Nick Smith screws up again

Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, February 22nd, 2017 - 20 comments
Categories: housing, national, useless - Tags: , , , ,

From Jenna Lynch on Newshub – Govt’s plan to build houses on excess crown land hits another roadblock

The Government’s plan to build houses on excess crown land has hit another roadblock. Three sites earmarked for housing can’t actually be built on.

Building and Construction Minister Nick Smith showed off spare Government land during a bus tour in 2015 as sites he wanted to put houses on.

Fast forward a couple of years, and there’s a problem.

His officials have deemed the Wiri Station Rd site in Auckland “not viable for residential development”.

But on top of not being able to build on Wiri Station Rd, Manukau Station Rd will have 100 fewer homes than planned, Mihini Rd hasn’t been vacated by KiwiRail so it can’t be used and Luke St has already been snatched for a pop up temporary housing site.

Bill English to the rescue!

Mr English defended the Minister. “He’s done a good job actually, some people think you can just decide to have more houses and they magically appear”.

Eight long years.

20 comments on “Nick Smith screws up again ”

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  1. Tamati Tautuhi 1
    22 February 2017 at 9:29 am

    The problem is in Auckland you have 40,000 plus people migrating into the City per annum with minimal improvements to the Infrastructure and little affordable housing available or being built, very poor planning and forecasting being done by Central Government and Auckland City?

    • saveNZ 1.1
      22 February 2017 at 11:19 am

      +1 Tamati Tautuhi – you can’t as English has realised after 8 long years magically make houses appear. Or roads or trains or infrastructure or pollution controls….

      But you can without any magic, change the immigration criteria immediately, at zero cost to the people of NZ.

      Obviously too simple for the “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” Class.

    • lprent 1.2
      22 February 2017 at 11:25 am

      Mostly just central government.

      They are the ones who are maintaining fiscal caps in terms of debt ratios on the local bodies including Auckland City.

      They also refusing to put in legislation to allow them to do things like have regional fuel taxes to pay for infrastructure.

      Similarly they constrain the level of infrastructure that developers have to build as part of their projects. For instance putting in feeder roads or bus stations. Mostly because to do so would show up the lack of viability of greenfield way out of the city projects.

      Sure auckland city isn’t perfect. But their dimwitted responses pale compared to the National fools from Wellington.

      After all Auckland city doesn’t set the migration policies. But National doesn’t allow Auckland to raise the resourced to deal or pay for the infrastructure, and also doesn’t pay for it Nationally. They expect that a few magic passes of Nick Smith lying (as usual) will acheive it.

      • Tricledown 1.2.1
        23 February 2017 at 1:43 pm

        Laissez faire just do nothing Spin and lame blame shifting.
        Now her Smith wants to takeover all councils decision making.

  2. Cinny 2
    22 February 2017 at 9:42 am

    If you are going to announce land for housing, would you not make sure the land was fit for purpose before telling everyone?

    8 long years? Nah more like 27 long years of Dr Custard as an MP. And prior to that 14 years on Rangiora Council, career politician, has been since he was 21 years old.

  3. Antoine 3
    22 February 2017 at 9:47 am

    Bit of a balls up really

  4. Greg 4
    22 February 2017 at 9:50 am

    We have a government of wilful denial of any problem in fact every solution put forward hits a concrete wall what are they hiding there job is to govern

  5. Sabine 5
    22 February 2017 at 10:40 am

    Bill English to the rescue:
    Mr English defended the Minister. “He’s done a good job actually, some people think you can just decide to have more houses and they magically appear”.

    and now lets sell some more State Houses to provide the private market with some more incentives to build the houses that we need to house those that can afford it or are lucky enough to be deemed eligible for the Accommodation Supplement aka the Landlord’s Benefit. 🙂

    see, the market is already fixing things.

    • The decrypter 5.1
      22 February 2017 at 11:01 am

      English,-“He’s done a good job actually” Actually–{used to emphasize that something someone has said or done is surprising} ??

      • Sabine 5.1.1
        22 February 2017 at 11:37 am

        yep, i got that as well.

        actually, as in considering all facts, considering that he is tasked to fail, considering that his job is not to build houses but to free up land to sell to the highest bidder etc etc etc .

        One thing we can all agree on, Nick Smith does a stellar job at not building houses, at not facilitating the building of houses, and that is what he is supposed to do. akschullie.

  6. The decrypter 6
    22 February 2017 at 1:22 pm

    I don’t have a link but does anyone remember when government subsidised farmers for every sheep they ran on their farms. Think it was fred dagg who interviewed farmers who waved their arms around and quoted huge numbers of invisible sheep over hills, out of sight, etc etc . Well nick smiths doing a one man illusion act all by himself, houses here, there,everywhere .

  7. michelle 7
    22 February 2017 at 1:54 pm

    the tories are quick to run down our teachers what about there incompetence look in the mirror you tories

  8. AB 8
    22 February 2017 at 3:23 pm

    While Nick Smith persistently turns a blind eye to the demand side and witters on about land supply, he will continue to fail and sound like a strident clown.
    The demand side is the biggest driver of this insanity and must be addressed by:
    – turning the immigration tap down significantly
    – making houses other than the family home very unattractive as a speculative investment for BOTH locals and foreigners.
    – restricting the ability of banks to create limitless credit out of nothing and pump it into the housing market
    And house prices need to come down, not merely stabilise.

  9. Tamati Tautuhi 9
    22 February 2017 at 5:53 pm

    The problem is house and land prices have been cranked so high now, the banks have got cold feet and are scared to lend. Also the underlying land value is so high the banks are wary of lending to under capitalised developers hence there are very few building companies with the strength in their balance sheets to undertake spec building.

    How can a $500,000 house be an affordable home with NZ’s low wages. We need to turn off the immigration tap and shut down foreign investors speculating on NZ’s property market. Tai hoe for a while until we balance the ship?

  10. Richard@Downsouth 10
    22 February 2017 at 9:28 pm

    Housing Crisis? Don’t you mean chance for rich people to make a lot of money, most of it with little tax attached to it

    Nothing to see here

  11. NZJester 11
    22 February 2017 at 9:36 pm

    We should probably just schedule this as a monthly post.

    Do you think that will help cover them all, or are you going to do a two for one story each month?
    Maybe a fortnightly one might help you keep more up to date with him. ;-p