Geoffrey Palmer, Bernard Hickey & the housing crisis National deny

According to the National Government, there is no housing crisis in NZ.

None.

It’s not a crisis.

Which is an interesting perspective because Moody’s don’t see it that way at all…

New Zealand housing market crash warning issued by international ratings agency Moody’s

 New Zealand is one of four countries most susceptible to a housing market crash due to an explosion in house prices and household debt, an international report warns.

Credit rating agency Moody’s rates New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Sweden as the advanced economy nations most exposed to a housing correction, which could spill over to the broader economies.

House prices in New Zealand have soared in real terms by 30 per cent in three years, closely resembling what happened in Spain, Ireland and the United States “on the eve of their respective housing market corrections”, the Credit Profiles Resilient to Rising Household Debt and Stretched Housing Affordability report warns.

“New Zealand is most exposed due to its economy’s heavier reliance on residential construction, the potentially more volatile nature of increased housing demand, households’ exposure to interest rate shocks, and significant pressures on housing affordability.”

…with such doom and gloom predictions, Andrew Little has had to repeat the counter-intuitive lie that he doesn’t want to see house prices plummet because that would scare the bejesus out of the property owning middle classes who are after 9 years of feeling slightly ashamed at their grotesque illusion of wealth, might be tempted to vote Labour in September.

He can’t get their votes if he is honest about the bleeding obvious which is that when this property bubble implodes under its own weight that house prices will plummet.

National refuse to acknowledge it’s a crisis because they desperately need the open floodgate immigration program alongside our corrupt student and work visa system to keep these insane property prices inflated enough for the middle classes to keep voting them into power.

Political denial and convenient lies are what our political process has become which is why Geoffrey Palmer and Bernard Hickey came across as so disconnected from reality last week.

Bernard get’s his licks in by lecturing Millennials and Gen Xers on their lack of voting while Palmer ends up sounding like he’s speaking out of his own arsehole as he says…

“Hardly anyone votes… why would they not vote? It’s quite hard to understand. Are they turned off by it? Do they think it doesn’t matter?”

He said it should be against the law to stay home from the voting booth.

“If you are going to live in a democracy – which is supposed to be conducted by the people, for the people – then the people should have some duties. They should participate and they should vote.”

…firstly let’s deal with Hickey.

What Hickey fails to accept is that the Millennial and Gen X cynical and jaded response to the obvious corruption of the current political settings is actually incredibly legitimate. When 121 MPs own 295 properties between them, the entire political class are as corrupt as the system itself.

To harry Millennial’s and Gen Xers for our lack of political engagement in a corrupt system misses that no political party are offering any real changes in the neoliberal property market.

As for Geoffrey Palmer, the simple fact that he as a member of a Government that betrayed every principle it ever had can’t see the audacity of blaming non voters for their apathy highlights how much of an out of touch clown he has become. Politicians have to give voters a reason to vote, and when those politicians betray everything their party has ever stood for, he can’t turn around and blame the voters.

Here’s when Millennials and Gen Xers start turning out in electoral numbers that swamp the boomers – 2024. By then the poverty, injustice of the generational theft and climate change will be impacting with such cruelty that those generations in their fury turn not only on the generation above them, but the political class as a whole. That’s when radical policies that actually challenge the current political and economic settings are demanded by those who have been left behind.

That’s when we get to destroy the old and take back the present.