GUEST BLOG: Gerard Otto – Judith Collins speaks weasel words
“The government has only delivered 33 houses in the time the private sector has delivered 35,200 houses” – said Judith Collins on 23 January 2019.
A Nat weasel sniggered and nodded vigorously.
The Nat weasel was as smug as John Key with a ponytail – as long as nobody asked how many of the 35,200 houses were priced under $650,000?
DoH.
That’s right bugger all.
The number “35,200 houses” – was spread around the propaganda media network and no journalist investigated the price breakdown.
What was the real comparison?
Affordable houses versus Affordable houses?
Once again New Zealand’s media were too lazy to research the answers and the slanted mistruth delivered by Collins was accepted as some valid comparison.
Collins referred to the Tamaki Transformation Project as some sort of proof that National had built a few affordable homes.
It appears that about 40 people move into affordable homes in Tamaki just before the 2017 election but there was no data about how long they took to build these.
At the moment only a few are available on their website.
So National skated past the truth here and ducked hard numbers – while smugly acting like they knew everything.
Collins started to lecture how the real path to solving supply side housing was to reform the RMA which begged the question – why the fuck didn’t you do it when you have nine years to do it?
The answer was a confession that National has no mates.
Yes the much vaunted largest stable political party was actually a minority party and unlike the Coalition of today – National was a dog’s breakfast – constantly at war doing deals with it’s minor partners.
People cared about coastlines and trees and the natural world it seemed.
This frank admission skated past the noses of girl fans like Audrey Young and Fran O’Sullivan as if it was all super stable and hunky dory.
Naturally.
But a quick look at RMA Reform shows Nick Smith had a couple of cracks at changing the RMA during Nationals time but just made things worse.
Now his tinkering is being unpicked by David Parker.
Back in 2015 everyone laughed at Nick Smith ( The NBR etc ) and his claims that the RMA was responsible for most of the 40,000 house shortfall that accrued under National.
National were a joke – but we all carried on.
Today not much has changed as Judith still cannot give you an apples with apples comparison and the weasel is shitting all over the media.
Gerard Otto is an activist and writer
reading his article it seems like Winston this writer cannot admit the failure of Kiwibuild. Even the ones that are about to be completed cannot be sold . The ones built in New Plymouth are overpriced for the area . The whole programme is not going to help those in cars but is aimed at winning the middle class in the same way the fee free students are the children of the wealth middle class not the poor .
Re..the photo? What does State Housing 1949 styles have to do with 2019 ‘Affordable’ houses??
What’s so confusing? The cost you are seeing is for the land. It doesn’t include water, electricity, sidewalk, police ect. Stand alone monuments are no good for any one. Precinct development is much harder to do. Better to deal with HNZ entity than a whole bunch of feral home owners.
She’s speaking em weasel words better and better.
The big problem is land prices NZ are over the moon add in compliance costs, high cost building materials and high labour costs it is not easy to build affordable homes IMHO ???
Labour/NZF have to start rebuilding State Housing as there is no such thing as affordable homes anymore here in NZ
What I want to know is how the hell she managed to weasel her way back into Parliament. She was kicked out for skulduggery but somehow managed to sneak in the back door again. WHY? HOW?
Out should mean OUT – you go and don’t come back.