Oh really…
National Party admits it sold too many state houses
National’s new housing spokesperson has admitted the party was wrong to sell and convert more state houses than it built when it was last in office.
Nicola Willis, who took the housing portfolio in a recent reshuffle, told RNZ the net reduction in state houses under the last National government showed that governments needed to continue increasing the number of state houses.
Willis said National sold or converted “a couple of thousand” state homes.
“I think what we can see from that is yes, the Government needs to build state houses,” she said.
…let me see if I can get this completely straight.
The privatisation of State Housing that National embarked upon, using a false meth hysteria to claim State Tenants were smoking the P so National could throw them onto the streets and erode any sympathy for them is now, according to Nicola Willis, possibly a bit on the nose?
Housing NZ and National being told in 2016 that they had misinterpreted their own meth contamination policy and HNZ acknowledging to the Drug Foundation that they had misinterpreted it might be, according to Nicola Willis, a bit far?
Being told in 2016 they were applying their own policy on meth contamination falsely, and then admitting that they were applying their own meth testing policy falsely AND YET needlessly spending $120m on decontamination, throwing a 1000 beneficiaries onto the street at the height of a homelessness crisis and pimping this to the click bait media so they could continue privatising State Housing, according to Nicola Willis, that might have been wrong?
How fucking charming.
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And to make matters worse they also sold land worth millions of dollars that state houses were sitting on and they sold down others state assets. And then they destroyed some SOEs in the process of espousing privatisation is best. ( like the power companies experiment) And to add to it all they used the proceeds to make them look like they were good economic managers to boost there budget coffers. Under this new lot Kiwi build might be failing but state house building is on the up. Now national need to stop saying they are good economic managers cause we all know the costs to them having a surplus, too many have to suffer.
I wonder what they’ll admit to when on trial for treason?
This is a pre-emptive “clean-up” operation before the election (probably initiated by Hooton). National’s focus groups will have been telling them that many New Zealanders still hold them responsible for creating the housing crisis. That’s a serious weak-link in their upcoming election campaign.
The solution they’ve decided on is an early mea-culpa with a few half-arsed excuses so that when the issue gets raised later on they can claim, “Yes but we’ve already dealt with this issue. Why does the government and the media keep harping on about old news?”
Will it work? I don’t know, but New Zealanders have been shown to have remarkably short memories when it comes to recognising who was responsible for the country’s ongoing housing woes, so they’re probably in with a good chance. Expect to hear “but Kiwibuild!” exit all National MPs mouths at least three times a minute from now until the election.
The media should keep harping on because National can’t claim to be good economic managers when the money came from selling at least 2 thousand state houses making people homeless. There are always consequences to policies and they can’t have it all there way and this point needs to be raised.
Many of the sales were to foreign buyers who had neither citizenship nor residency.
The first ever Stats NZ publication of property figures showing tax residency of those transferring property happened in 2018. (Why were the Nats so reluctant to release the info under their tenure, I wonder.) So this was for the first three months of 2018:
Some areas had foreign buyers making up to 18.7% of purchases.
Nearly 10% of all purchasers were corporate entities, for which information on ownership was still unavailable.
“Chinese and Australian tax residents made up the majority of foreign buyers and sellers.” Link here: RNZ 7th June 2018
The information showing how many state houses we had in 2008 when National first got elected to 2017 when they got ousted we have a right to see this. We also should be able to see who brought these houses/flats and how much they paid for them and what the money was spent on. I know there was at least thousand sold but there was also land. And Some of the land was worth a lot of money.
And of Course Jacinda came to power to fix the National housing problem.
And hows that going.??
Governments local and central, cause the problems by regulation and restriction.
Which pushes up prices of land and building.
and Politicans add full to the fire by pumping up dreams for the homeless/unhomed.
A prime example being the Kiwibuild shambles that promised affordable homes. Then built $600,000 homes!!!!
When I gree up a 1,000 sqft home was a big, luxury place.
Now it seems the average is 2,000 sgft, why is that?
A pox on central planning and restrictions.
Let the Kiw battler build their home as they want.
Well surprise surprise surprise!!!!!.
HAS THE POPE ASKED THEM TO CONFESS THEIR SINS????????
UN-BELIEVABLE.
Are they now going to confess to selling alll our public assets as well next??????
Will National finally confess their love for austerity is wrong also??????.
Truly they are the ‘shifty Political Party’ that can never be trusted ever again.
In 2015 Andrew Little tried to call the then-govt out for selling our homes to foreign buyers, especially to so very many from China. He was denounced as being “racist” for raising that line of question. Here is an article from that time, referencing this: NZ Labour Defends Claim of Foreign Buyers
I’m guessing Hooten is telling them progress on social housing is undermining National, so just pretend you care.
Shallow as the sweat on Hamish Walkers forehead!
January 2016, Ms Bennett, then Social Housing Minister, denies her meeting with Chinese property billionaires: Stuff January 2016 Minister Denies Meeting
Excerpts:
Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett is denying claims she met with a representative of a Chinese property billionaire said to be eyeing up New Zealand’s state housing stock.
The State Housing Action Network said on Friday that it understood Bennett met with Roger O’Sullivan, recently appointed New Zealand manager for Henry Cheng Kar-Shun’s Pinnacle Group, on December 11 to discuss buying state houses.
But Clark Hennessy, Bennett’s spokesperson, said no such meeting took place and that network convenor John Minto was “making stuff up”.
————
Minto said the Government intended to sell up to a third of state houses, “the biggest privatisation of state assets in New Zealand history”, beginning with 1140 houses in Tauranga and 370 in Invercargill.
His action network had written to Cheng “expressing our strong opposition to any purchaser, domestic or overseas, buying state houses”. It had also written to Australian-based Horizon Housing, which has also expressed interest.
“The government sell-off of state housing is a travesty,” Minto said. “New Zealand needs more state housing, not less. We are in the middle of a housing crisis for low and middle income New Zealanders and only the government has the resources and the capacity to provide the large number of quality, affordable housing so desperately needed.” [Further details at link]
A 2016 real estate investor blog in Australia also referenced Chinese buyers of NZ property, which is not surprising as Aus purchasers were the other main interested party: Realestate Investar Blog (Same basic info as linked above.)
National sold some state owned blocks of flats saying they were earthquake prone. Within a few weeks I saw a couple of India blokes painting these earth quake prone flats. Nek minute a sign went up with phone number saying ‘To Rent’ bloody liars.
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