National’s under-investment in housing, public services, and infrastructure means New Zealand is literally running out of beds for the record number of new migrants, says Labour’s Immigration spokesperson Iain Lees-Galloway.
“People who migrate to New Zealand bring much needed skills and cultural diversity to our country but National’s failure to invest is letting down both new migrants and the people who are already here.
“In the past year, immigration into Auckland alone ran at 100 people a day, yet National is planning to build just one affordable house a day in the city. All up, Auckland built less than half the houses it needed last year, adding to the existing shortfall of 40,000 houses. Inviting so many people to our country when we don’t have the houses they need is irresponsible and unfair to everyone.
“Our roads, rail, schools and hospitals haven’t had the investment they need from the Government to keep up with the pressure created by such rapid population growth.
“National’s had nine years to fix this; it’s time for fresh thinking on immigration. Labour’s going to invest in the housing, transport, and public services we all need. We’re going to build homes that people can afford to buy. We’re also going to take a breather on immigration so that our infrastructure has a chance to catch up,” says Iain Lees-Galloway.
That’s great. Except Labour won’t do what they promise.
First, they won’t because they are the Architects of NeoLiberalism, and not a Workers Party, and second, they can’t, because the problems with housing in New Zealand are systemic, and Labour only knows how to tinker around the edges.
New Zealand has some of the most anti-intensification planning laws in the world. It would be easier to build a freeway through Grey Lynn than to build a block of apartments there.
As well, New Zealand has some of the most expensive building materials in the world – construction costs in terms of materials are almost a third again over Australia and other countries. There is no excuse for this, because we could easily import these materials from China, where they are cheap and plentiful. Except we have a near-monopoly on building supplies here. Is Labour going to tackle that? I think not.
But even if the houses WERE built, there is nothing to stop them from being snatched up as fast as they are finished by the Speculators and Land-bankers, foreign OR domestic. In every city around the world where Speculators are allowed to run wild, from San Francisco to Shanghai, you can build as many houses and apartments as you want, entire ghost cities of them, and house prices still go UP. Is Labour going to do anything about that?
Finally, assuming supply really was the problem, in spite of years working on the Christchurch rebuild, New Zealand still cannot get its act together to build housing on an industrial scale. We seem to have some serious learning difficulties! We think we already know everything! We never look at other cities, like Sydney and Melbourne and ask, “how could we do intensification better, combining apartments and rail?” Its beyond us.
It’s not hard, and there are a thousand successful contractors in Australia doing it now who could come here and teach us. But we can’t get it together to bring them over and learn it. It is difficult to find Kiwi developers who are even willing, much less able to build apartment buildings, and when we do the apartments are too small. When they’re sold, they are almost as expensive to live in as a house, or a rental. There is systemic resistance to apartment building, but that, my friends, is the unavoidable future.
Consider for a moment, Labour could make a difference in its first 100 days, by addressing land-banking. There are nearly 30 THOUSAND residential dwellings being land-banked by speculators which could be flushed back into the market with a LAND TAX. That would fix our supply problems almost over night. But have you heard even one word about this from Labour? No. Either they don’t know about it, which makes them incompetent and unfit for government, or they DO know about it, and they are willfully AVOIDING it as an issue.
Is Labour going to fix ANY of this? I seriously doubt it. They won’t even do the most basic things – that would require Government Planning and Intervention that looks too much like “Socialism”. Well, it is IMPOSSIBLE to fix housing without some serious Government Planning and Intervention. Which means Labour, which is absolutely phobic about appearing “socialist” will do precisely nothing.
Labour will not sort out housing. Before Labour can sort out housing, Labour needs to sort out Labour. And that is definitely not going to happen.
Most building materials from China are of very poor quality.
They are cheap for a reason.
Ask any N.Z certified electrician about the electrical cable and switches arriving here.
Ask any N.Z certified plumber about the quality of the water pipes, mixers and toilets. No ‘watermark’ quality stamp required here as is compulsory in Australia, (leaky house syndrome is about to hit N.Z again, but this time it is going to start inside the walls).
And ask any N.Z certified builder about the quality of Chinese steel reinforcing rod , (certified only by the Chinese factory where it’s produced), (I kid you not), that’s been flooding the country.
Major construction projects are having to shore up the failing steel with complete re-designs of affected areas with masses of extra concrete at great expense.
Yes Winstone’s have an iron clad grip on the gib board market and are almost twice the price of what you would pay in Australia and while we are supposed to be running at around 2% inflation every month I get a suppliers news letter informing me of 5- 10% rises in material costs for a wide variety of materials.
However , Real Estate agents need to be completely cut out of the picture .They take no risk and their skill level and training is near zilch, but they continue to rort the housing market with fees of between 3-5% of the total sale cost of a house, plus all sorts of bullshit administration expenses, plus extortionist advertising costs.
The average house in Auckland would instantly be $40,000.00 cheaper if you took the agents out of the picture.
Building large scale housing is not overly difficult .
Building the infrastructure and transport lines to service them is.
A reckless National Party have thrown the next Government a massive hospital pass!
I can see it ow reaching the east coast provinces of HB & Gisborne.
I walked into a Burger king today with my family and the place was heavily also visited by South Americans that are working there ad eating there.
This was know only by asking there origin.
Health centres are also seeing a large increase of foreign new arrivals also we are told so we will pick up their cost for treatment also we many do not work yet.
This is a recipe for disaster coming our way.
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