely low-rise Auckland neighbourhoods currently spared the horror of the townhouses present in other areas wrote to their local MP and newspaper. Several of those MPs happened to be in Cabinet alongside Bishop - including most crucially ACT leader David Seymour, who was probably the man most responsible for the last National Party backdown on housing.
Knife in back count: Somewhere between two and five.
So before consultation on the plan had even closed Bishop got to work on a new backdown. He announced it in Auckland on Thursday - the two million number became 1.6 million.
But it seems this was not enough. Just minutes later Seymour made clear to journalists down in Wellington that despite this change going through Cabinet his support was still not a given.
“The Government is making changes, but we need to see what 1.6 million looks like before we vote for it. So this is good progress, but we're not there yet,” Seymour said.
“Most people are happy to support development, but when you get, say, a single family home with a terraced housing apartment building right next door, you know that creates real annoyance.”
In other words, despite the second backdown, despite Seymour supposedly believing in the wisdom of markets and the rights of private property owners, there was still a good chance he could kill this plan, if he or some undefined group of residents didn’t like where the new housing was going to be built.
Knife in back count: I guess one was taken out and put back in.
Through all of this and his efforts to reform the RMA Bishop has sought to keep one public notion alive: That the Government needs to do all it can to encourage people to build more houses, and that doing so effectively might require a real shock to the system. This has been a crucial component of his reputation as a minister keen to actually get stuff done, even if it hurts a little in the short term.
In order to keep this image alive Bishop went as far to say something few politicians ever have: That he actually wanted house prices to come down. Slowly but surely after his first backdown he managed to build back credibility with pro-housing “YIMBYs” (Yes In My Backyard) across the political spectrum.
Now once again he looks weak. What developer would commit money and time to building in Auckland with this much uncertainty? Even if the new plan is confirmed by Cabinet what is to stop the whole deal being opened up again the next time an Auckland MP is feeling the heat?
It would perhaps be easier for Bishop to build more political momentum behind building more houses if he had some cover from his left. But Labour’s finance spokeswoman, Barbara Edmonds, was utterly mealy-mouthed when I asked her last week if house prices should come down, instead committing to them growing at some level while somehow becoming affordable at the same time. She essentially committed Labour to the idea that the family home should be seen as a key part of one’s retirement savings, not just a dwelling. (To be fair to Labour, National stabbed the party in the back on housing back in 2023 too.)
Bishop said on Thursday that he didn’t feel the war was lost. That the direction of travel was still towards abundant new housing. But it feels like it is always a direction of travel, and we will never really get here. The original density standards were supposed to be in place from 2022. It is now 2026 and we are not anywhere closer to them coming into force in our largest city.
The many knives in Bishop’s back aren’t that hard to spot. He took a punt this term trying to build political space for a shocking amount of new housing, for the notion that it might win the political right voters who aren’t already wealthy and sorted, even if it hurt them with those that were. It has ended with him repeatedly humiliated. Why try again?