BREAKING- Allegations of Political interference to twist foreign buyers numbers
Labour have come out with an incredibly serious allegation that Steven Joyce and other Government Ministers manipulated the foreign buyers register to make the numbers appear far smaller than they really are…
Well-placed sources in the Government say the Land Information survey on foreign buyers was delayed while Ministers re-wrote the survey questions, says Labour’s Housing spokesperson Phil Twyford.
“I’m told the survey was delayed by Cabinet while Ministers – including Steven Joyce –interfered with the way the questions were framed.
“This is pure political manipulation and it has all the hallmarks of a Steven Joyce special.
“It would have been so easy to simply ask home buyers if they were citizens or residents. But instead the Government produced a convoluted set of questions that made nine months of data collection effectively useless.
“National has got itself into another housing fiasco by deliberately designing a survey to muddy the water and confuse the public debate about the impact of foreign buyers in the real estate market.
“Their latest calculation excludes house-buying foreigners on temporary work and student visas. This is a nonsense and it is cynical for Ministers to suggest the data says foreign buyers only account for 3 per cent of sales.
“In fact, the latest batch of data only shows the foreign buyers could be anywhere from 3 to 31 per cent. It is effectively meaningless.
“This was always an exercise in spin and manipulation from a Government that is deep in denial on the issue of foreign buyers.
“When the big banks, both here and in Australia, recently stopped lending to foreign buyers, it demolished what little credibility the Government had when it argued they are not a significant presence in the market.
“National’s attempt to pull the wool over the public’s eyes has well and truly back-fired. If they have a shred of decency, they will now redesign their survey to actually determine how many people are buying properties who are not residents or citizens. It is that simple,” Phil Twyford says.
…this Government has a long history of falsifying stats to make them appear far better than the truth, they refuse to acknowledge the real level of poverty, they twist environmental figures to hide our pollution and they recently reset the unemployment numbers to make the level of jobless look smaller.
Whenever this Government get into trouble their first instinct is to lie, but while those lies keep propping up middle class illusions of property wealth, the NZ electorate seems happy to keep them in power.
Feel like we are on the ‘Cusp of something special’ yet NZ?
Something special ?! We’ll give you something special. We are still in due process but my team (Steven- Paula- Simon- Nick- Hekia- Judith- Murray- Maggie- Jonathon – Michael etc.) are about to come up with something really aspirational.
Aspirational? Do they maybe mean breathing? Looking at some of them, even that would be a stretch.
REALLY?????? What a joke.
At the rate of Nationals resettlement of NZ, Asian demographics will overtake Maori in the near future and be the 2nd highest population demographic. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11166485
John Key talks about the importance of Asian immigration and why National is pro immigration. The issue for me, is that after 30 years of being pro immigration, being pro free trade, Kiwis have static to negative GDP and productivity seems to be falling. Maybe importing people in on low wages, and making our education system more about foreign fees and less about world leading education and job creation in the new economy, has not worked for the country???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owas78DZCj8
What is National’s plan? If we had the jobs, if we had the houses and there were some sort of compelling reason to have such a high immigration rate and clearly being so selective about it (Refugees for example could increase NZ numbers but the government apparently does not want them).
But while Maori own 5% of NZ land, how much land will the new migrant settlers own? Clearly the National party does not want to say and deliberately poisoning the statistics, but we can see that the unitary plan has been designed to house as many as people as possible but not at the prices that resident Kiwis can afford. Apparently Joyce has deliberately pulled out the affordability criteria on the unitary plan, God knows why some of the social charities and opposition MP’s seem so keen on it.
If true, this does not surprise me. The Nats are masters of spin and damage control, carefully managing and severely limiting the interviews they are prepared to give. Given the bias of commentators like Hosking and Henry, it’s not too surprising that few people seem to see through their tactics. Link that to the natural Kiwi tendencies to (a) blame all our ills on dole-bludgers and interfering bureaucrats, and (b) get distracted by trivia and tribalism (celebs, TV, gaming and sport), and you have a perfect recipe for complacency. The only way to effect change is to get more of the young and alienated to get off their bums and VOTE. Taking a slightly longer term view, the Nats are utterly and wilfully ignorant when it comes to game-changing factors like foreign control, immigration, robotisation of jobs, the loss of manufacturing, plus of course the biggies: climate instability and resource limitation.
I suppose it all falls under the umbrella called “better public service”, as interference is becoming the norm, in virtually all areas of administration.
SS Jpyce has always been Government’s Principal Propagandist and stategist as he set up his Propaganda agency under his own design the Ministry of Everything called MBIE with tenticles in every corner of the countrybincluding Local and central Government.
This control spin agency MBIE is currently going around the country putting on “Regional Economic development strategies that is actually designed by him as Economic Development minister”.
It is nothing more than a front gloss over preparation agency designed to make citizens that Government are actually doing something for the regions but when you look under the thin vale it its just hype and fluff using a bit of “old Money” here and there”.
It is like Napierlast week they are giving the port $25 million for three access roads to the Port for trucks, but we already have three?
So since we have more trucks in our region than anywhere else (including Auckland) it does absolutely nothing for lowering trucks volumes that are rapidly increasing at 12% every year (higher than anywhere else in NZ, while SS Joyce is also interfering in a HBRC bid to operate the rail service offing almost $6 Million to work with Kiwirail but Government ministers are trying to stop that plan.
Joyce is the most arrogant meddling prick in the country and needs to get the boot, a is a fascist and like his relative William Haw Haw was.
SS Joyce is also a turncoat.
MoBIE, oh yes, I remember, the Independent Hearings Panel, oh sooo “independently” decided to throw out the rule book from the Auckland Unitary Plan, so developers can build almost as they like, and make endless profits.
They cited MoBIE besides of Housing NZ and various developers and large utility businesses for the “evidence” to do just that.
Wow, what a coincidence, who is the Minister in charge there, at MoBIE?
Was that not the same Minister telling them also, to get rid of “affordability” requirements?
The noose is tightening, around the culprit.
The frequency of these embarrassing exposures is increasing… how many in the last week? It seems that nearly each day there is another. What can we expect tomorrow. There’s probably a mathematical equation to explain it….. the more frequently the brown stains appear, the more they thrash around trying to (a) deny there’s a stain (b) deny there is a smell (c) convince us with a moronic explanation that they are on top of a problem that they are denying exists.
Meanwhile, more brown stains, more stink…. eww.
Reprehensible: ˌrɛprɪˈhɛnsɪb(ə)l/ adjective
deserving censure or condemnation.
Phil Twyford sounded rather sure of his allegations and if they are as he says Joyce should not only go but should be charged with something.
This expedient deception that comes with such ease from National has such a corrosive effect on democracy, people simply default to the base position that all politicians ever are a lying cheating scum. It may suit Joyce and the National Party today but I personally am so over theirr short term junky’s high method of politics.
I think this says it all…
https://www.barfoot.co.nz/commercial/buying/faqs-overseas-buyers
I don’t want to be a compulsive linker but this just has to be listened to. It truly beggars belief…
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201810495/upston-defends-reliability-of-latest-foreign-buyer-numbers
A Kiwi couple I know both with good jobs were looking to buy a small apartment for around 250k and were told they needed 125k deposit up front so out of the question. Meanwhile a foreign non-resident 18 year old language student who a friend teaches bought a 3 bedroom house in Glenfield. No guesses where the money came from. This government is selling us down the river
They’re not in denial at all. They know exactly what’s happening. What they’re trying to do is to hide the fact that foreign buyers are building up the housing bubble but they have two problems:
1. They don’t want house prices to fall while they’re the government as it would make them look bad
2. The housing bubble is the only thing that’s making the economy look like it’s working
They have to do that because telling the truth would get them thrown out of government and never to be re-elected and they’d have to accept that their professed ideology brings about worse outcomes for society while only enriching a few.