An astonishing opening play from the Prime Minister upon her return from holiday.
"I will fix the housing crisis."
Are you kidding me? You will do what? No one else has fixed it, because they can't. This is the year of delivery, not, 2.0.
She comes to the “I will fix the housing crisis” headline with what? Kiwibuild?
The government's credentials on housing are abysmal. The social housing programme they tout as a success, doesn’t even begin to cover the increases in the lines of people queuing up for a roof.
It's up 1000 in the last two months. 22,409 in line now. Record broken, after record broken, and their work so far is 8000 houses. And when I say 8000, that’s a promise not actual houses.
By 2024, as in beyond the next election, the promise is 18,000 houses. That doesn’t even cover those here right now, far less the many thousands more than will join between now and then. And that’s just social housing.
The major mistake she makes around a so-called crisis, is the same mistake others have made before her.
She thinks governments affect prices. They don't. You know why they don’t? Because if they did, they would have done it by now.
Then ask yourself the simplest of questions, what does “fix” mean? When is it fixed? Answer, there is no answer.
The same way there isn't a crisis, unless you want there to be one.
The same way a 10 percent drop in value might be a crash, or a correction, or an adjustment depending on who you are, and what your agenda is.
Here's our status, here's what she lines her mad promise up against, we can't get access to builders, we are already building flat out, materials are hard to come by because of shipping, prices are rising, money is cheap, and demand is through the roof.
And she is going to do what?
The last smokescreen they ran before Christmas was the Robertson letter to Adrian Orr, which essentially got put in the bin.
Governments don't control the housing market, and promising stuff that makes it sound like they do is a mad combination of ignorance, arrogance, and a con.