Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
Auckland Council has less than two weeks to respond to a letter from the government wanting the council to outline its plan for housing intensification.
But mayor Wayne Brown says the council is already spending millions on the project and the request is too costly.
In February, Minister for Housing and RMA Reform Chris Bishop announced that Cabinet agreed to reduce the city's minimum housing capacity requirement from 2.08 million to 1.6 million.
In a letter to Brown dated 24 February, Bishop asked for an outline of the approach the mayor intended to take to review the plan, and of what areas or suburbs may be affected by the change.
Brown refused. "We've spent $10 million on Plan Change 78, and by Christmas we'd blown another $3 million on Plan Change 120, as well as having 50 staff reading 10,000 submissions... so this is expensive," he told a planning committee meeting on Tuesday.
"Preparing maps requires investing significant time and money. It's not as simple as pushing a button. In this organisation you're lucky to get a lift by pushing a button. We'll be telling the government what Aucklanders want, not the other way around.
"What's important is for Auckland to lead the process from here, not producing maps to see if some ministers worried about their jobs might like them."
A spokesperson from Chris Bishop's office later clarified to RNZ that the minister had never asked Brown for a map.
Brown was adamant that Auckland Council would not invest any more resources.
"I'm reluctant to commission a hell of a lot of expenditure, which may not meet an unknown criteria from an unknown number of Cabinet Ministers. Most of them don't live in Auckland.
"That's just stupid. I'm not going to do that. I'm the mayor of Auckland. If they want to be the mayor of Auckland, have a crack at me."
Bishop asked Brown to respond to the letter by 17 March.
Councillor Shane Henderson agrees with the mayor's approach saying the council should not provide an outline until feedback from the public had been considered, and accused the government of "political desperation in an election year".
Councillor Sarah Paterson-Hamlin was concerned Aucklanders would have to be consulted again.
"I'm really conscious that we asked a lot of Aucklanders," she said.
"We asked them for feedback on a really complicated thing over Christmas and they came to the party, 10,000 submissions is a lot for a process like that. I don't know how we can go back out in good faith, and how we communicate to those 10,000-plus people that they will be heard."
However, deputy mayor Desley Simpson did not understand why it would be too difficult.
"Respectfully it does seem pretty obvious, for me, for a layman, surely if you just up-zoned along the major transport corridors and around the stations added the city centre you'd get a number.
"Why can't you just tell us straight away what those suburbs would look like going up and the suburbs that would look like going down? That seems like, from a layman, quite a logical thing to ask."
Auckland Council chief of strategy Megan Tyler responded that it would be too time-consuming.
"It's not simple. If it was a button, I would happily show you the button. You can press the button yourself. There isn't one."
Housing Minister Chris Bishop told Morning Report he wanted to crack on with the process and hadn't asked the council for any "onerous obligation".
"We haven't asked for detailed maps that take weeks or sometimes months to produce - we've just asked for a summary.
"I think the council can produce that, and I'm encouraging them to do that."
He said it wasn't election year politics but a "bunch of people in a difficult situation getting on with the job".
"This is not an issue in which people are placing their own person priorities ahead of the national interest."
Bishop said he wouldn't "die in a ditch" over getting a reply by the 17 March deadline.
"I understand where he's [Brown] coming from. He's pretty brassed off about it which I can appreciate at the end of the day but I think everyone wants a solution for Auckland."
Asked if it was helpful for ACT leader David Seymour to have written a column saying the council can produce maps almost at the press of a button, he said it was written in his capacity as the MP for Epsom.
Auckland Council will meet again on 10 March, where Bishop's letter will be on the agenda.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
