There are glorious moments on TV that manage to just grasp a moment and give true insight.
One such moment was Q+A last weekend when right wing commentator Liam Hehir simply threw up his hands and stated that maybe we needed to be honest and admit entire generations are now locked out of home ownership.
The naked truth of that just sits in front of us and must be explored.
The reality is that entire generations are now locked out of home ownership through a combination of the commodification of housing in a lax regulation environment.
So now that fact is before us, what do we do?
Let’s look at this charts…
…right.
So Labour turn on the taps to the corporate banks to start an orgy of property speculation that has now priced home ownership beyond the reach of entire generations and Grant’s worried NOW because this venal greed risks crashing the entire economy.
Note – Grant’s concerned when his policy failure risks collapsing the economy NOT when it was crucifying renters, the homeless, beneficiaries and the working class.
Those 4000 kids living in motels will be so pleased Grant its thinking about stern action to stop those greedy property speculators from fucking the entire economy…while they stay in those motels of course.
The IMF agrees we are in trouble…
IMF warns of ‘pronounced correction’ in NZ’s housing market
The International Monetary Fund has praised New Zealand’s economic performance in response to Covid-19, but warns it is vulnerable to a housing downturn.
…the truth (like everything else in fucking NZ), is that the under regulated free market has been warped by the wealthy for their interests and all Labour attempt is bullshit tinkering on the sides rather than challenge the dominance of neoliberal theology.
We have allowed the commodification of houses to be a means to make wealth and people are chasing that with all the nuance of meth addicts in a P lab.
If Labour wanted actual solutions, these 4 would do it.
1 – FLOOD MARKET WITH MASS STATE HOUSING REBUILD: End the scum landlord subsidy of housing allowances end putting money into the pockets of unscrupulous motel owners by rapidly building 50 000 new state homes. Scum Landlords can do as they please because the level of desperation amongst renters gives them total power. Flooding the market with 50 000 new state houses would rob scum landlords of that desperation.
2 – STATE HOUSE FOR LIFE: Allow beneficiaries to stay in their state home for life so that they can create stable communities and that their desperation is never transported back to Landlords.
3 – DEPOSIT RESTRICTIONS: First time home buys should be required to have 10% deposit, but the more properties you own, the higher the deposit. The reason the speculators can out buy any first time home owner is because they can use their multiple properties to leverage more debt. If you are a property speculator, you need to turn up with a 70% deposit to counter the leverage multiple properties allows them.
4 – RENTER RIGHTS: Long term low rent rise environment.
If Labour want to actually solve the problem they have to regulate the market and re-set it so that speculation is punished while first home ownership and housing of the poor is championed.
For too long we have allowed the the rich to dictate the rules, if Labour’s kindness is to be meaningful, it needs to challenge that dynamic.
If a right wing commentator like Liam Hehir can see it, how can Labour not?
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“If a right wing commentator like Liam Hehir can see it, how can Labour not?”
They can see it. Unfortunately their modus operandi and the ‘comms and marketing’ people have decided that they should NEVER EVER admit to making mistakes. That would undermine that kind BUT staunch image that was necessary to get “us” through the pandemic.
That, and of course their commitment to the managerialists’ neoliberal theory and religion.
Far easier to have another inquiry.
I don’t believe it as Bomber puts it “those greedy property speculators from fucking the entire economy“, rather it was the policies that this current government put in place in conjunction with their inability to actually do anything that opened the door to property speculators who in fairness are reacting fairly rationally. Money is cheap, there are better returns available via capital gains so it only follows that’s where the coin goes.
If they really wanted to make a change they could compulsory purchase vast tracks of land around our major cities and open up huge areas to flood the market. They won’t though as they could organise a root in a brothel let alone deliver complex solutions.
In order to fix the market you would need to crash the market. If you crash the market you forgo the next 2 general elections as the economic carnage would be solely blamed on the government of the day. You have to remember Grunter has A LOT of pride when it comes to his economic ability. The top end of town still thinks he is a financial mental midget therefore there would be hell to pay before he allows them to have the last laugh.
He is starting to freak out because it appears despite his best efforts there is a reckoning coming to the NZ economy without it’s usual pump and dump Asian immigration ponzi scheme that Clark, Key and until covid the Blairite dined out on. You could literally bush cash in 40L drums on parliament lawn if +65k were coming into the country year-on-year. The catch-22 is of course the Blairite is hostage to St Ash and her carefully constructed narrative of fortress (little) Aotearoa therefore there is no appetite with the sheeple to collectively open our legs to Australian tourists (and over time) Asian immigrants.
Pizza ovens, jet skis and living room extensions on tick are one-off sugar rush injections to the economy and if there is no immigration over time, demand will diminish to almost zero. Coupled with 30% of your economy dependent to tourism that local demand only satisfies during school and summer holidays and you have a recipe for recession.
The real bogeyman will be inflation and worldwide despite the best efforts of the moneymen (people sic) inflationary pressures are building far more rapidly than people thought. If interest rates go up quicker than expected the threat of stagflation increases. Imagine Japanese-style stagflation without the social discipline of the Japanese people.
“If you crash the market you forgo the next 2 general elections……..”
Hard to tell this far out from the next election, but it may well be up for grabs anyway.
Where I live, I’m surrounded by tertiary students housed by a slum landlord; plus an aging boomer, left-leaning contingent; plus the new kids in town – predominantly corporate CEOs and people in gummint who’re busy gentrifying the place and installing elaborate security systems to keep out the plebs.
Seems to me the consensus is Labour might be struggling when it comes time in ’23. If not ’23, then ’26.
The corporate class were never going to vote Labour next time – even the gNats that defected last time; the left-leaning boomers are increasingly becoming more disappointed as they struggle to hang on to what they’ve got, and as they ponder their children’s future; and the students just think JA and Grunt are up themselves, nice and comfy, and condescending.
But as above – the comms and marketing department have said “NEVER EVER admit you made a mistake. Spin it any which way you can”
The problem the opposition has is they are not providing any compelling counter argument and is summed up best by my mate (back when we were in school) when asked why he didn’t move from New World to Woolworths for 25 cents extra per hour – “Why move from shit to crap”. This is the main challenge for National at the moment.
Well you do have Jude, practicing her niceties (Morning Report: “Oh Hello Sooosie” how luverly ), and Soimun doing his best to capture the tide.
Then there’s a Luxton – or whatever his name is who’s probably got that Krismetuk ponytail puller on his team
So who knows, but Labour shouldn’t be resting on its baubles because ‘political capital isn’t something that’s bankable. You either use it, or lose it and at the mo’ its being frittered.
All I know is that Labour has lost me and most of the neighbouring community.
Bullshit
Care to elaborate?
How do you elaborate on bullshit economic theory?
Didn’t think so. The truth hurts when it paints your mob badly.
There’s nothing wrong with your abstract ideas, that’s the way physicists deal with problems.
The next generation are also locked out of home ownership because retirement villages take massive profits due to unfair conditions set by retirement villages. Big corporations (mostly foreign owned) are intercepting NZ’s next generations inheritance from parents who are often infirm when they sign up to the arrangement or have few other options to be cared for under market led, NZ.
Well said, Martyn! (May I point out a typo in the second sentence.)
And may I add a few more issues for consideration in addressing this problem:
1. A wealth tax, with gains made on property speculation being funneled directly back into the low-cost housing project.
2. Find some way of lowering the extra-ordinarily high price New Zealanders pay for building materials.
3. Instigate a tenure system, where families can build low-cost removable homes on leasehold land, which they can then later move to their own land if/when they can afford it. A system like this works in Australia for down-sizing retirees – there’s no reason why it cannot work for younger families here. This sidesteps the very high initial cost, and ongoing over-capitalisation, for Kiwi families on the land below their home.
“2. Find some way of lowering the extra-ordinarily high price New Zealanders pay for building materials.”
Yep. It’s hard to justify. Every time I come away from an Okker Bunnings or Mitre10, I feel guilty for playing their silly game.
Those two minimum wage (or a rupee or two above) “job creators” should hang their heads in shame. The thing is, I won’t be at all surprised if the Labour Party, or the Ministry for Everything get a couple of their ilk onto the next panel that’s tasked with “a piece of work” that’ll feed into an inquiry as to the cost of building in ‘lil ‘ole Nu Zuln’ that used to punch above its weight – “in that space, going forward”.
You just reminded me – there’s another reason not to Party Vote Labour to add to the list, after a lifetime of being a suppota.
“They don’t get it” because the Labour Caucus very existence, MP’s positions, and hundreds of badgering, “torys in disguise” public servants jobs, all depend on their NOT getting it, i.e. challenging neo liberal orthodoxy.
I admit my admiration for the PM’s excellent COVID performance, when for a few glorious weeks of Level 4 Lockdown she put public health before private profit. If she could do that on a regular basis this would be a Govt. remembered rightly or wrongly on a par with MJ Savage’s.
But that is not going to happen. Grant and Jacinda are monetarists and market disciples through and through. I still recall that brief candid TV shot taken unawares I think, in a corridor, David Cunliffe had just been confirmed by narrow vote as Labour leader–the look of sheer horror on her face as she turned to Grant Robertson was chilling.
Labour has six months max following the Budget to do something practical for the NZ working class or you and I may as well start preparing for the 2023 election now. What that means for the right I’m not sure. For the left it hopefully means a strong Green/Māori vote and a co-alition with Labour pushed left by its Māori and Pacific MPs. But who knows–all those new Labour MPs in rural seats may be one timers and Nat/ACT may make a comeback on disappointment with Labour and the anti vaxxers and conspiracists and gun nuts! Or switch voters might put Labour in again as long as their property values stay solid and the cops keep the homeless out of their empty spare houses…
The plan on housing is simple by Labour.
Do nothing, focus group and poll.
If those two bits of research indicate minimal damage, then do nothing continues.
Forget being in government to make a positive change, winning the vote is ALL that matters.
So true. They learned this well off Key and Joyce.
They let the Greens ‘lead’ on housing, and seems to be turning the Greens home owning votes to Labour. Not sure that is helping the planet.
I know I sound like a borken record but we have done all this before.
Quick summary.
John.A.Lee given housing minister’s job. Uses state control of banks NOT to make money available to speculators but to employ contractors, buy land and building materials( at prices set by government).
This is called State Socialism. It involves government using its powers for the benefit of MOST of the population.
My dad comes home from World War II, marries mum. There are no homes to buy because during the war people have been too busy fighting to build fucking houses( or indeed houses for fucking).
In parks and Domains all across New Zealand there are military style barracks housing people while they get cheap state advances loans to buy their own well made, healthy houses.
This temporary housing is basic – but people are out of the weather and the wartime generation are not whingers. With state assistance the builders supply catches up with demand and the baby boomers are housed.
Did it before – why can it not be done again? All the Labour Party has to do is blow the dust of its Socialism.
So the Greens have a housing policy. When do they decide to release it ? On the day that NZ win the Cup. The news went from 6 to 7.30 and was wall to wall the Cup . Not a mention of the policy. This indicates tome how out of touch they are. A couple of the points they made could work but the rest was shear communism and would cause a riot if adopted.
Leave our Greenies alone they are doing there job holding our government to account at least they are trying.
Unlike National where is their housing policy and ideas instead all we hear from them is ‘bring in more foreign workers’ ‘open the flood gates’ same old shit and every time they get in power the inequalities get worse.
Leave our Greenies alone they are doing there job holding our government to account at least they are trying.
Unlike National where is their housing policy and ideas instead all we hear from them is ‘bring in more foreign workers’ ‘open the flood gates’ same old shit and every time they get in power the inequalities get worse.
I’d like to support the Greens more, but I feel they are too in touch with the Natz on immigration and giving the Natz their questions in parliament.
Labour and Greens have continued with the Natz immigration experiment but getting poorer people in as temporary workers who never leave. If you are a criminal, mentally ill or a parent, or life in their home is harder, then you never need go back home as they just apply to the immigration protection council who lets them stay. In the past decade NZ now has an extra million people who need housing and social services now. And another 1 million people will flood in when they open the borders.
Already 120,000 people have come to NZ with MIQ since March. NZ has still not built the tens of thousands of new houses for them or the water, roads, hospitals, schools, jails etc, so they are driving up housing shortages but unlike locals, have loads of cash with them. If poor them the woke will bankroll them into NZ (and their families) with social welfare by hard luck stories we are subjected to on a daily basis with MSM.
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