Heather Duplessy-Allen

Look, I had a quick look at the report this morning.

Heather, it's 100 pages.

It came out overnight.

I haven't had time to digest it all.

Remember, it is proposed.

I'm fascinated to hear what the minister had to say.

At the heart of it, it feels a little bit cynical.

It feels kind of engineered.

But then again, you know, these guys make the rules on this, don't they?

Quite right, and you can see why they want to, as you just explained.

Right, what's the deal with the building consents?

Yeah, back to the land of the long white cloud and something a little bit more understandable, local building consents.

And contrary to what you may think, given the drop that we've seen in consumer and business confidence, building consents just continue to trend higher.

So it's a reasonably positive signal, particularly for a sector, the construction sector.

It's been kind of challenged, hasn't it?

But it's actually been trending higher since the middle of 2025.

So it's a very, very clear rebound here.

in building consents.

Look, we're still a long way from the heady days of 2021, but definitely moving in a positive direction.

So on an annual basis, building consents are up 16% year on year.