Twyford sounding good

The Herald reports:

New Housing Minister Phil Twyford wants to scrap Auckland’s regulated urban boundary to let the city spread.

Yes, yes, yes. The single most important thing the Government could do.

“On the question of the Metropolitan Urban Limit, we are going to build affordable houses, we are going to tax speculators, we are going to do all those things.

“But if we want a lasting solution to this problem, we have to make reforms that will allow the market to deliver better outcomes on its own, and the two really big things that we have to fix are the broken system of financing infrastructure that stops the city from growing, and the highly restrictive planning rules like the urban growth boundary.

“But you can’t fix the urban growth boundary without fixing the financing issue.”

Twyford said he was working “as a matter of priority” on developing infrastructure bonds to finance new roads, water and sewerage. He has said previously that the bonds could be issued by a central Government agency and repaid over 50 years by targeted rates on properties in new developments served by the infrastructure.

The infrastructure bonds also seem a very good idea.