Posts by Russell Brown
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Sorry guys, I've been snatching posting moments in a very full, complicated day and clearly doing a terrible job of it. Feel embarrassed.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to George Darroch,
A friend of mine’s quip on Facebook. In two senses, he’s absolutely right. The first is that anything that is being redacted is almost certainly something that should have been highlighted, and the second is that by redacting the entire thing they’ve highlighted just what they’ve done.
That's an awesome paragraph, bro. Just sayin'.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Andrew C,
Not sure its all been one way in that regard Tom. I went to a meeting about the Unitary Plan in Beachhaven about a week ago, and the officers there still, despite being repeatedly told by members of the public present that 3 stories was possible, tried really really hard to stick to the line it was only 2.
This is a confusing issue. The defined exceptions that make an extra two metres possible in mixed housing zones aren’t actually part of the Unitary Plan, but are essentially the same resource consent rules that allow basement and attic extensions under the current rules: proximity to boundary, shade, etc. They're not intended to permit three-storey devlopments.
(NB: Suburbs like Mt Eden already have plenty of buildings higher than this in what will be mixed housing zones. There's currently no upper restriction, subject to the rules.)
I think the council is explaining this poorly, but I don’t think there has been intent to deceive. In terms of the Unitary Plan, they're actually right. Ben Ross explains.
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Queen of Thorns also responds to Geddis in her inimitable style:
I’d just like to end with a little thought experiment for the class: imagine that Labour were in power and passed any legislation – say, to plant more native trees on public land, or to make it illegal to waterboard people – and then said “but you can’t see the advice we’ve made this decision on, and you can never ever challenge it.”
Oh, and passed it under urgency.
Just imagine it. The Kiwiblog commentariat would shit themselves. W****O**’s servers would probably explode. You’d hear Cactus Kate’s screams all the way across the Pacific.
Add this to Sky City’s 35-year protection clause and our whole constitution just got taken out back and shot in the head, and National’s turned the corpse into a ventriloquist’s doll and is assuring us that democracy is just resting after a rather vigorous squawk.
I tried to point out something similar last week to some Kiwiblog regulars who were gamely insisting that Key and Joyce should be congratulated for "getting the job done" with the deeply compromised process of the SkyCity conference centre shemozzle. No luck, I'm afraid. They just weren't seeing it.
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<BLOODY BIG I WAS A DISTRACTED LOON TODAY EDIT IN THE INTERESTS OF GETTING SOMEONE’S NAME RIGHT FINALLY.>
Claire Browning’s Pundit column on Geddis, the Crown Minerals Act and various other elisions of democracy is worth reading.
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Hard News: A Golden Age for the Arts?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Yeah, I expect Oppositions to oppose but, frankly, Labour’s art policy last go around was long on platitudinous waffle and short on substance. I expect a bit more at this point from a Government-in-waiting that another spokesman holding a listening tour so folks can say it all one more time.
Yes -- and it undermines any criticism they might have of current government policy. It's an area where Labour has heritage and should be strong and articulate.
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Today’s adventures in RIS redaction …
Simon Bridges flatly denies Moana Mackey’s claim that the legal advice on amendments to the Crown Minerals Act (which somehow needs correcting a month after it was passed) was that they were in breach of international law.
But the minister cannot explain why the legal advice he is referring to was deleted from the Regulatory Impact Statement. (from about 2.00)
Seriously?
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Awesomely enough, Luke Buda of the Phoenix Foundation was born in 1979 in Wroclaw.
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A rejoinder to my Wroclaw t-shirt experience, from reader Jimmy Hayes:
Had a real moment reading your anecdote about The Clean and Wroclaw.
In late 2011 I travelled through Wroclaw also. My host took me to a bar and introduced me to a burly doorman who spoke zero English, but apparently had a radio show (or podcast) that only discussed/played ‘Dunedin Sound’ groups. It was evidently quite a popular show. Wish I could tell you the name, but the scrap of paper is back home in Nelson, inside a box marked ‘awesome travel memories’.
With our two experiences combined, there may be a Polish hotspot worthy of future investigation! So strange how these pockets of fan-dom exist.
Amazing.
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Arggh. Another shock-horror Unitary Plan story in the Herald from Bernard Orsman:
Half of suburban Auckland could be built up with three-storey apartments and residents will have no say when developers move into their street.
After nine weeks of telling Aucklanders the maximum height of “small-scale apartment buildings” in neighbourhoods was two storeys, the Auckland Council has admitted the height limit is three storeys.
Three-storey apartments are possible in the “mixed housing” zone in the city’s new planning rulebook. The zone covers 49 per cent of urban Auckland and most suburban streets have some degree of mixed housing.
Half of suburban Auckland? Or half of urban Auckland? It doesn’t seem to matter. The main thing is that evil developers are going to come to your street.
Further down, it transpires that that are substantial caveats. Developers would have to meet what seem to be the current rules on proximity to boundaries, shade, etc, to go from 8m to 10m, and it’s not possible at all unless the property is at least 1200m. It’s not at all clear to me how much this actually differs from the present planning rules. [Edit: I’m informed that this represents only a very modest loosening of current rules, mostly in the reduction of the minimum section size.]
Ben Ross says the “shock” detail has actually been available for weeks. He’s done yet another fisking.
Orsman namechecks Auckland 2040, which endorses Quax, Brewer, et al, and even directs its audience to Whale Oil. The website’s domain appears to be registered to this Takapuna rich-lister.
I think we’re seeing the anti-Brown strategy for the municipal elections taking shape here. It’s disappointing that the the city’s newspaper isn’t so much reporting the story as giving one political group a megaphone.