Labour says it will introduce legislation that would provide automatic protection to heritage trees to avoid a repeat of this week's furore over a Kauri.

Protests over the planned felling of the Titirangi specimen to make way for housing have successfully saved the tree.

The council and the land owner have agreed to work together ... although the council says it won't be buying the property in question.

Labour's Auckland issues spokesman Phil Goff says when National changed the Resource Management Act in 2009, the blanket legal protection that Waitakere Council placed over such trees was removed.

Instead councils must list protected trees individually - a process he says is time-consuming, bureaucratic and costly.

He says the law went too far and it's time to reassert a sensible level of environmental protection.