a sepi a sky, a row of houses with airbnb and book a bach logos on them
How do short-term rentals change the price of renting or buying houses for everyone else? (Image: Shanti Mathias)

PoliticsApril 4, 2025

Lessons for Wellington from the councils that have tried to regulate Airbnb

Contributing writer
a sepi a sky, a row of houses with airbnb and book a bach logos on them
How do short-term rentals change the price of renting or buying houses for everyone else? (Image: Shanti Mathias)

As Wellington City Council contemplates changing rates for Airbnb owners, what can it learn from councils who have been there, done that? 

The first thing you encounter when scrolling through Airbnb, the ubiquitous accommodation booking website, is the abundance of options. Dozens of plump pillows arranged on tidy beds. Lots of grey carpets and greige walls. Turquoise blue pools, a picture of a cottage with a rainbow arching over the roof. Fifteen pages of options of people’s houses to stay in.  

That’s just in Christchurch – probably not the most popular holiday destination in New Zealand. Search Airbnb or similar platforms, like Bookabach, for “Queenstown” and dozens of options pop up, more and more appearing as you zoom into the map. The Taupō area, similarly, has 690 Airbnb options displayed for a weekend in April, while the much larger cities of Wellington and Auckland have 770 and over 1,000 respectively. 

There have long been concerns that areas with high short-term visitor accommodation options enabled by platforms like Airbnb exacerbate housing shortages. Not according to Airbnb, though: the platform commissioned economist Brad Olsen last year to do a survey of the impact short-term rental accommodation had on housing prices in Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown and Christchurch. The analysis suggested that housing supply, mortgage rates and population had a much bigger impact on housing costs than short-term rental accommodation. To really hammer the point home, Airbnb tagged this article on its website with the label “airbnb not responsible for housing crisis”.

a map of queenstown overlaid with different patches of land.
Property in Queenstown is extremely expensive – is that because everyone is turning their houses into Airbnbs? (Image: Archi Banal)

Nonetheless, Queenstown, Christchurch, Rotorua and Thames-Coromandel councils have added or considered extra regulations for local property owners renting their houses through short-term visitor accommodation platforms. The latest is Wellington City Council, which is discussing charging Airbnb owners commercial rates. 

Wellington could look to other councils which have already put regulation into place. “We heard a lot about the impact of [short-term rentals] on housing in Queenstown before Covid,” said Julie Scott. Scott is the CEO of the Queenstown-Lakes Community Housing Trust, the main provider of affordable housing in the district where Kainga Ora has a minimal presence.  “it was phenomenally more rewarding for landlords to turn their properties to short term, not long term rentals.”

Queenstown Lakes District Council has placed regulations on short term rentals, including that resource consent is required in some cases. Airbnb and bach owners also have to pay commercial rates (which are generally significantly higher than residential) have to be paid, under different conditions – 25 – 35% more if you’re living on the property or renting it less than 181 days a year, and 50-80% more if you’re renting the property more than 181 days a year. Yet because there are so many other factors, like the increase of tourists and short term workers following Covid, Scott says it’s difficult to tell whether these regulations have led to more houses being used for long-term rentals in Queenstown, especially because changes in the tourist market following Covid and interest rates impacting house prices are also a factor. 

a collection of housing with price tags
Airbnb hosts earned a median income of $4,400 from their listings in 2017. Over 70% of hosts were women and the average age of hosts was 48 years old. (Image: The Spinoff)

Voluntary compliance in Christchurch

Christchurch City Council has also regulated short-term accommodation, requiring resource consents for people putting their houses for rent in residential zones. However, the impact has been minimal; while at least 700 properties were available in the city on Airbnb on a weekend in April, only 48 people have been given resource consents, and only 148 have notified the council that they are operating accommodation in their homes. Yet, as scrolling through listings shows, there are hundreds of people operating Airbnbs in Christchurch without consents or notifying the council. 

Applying for the consent costs $1,000, and requires proof that surrounding properties won’t be too affected, including information about parking, how many nights a year the house will be occupied and what instructions guests get when they arrive at the property. “Removing the fee would likely result in more operators applying for consent, but the cost would then fall on ratepayers,” said the council’s head of planning and consents, Mark Stevenson. 

However, there’s minimal enforcement of the rules, because the council has nobody assigned to checking on short-term stay providers. The council’s compliance team is creating a job to do this. “Until this role is established and filled, the team will continue to provide a reactive compliance response utilising existing personnel,” said Tracey Weston, the council’s head of regulatory compliance. 

a white whoman with dark hair wearing a pink scarf with trees in the background smiling slightly
Julie Scott says it’s hard to tell whether regulating Airbnbs has made it easier to find affordable rentals in Queenstown (Image: supplied)

Regulating short term visitor accommodation gets to the heart of tensions between residents in holiday hotspots and tourists, who are a source of income but also place pressure on resources like housing, parking and water without paying rates or income taxes. In the Mackenzie District, popular with tourists for the glacial blue lakes, fields of candy coloured (invasive) lupins and access to Aoraki National Park, housing shortages have been hotly debated in the long term plan, with the mayor calling out a “proliferation” of Airbnbs. In Thames-Coramandel and Rotorua, both with locals struggling to find housing, limits have been set on how many people can stay in an Airbnb. Tourists keep coming to these places – but housing remains out of reach for many, too. 

Airbnb has been largely resistant to these kinds of regulation. Instead, it has said that it “is committed to empowering everyday Kiwis to combat costs of living through hosting and travel”. (Airbnb did not explain how travel would counteract the cost of living.) 

a green field with a big emty dirty lot that has some foundations laid in it. Blue skies, mountains in the background and bright green paddocks
Tewa Banks, a Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust development currently under construction. (Image: supplied)

“In a survey of hosts on Airbnb last year, 53% said they used money from hosting to cover food and other costs that have become more expensive, while 41% said they used the money from hosting to help them stay in their homes,” Michael Crosby, the Airbnb head of public policy for New Zealand, told The Spinoff, adding that the platform supports local economies through providing cleaning work and customers for businesses. 

Airbnb has suggested nationwide, rather than council-specific, policy for short term rentals, with a visitor levy to fund better tourist infrastructure. Some nationwide regulation exists; since April 1 2024, Airbnb providers have had to pay GST on their earnings, although short stay accommodation is excluded from the Residential Tenancies Act.

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“The requirement to pay GST has definitely reduced profit and made some people think twice about renting their properties,” says Scott. The increased administration load has also made stable long term tenancies more appealing for some landlords. 

Regardless of whether the regulation is enforced, regulations do change people’s behaviour around buying properties to rent. Alex*, a Canterbury resident who lives in a rural area, has been considering buying a property in central Christchurch to rent through Airbnb or a similar platform. “I want the ability to come to the city to stay when it suits, obviously would have to book in advance, which is why a short term rental would suit my situation,” he told The Spinoff. He’s reluctant to pay for a resource consent, and sees the possibility of the council increasing enforcement as a “major risk” which would make having a second property unprofitable. “I have made the decision to try and purchase a property that is not in a residential zoning, which would mean a resource consent for short term rentals would not be required,” he said. 

What Scott thinks other councils can learn from Queenstown’s efforts to regulate short-term rentals is that there’s “no silver bullet”. In her work, affordable housing can’t solely happen through addressing the tourist platform. Instead, it happens through policies like inclusionary housing, which ensures that part of new housing developments are set aside for affordable housing, and simply building more houses. “People think a 300sqm freehold section is dense, but we need to go up, not out,” she said. For people to live in a place and make it thrive, there needs to be somewhere for them to live, whether there are lots of tourists or not. “I think we’re always going to see a demand for affordable [long term] rentals.”

Keep going!
Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke doing a haka in a legislative chamber. The chamber is wood-panelled with green flooring and empty seats visible.
Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performing the haka in question on November 14, 2024 (Image: The Spinoff)

PoliticsApril 3, 2025

Te Pāti Māori’s stand-off with the Privileges Committee, explained

Contributing writer
Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke doing a haka in a legislative chamber. The chamber is wood-panelled with green flooring and empty seats visible.
Rawiri Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performing the haka in question on November 14, 2024 (Image: The Spinoff)

The three MPs whose rule-breaking haka caught the world’s attention didn’t attend their scheduled hearing yesterday. Constitutional law expert Andrew Geddis has the rundown of what happened, why, and what’s likely to come next. 

I see Te Pāti Māori and the privileges committee are in some sort of stand-off – what’s the beef about?

To really understand the issue, we’d need to begin with first contact between Māori  and European explorers/agents of colonisation … and I don’t have the words or expertise to unpick the subsequent 383 years. So, let’s jump ahead to November 2024 and the haka led by Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke in the House of Representatives. Following this action, three MPs (NZ First’s Shane Jones, National’s Suze Redmayne and Act’s Todd Stephenson) laid complaints with the speaker that this haka was a breach of parliamentary rules. The speaker agreed that the behaviour of four MPs who took part by leaving their seats and entering the floor of the House – Peeni Henare, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke – should be further considered by the privileges committee.

The “privileges committee” sounds awfully anachronistic. What exactly is it?

I’ve had cause to write about it before, back when it considered Rawiri Waititi’s breach of a court order when asking David Seymour a parliamentary question about Tim Jago, the convicted sex offender who had been his Act Party president. So, I’ll just recycle my description of the committee from back then.

If the speaker agrees a complaint about a parliamentary rule breach is serious enough, that matter goes to the House’s privileges committee, which by journalistic convention must always be referred to as “powerful”. Basically, it’s made up of senior MPs from all the parties. They then hold a kind of in-house trial, decide if what has happened is a breach of the rules, and then decide what penalty should apply.

So, four MPs got sent there by the speaker for performing the haka. What’s happened since?

One of those MPs, Labour’s Peeni Henare, had his time before the committee in mid-March. He accepted that he breached parliamentary rules by going onto the floor of the House to perform the haka, and the committee decided that while his actions were “disorderly”, in effect they did not amount to a “contempt” of the House. Peeni Henare then apologised to the House for his actions.

Hang on – what’s this “contempt” business all about?

Basically, a “contempt” of the House involves a finding that someone has acted in a way that stops the House or any of its members being able to carry out their functions. It ups the seriousness of the issue, and hence the potential consequences – as we’ll get on to in a second.

Fair enough. However, if one of the four MPs has been dealt with in this way, why are Te Pāti Māori’s MPs still at issue? 

I think it’s safe to say that they don’t share Peeni Henare’s acceptance that their particular actions when conducting the haka were “wrong”. So, they want to defend themselves by bringing evidence before the committee from experts in tikanga and having their cases argued for them by a lawyer.

That sounds fair enough – why can’t they do this?

Because the committee won’t let them do so, pointing to the House’s own rules that set out the quite limited way in which witnesses (such as the MPs in question) can make use of legal advisers. While the committee might function a bit like a court in terms of deciding if you’ve done wrong and should be punished accordingly, its procedures aren’t the same as those that occur in a criminal trial.

Oh dear. How is this all coming to a head now?

Yesterday the committee had scheduled an hour-and-a-half for Te Pāti Māori’s three MPs to appear before it (separately, despite their desire to be dealt with collectively). However, the MPs basically said “nope – not coming” and instead announced they would set up their “own independent hearing” next month to “address the real kaupapa, which is tikanga Māori”.

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It’s a committee-off! How has the privileges committee responded?

Following yesterday’s no show, the committee issued a statement that it would extend the MPs one last chance to come before it on April 23. That statement concluded with the words “we expect the members involved to engage with the committee’s consideration of the question of privilege, as all others who have been referred to this committee have done”.

In some subsequent comments to media, the committee chair, Judith Collins, came pretty close to threatening that a failure by the MPs to engage as “expected” would be itself considered a contempt that the committee could decide to punish.

That’s starting to get a bit ominous. Where might this then all end up?

I guess there’s always room for some sort of compromise deal to get worked out – the committee might massage its procedures in a way that satisfies the MPs’ concerns. But, if there’s no rapprochement forthcoming, then we may again see another refusal to attend come April 23.

At that point the committee would have to decide what to do both about the original matter – how to categorise the haka as performed by the MPs in question – and also what to do about the MPs’ refusal to participate in the committee’s processes. Here Collins’ statement to the media pointing to the prospect of fines, or even the suspension of an MP from the House, really ups the usual stakes in these matters. Previous committee findings that an MP has committed a contempt have attracted at most a censure (telling off), and requirement to say “sorry” in public. 

So, again, it’s hard to know just how seriously to take these implied threats of heavier sanctions. But the privileges committee gets called “powerful” for a reason!

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Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer

A lot of this looks like procedural game playing and posturing. What’s really going on here?

The real issue arising from the MPs’ use of the haka, it seems to me, relates to how deeply parliamentary rules should accommodate tikanga and Māori forms of debate and contestation. However, the privileges committee isn’t really set up to address that sort of issue. It’s there to judge behaviour against the House’s as-set rules and determine what consequence should follow if these are breached.

Consequently, Te Pāti Māori is right to complain that the status quo all-but guarantees a finding that its MPs’ actions breach parliamentary rules. And with little to no room to argue before the privileges committee that these rules are wrong or unfair, their participation simply lends credibility to a process primed to condemn them. Contrariwise, the privileges committee can’t unilaterally change the rules parliament operates on, only adjudicate on whether they have been broken and what to do about that. And while Te Pāti Māori’s MPs are a part of the House, the argument goes, they have to be held to the rules of that place.

As such, we find ourselves in a situation so common in Aotearoa New Zealand. Māori pointing out how the existing rules fail to properly accommodate them, while those whose job it is to apply those rules say “sorry, but this is just how things are and if you want to participate you must conform”. All while the big question – what rules would allow for a proper incorporation of tikanga into our collective way of behaving? – gets pushed aside as being just a bit too hard to think about.

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