Labour govt 2020-23

[dobby41]

In 2017 the Labour campaign literature said that 'only Labour has a comprehensive solution to the housing crisis'.

Phil Twyford was on TV saying that Auckland was 'full up'. The message was clear: we couldn't cram in another living soul - the infrastructure was already creaking under the strain and we had a full blown housing crisis.

Labour had spent years screaming about a 'housing crisis' - a term that they spread far and wide & shouted from the rooftops.

So where is the 'comprehensive solution'? All I can see is a lazy foreign buyer ban that has achieved zilch, I think about 450 houses (I might be being generous there) have been built of the 100,000 promised, and hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been imported - many of them into a city that was apparently full up.

Of the KiwiBuild or social housing 'built' by this government, it turns out many of them were just existing stock puchased out from under the noses of first home buyers, while others were bought of the plan and re-branded as 'KiwiBuild'.

So the solution is obvious -

- Build the 100,000 affordable homes that were promised.

- Dramtically curb immigration from 2017 onwards until housing stocks have caught up.

- Don't drop your nuts and drop LVR's completely at the first sign of a pandemic.

- Don't tell the NZ public that house prices will always rise on your watch "as that is what Kiwi's expect".

- Incentivise saving and investment into the productive economy and away from housing.

- Stop providing subsidies to people to buy houses.

- Stop allowing people to gut their 'KiwiSaver' (supposed to be a pool of retirement savings) to buy houses.

I'm sure there are a truckload of other options that could be deployed to match Labour's words around a 'comprehensive solution' to the housing. If their feckless supporters actually held them to account rather than allow them to get away with a pack of lies maybe things might be different.

Thanks for answering.
I'll only comment on the 1st 2
- 100k houses was never going to happen - resources of all types are the problem (build ready land, builders etc) - a pipe dream!
- Immigration has been curbed - thanks Covid.

[Logen Ninefingers]

Thanks for answering.
I'll only comment on the 1st 2
- 100k houses was never going to happen - resources of all types are the problem (build ready land, builders etc) - a pipe dream!
- Immigration has been curbed - thanks Covid.

- Immigration has been curbed - thanks Covid.

I think COVID reared its head in 2020....what were the mob with the 'comprehensive solution' doing in the 3 years prior to that?

[dobby41]

- Immigration has been curbed - thanks Covid.

I think COVID reared its head in 2020....what were the mob with the 'comprehensive solution' doing in the 3 years prior to that?

True - not a lot better than the previous lot in their 9 years. They touted the GDP growth when most of it was imported via more people.
Meanwhile, Labour is trying to reset the immigration setting to higher-income people while everyone is complaining that they can't get the people in that they want - chefs, baristas etc.
I'd separate out the short term labour for picking etc - they don't intend to stay.

[Panda-NZ-]

I think you would need to look more at the British high rise public housing tower block experience to see how high density may pan out for NZ.

Eastern european style housing ?

NZ developers sadly can't be trusted with "density" given the history of abestos, leaky homes. Always a corner to be cut.

[Panda-NZ-]

But isn’t it “well done Adrian (and his team)”? (Also “well done Delta and his team for closing the borders and halting Labour’s mass immigration scheme so that the employment pool could tighten”).

National considered full employment to be 5% which is unacceptable.

Hopefully with the 3.4% rate wage rises are on the cards.

[Logen Ninefingers]

True - not a lot better than the previous lot in their 9 years. They touted the GDP growth when most of it was imported via more people.
Meanwhile, Labour is trying to reset the immigration setting to higher-income people while everyone is complaining that they can't get the people in that they want - chefs, baristas etc.
I'd separate out the short term labour for picking etc - they don't intend to stay.

If you can debate Labour's performance on their 'comprehensive solution' without making the usual reference to 'the previous lot in their 9 years' then I'd be amazed.

Who was screaming about a 'housing crisis' in 2017 and campaigning on 'a comprehensive solution', that's what I'd like to know. But we know the answer: it was Labour.

And now you talk about Labour 'trying to reset the immigration setting' - presumably you are talking about post-COVID when you say that. But what did they do between 2017 and 2020? Stop being slippery about it! Go and look at the Statistics NZ data and you will start to see migrant numbers spiking upwards from the June 2019 quarter through to the March 2020 quarter - it seems that for some reason they just took the brakes off and opened the flood-gates. The data does not lie.

[fungus pudding]

National considered full employment to be 5% which is unacceptable.

Hopefully with 3.7% wage rises are finally on the cards.

Read - more inflation on the way. The unions will see to that.

[Panda-NZ-]

Read- high wages for the first time in a decade.

[dobby41]

Read - more inflation on the way. The unions will see to that.

Where does supply and demand come into it?
If labour is in short supply wouldn't you expect the price to go up? Unions or not.

[fungus pudding]

Read- high wages for the first time in a decade.

Ever heard of a cat chasing its tail? Burns up a heap of energy and ends up where it started. If you want a higher income - become more productive or useful. Just helping roll the inflation wheel along the road won't do it.