Bernard Hickey says the Government and Auckland Council need to agree on funding big new water and rail infrastructure to have any hope of addressing Auckland's housing shortage crisis

How is this for an alternative strategy, cashing in on hot Auckland values .... Choose to live on a lifestyle property on the outskirts of Cambridge, great place to bring up a family excellent schooling, with new motorway, 2017 1 hour to the Harbour bridge. Rateable value of say $800k, rates of say $2500 pa. Work in either Waikato or Auckland. If Auckland buy a nice Yacht say 40 footer say $300k keep it at Westhaven Marina total out goings r&m and berth-age say $1200 per month, this gives you a nice base in downtown Akl plus the obvious Hauraki Gulf playground.
This to me make good sense as a balance of work and lifestyle that is quite affordable. Works for me.

How about 33% of the population! Any business that requires skilled employees or a large number of consumers is probably better off in Auckland. Most businesses that don't benefit from a large population on their doorstep are already based outside Auckland.

So Auckland rate payers should pay for the governments decision to turn up the immigration tap? Surely if the government wants to increase GDP by increasing immigration they can at least help pay for the infrastructure required to house the immigrants.

Correction -Rates are how NZ pays for local government activities. Overseas Local governments have different revenue sources -half of my PAYE in Finland went to my local municipality for instance. In the US Local and State government have different revenue sources, such as the US equivalent of GST. Other countries transport taxes and charges go to local government.

Every extra immigrant has already has had a part of their lives with no drain on our taxes but they are likely to spend the expensive years here as a greater burden than the amount they will contribute.
Think so called "family reunification"
Think arriving after age 55, never being employed and then collecting Superannuation for 20 or 30 years.

government and bankers pocketing all most of the cash. But they don't see themselves as a business that provides a service like the rest of us - they see themselves as the creators of money and that the rules don't apply to them... so infrastructure is full of parasites and no real risk/responsibility for those involved. as long as someone else is paying for your ass to be covered in layers of paper, all's good.
Competence is the bane of such organisations and anyone with competence must not be allowed near the power structure lest the bubble collapse.

A lot of infrastructure degrades with time or in not to required standards.
Example is central Auckland combined sewage which adds a load to sewage volume and is very expensive to replace.
I recall that Vector originally was going to underground all overhead lines to a schedule that was very soon extended in time or has it been abandoned altogether?

Death by a thousand small cost increases. In no particular order:

- civil construction costs have risen 50% faster than CPI over the last decade; some of it is stuff like energy, steel, plastics etc and some is the following
- Health and Safety in Employment Act got severely tightened in 2003 - some commenters here believe up to 20% of the cost of an infrastructure project goes just to HSE compliance (i.e. lots of orange cones)
- higher design and construction standards. Over the last 20 or so years standards for discharge of sewage and stormwater have been imposed on the whole country from central government via regional councils. Standards for potable water supply were significantly tightened in 2000.
- it's way more expensive to upgrade infrastructure in existing built areas than to extend to greenfields
- per subscriber I believe infrastructure serving densely built areas is more expensive than medium density areas
- ironically councils have to get resource and building consents the same as everyone else - nuff said

In general the public sector is about 20 years behind the rest of us so while what they are currently doing might have looked almost leading edge in 1995 in fact it will be about 2035 before they wake up to what the rest of us can see today.

By comparison to Awkland , Christchurch is an unglobal city , and yet its rates are scheduled to rise 28 % over the next few years ...

... and just this week it was announced of the salary rises for Mayor Dalziel and her councillers ... rises which she described as unfortunately timed , but unavoidable ...

Just who is serving who , in this fine country ?

Exactly Simon. If Auckland is the economic powerhouse as much as they say, and has the jobs they say, and people want to go there and pay twice for a house as they would elsewhere in New Zealand. Then they should pay the rates to build the infrastructure. $10,000 pa rates are quite appropriate.
It's a lot of money, it hurts, and it's necessary.
If you are happy to take the gain when your house doubles in price to $2,000,000. Then take the small hit and pay $10,000 rates.

That's fine but keep in mind the council are elected. What existing home owner is going to vote for higher rates to help pay for infrastructure for new home owners? Especially the elderly who are already struggling with current rates payments.

A serious question :-

Are there any Auckland-born old-timers still around, still living in Auckland, have stayed living in the same house for the last 30 years who haven't been sucked into the property-investment casino

Would like to hear their opinions

Is Auckland a better place for you today than it was 30 years ago

Exactly - we are all moving the deck chairs around here - the big issue is demand. The government is trying to be clever making out they are doing something about supply while they are dead scared about talking about demand. While they are grabbing their ankles we are being invaded. Housing, traffic, health, education - watch them all get swamped.
It will be interesting to see Key's comments on the new housing taxes introduced in Australia. Please not let him say " at the end of the day we are two different countries..." followed by that sh@t eating smile.

Exactly - we are all moving the deck chairs around here - the big issue is demand. The government is trying to be clever making out they are doing something about supply while they are dead scared about talking about demand. While they are grabbing their ankles we are being invaded. Housing, traffic, health, education - watch them all get swamped.
It will be interesting to see Key's comments on the new housing taxes introduced in Australia. Please not let him say " at the end of the day we are two different countries..." followed by that sh@t eating smile.

Hmm, our economy has gone from an absolute shambles in the 80s to the envy of most the world now - don't you think some of that could be put down to immigration?

GST is on everything, simple. No end of ppl would like that spent elsewhere...

Kumbel this is the best post here.

I would like to add that I am not necessarily certain Councils want a compact urban form. What they want is a choice in transport mode provision and housing type. They are reflecting what their urban residents are telling them. But because central government only wants to fund motorways that only provides the motorised vehicle transport mode, that only works for the double garage stand alone housing type we have a stand off.

Coucils can't provide the sort of transport, housing and urban development that they and their residents want because central government controls all the purse strings so they fall back to the default 'compact city' option.

Central government doesn't want to fund 'lefty' urban development and only provides motorways.

Nothing gets built and everyone blames someone else.

For instance is this sort of comment by Patrick Reynolds at Transportblog -a big advocate for 'lefty' urban forms about compactness or choice wrt transport mode and housing type?

http://transportblog.co.nz/2015/05/04/the-interim-transport-programme-a…

'Acting' in the situation Kumbel describes, inevitably means Either:
- CG giving further taxing powers to TLA's
- CG giving higher contractually obligated fractions of CG revenue, to TLA's

Neither is highly palatable to a CG whose books are already spattered with too much red ink.

It is a pity, because, as Brendon notes, offshore taxation systems much more suited to the sort of infrastructural development tasks noted above in the thread.

Multi-layered tax (e.g. city/state/federal) is a commonplace, as is the notion of destination-based taxes (e.g. based on the delivery address for goods and services). So a seller in CA has to calculate, account for and remit, taxes to TX or VA if that's where the goods go.

If Awkland had a 1-2% local sales tax, problemo solvatio.

It will, however, be a cold day in Hades before we see an NZ Gubmint offering That sort of localised taxing power. TLA's have not distinguished themselves by demonstrated financial prudence, either. Examples: the infamous Mangawhai sewer scheme http://joelcayford.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/mangawhai-bankrupts-kdc.html , the Hamilton V8 race saga, and the fact that, propelled by the Four Well-beings of yore, TLA's generally have ratcheted up spend to the point of political no return, and now find themselves stranded with high rates, high spends, and aging/failing infrastructure.

This doesn't induce CG pollies to offer them Yet Mo' Moolah.

... the Indonesian solution ?

At the next property auction arrange for a firing squad to shoot any prospective buyers who turn up ...