AGREED.

The debt owed to the government will be carried in the books as an asset, neatly cancelling out the $450 million the government has actually spent on temporary accommodation for the desperate, remaining fiscally neutral until the debt is written off, which much of it will have to be.

It can be written off the books as bad debt in the never never, but until then is neatly hidden and doesn’t hobble the quest for “apparent” surpluses.

Even if there is no “accountancy” involved, morally speaking, had it thought of the “impact on real people” side of its policies, the Government could have spent $450 million more on building housing over the last few years for the inevitable and predicted collateral damage as the impact of their policies tsunami: Rampant “clayton’s” growth from immigration, Auckland house prices on a rocket, bloated industrial scale tourism prostituting our increasingly crowded and decreasingly healthy environment, the hoped for re-build boom engineered by the decision to demolish the Christchurch CBD failing to fire much beyond the cost of the demolition, and the binge mentality overdevelopment of our now souring dairy industry with its trail of polluted aquifers, dead rivers, devastated natural habitats, and farmers drowning in a 45 billion dollar muck pond of debt. Etc, etc … The rock star economy needs all the accountancy it can get.

The $450 million housing stock the government could have invested in would now be carried on the books as an asset (a real one) and of course would have been rising in value on a rocket along with the market.

Perhaps.

National are just fiddling as Rome burns.

Same as Muldoon did back in 1984.