Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

A fresh and intelligent start to your day - catch the very latest international and domestic news developments, sport, entertainment and business on Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, on Newstalk ZB.

  1. 4 hr ago

    Andrew Dickens: The jungle drums are starting to thrum for the fast-track regime

    Well, the jungle drums are starting to thrum for the fast-track regime.  Word on the street is that legal action is coming for a number of the proposals currently before the committee. Meanwhile there was a fiery Auckland Council meeting yesterday full of anger at residential fast track developers. Mayor Wayne Brown has vowed to be a thorn in the side of subdivisions looking to circumvent the council, considering telling fast-track developers – and future residents – it won’t provide or fund basic services to them. The problem is the developers are using the new system to gazump planning rules.  Fast track was designed to speed up the process of getting consents but not to supplant the regulations currently in place.  There's been a stampede by housing developers who want quick consents, but they also want more latitude for their plans.  A prime example is the re-development of the Devonport township.  The developers there have proposed a series of 8 storey buildings.   But the Unitary Plan currently only allows 4.  That's got locals concerned that the picturesque main road will be overwhelmed, but they'll have no say The fast track is there to make the gaining of consents faster but not to fundamentally change the plan that's currently in place.  The great success so far is Ports of Tauranga whose plan was stuck in bureaucratic limbo for 7 years.   Now in a matter of months the plan has been approved. But it is still a plan that adheres to planning regulations in place.  So expect some expensive legal action as locals and councils put the spanner in the works of the developers trying to push the boundaries for a quick buck. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  2. 1 day ago

    Ryan Bridge: Standing still is not a strategy

    We've got another report from another ratings agency, Moody's.   They've taken a look at our credit, they've taken a look at our economy, much the same as the S&P one we spoke about last week.  But here's a few things this country cannot afford to forget.   We are a trading nation; we have a small population. Unless we sell stuff to the rest of the world, which the world then pays us for, we are a backwater.  We are a money-go-round; we are a low-income poor cousin at the bottom of the Pacific.  Dairy, meat, kiwifruit, honey, you name it. If we don't have strong export industries, we're basically buggered. We need more of them, of course.   We have tourism, let's not whinge too much about the campervans.  The world's cooked at times, and there'll be another Hormuz before long.  Hell, the current Hormuz isn't over yet and that means we need storage for diesel, which we're doing, but we need more of, for gas, which Genesis is looking at, and Todd and Uncle Shane are trying to find, and data centres.   I know they're controversial, I know people hate them, but they shouldn't be.   If done well, and by well, I mean they wash their own faces, then tick tick.   The other thing we desperately need are roads that don't wash out when it rains. Petrol taxes pay for that, so let's maybe not cut our nose off to spite our face in that regard.  It's pretty simple really, we need to keep doing what we're doing, we need roads to get our stuff to port, we need oil to keep the country moving, we need ships coming and going and we need something new on the horizon always.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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A fresh and intelligent start to your day - catch the very latest international and domestic news developments, sport, entertainment and business on Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, on Newstalk ZB.

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