Newshub poll – Key’s government has failed on housing

Written By: - Date published: 3:10 pm, May 25th, 2016 - 48 comments
Categories: housing, human rights, john key, polls, uncategorized - Tags: , ,

Quite apart from falling to his lowest level ever as preferred PM, the Newshub poll had more bad news for King John:

John Key’s Govt has failed New Zealand on housing

The verdict is in: John Key’s government has failed the New Zealand public when it comes to controlling the housing market.

The failure has been made clear with an unprecedented 76 percent of voters in the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll saying ‘no, the Government is not doing enough when it comes to housing’. …

With headlines like these it is no wonder:

Govt failing ‘clear obligation’ to children, “Allowing a situation where children are living in cars and garages means the government is failing to meet international obligations, the Children’s Commissioner says”.

Kiwi house prices continue record-breaking climb, “Since April 2011 the average asking price is up almost fifty per cent and the increase of $36,000 is pretty close to the median annual wage after tax in New Zealand. That shows properties are now earning more than the median amount earned by a Kiwi employee”.

Rents in Auckland jump $20 a week to record high, “Rents in Auckland have hit a record high with the median price now $520 a week, according to one website”.

South Auckland marae seeking donations to help homeless whanau, “An Auckland marae is calling for donations to help provide relief and comfort for homeless families who it will be looking after”.

Property speculation is the only job that matters, “When Te Puea marae threw open their doors to the homeless earlier this week, they showed up the Government for its woefully inadequate response to the housing crisis”.

Emergency housing choices often limited, costly, says ministry, “Debt is often unavoidable when getting Work and Income clients housed, the Ministry of Social Development says”.

Government won’t wipe Work and Income motel debts, “More and more people are running up debts of tens of thousands of dollars living in emergency accommodation like motels, according to community housing groups”.

Is NZ facing a crisis of conscience?, “The housing crisis has taken on a more visible form, with the issues of emergency housing and homelessness”.

Is there a housing crisis? John Key fails to say yes or no after being put on the spot, “It’s the term on many New Zealanders’ lips, but seems to be the one Prime Minister John Key just can’t bring himself to say”.

housing poll 2016

48 comments on “Newshub poll – Key’s government has failed on housing ”

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  1. weka 1
    25 May 2016 at 3:20 pm

    So the 20% who think National are doing enough, is that the % of people that are still making money out of the property boom?

    • Lanthanide 1.1
      25 May 2016 at 4:08 pm

      Bear in mind that an IQ of 100 is just the *average*. It means there are plenty of people with IQs around 70-80.

      • weka 1.1.1
        25 May 2016 at 4:49 pm

        How does that relate to my question?

        • Lanthanide 1.1.1.1
          25 May 2016 at 5:29 pm

          I’m suggesting that the 20% of people that think National are doing enough have an IQ of less than 100.

          • weka 1.1.1.1.1
            25 May 2016 at 6:13 pm

            ok. I was thinking there would also be people from across the IQ spectrum who are just morally bankrupt and/or too self-serving (eg the people creaming it on the housing market). Probably some of those surveyed don’t have a good grasp of the situation either. Or don’t care about Auckland.

            • gsays 1.1.1.1.1.1
              26 May 2016 at 6:04 am

              Hi weka, more insidious point to me is that we have folk doing well from property across the political spectrum.

              ie lots of ‘lefties’ are benefitting too.

              Till being a landlord goes the same way as baby fur seal clubbers not a lot will change.

              • weka …
                26 May 2016 at 6:59 am

                Who would own the house I rent if not the landlord? It’s not an investment property. I would guess they vote on the left.

                • gsays …
                  26 May 2016 at 10:43 am

                  In answer to yr question, perhaps the council, the state, or yrself… None of whom(which) need to have profit as a motive.

                  My point not is there are far too many folk doing very well thank-you for things to change.

                  Change a few rules: being able to negate taxes with expenses, a CGT… and turkeys voting for early thanksgiving.

                  • weka …
                    26 May 2016 at 12:05 pm

                    I don’t want to own the house I am living in. It belongs to a family, not just legally but it’s actually the place that they love and want to come back to. If they had to sell it to the council what would they live in when they come back? It’s their home, not just some random box that people can come and go from.

                    I get the impetus to make things fairer for renters, and definitely support huge changes in tenancy rights. I just don’t think abolishing private ownership is necessary nor useful. There are better ways to deal with this. Lifetime tenancies for those that want them. Better rental standards. Not being able to sell a house out from under a longterm tenant at 6 weeks notice. etc.

                    I also think rent to buy and other schemes that enable people who are paying rent to build wealth, would be the go. The issue isn’t people like my landlords (they pay rent themselves), it’s people who are intentionally creaming the market to make huge profit. Go after them. I don’t even think they are the majority.

                    • Draco T Bastard …
                      27 May 2016 at 1:51 am

                      I just don’t think abolishing private ownership is necessary nor useful.

                      Private ownership is one of the major problems of the current system. It encourages living off of other people through rentier behaviour and that leads to massive accumulation by those who get to own. That massive accumulation eventually leads to the collapse of society as we’re presently living through now.

                    • weka …
                      27 May 2016 at 6:04 am

                      And yet when we have these conversations you’ve not been able to address the issues I’ve raised of the problems with state ownership. I’m not convinced by your arguments that a system of state ownership under the NZ Crown would be better than reforming the system we have now via legislation and changing culture.

                    • tricledrown []
                      6 June 2016 at 9:44 am

                      Gulags don’t charge rent

                    • Psycho Milt …
                      27 May 2016 at 6:33 am

                      Private ownership is one of the major problems of the current system

                      In the communist utopia there are of course no problems. Difficult to get there, though – have you considered moving to Solla Sollew?

    • Psycho Milt 1.2
      26 May 2016 at 7:06 am

      So the 20% who think National are doing enough, is that the % of people that are still making money out of the property boom?

      Could be. If you’re making a couple of grand a week in capital gains from National’s lack of action, how likely are you to want to see them put a stop to it?

      • weka 1.2.1
        26 May 2016 at 12:09 pm

        It does make me wonder what proportion of the population want things to be done and what don’t. Would be a useful piece of research for someone to do.

  2. linda 2
    25 May 2016 at 3:20 pm

    The john key government has had 8 years. Plenty. Of time to fix the problem time to deliver time up key has to fix the housing problem now

    • Enough is Enough 2.1
      25 May 2016 at 3:54 pm

      Sorry – No Way.

      Time is up on the corrupt crook. We can’t leave this problem in the hands of John Key to fix.

      50% of National MPs will lose their job next year on the basis of these numbers. They should do what is right for the country now and roll him before he imposes more destruction and misery on this country.

    • miravox 2.2
      25 May 2016 at 6:21 pm

      This government can’t fix what they deliberately set out to break.
      Ideological dreaming that the invisible hand of the market would provide. Big fail.

      I can’t imaging how many policy wonks are biting their tongues on the ‘we told you so’ about the consequences that the government had no plan for.

  3. AmaKiwi 3
    25 May 2016 at 4:28 pm

    A recession is when your neighbor is nearly bankrupt. A depression is when you are nearly bankrupt.

    Are more of us becoming more compassionate or is it because more of us have the wolf at our doors?

    Nationalize the banks and see how quickly wasteful borrowing dries up.

    • Lanthanide 3.1
      25 May 2016 at 4:32 pm

      “Nationalize the banks and see how quickly wasteful borrowing dries up.”

      Then we’ll really have a depression.

      • AmaKiwi 3.1.1
        25 May 2016 at 5:39 pm

        If the world’s problem is that everyone is drowning in debt they can never repay, why would reducing debt be a bad thing?

        The alternative is continuing to borrow. Is that good?

        • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.1
          25 May 2016 at 6:04 pm

          If the world’s problem is that everyone is drowning in debt they can never repay, why would reducing debt be a bad thing?

          IMO the global 99% aren’t drowning in debt; they are however suffering from too small a share of global income, and resorted to debt lent by the 1% to try and keep their families and households running.

          • AmaKiwi 3.1.1.1.1
            25 May 2016 at 6:30 pm

            Colonial Viper

            The amount of government, corporate, and personal debt far exceeds anything that can ever be repaid.

            Our NZ national debt of $140 billion means every man, woman, and child in NZ has taken on $35,000 in debt under this government. A family of four owes $140,000 in national debt alone. Now add local body debt, mortgages, credit card, auto loan, student debt, etc. Maybe you personally can handle that, but the poorest half can’t. So double the amount you owe to cover their share.

            Now add in corporate debt. Utilities, retail manufacturers and their shopping malls, airlines, shipping companies, arms manufacturers, farms, mines. All those high rises under construction are using borrowed money. Ten years ago there were 61 American non-financial companies with AAA credit ratings. Today there are only TWO. What will sink the ship is the investment Ponzi scheme. Trillions borrowed against paper promises mislabeled as financial “assets.” The emperor has no clothes!

            It is the same everywhere. Everywhere!

            • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.1.1.1
              26 May 2016 at 12:13 pm

              Well, that’s what you get with the Greenspan put.

            • greywarshark 3.1.1.1.1.2
              26 May 2016 at 12:46 pm

              One slow way of cutting debt is to raise the inflation target between 3 and 6%. Allow for some losses as a result of wage rises etc and encourage new business with more money flowing through the system. A rise in inflation would encourage tax haven holidayers to put money back into the system faster as pools of money left sitting depreciate.

              At the same time put a small tax on a second house, and rising on every following house. Or, for housing investors, give each house a separate tax number, and each must carry its own costs or profits.

        • Lanthanide 3.1.1.2
          25 May 2016 at 6:44 pm

          ‘Fiat currency’ is only worth something because people have trust in it.

          Similarly the world economy, which is built on fiat money, only keeps going because of that trust, and because of momentum.

          If everyone in NZ stopped borrowing money, this country would go into a depression. If the world did it, it would likely be the end of the economic system.

          The economic system we have is what has raised everyone’s living standards and life expectancies so dramatically over the last 200 years.

          While there is plenty wrong with it, slow reform is better than self-imposed destruction.

          • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.2.1
            26 May 2016 at 12:18 pm

            You do realise that the financial system has been reformed over the last 20 years?

            Each time for the worse?

            And it is still getting worse?

            And it is heading this way, because a certain class of persons is doing very, very well from this situation.

            And it is these people who have already built into the system its self destruction.

            They blew it up once in 2008, and had to get entire nations to impoverish themselves to rescue them.

            Now we are in even more leverage than ever.

          • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.2.2
            27 May 2016 at 1:37 am

            The economic system we have is what has raised everyone’s living standards and life expectancies so dramatically over the last 200 years.

            I don’t think so. The economic system we have is the one that was in place when those discoveries were made but it didn’t actually bring those discoveries about. Those were brought about by simple human curiosity.

            Also, getting those discoveries into general use could have happened without capitalism. In fact, given capitalisms penchant for restricting knowledge it’s probably slowed things down – especially in the last few decades as the corporations have lobbied for, and got, increased IP protections.

      • AmaKiwi 3.1.2
        25 May 2016 at 6:43 pm

        Lathanide

        “Then we’ll really have a depression.”

        We already do.

        • Lanthanide 3.1.2.1
          25 May 2016 at 6:49 pm

          A recession is characterised by 2 quarters of GDP shrinkage. I don’t think there’s any objective definition of a depression, but presumably one would need to have a recession first.

          So I don’t believe NZ, or the world, is in a depression. Some countries like Venezuela and Greece, maybe.

          • Colonial Viper 3.1.2.1.1
            25 May 2016 at 7:34 pm

            It’s not a depression or a recession until you are living in it.

            To the people living on the right side of the railway tracks its only an article in the FT anyway.

            BTW there has been no honest economic growth in the world for probably 20 years now. It has all been fed by a central bank intervention inflating asset bubbles and preventing true price discovery in the market place.

            • vto 3.1.2.1.1.1
              25 May 2016 at 7:41 pm

              I think you’re right.

              GDPs all over may have risen, but so too has the amount of currency.

              Does the increase in GDP match the increase in dollar notes? If so, then no growth.

              Don’t need growth anyway – it is the biggest myth on the planet. The only need for growth is to pay the interest on all that newly issued money which comes with an interest bill each and every day. That is the sole reason for growth.

              • Colonial Viper …
                26 May 2016 at 12:20 pm

                GDP has risen in tandem with debt and credit levels rising.

                One way of looking at debt levels rising is that it pulls future consumption forward to now.

                But what happens when the debt has to be paid back?

                In olden days you would just forgive unpayable debt.

          • Pat 3.1.2.1.2
            25 May 2016 at 7:44 pm

            depression sometimes classified as a reduction in GDP exceeding 10% with associated high unemployment…i.eGreece

            • Pat 3.1.2.1.2.1
              25 May 2016 at 7:54 pm

              and if you think about it that may well come to apply to some areas of NZ if looked at regionally

  4. vto 4
    25 May 2016 at 7:29 pm

    I think John Key really is being exposed as the king with no clothes…

    As this shite is hitting the fan for him he genuinely does not have any answer other than to shrug the shoulders and dismiss it as “not bothered about it, not a big issue”.

    It is apparent John Key knows no other way of dealing with things.

    shallow and sallow

  5. AmaKiwi 5
    25 May 2016 at 9:48 pm

    GDP definitions are bankster’s definitions.

    The Great Depression was firmly entrenched years before the Oct. 1929 crash. All the stories in today’s news are evidence of a deflationary depression underway now:

    – collapse of commodity prices and global shipping;
    – rich/poor gap becomes a chasm; the ‘working poor’;
    – Ponzi scheme leverage in financial markets producing nothing except phantom paper profits;
    – increasing financial market price volatility;
    – extremist third party movements and violent protests in even in the richest countries;
    – tens of millions of rejected refugees;
    and worst of all,
    – the outbreak of World War Three, which began in the Muslim world and is spreading.

    • Psycho Milt 5.1
      26 May 2016 at 10:57 am

      the outbreak of World War Three, which began in the Muslim world and is spreading

      Yeah, The The wrote about that in Sweet Bird of Truth – back in 1986. Hasn’t spread very far since then, you’d have to say…

    • aerobubble 5.2
      26 May 2016 at 11:16 am

      Yes. New technology, oil fueled industalization, exposed the wealth to unprecedented risks, they were locked into the old economy. Similarly today wealth concentration, or calls on future waelth are mismatched and the real economy, people, have little access to wealth. Formerly we’d have mortgages to borrow money cheaply to grow our wealth, now housing is its own means to wealth, albeit for fewer.
      Its a crisis that few want to attest to.

  6. Mike Steinberg 6
    26 May 2016 at 11:01 pm

    If the government wanted to address housing it could reduce the inward migration target from 50,000 to about 20,000 to allow supply to catch up. The other thing is to remove restrictions on land supply (eg. Houston has population growth without big price rises as there are few restrictions on supply). Economist Michael Reddell has been pointing this out for sometime.

    • Colonial Viper 6.1
      27 May 2016 at 12:24 am

      Houston is a sprawling unplanned personal car reliant shit fight where a 90 minute commute is considered short.

      • Psycho Milt 6.1.1
        27 May 2016 at 6:39 am

        Yep. But if you restrict your assessment solely to house prices, Houston looks good. Always choose carefully the numbers you’re going to measure to ensure you get the result that suits you, that’s the economist’s way.

  7. Lloyd 7
    26 May 2016 at 11:13 pm

    Basic problem is the OECD economies are all being run along neo-liberal lines. Since neo-liberalism is an ideology with the basic philosophy of allowing the rich to take everything they can, the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are being economically screwed.
    Once a policy of taxing the rich and giving to the poor is introduced to a significant number of the OECD economies, then the world economy will take off. Spreading the wealth will only happen once politicians have the guts to stand up and say the next government will raise taxes, but only on the wealthy.
    Once you change the economic game, reducing national debt becomes a possibility.

  8. Lloyd 8
    26 May 2016 at 11:17 pm

    Anyone hear that moron who is CEO of Auckalnd Airport commenting on the Budget on John Campbell’s NZR show? He said governments can’t create jobs!
    He should check who did the main work of creating the airport he now runs. It wasn’t small business.

    • Pat 8.1
      26 May 2016 at 11:29 pm

      been raised on a diet of neoliberal dogma one suspects

    • Psycho Milt 8.2
      27 May 2016 at 6:42 am

      He said governments can’t create jobs!

      These guys get paid enormous sums of money but spout idiocy when they open their mouths. Kind of like Mike Hosking, only CEOs are meant to be actually capable of doing something useful.

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