Start with housing, where the damage is worst. Bishop declared emergency housing "one of the biggest public policy failures in New Zealand history", then dismantled the safety net before anything adequate replaced it.
Under his direction, Kāinga Ora scrapped 212 projects that would have delivered 3,479 homes, 1,527 of them in Auckland. It's selling a fifth of its vacant land, wrote off as much as $180 million spent on projects that won't go ahead, and cut 620 positions. Bishop's own answers to Parliament showed state housing stock was forecast to fall.
On 19 June 2025, RNZ reported:
Kāinga Ora halts hundreds of housing developments, sells vacant land
Housing Minister Chris Bishop ordered Kāinga Ora to deliver a turnaround plan that would ensure financial sustainability.
The agency's plan will see it refocus as a landlord, rather than a developer, and the number of houses it owned would stabilise from 2026.
Crockett said Kāinga Ora reviewed more than 460 social housing projects to ensure it was getting the best value for money and supplying houses in the areas of greatest need.
It was decided 212 projects that would have delivered 3479 homes would not proceed because they did not stack up financially, or were in the wrong locations.
It would press on with 254 projects, building more than 1800 new homes.
Kāinga Ora would also sell about a fifth - 36 hectares - of vacant land because it was no longer needed.
The consequences of this and the governments gutting of emergency housing weren't hard to foresee. Homelessness in Auckland more than doubled. Asked about it in March 2025, Bishop told Q&A "There is basically no agreed definition of what homelessness is", a remarkable thing for a housing minister to say. This year, all but one of 19 housing and homelessness organisations surveyed said homelessness had increased.
There should be no argument... housing works. Yet officials concede they can't guarantee shelter for anyone on a given night, and the latest Budget offers just 2,250 extra social houses over three years, and not until 2028.
Then came the doorstop Bills meant to replace the RMA. The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill passed their final reading on 22 September, with Bishop promising "freedom." The lawyers heard something else. The Law Society warned that the Treaty provisions would bring considerable legal uncertainty and likely years of litigation, while the free-market NZ Initiative noted that undefined terms leave their boundaries to be settled by the courts.
Bishop described his purpose as having "reduced the ability for people to inject themselves into your business". But that's clearly a grievance, not a planning philosophy. The RMA has generated case law for 35 years and it's still being written. A statute built on fresh, undefined terms invites the same, and decades of litigation is a reasonable forecast.
Local government reform is a mess. Bishop unveiled the biggest shake-up since 1989, replacing elected regional councillors with boards of mayors, then scrapped the idea after strong opposition, breezily calling it a “starter for 10”. Councils were then given three months to submit reorganisation proposals or have reform imposed. Eighteen groups did, at a cost of millions, and in September Bishop and Watts shelved the lot until 2027 because none had the unanimous support of its region.
The Environmental Defence Society warned that overhauling regional governance while replacing the RMA creates confusion about who does what. They're not wrong.
Water is the other half of the council mess. More than 30,000 Wellington, Hutt and Porirua customers haven’t paid their first bill from the new water agency Tiaki Wai, leaving about $21 million unpaid. Bills are up 13.3 per cent to an average of $2,390, and the Commerce Commission chair says the agency’s costs far exceed what it collects. Nationally, council water plans will cost nearly $9 billion more than councils first estimated. With this in mind, Bishop winning any votes is a miracle and testament to the mainstream media's biased reporting.
Fast-track fares no better. Ministers originally held the final say until public outcry forced in expert panels, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment called the law "one of the most complex and convoluted pieces of legislation I have ever seen".
On 14 September 2026, RNZ reported:
Fast track housing projects already putting enormous strain on infrastructure: LGNZ
The mayors of Auckland and Queenstown have already called for an immediate pause on fast-tracked housing developments.
Local Government NZ vice president Dan Gordon said it had developed a four-point plan which will ensure people are confident in the system.
"Number one is looking at development contributions, so it covers projects that have already been applied for under Fast Track. Two is requiring the cumulative effects of multiple projects to be considered. Thirdly is a pause on ministerial referrals, and four is to commission a longer-term review to make sure that fast track is right under the new planning system," Gordon said.
"Some fast track housing projects are already placing enormous strain on existing infrastructure, rather than directing growth to areas that are already ready for it, particularly in rural areas. Fast track housing applications shouldn't be able to bypass council decisions in areas where we already are planning significant housing growth, and certainly not if the council has declined their application multiple times and with good reason."
He said a number of councils had been in touch with LGNZ to express their concerns about the fast track process.
Now the Auckland and Queenstown mayors want fast-tracked greenfield housing paused. Wayne Brown called the Delmore approval "amateur, pathetic and stupid", and Auckland analysis warns that ratepayers could subsidise infrastructure by as much as $1.5 billion. Bishop dismissed Local Government New Zealand's concerns as running ahead of the facts, yet he was already rushing a law change through Parliament to answer them.
Even granny flats have disappointed. The coalition agreement promised them, yet consent-free building began only in January 2026. The advertised saving of up to $5,650 is dwarfed by the development contributions of $17,000 to $30,000 that councils such as Hastings still charge. The Government's evidence of success was more than 52,000 downloads of a guidance document, not homes.
Then there's tobacco. Bishop worked for Philip Morris New Zealand from 2011 to 2013, lobbying against higher excise and plain packaging. He has said he has no “moral issue with tobacco, it’s a legal product”.
The coalition he served in repealed, under urgency, the law that would have banned sales to anyone born after 1 January 2009, cut retailers from 6,000 to 600 and removed 95 per cent of the nicotine from cigarettes. At the same time it halved the excise on heated tobacco products, a market dominated by Philip Morris, and set aside $216 million (later forecasts closer to $300 million) to cover the lost revenue. The one-year tax break was later extended to 2027. Officials confirmed Philip Morris, as the monopoly supplier, would be the main beneficiary.
The results are a stall in progress and a booming black market. Official daily smoking has sat at 6.8 per cent for three years, the Smokefree 2025 goal was missed, and Māori (15.0 per cent) and Pacific (10.3 per cent) rates remain far higher. Meanwhile the illicit share of the market has surged to around one-third, costing the Crown hundreds of millions more.
A former Philip Morris lobbyist sat in a Cabinet that dismantled the strongest anti-smoking laws in the country’s history and handed a multi-year tax break to his mates.
Ministers are meant to deliver outcomes, not press releases and worse results. Bishop delivered cancelled homes, rising homelessness, increased illicit smoking rates, contested law and a retreat on local government.
Even Luxon removed him as campaign chair in April, and on election night the PM noticeably thanked every other senior National figure who appeared to have lost their seat, and pointedly left Bishop’s name out, later saying the insurmountable margin could still fall in Bishop's favour. Whatever the special votes do for the seat, Hutt South has made its judgement, and the record clearly supports it.
