| LISA |
Housing Minister, Chris Carter is shortly to seek Cabinet agreement to a set of proposals to make it easier to buy a house. He's doing so against a background of continuing immigration, rising house prices and mortgage interest rates which have led one recent study to conclude that by 2016 less than 60% of Aucklanders will own their own home, but already housing developers are claiming the Minister's ideas will lead to the proliferation of poor quality housing. Mr Carter is with us now. So to start with why do you say there actually is a crisis? |
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| CHRIS CARTER - Minister of Housing |
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Lisa the report that was released on Monday, the two housing reports that went to the Auckland Regional Council and the other mayors in Auckland said that 55,000 Aucklanders couldn't afford to buy the cheapest house in Auckland. I think all of the viewers watching this programme today know of examples within their own families, their friends, their neighbours where people are struggling to buy homes, it is a reality of modern New Zealand. |
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| LISA |
But if you look in the paper this morning the big fat housing supplement that comes with the Herald we've just put a ring around a few of these that are in around your area, less than 400,000 arguably it is still possible to buy a house so how much of this is the me generation having great expectations, wanting a house in the suburb that they want and wanting it now? |
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| CHRIS |
Well there's part of that but the reality is that the 55,000 people identified in the report couldn't have bought any of these houses because their income could not have serviced a mortgage and left enough to live on. So that's the reality, New Zealand is not unique in that that many other countries are struggling with this, Auckland, Canada, the US, UK and so on. A variety of initiatives have been taken by governments overseas to try and help people like those 55,000 get into the lower end of the housing market. Look the initiatives that I'm hopefully gonna be talking about this morning and viewers will hear about is not about allowing first home buyers to buy luxury or even middle income houses, it's that people if they want to can get on to the ladder, those 55,000 who currently can't. |
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| LISA |
But would you accept there are a bunch of people who have expectations that are too high? |
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| CHRIS |
Look there'll always be people who have expectations too high but the reality is if we have a situation where 55,000 Aucklanders cannot buy the cheapest house in our city then we have a serious problem. |
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| LISA |
But who says owning a house is a right? |
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| CHRIS |
Well that's true that in many other countries renting is very much part of the culture of urban living. In New Zealand though we've had an ideal that home ownership is part of the Kiwi dream so there's that part of our culture, but there's also been lots of sociological studies that show that owning your own home is really good for financial security, for job security, for the wellbeing of individuals and families, so I'm very enthusiastic and the government's very enthusiastic about home ownership because of the reasons I've just outlined and we don't want to see a situation where 55,000 people cannot afford to buy the cheapest house in Auckland. |
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| LISA |
Alright well let's get down to the nitty gritty, what do you plan to do for first home buyers? Share equity? … |
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| CHRIS |
Well essentially we've got four initiatives going on. We've got direct financial assistance, we've already brought in the Welcome Home loan scheme whereby the government guarantees the deposit for a house, the lender still has to be able to service the mortgage, that's been going for about three years, we've recently raised the levels and about 3,000 Kiwi couples or individuals have bought houses through that scheme. We've allowed the Kiwi Saver the new savings scheme that the government's brought in - after five years a couple will be able to use the money they've saved to buy their first home. So those are direct initiatives and next year we're hoping to bring in a shared equity pilot. This is a scheme modelled on the UK and Australian models, and it will be a first for New Zealand where for the first time people will have partial ownership where they might buy 75% of the value of the house, the state will guarantee 25% and then the house is sold the 75% of the increased value goes back to the purchaser and 25% goes to the shared equity partner. |
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| LISA |
Just to be clear on that shared equity scheme, so it would be in some schemes it's private investors overseas who put up the extra money, is it going to be a state funded equity shared equity scheme. |
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| CHRIS |
Ultimately it would be best if it was private and there's been a really good initiative recently in South Australia where a bank there has involved itself now in the shared equity market. |
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| LISA |
Didn't that bank though take when it got its money back, twice the investment level? |
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| CHRIS |
Yes, that isn't the level we're envisaging for our government pilot scheme, and hopefully when that bank is competing with others to do that product that will force the price down. In the UK and Australia it's primarily been state participation in shared equity. |
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| LISA |
So here you'll want is state is private? |
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| CHRIS |
Here we'll set up a small pilot next year to see if New Zealanders want this product, if this product will make a difference to those 55,000 people I talked about before and others, and also of course you're exposing the state to a fair bit of liability risk. I mean if the property market collapsed share equity only works when the market's rising, so we'll do a model, we'll see if it works, we'll see if Kiwis want it, we'll see what the risk is and then we'll see if it works we'll try and encourage private financial markets to involve themselves in it. So that's the first chance at financial assistance. Secondly we've got Greenfields development, there's a really excellent article in today's New Zealand Herald about our flagship Housing New Zealand project at Hobsonville where on the old defence force lands there we're building 3,000 houses of which 15% about 500 will be for first home owners, another 15% will be state rentals and the rest will be a range of million dollar plus and down houses. So that's a big housing development which includes affordable housing so second initiative Greenfields. Third, Brownfields developments, we've done a terrific project at Glen Innes where the state housing area, part of the state housing area has been completely renovated, that gave me a lot of food for thought. At the moment Housing New Zealand owns 50% of the housing stock in Panmure and Glen Innes. The Auckland City Council has initiated the Tamaki project which is greater intensification for that area, so we have an opportunity at Tamaki to transform that urban community, increase the availability of more state rentals but also first home ownership opportunities, so if we get 6,000 houses where we've currently got 3,000 in that area, by leveraging off the 50% land ownership that Housing New Zealand has, we can transform that community and create more affordable houses, because we don't want big concentrations of social housing, but I don't want to reduce the stock, in fact I want to increase it but if we insert private ownership in that area we've got a fantastic Brownfields development, that is urban planning, happening within the existing urban area. So that's the third step. Fourth step is what I'd suggested and it's created great excitement in the media this week and that is the ability by councils when they give consents for a development to say to a developer yes you can build your houses there but you must include a percentage of affordable houses. Now everywhere in Britain that takes place, almost everywhere in Australia it takes place, we've never done it in New Zealand and I think that councils need to look at this. We've had none little tiny example at Queenstown where the council there negotiated with a developer building a big new housing development by Queenstown airport and they included a percentage of affordable homes because they needed workers in Queenstown. We need to do that in Auckland. |
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| LISA |
But do you anticipate things like loosening the consent process for developments or using green belts or unused Crown land are you going to loosen up and consent to this. |
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| CHRIS |
Well we've already done that with Hobsonville. We've got this large block. |
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| LISA |
But beyond that. |
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| CHRIS |
Well yes we've got a similar project going at Weymouth on the site of the old social welfare home there, but there is a limited opportunity with Greenfields developments because essentially we're operating within the metropolitan urban limit, but there are good opportunities for Brownfields development such as the Tamaki project I outlined earlier. So I think that the only solution to the 55,000 Aucklanders who can't buy houses is to provide a variety of different opportunities, it might be financial, it might be housing developments that include affordable houses. That's the only way we're going to provide pathways to home ownership. |
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| LISA |
Now you mentioned that you're not keen to sell off stock, I mean Bob Hargreaves from Massey University has suggested you could sell off 10% of your stock each year and you would gain 6,600 homes by using that money to buy more affordable housing, why don't you sell off some houses and do that? |
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| CHRIS |
We went down the path of selling state houses under the National government between 90 and 99, 13,000 were sold off, actually very few of them of course to tenants, less than 3,000. I've currently got 11,000 people on the state housing waiting list, we've built approximately 8,000 houses since Labour came into government, so if we started selling state houses we'd compound the waiting list for our tenants who are living in them, many of whom of course don't have the financial resources to pay a mortgage, that's the reality. |
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| LISA |
Arguably you might have sold the wrong houses, couldn't you sell the houses in places in Auckland where we've heard there are state houses worth more than $500,000 a million dollars. |
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| CHRIS |
And sometimes we do. You know there isn't a total ban on selling state houses, we do sell some sometimes to do exactly that, but any large scale sale programme the government is opposed to because of the waiting list programme, but I just outlined earlier in our discussion our Tamaki project which will as we redevelop that project, that area if it goes ahead will involves selling and buying to rationalise land holdings to create these new housing opportunities. So I'm not opposed to it in principle where we're seeing a localised area meeting a housing need, but you know I'm struggling with a waiting list and the reality is we've got people living in our state houses what do we do with them. |
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| LISA |
How many of the people living in those state houses are non New Zealand residents? |
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| CHRIS |
None, you can have a state house if you're not a New Zealand resident. For migrants they have to be a citizen or a resident of New Zealand so it's a little bit of a misnomer that's been put out but the reality is you have to be a New Zealander or become a New Zealand citizen to get a state house. |
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| LISA |
Last week on this show Winston Peters was here and he said that inflation's the problem and that the Reserve Bank Act needs to be changed to deal with it, but he said there was no support for that, why don't you as a Minister in government push for some changes to the Act? |
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| CHRIS |
Well I'm responsible for housing, I'm pushing for all sorts of changes within in that area. The area that you've just touched on is not my responsibility it's the responsibility of the Minister of Finance and I guess you'd need to put that question to him. |
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| LISA |
But arguably well the housing market is inextricably linked. |
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| CHRIS |
Well of course we have very strict legislation in New Zealand that government doesn't interfere with the operations of the Reserve Bank and I think that our economy and our country is the stronger for that. |
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| LISA |
But isn't he talking about changing that legislation, are you happy with the Reserve Bank Act as it stands then, let me put it that way? |
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| CHRIS |
I would prefer not to comment on areas that I'm not responsible for but happy to talk about housing. |
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| LISA |
Well Winston Peters also mentioned that there's going to be some concessions in the budget in terms of Kiwi Saver, how much more can wannabe first home buyers expect from this budget? |
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| CHRIS |
I think that home buyers can expect some good things in this budget, we've already signalled that next year we'll be bringing in our shared equity pilot, that we'll continue with a programme of enhancing our state housing, that's not about ownership but it is about providing decent accommodation for New Zealanders who currently are struggling to get that, so the government has been committed to strong action in housing. There was a comment earlier in your programme about our government not showing initiative with ideas, this is a government full of ideas. I've just outlined to you some amazing initiatives in housing, and I'm very enthusiastic about looking beyond the square to see if we can find solutions to those 55,000 Aucklanders who simply can't buy a house at the moment. |
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| LISA |
On that note let's bring in Jenni McManus who made that comment. |
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| JENNI McMANUS - Senior Journalist, Sunday Star Times |
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Well I know you've touched on this before this morning Chris but don't you think it's time that we rid ourselves of this obsession with home ownership. I know culturally we've done it in New Zealand for decades but Europe survives with rental housing, the UK, New Yorkers don't expect to own their own homes, why don't we free these people from - or having the expectation that they are going to be able to buy a house, they can't afford a mortgage they stretch themselves trying to pay one, and just make it easier for them to rent for life. You'd have to put restrictions in place I guess to make sure that the renting was more secure than it is now, but why not just accept that they're never going to be able to buy a house. |
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| CHRIS |
Well Jenni you do touch on an important point that we do have a strong cultural feature about owning your own home but of course there are also those sociological studies which I mentioned earlier which show that for the wellbeing of families, for security of employment, for health outcomes, home ownership is a very desirable thing. |
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| JENNI |
But people aren't not healthy in Europe and the UK simply because they don't own - I mean I'd like to know where those studies came from, who did them, what questions were asked, you know I don't accept just the blanket there are studies. |
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| CHRIS |
Well I think if we do go down that path of accepting that for some people home ownership may never be a reality then we do have to take those other steps which you've just alluded to, which is about giving security of tenure, which at the moment New Zealanders don't have which is why state houses are so popular to rent because you're there for as long as you want to be whereas of course in the private rental market you've got quite a limited time when you can be evicted, sorry the landowner or the property owner doesn't have to give I think it's a 90 day notice. |
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| JENNI |
But wouldn't this be an awful lot simpler than tinkering in the market, I mean I'm not saying they're not good ideas that you have but they are difficult they're hard to put into place, wouldn't it be much simpler to enable people to rent for life, key money and that sort of thing. |
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| CHRIS |
Well I'm enthusiastic about home ownership so I'm prepared to tinker if I can help and I think we're tinkering quite substantially. |
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| JENNI |
But you are tinkering with taxpayers' money possibly. |
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| CHRIS |
Well I think we're providing opportunity Jenni and that's… |
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| JENNI |
No, you're actually using taxpayers' money, you may not agree with me. |
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| CHRIS |
Well the project that I talked to you about before of Tamaki, we're hoping we'll be able to leverage off the state land ownership there so actually it won't involve ultimately the expenditure of that much taxpayers' money. |
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| LISA |
But a shared equity scheme could possibly involve taxpayer money. |
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| CHRIS |
Which is exactly why I said we'd be doing a small model to see if it worked, if it was desirable and if it didn't expose the state to too much liability. |
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| JENNI |
But there's more than that too, there's the bullying of developers like you'll get your resource consent if you do what the government wants. They'll all disappear. |
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| CHRIS |
Well they certainly haven't disappeared in Australia and in the UK where this is mandatory in most places. In the UK mandatory, everywhere in Australia in most places. In the end a developer is there to make a buck and even with the direction to have affordable homes they still make a buck. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring John into the conversation. |
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| JOHN ROUGHAN - Columnist, NZ Herald |
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Shared equity, 25% state, 75% private buyer. |
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| CHRIS |
Perhaps, we're not sure of the formula yet. |
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| JOHN |
Well whatever it is. What I'm wondering about is when that buyer comes to trade up to sell his first house he's gotta pay 25% back to the government in effect or whatever it might be. |
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| CHRIS |
Yes, of the increase. |
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| JOHN |
No isn't that going to discourage him, or is he going to be able to buy a second house, isn't this just transferring the problem one step up the ladder? |
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| CHRIS |
No well first of all we'll be doing a small pilot to see whether these things happen. |
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| LISA |
How big is that pilot going to be? |
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| CHRIS |
Well that's to be determined during the next six months, we are well down the path of scoping it out but I'll be releasing that information next year. It'll only be available for first home owners, so once you've begun - it's to get people on the property ladder, once they're on the ladder then it's their business from then on. |
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| CHRIS |
Well if you think that property values in Auckland have gone up 106% in the last ten years. |
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| JENNI |
But that is supply and demand it's not a crisis. |
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| CHRIS |
It is supply and demand so you would still make enough getting 75% equity out of that to give you a substantially increased deposit to buy another house. |
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| LISA |
When you look at overseas equity schemes though as John is alluding to I believe, in Australia they say it just pushed up the price of houses by the amount that the government was prepared to contribute. |
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| CHRIS |
Well that's debatable there's been a variety of theories from that, but with shared equity we're talking about a very small niche market, it's the concept of shared ownership, now whether New Zealanders will relate to that at all remains to be seen, it's something entirely new in our housing market and the scheme will be small. |
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| LISA |
How tight will the eligibility be for that scheme? |
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| CHRIS |
It will be very tight, it will be directed at the lowest quartile of houses so you won't be able to use it to buy an expensive home and you'll only be able to buy it for a new home, look it's a very small niche market to help people, those 55,000 people we talked about before who can't simply at the moment … |
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| JENNI |
But it won't help 55,000 people will it. |
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| CHRIS |
No it won't but it's part of that basket that I talked about earlier in the interview of providing pathways to ownership, you know in the end the government can't solve the housing crisis, it can assist but it can't solve it. |
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| JENNI |
But you'll still have this huge number of people though who never will be able to buy their own houses and what I'm saying is you know they should stop beating up on themselves maybe. |
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| JOHN |
Well I don't know about that. The problem to me seems to be basically that our whole tax system here distorts the pattern of investment towards property and residential housing in particular. Now if the government was to tackle that, if it had the courage to tackle that, we might not have everybody investing in second and third homes for their retirement and money going more broadly and the housing market not going out of sight. |
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| CHRIS |
Now John are you talking about a capital gains tax. |
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| JENNI |
He is talking about a capital gains tax yes. |
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| CHRIS |
I thought we'd get to this point in the interview. In my view a capital gains tax is not a silver bullet, Australia has a capital gains tax and the affordability's issue is even worse there than it is in New Zealand. |
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| JENNI |
An it's easy to avoid. |
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| CHRIS |
And secondly you'd have to have cross party support and you simply wouldn't get that. |
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| JENNI |
No government is going to be so politically stupid. |
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| CHRIS |
In theory it might sound fine but the reality is it's not going to happen. |
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| LISA |
Alright, thank you very much for joining us this morning Chris Carter. |
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| JIM BOLGER: Beehive Secrets |
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| LISA |
Just when you thought all he did was run New Zealand Post and KiwiBank Jim Bolger is back in the news. Victoria University is this weekend holding a conference featuring many of his former colleagues to re-examine his eight years as Prime Minister and he himself opened the conference with an account of how he told the Queen New Zealand would eventually become a republic. But in many ways Mr Bolger is an enigma difficult to pin down ideologically, probably his closes political friend and ally was former treasurer and minister of almost everything else, Bill Birch. He's taking time out from the conference to join us now. Good morning Mr Birch can you tell us in retrospect should you have really gone forward with the mother of all budgets? |
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| BILL BIRCH - Former National Minister |
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Well I think looking back at that one's gotta put it in the context of events of that time and we were sort of recapturing that event yesterday at the university conference just reminding people that the Treasury briefing which took place overnight after the election was that the fiscal position had deteriorated from the last published statement of accounts by over one and a half billion dollars and the Bank of New Zealand was on the verge of insolvency and needed a bail out, so I mean it was the need certainly in the eyes of Treasury and the government's advisors for some very strong immediate responses to a very difficult position. |
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| LISA |
But some of your former colleagues believed that Treasury perhaps manipulated you into going ahead with that budget, do you think it did? |
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| BILL |
No I don't, and I don't think that actually came out of the conference yesterday, I don't believe any of my senior colleagues would have felt that. There's absolutely no doubt that there had been a large amount of unauthorised expenditure by the Mike Moore outgoing government and the fiscal position was extremely serious and the Bank of New Zealand situation was also extremely serious and needed immediate response. |
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| LISA |
So how damaging was it for the National Party do you think? |
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| BILL |
Well in terms of political fallout quite damaging, we won the 1990 election with a very substantial majority and in the 1993 election it was a cliffhanger, and that was really the political fallout as a consequence of some of the measurer that we'd taken, but in terms of policy responses the conference you know looking back ten fifteen years now is saying that the policy responses were necessary but in some cases maybe we went too far, maybe you know we overstepped the mark, and we took measures that in retrospect were unsustainable, an done of those, one of the most difficult ones was the steps national superannuation where we clearly broke a promise. |
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| LISA |
Do you think that Jim Bolger should have sacked Ruth Richardson earlier, much earlier? |
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| BILL |
No I don't think that would have been a credible option either, I mean everything that Ruth Richardson put in place was debated exhaustively at cabinet and cabinet committees, I mean they were collective decisions and she was the minister responsible for carrying them through so she was actually, although she was also the lead ministers in terms of fiscal and economic policy she was carrying through the National government's very considered and thrashed out responses to a crises. |
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| LISA |
Was it more her style then that was the problem do you think? |
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| BILL |
It was very much her style and that really came very clear during the conference, I mean her style was divisive and to my knowledge Jim felt that he was spending far more time resolving disputes between her and other ministers than he could simply afford, and that really I think was the basis for his decision to sack Ruth. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring in our panel now going first to John Roughan. |
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| JOHN |
Bill, Ruth's book referred to she and Jenny Shipley I think taking Jim Bolger by the elbows sometimes into these policies. Did they really run the National government in that first term 1990-1993? |
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| BILL |
No and I don't think you believe they did either. In fact in my assessment of those years they were hugely busy years, I mean we introduced a whole raft of reforms apart from what happened in superannuation and some of the fiscal changes, and if you look at those, I mean there was the labour market reforms themselves the Employment Contracts Act which I'm not sure - which has actually changed the way the labour markets operate and they're still in place today. There were the health reforms and welfare reforms, there were housing reforms, reforms of the ACC, the Treaty settlements which Doug Graham was involved in, the restructuring of the old Department of scientific and Industrial Research and the birth of the Crown Research Institutes by Simon Upton, I mean there was a huge agenda which the National Party wanted to put in place and it was a very busy time, that work which really carried through in the second Bolger government through the 1993 1996 period as well. |
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| JENNI |
Sir William you did put in place the Employment Contracts Act which was landmark legislation in its time, why didn't you take the step further and abolish the Employment Court, it would have made such a difference to employers. |
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| BILL |
Well an interesting suggestion because I mean if there was any criticism of the Employment Contracts Act it was that we probably went too far, I don't believe we did we found a balance, but I don't believe that it was credible in a political sense to abolish the Employment Court at the same time. |
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| JENNI |
But in one sense were you not giving with one hand and taking away with the other as far as employers are concerned? |
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| BILL |
Well yes but the big shift was to voluntary unionism and that's still there today and towards creating enterprise bargaining and individual contracts, and even though there's been major regression back to giving unions the power of collective bargaining I mean that's what's happened under a Labour government, much of that earlier structure has remained and we even had Ken Douglas yesterday discussing some of those things and reflecting on that. |
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| LISA |
Mr Birch can you just quickly sum up for us Jim Bolger the man behind the scenes. |
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| BILL |
Well I've got huge respect for Jim, I mean I think he'll go down in history as one of New Zealand's outstanding leaders as Prime Minister. He comes from a very firm moral Catholic and family background and those values were very much present right through his period in office, but he also developed in opposition in his early years as a Minister of Labour very good negotiated skills and very good leadership techniques and he applied those in his years as government and I think the country's benefited enormously from that. |
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| LISA |
Thank you very much for joining us this morning Bill Birch. |
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| MANGERE - Taito Philip Field |
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| LISA |
Mangere MP Taito Philip Field's well clear of the Labour government and his bid to form a Pacific political party is gaining momentum. Reporter Renee Graham spoke to the church leader and other locals for the inside story on a party which could be crucial to next year's election. |
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| RENEE GRAHAM |
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He may be on the outer with the Labour government but this Thursday saw 200 Pacific Islanders out to back Taito Philip Field all the way to the Beehive. These supporters want to see him lead a Pacific party which he says will stand for old Labour and Christian values. |
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| TAITO PHILIP FIELD - Independent Mangere MP |
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Yeah and those values is godly family values and I think a lot of groundswell of supporters are showing not only in this area of South Auckland but other parts of New Zealand have indicated people who have been really concerned with the direction of legislation that's gone through. |
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| RENEE |
The allegations of corruption against Field being investigated by Police do not trouble his supporters. |
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He's a people's person he's always there when we need help, he's always with our communities in public meetings. |
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We really support him, I think he's really done a lot to us not only the Samoan but the Tongan and to other people. |
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| RENEE |
And ominously for Labour he's also supported by the Destiny Church who's allying Destiny New Zealand and got the third highest party vote in Mangere last election. |
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| BRIAN TAMAKI - Destiny Church Leader |
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For what I see there is good support for Taito regardless of what others are saying, that the media's saying right now, there is support, again Mangere has a high Christian population, church population and I've also been a part of the meetings with some of the ministers from Manager and we're certainly quite keen to see our values represented in parliament which right now is misrepresented, it's disproportionate. |
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| RENEE |
Bishop Tamaki says they share the same goals. |
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| BRIAN |
We just have shared values, those are family values which this country's in dire need of and there are principles which are underneath that that are Christian which is another aspect of this nation's poor record, our morals have slipped right out the back door and so there are two very good cases that I see that we have common ground to talk but I think most of New Zealand specially New Zealand families have seen this Labour government for what it really is, and this next election I think is going to prove that out. |
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| RENEE |
And Destiny New Zealand Party Leader, Richard Lewis, says this might see them working together. |
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| RICHARD LEWIS - Destiny NZ Party Leader |
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Well it's early days and there's been general discussion around the theme of one vehicle, we realise there can only be one Christian party in on that basis, it will be interesting to see what unfolds. |
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| RENEE |
So is it strength in numbers then with the possibility maybe of the two parties joining together or at least talking seriously between each other? |
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| RICHARD |
Well the common ground is we both want to see Labour come down out here and we know that Labour has very much abandoned the Pacific voter, they don't carry the same values. |
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| BRIAN |
Mangere is definitely a battleground and coming from our perspective we see it is worth a battle anyway, even if Taito decides not to stand or the inquiry comes out against him we're saying that this is a battle field because again of the high Christian population and the churches here we see it as probably a good place to mount a decent political assault. |
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| RENEE |
But others in Mangere say Field's success could depend on who ends up fronting Labour. |
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| REVEREND OPETER SYKES - Mangere East Family Service Centre |
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Mangere's somebody who's looking for somebody that they know and trust and if you look at who gets elected they're people who have a profile locally, people don't vote for somebody who comes from outside the area. |
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| RENEE |
The Reverend Peter Sykes says the accusations against Fields are changing voting behaviour. |
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| PETER |
They're less trusting of the system as a whole and they're less trusting of just the old traditional system doing what your parents have done and therefore we do. |
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| RENEE |
The risk for Labour has always been that Fields' fellow Pacific Islanders will decide to back him over their traditional Labour vote. Thursday night's attendance numbers indicate that risk might soon be a reality. |
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| FINAL THOUGHTS - Guest Commentators |
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| LISA |
Well there you have it the combined forces of Brian Tamaki and Taito Philip Field does Labour need to be afraid Jenni? |
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| JENNI |
I don't think voters are so stupid Lisa, I really don't, I think they're really underestimating the voters of Mangere if they think that sort of stuff's going to fly. |
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| JOHN |
What did Brian Tamaki get at the last election or Destiny Church or whatever it was that they stood under? I forget the figure but it was infinitesimal. |
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| LISA |
Terribly memorable clearly. |
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| JOHN |
He's not going to worry anybody. Philip Field though as bad as you know everything is if there's significant Polynesian support for him then we have to worry, we have to worry about a clash of cultures and values in our political system which might be real about expectations of people in high office and whether it's understood that they can sort of do well for themselves and look after their families, or whether they really have to observe some strict rules against corruption. That's the worry. |
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| LISA |
Our earlier interview today, Housing - Chris Carter. Jenni do you think they should be managing people's expectations about home ownership rather than going through these great lengths to get people into buying their first home? |
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| JENNI |
Yes I really do and I think it's a long term thing, we've got a very very long tradition of home ownership for everybody but hey you know it's not enshrined in the Bill of Rights Act, people don't have a right to own a home and an awful lot of them would be a damn sight better I think if they rented a house and spent their money in other ways, it would be an awful lot less stressful for them. |
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| LISA |
I see John stretching up to his full height in response. |
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| JOHN |
Home ownership is part of our culture, part of our society it's important it's part of the glue, it gives people a stake in what happens here in this country and if we're going to let a situation develop where half the population doesn't own homes and can't expect to and the other half do we're creating a recipe for trouble. |
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| JENNI |
Well it doesn't happen in Europe that there's trouble or in North America that there's trouble, I mean I cannot see why four walls can make that sort of a difference, and I certainly can't see why people's health is at risk simply cos they don't own houses. |
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| JOHN |
We're a pioneering society this is our culture, we came here to escape the kind of European class system everybody came here for a bit of land and a stake. |
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| JENNI |
Are you trying to say there's no class system here John? Get off the grass. |
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| JOHN |
No there's not by comparison. |
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| JENNI |
I think there is, there's a terrible class system in New Zealand. |
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| LISA |
So taxpayer money should be going into these equity schemes or not? |
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| JOHN |
No I think there are other solutions that we can tackle this awful housing market with and bring it back to some sort of commonsense, and our whole economy would be better if we did. |
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| JENNI |
It's supply and demand - no taxpayer money shouldn't be used to move people into houses and to allow them to buy homes, well I'm a taxpayer and I don't want my money used for that it's hard enough to pay my own mortgage let alone somebody else's. |
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| LISA |
Alright fierce debate there from our panellists thank you very much for joining us this morning. |
