EXCLUSIVE: “The data is simply not available, Minister.”
IS LABOUR getting Sir-Humphreyfied on housing? For younger readers, Sir Humphrey Appleby is one of the leading protagonists in Antony Jay’s and Jonathan Lynn’s incomparable 1980s television satire “Yes Minister”. So compelling was the Sir Humphrey character (played to perfection by the late Nigel Hawthorne) that his name quickly became synonymous with the obfuscating, prevaricating, manipulative and often downright misleading senior civil servant who steers his ministerial master away from his better instincts towards the maintenance of the bureaucratic and political status quo.
Dr Chris Harris, a specialist in urban design and planning, raised the Sir Humphrey question with me after a careful reading of “Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housing”, the study authored by Alan Johnson of the Salvation Army, Otago Public Health Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman and economist Shamubeel Eaqub, which was released by the Housing Minister, Phil Twyford, on Monday afternoon.
One figure, in particular, caught his attention. This was Figure 3.4 “New Dwellings Consented, By Owner Type, 1970-2017” (see below). It’s most notable feature, explained Dr Harris, was the extraordinary spike in new dwelling consents which followed the election of the Third Labour Government, led by Norman Kirk, in 1972.
The graph shows consents flat-lining at around 23,000 per year in 1970, 1971 and 1972. Between the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1974, however, the number of dwelling consents shot up to an astonishing 39,000.
The first and most obvious question that springs to mind is: “How on earth did the Kirk Government do it?” Finding the answer to that question would, surely, be of considerable assistance to Minister Twyford as he sets about tackling New Zealand’s appalling shortage of affordable housing?
Presumably, the same thought occurred to the “Stocktake” authors. What was their conclusion? That’s when Dr Harris’s eye fell upon the concluding sentences of the paragraph printed immediately below Figure 3.4:
“While current levels of new house building compare favourably with the low levels of construction seen immediately after the global financial crisis, during the period 2009 to 2011, these current volumes are not historically exceptional particularly compared with the early 1970s. However, data on government involvement in the 70s boom is not available.”
Get that? Information on the way in which the Kirk Government managed to nearly double the number of houses being consented “is not available”. (My emphasis.)
In his e-mail alerting me to this extraordinary omission, Dr Harris writes:
“Note the last sentence! In fact, you can find out quite a lot from consulting the on-line NZ Official Yearbooks of the time. State Advances credit, available for actual housing construction but not speculation since 1919, was increased. And on top of that there was as yet no Accommodation Supplement to fritter away government housing money, so that it very much went on actual building. There was also a shift from building large stand-alone houses on the city fringe to building lots and lots of small and affordable flats in more urban locations, which is where the real shortage was, and had long been. And this was all directed from the top by Big Norm.
“Norman Kirk re-founded the old-time Ministry of Works as the Ministry of Works and Development in 1973, and founded the Housing Corporation in 1974, also to try and get more houses and flats built. It turned out that urban flats proved easiest and quicker to build once central government weighed-in to overcome the usual obstacles. This was a really important part of the recipe for getting runs on the board quickly. Our cities are still full of flats built in the 1970s – the standards were higher than in later decades. Mass-produced hollow concrete blocks, suitably reinforced, were the building material of choice. Concrete block walls signify a 1970s flat in the same way that a tiled roof is typical of a 1940s state house.
“Big Norm’s policy of pulling out as many stops as possible and focusing on flats really did work surprisingly quickly and the proof is in the consent graph. Our population back then was only a bit over three million, so the graph actually understates the success of the policies of the 1972-1975 Labour Government.
“Actual builds are always a bit less than consents granted. In the early 1970s the peak rate for actual housing construction was 34,300 units built in one year. This roughly equates to 50,000 a year today, if not more, and that nice round number might explain why Shamubeel Eaqub challenged the government to see to it that 500,000 housing units are built in ten years.
“Interestingly enough, few of the houses built under Kirk’s administration were state houses. To get things moving quickly, the policy was very much one of collaboration with commercial builders and developers, who were offered guarantees to go and work flat out building small affordable units without worrying too much where the money was coming from, or whether the consent was going to be approved.”
Dr Harris goes on to observe:
“You have to wonder whether there is some kind of an embargo on the level of government activism that led to such a boost in housing production in the early 1970s. It’s like an episode of Yes Minister in which the bureaucrats have hidden all the relevant files and the politicians don’t notice that they’re missing straight away. Adding to suspicion of a stitch up by a business-as-usual brigade is the fact that the word ‘credit’ does not appear in the report and there is only spotty and empirical reference to ‘finance’. So, no need to frighten the banks in other words. There also doesn’t seem to be any mention of the really important part played by central government institutions in making things happen more effectively and in a streamlined way back in the past: institutions such as the State Advances Corporation, the MWD – which the Rogernomes abolished in 1988 while dialling-back state construction lending at the same time – and the Housing Corporation. The Housing Corporation is still with us of course, but only in a feeble and gutted sort of a way.”
Here, perhaps, is the explanation for Shamubeel Eaqub’s extraordinary forthrightness during Monday’s media conference in the Beehive Theatrette. With barely concealed frustration at what he clearly regards as the new government’s half-hearted housing effort, he urged the governing parties to break free of the fiscal “straightjacket” in which they are currently restrained by Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s Budget Responsibility Rules.
The last thing the “Sir Humphrey’s” at the top of our own civil service want, deeply imbued as they are with the neoliberal economic orthodoxy which has guided New Zealand public policy for more than 30 years, is for “their” ministers to begin searching back through the historical record to discover how, forty years ago, a newly-elected Labour Government responded to the needs of its people by – of all things – fulfilling them.
In 1975 the Kirk govt decreed that new houses could not be more than 1500 sq ft in size, and that new homes could be built in small townships and outside of towns only if your work was in the area. They also made it easier to get a mortgage through the now Housing Corp, particularly if you were working in rural areas. We had one house through Housing Corp which was no longer big enough for our family and we were able to have another to build a larger home. We were not able to capitalise the Family Benefit as we earned too much, but able to do this because we wanted to build in a rural township where our work was.
Thats the trouble with commissioning reports ….too often those without the relevant knowledge are writing them…..
Most of a certain age could have provided the explanation without too much difficulty….the same peoples services were declined/ignored in the aftermath of the ChCh quakes…..we seems determined to keep repeating the same mistakes time after time.
The zombie TPPA is effectively signing a death warrant on affordable housing and allowing the global free markets and their employees and partner’s free reign here. The exploitation that escalated under the Natz will continue unabated and probably worse under Labour.
More on TPPA – leftie zombie version…
Barry Coates: Gains under TPP not worth risks to democracy
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11994205
It might be signing a death warrant on this government’s chance of another term too.
D J S
I doubt that, it certainly didn’t stop the nats winning elections.
It didn’t stop the Natz winning, because their supporters don’t care about it and they never completed it anyway.
It’s a bit like USA, politicians appear to be getting away with ‘free trade, then suddenly the effects of NASDA are death and all main parties are walking away from it, let alone signing more.
I bet National mention Labour signing TPPA again and again next election if Labour sign it, that, and a possible congestion tax. (A congestion tax helps the rich in central suburbs go to their holiday Bach with less traffic but is another nail to the poorer folks (probably labour supporters) forced out to the outskirts of town).
Labour didn’t exactly win an overwhelming majority or a majority at all, and with NZ First going back on their promises, and Greens losing a lot of support last election,
Labour need to really carefully think it through because the Rogernomics ideology nearly destroyed the Labour party legacy now that the Rogernomics effects are being clearly felt.
Voters gave Labour another chance thinking Jacinda was a new improved fresh faced change, but are Labour advisers going to blow it with another ideology gamble that the crusty dinosaurs tell the people ‘it’s good for you’, because the same economists that told us rogernomics has been amazing to the economy tell us the free trades is roses too.
(Tell that to the debt filled students with zero jobs, the lower and lower wages and competing with asian workers rates and conditions, the full hospitals, the congested roads, the polluted beaches, yep free trades amazing!!!. so much better than the state house, clean green image and state of the art free education system in the 1970’s).
RMA meh. We could 3d print these ffs.
Ass…finger….pull.
Hi Chris
There is a great book called The Dam Dwellers by Marion Sheridan. It was reissued in 2014 for the Twizel celebrations. Tells how they did it.
So true Chris the civil service mandarins love the Neo Liberal orthodoxy. Many of these civil servants were plants to keep thw orthodoxy going. These are the last bastions of Neo Liberal policy not the politicians. They will do everything to keep the system going the way they want it to just like Sir Humphrey…
You assume that Phil Twyford genuinely wants to break the impasse, and that he is innocently held hostage to a devious civil service. It’s easier to believe they’re all in cahoots.
This Labour govt is Blairite to the core and fully signed up to Neo Liberalism. The Prime Minister is a PR sock puppet. This government is all about keeping the Left baffled with empty rhetoric and style while delivering nothing of substance. Except of course, the TPPA.
They aren’t going to build any houses to speak of. They’re going to talk about it, and report on it, but they will do nothing.
Please stop making excuses for them. They aren’t wayward children. Pretend they aren’t the Labour Party; hold them to account, the same as you did the Nats, and let’s take it to the streets. Then we will see some action.
Agreed fully with NOBODY here as we have two issues with this new ‘left wing’ Government.
First lack of labour promise to the voters; “Holding them to account”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/96745495/labour-promises-freetoair-rnz-tv-channel
Labour promises free-to-air RNZ TV channel
HENRY COOKE
Last updated 10:52, September 12 2017
1/ Labour has failed in their pledge to produce a fair free inclusive open honest publicly funded media called TVplus that they promised us voters in September 2017 ‘if elected’.
The new Broadcasting minister Clare Curran needs a proverbial kick up the butt, for failing to honour this promise to us all up now and making Labour like fools.
http://gisborneherald.co.nz/localnews/2437884-135/labour-greens-united-on-rail
2/ Labour in 2015-2016 promised the Gisborne/HB voters in the Gisborne herald, Wairoa Star press HB Today papers that when elected Labour/NZF/Greens all would restore the rail service between Gisborne and Napier.
Since the election of this new Labour coalition, no word of restoring this service has been made in the press to honour their promise to restore the Gisborne/Napier rail services. Another loss of “hold them to account”
Labour need to come forward and show they are as good as their word.
Who said it’s not going to happen? The only issues here appears to be that the Labour led coalition is not doing everything all at once and rolling it all out within the first months of setting up government. Ridiculous that those, like some authors on here, who should know better, are offering up one kind of conspiracy theory after another as to why hundreds of thousands of houses have not been built and the entire policy program not rolled out in the first few weeks. Everyone should have a magic wand to make it all happen quicker eh?
A good post, the bureaucrats have been shaped by neoliberalism and the kind of economic and fiscal sytstem we have had since the late 1980s. It is the same with most ‘experts’, they simply come and present more of the same, which considers state involvement as something that cannot be allowed to go ‘too far’.
So some of these advisors and experts that were consulted will have come with the usual kind of advice, hence the absence of certain available evidence in this report.
They pick and choose what suits them and their agenda, nothing else. Hence the government has to go and tell the bureaucrats, hey, we are now working in a different way, if you choose to work with us, go and find a job somewhere else, thanks.
So there you go.
The benefactors of the Rogernomes. Those craven bureaucrats who made a killing by the whole privatization , downsizing , restructuring , trickle down cock and bullshit process. The sly cardigan wearers of yesteryear who saw which side their bread was REALLY buttered on.
And historically ,…in those circles, there is NO WAY they want concise and easily accessed records to ever see the light of day. And though the originals may have long since retired, and a younger generation taken their place ,… there will be the unspoken understanding among those following after in the originals footsteps …
Silence…
Like rats in Margaret Thatchers and Ronald Reagan’s stinking corpse’s, so these are… still feeding off that legacy…
And the price?
Their enrichment and your impoverishment.
And who do they ultimately work for?
The Banks.
The banks that in New Zealand , … are about 90% foreign owned. And those foreigners include our ‘ cousins’ across the Tasman , – Australia.
And how did Australia come to own so many of our banks ? Through the Rogernomes opening up of the financial markets and deregulating them.
Ah yes, … apparently the massive protests were not enough to silence the treasonous Ruth Richardson’s, the Roger Douglas’s , the Jenny Shipley’s of the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s…
And yet ,… it would be so , so very easy ,… to slap their hands and say ” No more !! ”… would they withdraw their business?
Of course not !!!
They want to make money. So they would take a hit. Either that or get arseholed out of the place and we find better ways to raise finance…
At any rate , … to know more about these subversives … and how they managed to plunder NZ …
New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
Hopefully sooner or later there will be a fight back against these parasites who lurk in the shadows. Maybe that is the next revolution the people vs the bureucrats
I suspect the current government knows full well what Big Norm did in the 70’s to lift housing supply but are reluctant to engage in similar activities now.
The reasons are simple – no NZ politician wants to be responsible for lowering current elevated house prices and this is a potential consequence of increasing supply. Middle NZ has engorged itself on mortgage debt so there is also an economic risk to the banking sector if the value of it’s collateral – NZ houses – was to fall.
I’m surprised the report did not mention these factors since Shamubeel is an excellent economist.
Expect slow and surprisingly ineffectual progress from the current government who will wait until there is a house price crash before they feel bold enough to act.
“I suspect the current government knows full well what Big Norm did in the 70’s to lift housing supply but are reluctant to engage in similar activities now.”
Of course they do….which begs the question why the report was ever comissioned
You could say the previous National government have handed the new administration a set of “golden handcuffs” on housing. High house prices make us feel successful and prosperous but combined with huge amounts of private debt places massive constraints on any government wanting engage in the housing sector.
I bought my cheap flat in 1999, while working in a horticultural job at close to the minimum wage. It was built in 1973. Thank you Norman Kirk.
Back in the days of the 1970s – and before – assorted government departments had accommodation at reasonable rents for their workers. Some still do (though the buildings can be dire).
People who worked for the Post Office, MoW, Defence, Railways, Education, Corrections, Forestry – could all access housing. A lot of people worked for government agencies. Many of those 1940s quarter acre for the garden and chooks places were built for these people.
When the Beloved Fourth Labour Government ripped the rug away – also away went the housing, the job, the chance of saving for a ‘house in town’ for retirement. (Those dreadful boomers again.)
Farm workers were the same – shearers’ quarters, married couples, single men’s. Low wages offset by accommodation, milk, meat, and a bus to get the kids to school.
Now, with the skid of the neo-liberal BS under it – you get to keep the low wage. You get to pay market rental prices, and the government tops it up. Very few jobs come with housing now. Except, maybe, at the top. ‘Executive on transfer…’
The peasant at the bottom gets the costs that have gushed down from those who were best able to afford them.
Innit great?!