Too Much

Nick Smith has vowed to "smash" the Auckland City limits.

Not because it's a good idea (it isn't a good idea), but for a variety of apparently unrelated reasons:

• National, in spite of all the smiles and positive media messages, do not like Len Brown and will not forgive him for beating John Banks for the mayoralty.
• Labour, in a brief flash of political brilliance (probably by accident, given their recent performance) caught National flat footed on housing.  Until Labour stuffed that up, too.  However, National need to appear to be competent in this area and their message is clearly stated, not implausible and has a neat appeal to people's desires.  Once again Labour are out-communicated.
• Some of the people who stand to benefit the most from relaxing the urban limit are also close friends of National MPs.

From the Herald:

[Nick Smith] said his focus would be on opening up land supply because land prices were the biggest factor putting home ownership out of reach of many Aucklanders.

That's land supply being the constraint according to Dr Smith, not the high cost of living due to speculative investment in land and certainly not high unemployment or low wages with stagnant wage growth.  Uh-huh.

"There's no question in my mind that we have to break through the stranglehold that the existing legal metropolitan urban limit has on land supply," he said.

And that clinches it for me - the statement above tells us more about Dr Smith's mind than it does about metropolitan urban limits and land supply.  Remind me, why was he allowed off the back benches, again?

The Bats - Silverbeet, 199