Tag: Nick Smith
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The trouble with the Government’s National Policy Statement proposal
Housing is raging as an issue right now. And the Government is feeling the heat. Ordinary kiwis are becoming upset that in the land of milk and honey more and more are without access to shelter, that most basic of human needs. The Government’s approach has varied. For a long time it refused to accept that there…
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Commissioners for Auckland Council if the Unitary Plan is mucked up?
The politics of this has been simmering away for a while. There is a concerted battle between Central and Local Government to apportion blame for Auckland’s housing problems which are now a full blown crisis. The Unitary Plan debate is central. Whoever designed the system and the timeline was cruel. The job is immense, having to shoehorn eight district…
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Can Nick Smith override the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act?
Reprinted from waitakerenews.blogspot.com The politics of the Auckland Housing accord are concerning. It came out of huge pressure being applied on Auckland Council by the Government. Either Auckland was to expand its borders or it would lose some of its planning powers. This was never a Central Government decision. Under the conventional hierachy Auckland…
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Nick Smith’s Contempt for Local Democracy
Steve Tollestrup Nick Smith’s contention this morning that ‘small’ councils do not have the expertise to make decisions on environmental issues such as oil and gas exploration in their regions should sound alarm bells with Waitakere voters. Nick Smith, who by the way is not an environmental specialist, but a civil engineer with a PhD…