Opposition leader David Cunliffe believes Tauranga's local government and business leaders are on track to grow the region with future development plans in place.

The Labour leader was in Tauranga today for a morning meeting with the wider Western Bay of Plenty's leaders to discuss growth, infrastructure, roading and development in the region.

Labour leader David Cunliffe at The Strand in Tauranga.

'For example Priority One's economic development plan, I think is a very well written document.

'It has a clear strategy it has good clear roles for local regional governments, as well as business partners,” says David.

A clear indication was given to David that Tauranga is looking for assurance the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process will go through for Tauranga Moana, should Labour be elected to government in next year's general election.

And that the government will be a good funding partner for key future development and infrastructure projects.

'So in general we are keen to do that, but obviously we will take a case-by-case approach. But our message is partnership is the way we want to work,” says David.

He presented the meeting with statistics showing that in the last 30 years economic development is faster under Labour governments.

'It is typically faster under a Labour government because we want to get stuff moving. That will be true next year when we hope to become the government again - and to do that in a responsible way learning from the community about what matters to them, we call that partnership and that's what we are after.”

This afternoon David is visiting TIDA, the Titanium Industry Development Association, at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic's Windermere campus.

On the Reserve Bank's Loans to Value Ratio restriction on low equity borrowers, David says he is not surprised there had been a drop-off in first home buyers now the policy has come into effect.

'Labour has been saying for some time that the Reserve Bank ought to have been in a position where it could more actively consider an exemption for first home buyers.

'We are also interested to explore whether regional centres which don't have a high rate of property price growth should be treated differently from the major centres like Auckland where at the moment the problem lies.”

A Labour Government would respect the independence of the Reserve Bank, but there are existing instruments like the MOU on Financial Stability and the Policy Targets Agreement on Monetary Policy – which can be found on the Reserve Bank website.

They allow the government of the day to provide some guidance to the bank on how the Governor should interact with government housing policy.

'Of course the problem at the moment is government housing policy is all over the map,” says David.

'They don't have a decent supply side programme like KiwiBuild where we are going to be building 10,000 houses a year for a decade.

'And they haven't really got a sufficient solution to the overheated demand in Auckland, whereas our capital gains tax would take a lot of that overheating out of the market.

'So in general I think we would give the Governor a better starting position than he would have had under the current government.”