The Science Media Centre got comment from bunch of scientists on this and it’s a really interesting read. There’s a couple of positive takes I there, but mostly skeptical it will actually happen and if they do is it really a moa.

The point that resonated with me most is the risk that these big claims are picked up and used to undermine actual conversation work and protecting endangered species as “we can always just resurrect them later”

https://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/07/09/moa-de-extinction-plans-announced-expert-reaction/

The bill did not call for racial equality, it declared there is already full and complete racial equality. If there are in fact ongoing inequalities, doing this locks them in and prevents them from being addressed. That is a big difference and is one of the reasons it was so widely opposed.

Laws are not some magic Harry Potter spell that immediately make things true because they’re said a certain way. Youve either been taken in by this fantasy, in which case, grow up and learn something about the history of this country and how it still shapes us today, or you know what the grift is here and in which case, fuck you - you’re a facist and a racist because it’s always projection with you ghouls.

Nothing like Orwellian doublespeak than a bill that declares racism over “because I said so”

Yes I agree, Act’s bill was pretending to be racial equality, which it isn’t, which is therefore racist. Glad we’re on the same page

Acknowledging past racism is not racism. Pretending past racism is fixed, despite not doing anything to actually fix it, is not fixing racism. It is perpetuating and entrenching racism.

You don’t stamp out racism but just one sidedly declaring racism is over all of a sudden, having done nothing to address the actual harm that has been caused.

Lol fuck off. Writing down “actually we’ve unilaterally decided everyone is equal now” after decades of theft and oppression is not equality.

How rich to be accusing others of fascism when the party that pushes this is so strongly linked to facism and regression across the world.

Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.

The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.

Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.

Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.

This place is fucked, and now we know Australia won’t shoot themselves in the head for another three years at least people will continue to leave in droves.

When the bloodbath government budget here hits in two weeks time it will turn into a torrent.

Don’t take the bait. What Tamatha said is so much more mild and considered than this. These ads are bad faith faux outrage

Oh my bad I did misread what you said there

No it isn’t. It is being doing in the open and is nothing like fundamentalist Christians whatsoever.

Their membership decides what to do about this, which is far more democratic than you’d get with any other party in NZ. Compare that to the Uffindell saga.

To an extent, choice isn’t a huge feature of our housing market. That will certainly change eventually if theres a big increase in supply, but therell be a lot of poorly thought out stuff in the housing stock to get to that point

He says ugly buildings, implying what they look like aesthetically from the outside, but he actually seems to be talking about designing apartments to actually be functional to live in, which I agree with. It gets even more important the smaller the size I reckon

There’s a huge difference between ones done by private developers and kainga ora/kiwibuild imo. The former are more often investment units to extract tenant wages first and foremost. Storage, building amenities, light etc all non considerations. People I know in kiwibuild apartments love them.

The rest of what he says is the same old garbage and speaks to the risks of the govts approach. If nimby councils reject density around transport hubs as theyll be able to do under this, theyll push lower density sprawl further out and it’ll be worse and more expensive for everyone.

But there have been some recent examples, Auckland, Wellington, where they haven’t so I guess there’s hope!

Yes I’d imagine so, and they might take it that way.

On the other hand, they might make the politically easier decision in the short term if those more expensive servicing costs are incurred in the future when it comes time to maintain/replace greenfield infrastructure.

It’ll be great if it does, but there appears to be a big focus on greenfield both explicitly and giving opt outs to councils that can push to “other” areas if they don’t upzone so called character areas.

So pushing development to the fringes that are less served by existing infrastructure and services, and therefore more expensive or just downright worse in that regard.

• Expensive unsustainable sprawl

• expensive unsustainable sprawl

• deciding not to intensify for character reasons will lead to denser sprawl on city fringes without amenities, defeating the point a great extent given public transport funding has been slashed. This is already happening in Auckland

• mixed use fuck yes do that

• no minimum apartment size seems terrible when combined with the other sprawl idk. Banks are already very squeamish about lending less than 45sq m aren’t they or has that changed

• Wasn’t the MDRS better than this though?

Build good quality, well sized apartment blocks and terraces in centrally located connected areas people actually want to live. If the private market can’t or won’t do that, then the state needs to step in and do it, like in every other housing crisis we’ve had in this country.

Yeah like I said, “better things aren’t possible” fatalism.

I didn’t say I don’t consider roads as critical infrastucture, I specifically said “mega roads”, i.e new multi lane motorways that are a waste of money because they will encourage more driving, more sprawl and make traffic even worse in the long run (and I imagine local roads will deteriorate as they did the last time this happened).

Three waters, the ferries, state housing, public transport are all better options right now that are woefully underfunded and in fact actively sabotaged by this govt.

The “we don’t have the density” argument is often pulled out against funding public transport and it’s unfounded. We’re one of the most urbanised countries in the world. We could absolutely build more PT if we chose to, we’ve had far more extensive networks in the past than what we currently do.

Overall, saying what’s happening is a symptom is just an attempt to claim what’s happening right now is inevitable imo. Different choices can be made that would be far less damaging, they’d be positive even and actually address the underlying problems you highlight instead of this “better things aren’t possible” fatalism.