More pointless wailing in the Herald (here and here) and Stuff over the cost of living in New Zealand without ever pointing to the culprits – town and city councillors and the idiot voters who reward them for trashing the property rights enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty, to micro-manage their neighbours' land uses.

For most of New Zealand's wonderful years of egalitarianism you could buy land for your house for around one year's average earnings, and build your house for about two and a half year's earnings. After taxes and living expenses you could expect to get rid of most of your mortgage over the next 10 to 15 years.

Then the baby boomers inherited political power. Already set for housing they don't need to be grateful to developers. They can despise subdividers. They'll rally to block densification, and 'sprawl' and highrises and infill units and anything that might offend their 1970s aesthetic sensitivities or glorious views. They feel the virtue in sending others to commute in trains from apartments on 'hubs' irrespective of the surveys that show fewer than 5% want to live like that.

The more scarce is housing the better off the boomers are. If you are already on the property escalator of course you will demand 'protection' of 'heritage' building and suburbs. It guarantees your overinvestment in housing. Artificial scarcity will not be exposed for the selfishness it is. Bankers of course agree. Otherwise they might find they've lent more than houses are worth, as they have in the rest of the world.

The RMA was supposed to be about protecting the long term sustainability of our environment. The parasitic class of planners it has spawned spend next to no time on matters of genuine sustainability. They now administer power for the greens, the gullible and the greedy for whom freezing land uses in the status quo ticks all the buttons  The green faithful hate change because to them all mans' works are infused with original sin. The gullible genuinely believe that the aesthetics of their youth are, like the music, the best that ever could be, and on the precautionary principle it is best to block change in case it is wrong. And the greedies just know in their hearts that densification would bring the wrong kinds of people to live nearer them, and hurt their property values.

That coalition of fools governs in New Zealand.