Labour and National announce Kiwibuild Version 2

By
John Minto
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73
1569

Political co-operation across New Zealand politics is usually in short supply. Labour and National usually reserve bi-partisan support for what they call “national security” – like voting together to increase the powers of our spy agencies, the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau.

I can’t recall anything similar on social policy in the last few years – unless it’s the unsaid co-operation by which each party has demonised people on low-incomes over recent decades – National actively and Labour by neglect and omission.

It’s a measure of the seriousness of the housing crisis that they have joined forces to make it easier for property investors to build homes for middle class New Zealanders. They are co-operating to provide political cover for each other so that neither party can be singled out as allowing piles of townhouses in sections in leafy suburbs. It’s a gang up against wealthy nimbies. Both parties are now more scared of the backlash from the middle class struggling with housing than scared of wealthier homeowners who don’t want higher density accommodation in their streets.

But let’s be clear – this is not addressing the most critical problem in the housing crisis which is the desperate lack of warm, dry homes for families and tenants on low incomes.

Labour is building a net increase of less than 2000 state houses each year for a waiting list of 24,000.

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The policy announced today is version 2 of Labour’s Kiwibuild policy. The party is fixated on homes for the middle class at the expense of the desperately needed homes for the working class.

Still missing from Labour’s housing policy is an industrial-scale state house building programme to get New Zealanders on low incomes out of motels, caravans, sheds and garages and into decent state housing.

Is anyone there, Labour?

73 COMMENTS

      • But we can’t unborn all the born people, so we have to house them. Bringing in the extended family from everywhere and having to house them too, is another matter.

      • How ridiculous we are not over-populated at all. It is total ignorance and lack of action by successive governments.

        We can build bulk houses, the government should get off their arse and do it!

        • No, we aren’t “over populated” if comparisons are made to most other ciountries, but our own “population explosion” was inflicted upon, mainly Aucklanders, but has impacted the economy in shocking ways, by the importation of half a million people without even a nod in the direction of the amount of new infrastructure required to deal with that many people at once.. Add to that the dozens of high rise “dormatories” in the CBD that now stand largely empty as the owners await a return of asian student exploitation.. Then we had 6 years of unrestricted land banking (by the Chinese in the main) which I had the privilege of witnessing first hand while working for the sons, daughters, nephews, nieces of the owners of Grandee Developments, which was a major player in high rise construction in Hong Kong, and China…. And we haven’t even registered the number of “skilled” labour brought in during the Key years.. A lot of these people were simply abandoned to our tender mercies when Covid hit, so the big end of town dumped the after effects upon the taxpayer to deal with instead of having the slightest social conscience… We are overpopulated when it is looked at through the lens of what this country can deal with all at once, but then, John Key, and the craven rabble standing behind him, and directing him from overseas, never gave a shit how that affected us, so why would we even look at this as a problem, right?

    • Yes Tim and you seem to be the only one highlighting the root cause of this crisis. Everyone else on here just wants to pick sides and and throw stones at each other.

      • Rubbish yeahnah – your name says it all. People have been throwing ideas – just because they differ from yours doesn’t make them worthless, probably more the other direction for that.
        The bulk housing, the small united local groups gathered and trained into a team at polytechs, learning and building their own under full supervision and with more than adequate materials and practices. What a good idea to have one if poss in each area. Labour are happy to have the pmc step up, like Habitat for Houses?, and do what a State Housing department should be doing with MP having full ability to question and have good advice as to reasonable time limits, ground stability, drainage, roof capture, and suitable tenants. And people have fences and privacy.

        I know that is a strange idea to the gracious, who might decide to live in a gated community themselves but it’s of value to have your own vege garden and limit on the extension of others into what you would like to enjoy yourself. Like NZ at present on a larger scale.

    • Not really Timmyboy, it’s a lack of building going back decades. 5 million in a land area same as England – 65 million, we are sparsely populated by world standards. Our neo liberal masters have allowed, nay encouraged, the working class to get screwed in favour of generations that have greedily snapped up all real estate to enrich themselves. Politicians deliberately running down the housing supply to create greater demand that feeds price inflation, eg selling off state houses. Bastards.

      • The issue I believe is two fold. If you increase the population to the degree NZ has without the investment, particularly infrastructure, then it’s doomed from the start. Chicken and egg theory.

        • Bert plenty of taxpayer money for investment, the problem is it’s investment to business for the most part, who want to keep the PPP’s and profits going by keeping the infrastructure projects and consultation going for as long as possible. They will never build or solve anything under those conditions.

          Working in NZ is literally pretending to work. Normal folks who can’t stand the pretence are leaving to go overseas, making the system even worse, as there are less and less people calling out the situation or actually have real skills left in the NZ workforce.

        • Yes Bert agree and who did that increase in immigration benefit the most and who did it hurt the most. We should always weigh up the implications of policy to see if the benefits outweigh the negative impacts either way there is always a costs when you do trade offs.

      • Quite right GreenBus.

        Governments each and every one of them have been used by big business to cry out for labour that we already have but won’t pay decent wages to so we bring in and screw cheap labour.

    • Timmyboy. Yes. Read the book ‘The Population Crisis’ by Dick Smith (yes that Dick Smith). He’s done his research.

      • There has always been and continues to be enough to feed the world, distribution is the problem, along with the greedies who have way more than their fair share.

    • No, the problem is empty houses. 33,000 in Auckland. Over 100,000 countrywide. Landlords.
      Tax empty houses to free the up for supply drive down rents, and solve the housing shortage.

  2. Question Is anyone there Labour
    Answer. Sorry, there’s no one here, I think they’ve all gone looking for Chris Faafoi.

  3. All they did was remove the RMA from house building. As you say, to stop nimby’s. Another pointless charade to pretend they’re doing something rather than doing something!

    This will drive speculation and development in well off areas where a single dwelling section, for example in Herne Bay converted to multiple upmarket apartments should easily provide a guaranteed tidy profit. Same in Grey Lynn, Ponsonby etc.etc.

    But were I a developer, would I bother at the poor end of town? Not likely.

    What about the material supply issues? What about the skill shortages? What about the oversight? Christ, it’s not half obvious that Megan Woods is so far out of her depth that this catastrophe can only get worse.

    Labour continue to fiddle while rome burns because they are hopelessly incompetent. They deserve to be booted out.

  4. Not sure what the details are, but like everything they do with housing the side interest will be to destroy the environment, enable the richest individuals in the world to come and buy up NZ assets (both in and outside NZ) and then pretend that removing regulation (such as building and resource consent standards) is for the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’.

    Meanwhile the removal of building and resource consent standards tend to do the opposite, (and especially with the council rate payers guarenteeing the quality of the builds aka leaky or otherwise) and creates a litigations nightmare where surprise, surprise the richest and least moral individuals get to win while the taxpayers and middle class lose.

    We have already followed the neoliberal ideology for decades now in NZ for housing, and when ever they do something which is always to help the poor, it somehow backfires and instead creates the opposite in NZ.

    There is a lot to be said for doing what is existing, correctly, rather than abandoning it, for a new regime held out by business to solve problems and eagerly picked up by lazy government.

  5. Radical idea.

    they stop giving corporate welfare to private individuals and businesses to slowly and expensively and pollutingly and actually spend that money on Housing NZ building houses direct from state to renter, and my god! no profiteering in between! Then the profits from the low rents can be cycled back into Housing NZ and the public keeps their state owned assets for the next generation.

    • Good grief! are you suggesting the government should have actually done something to make housing and rents affordable for ordinary people? But, but – that would mean cutting out the banksters and property developers and speculators. We can’t have that now, can we?
      Sadly, this “plan” will change nothing.

      • Far more radical than that RosieLee, don’t allow middle men in between to siphon off profits. Radically avoid ghost jobs, by making sure builders are actually working under pre 1980 wage laws and not illegally, subcontracted scam labour who don’t know what they are doing.

        This idea is so radical it would ensure that the taxpayers benefit from owning, controlling and making sure they can guarantee the low rents for future generations. Not ‘gift’ off or sell, and then wring their hands when it all goes wrong!

        And so radical that a proven similar post war policy in NZ carries no risk and , creates conditions for individuals in NZ to be some of the wealthiest in the world and most highly paid, stopping inequality and profiteering at source.

        • They do realise that 3 story housing will shade neighbours and not create free warm, dry housing. That will have to be mechanically made now, with power companies hiking their power prices.

          Instead of making it compulsory in the building act to ensure any new building has solar power and water recycling for affordability. Passive heating. That would ensure that any new build, does not need to provide additional heating and uses less and recycles water to make renting and running a home more affordable!

          What happens when the new houses flood without resource consents, and waste water capacity is overloaded as the detention tanks must drain the water eventually!

          • Instead of making it compulsory in the building act to ensure any new building has solar power and water recycling for affordability. Passive heating. That would ensure that any new build, does not need to provide additional heating and uses less and recycles water to make renting and running a home more affordable!

            ABSOLUTELY AGREE, wanted a compostable toilet when we built our house but it wasn’t allowed. All these things should be compulsory as you have said.

          • Michal, thanks, the collective voice must somehow get through to Labeen that people need sustainable solutions for those that live in communities, not greedy, polluting ones that benefit the 0.01% and want growth, growth, growth, while pretending to benefit the poor and middle class but actually doing the opposite.

            Helping the 0.01% around the world have cheaper workers, and profit from consumerism with expanding populations and more landfill and plastic goods. Also now owning the media, influencing counter-media, owning and influencing politicians with donations and business-led thinking, taking over ‘charities’ increasingly counter measures such as controlling discourses through climate denial, paying lobby groups, and creating social media cancel culture groups.

      • RosieLee – ‘ Sadly this “ plan” will change nothing.’ I rather think that it will. I rather think it will propel us back to the terrible living conditions of post-Industrial Revolution Britain, which so many of the hard- working pioneers who helped to build this country were escaping from.

  6. You can not solve a problem cause by neoliberal actions by more neoliberal actions.

    The market CAN NOT solve a problem that it is profiting from quite nicely, thank you, no matter what the Ayn Rand fantasists might peddle.

    This has been imperially proved – around the world! – where they are all having the exactly same problem.

    Govt have to make a decision: are people going to have a home they own or will there be permanent renters – and if that is the case then renters need to have legislative protections so they can do that. If not, pull finger and do what has worked in the past: build houses for the people.

    It is a human right to have secure housing – no other problem can be solved until this is (including the vaccine roll out)

    • Neo-liberal economics is not economics – capitalist, market, free or otherwise. It is domestic and financial rule by a combined, centrally controlled, political / commercial system (the original definition of fascism). It’s pure command and control economics by the wealthy for the wealthy (with the odd bone thrown to those who do their bidding).

      I’m no fan of market economics, but it would do a whole lot better than the crap we have to put up with.

  7. I would suggest building big 6 – 8 – 12 floors appartment houses from concrete prefabricated blocks. What is the advantage to live in your own house when your neighbour is looking through your window and you can hear children playing in his house with no parking place no garage for your car. Just more expensive maintenance. People should get used to live in flats, it’s cheaper to build and cheaper to maintain and cheaper to heat via central heating for all the area. There can be big green parks and shops etc. nearby. Some of them can be state owned some can be private, people can rent them or buy them. They will also save the farmland. You have them all round Europe.
    Alexandra

    • Who is going to pay for them when they fail as our neoliberal, profit, cheap, untrained labour and anti regulation seems to be falling short in building anything in NZ.

      Concrete safety investigator ‘surprised nobody had been killed’
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/402908/concrete-safety-investigator-surprised-nobody-had-been-killed

      Multi-storey building flaws ‘almost the norm’
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/340396/multi-storey-building-flaws-almost-the-norm

      Apartment complex hit with $32.8m repair bill
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/331505/apartment-complex-hit-with-32-point-8m-repair-bill

      Council unable to identify possible defective buildings in capital
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/403417/council-unable-to-identify-possible-defective-buildings-in-capital

      Mainzeal loan generated hundreds of millions in wealth, court hears
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/375760/mainzeal-loan-generated-hundreds-of-millions-in-wealth-court-hears

    • You must be a Pom’. Fuck that, imagine a 7mag earthquake and hiding amongst those blocks. Dead meat, actually just a red smear.

    • Alexandra, you do realise that cheap often illegal labour is now in charge of re-building NZ. It so great as fast as your build them, another newly built one, fails and you get the contract to re-build it! Then you don’t pay your workers anything, but NZ keeps turning a blind eye. Even when they are killed. It’s the cost of pretending to build housing in NZ.

      Illegally working overstayer dies on the job – ACC payment made to widow in China
      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/illegally-working-overstayer-dies-on-the-job-acc-payment-made-to-widow-in-china/OWADEJMGCUYM36WLF6YNKUA2SE/

      Du praised Worksafe NZ’s approach to the investigation as “very professional”.

      “They’re amazing,” she said.

      “My husband worked himself to the bone for his employer, who did nothing for us, for our family, in the aftermath of his death.

      “If he had we could at least try to understand his situation and difficulties, but he didn’t care about us.”

      Worksafe NZ’s investigation report found Yu was working as a builder under the umbrella of a company called Star Echo Ltd (SEL), which was the latest in a string of subcontractors hired to develop the Hobsonville house site.

      Although Zheng Jinghui was director of Star Echo, the discussions and work was taken on by “a very experienced and highly regarded builder in the Chinese building community”. Yu was among those hired to build the house.

      On the day of Yu’s death, he had climbed to an incomplete first floor to work in an area where struts were temporarily pinned by only two nails. A co-worker nearby turned when hearing timber moving and watched Yu “trying to regain his balance”.

      Yu “tried to grab at some joists but wasn’t able to hold on”. He fell feet first through to the ground floor 2.9 metres below, landing on a concrete slab. “As he fell back his head struck a piece of timber that was located on the ground.” Yu was declared dead in hospital two days later.

      The investigation report found Star Echo had three previous interactions with Worksafe NZ with faulty and incomplete scaffolding cited in each instance. The company had received notices compelling improvement from Worksafe NZ but was not prosecuted.

      In this case, there was a recommendation to prosecute the company for removing equipment and tools from the building site before either police or Worksafe NZ arrived in the aftermath of the accident.

      The investigation found Yu was 45 when he died with no visa allowing him to legally work in New Zealand after arriving on a 30-day visitor visa in 2015.

      Du told Worksafe NZ her husband paid $30,000 in China for legal work in New Zealand but realised on arriving here that he had been duped. After paying $1800 to another contact, Yu was connected with the builder who was overseeing work at the Hobsonville site.

      u had been living with and working for the builder over three years, who said he had “no knowledge of his salary or other working conditions” which were agreed with Star Echo. The company said it had never received an invoice from Yu for his work.

      Worksafe NZ identified a number of areas at the construction zone that posed risks where workers could fall from a dangerous height. It emphasised the need for builders to protect workers where falls were a risk.

      “If a suitable ‘working at height’ control measure had been in place prior to the incident, the death of this worker could have been prevented.”

      Worksafe NZ found there was “public interest” in prosecuting Star Echo for removing equipment and tools from the building site. It also said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Star Echo over a “breach in relation to its primary duty of care” to Yu as a worker.

      That decision to prosecute was downgraded to a warning letter in April. Worksafe NZ’s specialist investigations boss, Simon Humphries, said the decision was made in the shadow of the pandemic.

      “This is because there was a greater public interest in Covid-19, amongst other reasons, and the offence by SEL was at the less serious end of the scale, as we only would have prosecuted for failure to preserve the site, not for the incident itself.”

      The Herald has attempted to contact Star Echo Ltd director Zheng Jinghui for comment. He did not respond.”

      Even the business review seems surprised that this firm was only fined $2500 for using illegal labour in construction.
      https://www.nbr.co.nz/story/auckland-construction-company-fined-2000-using-illegal-migrant-labour

      NZ increasingly is enabling the worst quality people and labour in the construction industry. And it is getting worse!

      • It is more than shame that these things are happening here. Do you think that the conditions are so bad that it is impossible to find some good building companies here? The apartments are being built round the world, there must be a safe way to build them.
        Alexandra.

        • Well it didn’t use to happen. Sadly neoliberals have now even infested some unions too. Unions instead of going after the people traffickers are inadvertently helping people traffickers and neoliberals get more labour in and lowering wages and taking up housing in NZ with scab labour here refusing to leave NZ.

          I’m all for making the people traffickers refund the scab labour money, not the woke led thinking of people traffickers and exploiters literally killing workers on the job, and nobody gets prosecuted for it. Then ACC pays out.

          Why don’t they just wave a flag to say, come to NZ and whatever happens you will make money here illegally and get to stay in NZ! Keep coming! You don’t need to know anything about construction or safety. It is only for the local firms to adhere to NZ laws!

          There is literally so much free government money sloshing around in construction industries, that they can afford to hire completely unqualified people and let them do whatever they want. Already happening and formally decent construction related firms are awash with unqualified people, but people doing all sorts of unethical behaviour in the work force on the side. The good people can’t stand it, and leaving the industry. Nobody likes to be managed by unethical idiots.

          Should be compulsory for audits every year for any firm anywhere involved in government money to be forced to do everything by the book, including avoiding cartel behaviour, unqualified managers and workers, and hiring more unqualified people into ponzi’s and using any form of illegal labour anywhere in their supply chain. Should instantly be fined $100,000’s of dollars per infringement.

          Guess what as soon as that happens and it becomes expensive to use unqualified and illegal labour and managers who allow and encourage this, our construction industry will start working again, properly.

  8. This infilling with 2 storied townhouses/apartments has been happening for the last six years. Just open your eyes when you walk or drive around your suburbs. Drive around the backstreets of Pt Chev and you will see multi-storied buildings going up on bare half/quarter acre sections in every street. No one digs large gardens any longer, no one wants to mow big lawns anymore so I think this is the best use of bare land on larger sections. The only problem is the lack of car parks.

    But the big problem for housing throughout Aotearoa are the land values. In Auckland CBD houses are only 20% of valuation while land is 80%. There should be a project for the building of papakainga housing on Maori lands. Also use of surplus crown land and some golf courses and reserves for housing.

  9. …”Both parties are now more scared of the backlash from the middle class struggling with housing than scared of wealthier homeowners who don’t want higher density accommodation in their streets”….

    There’s the motive,….now for the hypocrisy.

    …”But let’s be clear – this is not addressing the most critical problem in the housing crisis which is the desperate lack of warm, dry homes for families and tenants on low incomes”…

    According to the U.N Bill of Rights, to which we were signatories,…

    EVERY person has the right to a warm dry home.

    UN Declares New Zealand’s Housing Crisis A Breach Of …https://www.scoop.co.nz › Regional

    Paul Hunt: The Human Right to a Decent Homehttps://www.hrc.co.nz › news › paul-hunt-human-right-…

    Framework Guidelines on the right to a decent home in Aotearoahttps://www.hrc.co.nz › files › Framework_Guidel…PDF

    This govt , and the proceeding one, in fact every govt from the 4th Labour govt onwards have broken their obligations regards being signatories to the U.N Bill of human rights due to pandering to the lobbying and donations given by the small wealthy elites who infest our legal and democratic institutions, and who wield unwarranted and unelected power via the access to wealth over those of the majority of the electorate.

    700 YEARS AGO THIS WAS CALLED THE FUEDAL SYSTEM.

    God rest the souls of all those primarily young men who shed their blood in both world wars for the sake of freedom, democracy and egalitarianism.

    Something to which these parasitic elites have no concept of.

  10. The devil is in the detail and we’ve seen no detail yet.
    1. We do need less restrictions on adding or modifying homes
    2. We do need less bureaucracy in council along with the associated costs and time wasting
    3. We most certainly do need to open up land on the periphery of the city to build new subdivisions
    4. We don’t need to allow an open slather for crooked Chinese developers to destroy beautiful suburbs with tilt slab concrete boxes spread all over.

    The constraints:
    1. Most suburbs cannot handle significantly higher densities, mainly because of inadequate sewerage capacity. (Where I live the sewer manholes were strapped down as a temporary measure …20 years ago.) Only when the ‘central interceptor’ project is completed can west & central Auckland handle more population. Once that’s in place, it will be the logical area for most densification.
    2. Do you really think the wealthy gentry in the leafy suburbs will take this lying down?

    • 2. Do you really think the wealthy gentry in the leafy suburbs will take this lying down?

      Clearly not judging by Seymour’s opposition.

  11. This is classic neo-liberal economics. Land, unlike money, is an asset. Land, and thus house, prices are a method of indebting the general populous into a lifetime of bonded employment (for the rich). Thus National and Labour’s solution – taking the existing wealth and dividing it between more (common) people. Then inflate the cost of that land to keep people still indebted. All while never having to transfer wealth (AKA assets) from the rich to normal people – and even reducing their individual share.

    The fact that the quality of life resulting from hi rise, no view, no light, no garden, no parking living is much lower is totally unconsidered.

  12. It isnt the excessive quantities of sewerage that need the manhole covers to be tied down, it is the combined sewerage and storm-water mains in the older leafy up-market housing areas like Ponsonby, Parnell, Remuera, Grey Lynn, etc where all storm water shares the inadequate sewer mains. During heavy rainfall sewerage overflow will occur. The individual detention tanks and the proposed intercepter main will mainly mitigate that problem and provide for any infilling. However the separation of the sewer and stormwater main in the up-market suburbs will need to be funded with the help of the outer suburbs in south and west Auckland.

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