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I like the sound of this so far.
It's not mentioned in this article, but on the Herald:
“We’re also cutting red tape and costs on farmers building small dams by raising the height threshold for safety regulations from one to four metres,” Penk said.
Which gets a bit "Hmm.." from me. Seems like a big jump to not have safety regulations for
Four metres is pretty bloody high actually.
This does sound good, and reasonable. I feel like I recall hearing about something of a monopoly for Gib, does this help ease this situation?
It does, yes. This means it will be much easier to import equivalent products from overseas, bypassing the Fletcher monopoly on Wallboard.
I can't understand why Labour didn't do this while in power, actually.
I can't understand why Labour didn't do this while in power, actually.
Makes me wonder if Labour MPs have some shares or family ties in fletcher...
They're all landlords, so have a vested interest in house prices remaining high.
Thats true of national as well, so I imagine there must be some other conflict of interest that somehow outweighs the landlord conflicts of interest... Or maybe they've just calculated that the reduced cost of building won't really effect the housing supply too much, which would be good for landlords who want to subdivide or renovate.
Cost of building doesn't affect land values, so if your portfolio is mostly single level family homes, you don't have too much to worry about.
It kinda does to a certain extent, depending on how densely things can be built. When there's a townhouse available with double the floor area as a single family home for the same price, that's going to decrease demand for the single family house. But yeah it doesn't decrease demand a huge amount as most people still want to have a back yard if they can and banks will lend more for a standalone place because reasons.
Or maybe national mps are shorting thier stocks or investing in aussie building suppliers or something...
Sounds great, breaking up the monopoly. Of course, they products should have to meet our current regulations. If that isn't a part of this it could just lead to Leaky Homes 2: Electric Boogaloo
Yes the article doesn't seem to specify which standards exactly. But if for example we can now import building products that meet the equivalent Australian standards, I feel like that's a good move.
$5 that this is all fluff.
They’ll “set up the framework” and then not use it.
“Ah yeah, Australian building standards far exceed ours in most metrics, but none of it’s been … uh … earthquake tested. Yes! None of its been earthquake tested. So … no”
Then labour will come in, start to actually use it, and when we flip flop back to National, finger point, blame, and retroactively tear it all down. Then anyone with Australian building materials in their house get their insurance claims denied or something equally absurd.