By RNZ

The Act Party says it will allow builders to opt out of council building consents to improve the supply, quality and cost of housing.

Party leader David Seymour announced the housing policy today, which would also include scrapping the reformed Resource Management Act and using building insurance as an alternative to building consent authorities.

“Housing is still in crisis and Labour and National are equally responsible, it’s time to stop demand-side policies that aren’t working and set a target for supply,” he said.

 “Tax changes, loan to value ratios, first home grants, and foreign buyer bans have not dealt with the underlying shortage, just tried and failed to ensure that politically-favoured people ended up with more of the limited supply of housing available,” Seymour said.

Act Party leader David Seymour. Photo / Paul Taylor

Act calculated the country needed to build 51,000 homes annually for the next five years to meet demand, he said.

“We need to build like the Boomers. The New Zealand Initiative [thinktank] have done mathematical modelling of New Zealand’s expected population growth and also the types of families that we’ll have as people have children, retire and so on. That gives us a mid-point estimate of 33,000 homes per year,” Seymour said.

“We estimate that around 10,000 houses will be 100 years old each year, on average, and those will need replacing. And then a further 8,000 per year [are needed] to make up the shortfall of 40,000 homes that Infometrics predicted in 2019.”

To reach this target, Act would scrap the Natural and Built Environment Act, which replaced the Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991 last month.

“We don’t need the RMA by another name, with new complex terminology. What we need is an overhaul of of resource management law in New Zealand based on the assumption that you can do what you like on your property, so long as you are not harming your neighbours,” Seymour said.

 “Of course there will be additional regulations to protect endangered species, but most of the time, people are trying to build houses in an old horse paddock where there is no biodiversity.”

Builders would be able to opt out of council building consents too, which Seymour said would increase affordability and innovation.

“Leaky buildings happened under the current regime of council building inspections... It’s no silver bullet to have a council inspection that’s going to stop a similar catastrophe happening again,” he said.

“These inspections leave ratepayers on the hook, leave massive amounts of bureaucracy and delay on people that are trying to build in more affordable or innovative, warmer and drier ways with better materials.”

Act would allow building insurance to be used as an alternative to building consent authorities as well.

“We say if you can get it privately insured, you can build it. If you can’t, maybe someone’s trying to tell you something, but having the Government trying to zone various parts of the country in or out and then making itself the de facto insurer is less efficient and counter-productive for everybody,” Seymour said.

The party would also share over a billion dollars of GST revenue with local councils, based on their building consent activity, allow targeted rates to fund infrastructure on new developments and would use Codes of Practice to reduce the need for consents.

- RNZ