Labour builds the houses (yet another Key lie)

Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, May 31st, 2016 - 19 comments
Categories: housing, john key, labour, national, spin - Tags: , , , , ,

Good work by Geoff Simmons at the Morgan Foundation:

Fact check: John Key & Steven Joyce on housing

In a speech on Friday, Prime Minister John Key claimed that under National, twice as many new houses were being built as under Labour. Steven Joyce followed that up by stating “Auckland’s housing problems are a regulatory issue, primarily, and [the result of] a long period of under investment in housing which was caused by a strangling of red tape.”

Are they right? Only if you are prepared to contort the statistics in the most favourable way possible.

Key’s spin is to compare the lowest point possible under Labour – as the GFC was kicking in, to the highest under National. If you compare averages:

In fact, under Labour around 600 more houses were built per quarter than under National’s term thus far.

new-residential-building-costs

That was about housing consents. What about state houses? This graph was going the rounds on Twitter a while back. Labour builds the houses.

state-house-build-graph

19 comments on “Labour builds the houses (yet another Key lie) ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Richardrawshark 1
    31 May 2016 at 3:08 pm

    Why has MSM not exposed his lie?

  2. Keith 2
    31 May 2016 at 3:21 pm

    Anything Key says is now to be taken with a grain of salt. At his very best a lie wrapped in the truth is all we get.

  3. Lanthanide 3
    31 May 2016 at 3:32 pm

    The Morgan Foundation could do some good by just becoming the NZ version of Politifact.

  4. Reddelusion 4
    31 May 2016 at 3:37 pm

    Contort statistics in politics?, shock horror scandal So its true in some context and not in others, wow what and observation I will be mindful of not taking everything a politician says in future as gospel now that I know they may just be construing statistics in thier favour , thank you for this profound enlightenment

    • arkie 4.1
      31 May 2016 at 3:44 pm

      In which context is it true?

      • Reddelusion 4.1.1
        31 May 2016 at 4:54 pm

        Are they right? Only if you are prepared to contort the statistics in the most favourable way possible

        • arkie 4.1.1.1
          31 May 2016 at 5:57 pm

          Joyce and Key? You’re correct, they are only right if the statistics are contorted in the most favourable way.

          I’m sure he’s comfortable with that actually.

    • Wensleydale 4.2
      31 May 2016 at 3:53 pm

      Yeah, politicians tell lies, so… let’s just sit back and let them. That’ll fix everything. Good plan, General Melchett.

      • JonL 4.2.1
        1 June 2016 at 1:42 am

        I, for one, have had it with politicians continued lying to the public. I don’t know what is worse….the lying by people who are meant to be working for US……or…..the continual shrugging of shoulders and ..”well, what do you expect…they all do it” and acceptance, passive or active by a population who seem inurred by the whole damned sordid spectacle and accept all this bullshit!

        You get the politicians you deserve…………how low has society sunk.

  5. Bob 5
    31 May 2016 at 4:13 pm

    That consent graph actually tells a story in itself. You can see the effect that the Building Act 2004 had on Auckland!
    While it was an absolutely necessary Act to ensure we don’t end up with another leaky home situation, it is clear that the Act also brought building in Auckland to a standstill.
    All of which would go to back up the point that Steven Joyce was making.

    It would be interesting to get the numbers for the attached graph, as it does look by eye that consents across 2015 full year would be about double the consent for 2008 full year, in which case Geoff Simmons may have just proven John Key to be telling the truth…hard to tell though because I can’t find the John Key full quote anywhere…

    • lprent 5.1
      31 May 2016 at 7:43 pm

      While it was an absolutely necessary Act to ensure we don’t end up with another leaky home situation, it is clear that the Act also brought building in Auckland to a standstill.
      All of which would go to back up the point that Steven Joyce was making.

      Yeah right. More like it reinforces why the idiots from National are useless at housing.

      That hiatus was correcting National’s previous complete fuckup with their deregulation of the building standards causing the leaky building disaster in the first place.

      I wasn’t exactly happy to find myself in a leaky building in 2006 due to lax building inspections in 1997/8. The numbers of builders crawling over my apartment block and virtually all of the housing built under National’s idiotic deregulation and lax liabilities was why there weren’t any to build any houses. They did it for more than decade and I still see a lot of housing going under the white plastic every month to still fix up National’s unimaginable lazy idiocy.

      Tends to point to why National MPs should never be allowed to touch housing policy. They always screw it up as badly as they have this time.

      Ummm what was your ‘point’ again? National are born-to-screw-up?

      • You_Fool 5.1.1
        1 June 2016 at 9:57 am

        That National took 6 years to get building consents above the level that was occurring under Labour during the leaky building crisis and then the GFC; but nowhere near the level under labour previous to that.

        • maninthemiddle 5.1.1.1
          1 June 2016 at 10:46 am

          The GFC didn’t kick in until the dying months of the Labour Government. National managed the majority of the fall out from 2008.

          The consents graph shows a rapid decline from 2004 through 2008, and then a gradual increase ever since, accelerating in recent years. The graph also omits current activity, which has consenting at historically record levels.

          It is also ludicrous to publish a graph about state housing in a post about house building more broadly. The government does not need to own social housing, in fact it would far better if it owned less, and let the market provide houses where the need is the highest.

          • You_Fool 5.1.1.1.1
            1 June 2016 at 8:46 pm

            The government does not need to own social housing, in fact it would far better if it owned less, and let the market provide houses where the need is the highest.

            Clearly the current state of people living in cars in Auckland makes a mockery of such a statement. And before you blame council or government for that please note that there is at least 20K empty houses (I heard national supporters tell me that it is more like 60K) plus more than enough land already consented to be built on that is not…

    • tc 5.2
      31 May 2016 at 10:12 pm

      Sunny on planet key currently bob out on one of the many golf courses.

  6. Philj 6
    1 June 2016 at 11:24 am

    Meanwhile at a recent Master builder conference it was reported that builders would leave the industry if they had to guarantee the standard of their house building. Nekminit….. we have a shortage of builders. This government is getting sillier by the day. Don’t worry, the market will provide! Isn’t that how we got into this crazy situation?

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.