MAY 26 2018 LISTENER 11
CHRIS SLANEmanagement of the cattle disease, when both the
management systems and the disease considerably
predate the last election. Its only alternative is to
blame slackness and corner-cutting among farmers,
who are core National voters.
It’s unfortunate that former Primary Industries
Minister Nathan Guy, still fronting for National
on agriculture, has been blessed with an extremely
smiley resting face. He needs to join the charm-
school detainees for lessons in looking concerned
and even a bit contrite.
O’Connor is in the bittersweet position of seeing
a lot of the predictions about MPI’s dysfunction
that he made while playing Jeremiah in Opposition
come to pass – just in time for his watch.
DRY RUN FOR CATASTROPHE
This horrible outbreak should double as a drill for
what would happen if foot-and-mouth disease were
to arrive here. At that point, we wouldn’t have to
worry about the housing, land and infrastructure
shortage; depopulation would take care of all that
- along with a surplus of decommissioned milk-
ing sheds and other farm buildings to convert to
low-cost housing, if only we could afford to get the
work done. Tourism wouldn’t save us, either: even
after quarantines were lifted, who would want to
admire countryside full of ghost sheep and cows?
There is one minister
who actually does
need to be tactless
but, maddeningly,
cleaves to ingratiating
Pollyanna wale.
There is one minister who actu-
ally does need to be tactless but,
maddeningly, cleaves to ingratiating
Pollyanna waffle, and that’s Hous-
ing Minister Phil Twyford. Every
single development – or more often
non-development – in the KiwiBuild/
housing-shortage saga since theGovernment was elected simply
underlines the unwelcome fact that
there is no quick, or even slightly
delayed, fix. Over several decades,
we haven’t built enough of the right
housing in the right areas, and what
we can build now is likely to be
unaffordable to the average or low-
income household – in some cases,
permanently.Even if the Government decided,
starting right now, to cancel every
other state programme and build
every family a home, it couldn’t be
done. Everything from land supply
and lack of competition in the
building-products market, through
the multifarious council zoning and
compliance regimes, right up to the
Government’s own procurement
policies, is ill calibrated for a quan-
tum leap in cheap housing, or even
a shuffle towards a bit more average-
cost housing.
Creative ideas abound, such as
prefabricated housing and accommo-
dating foreign guest-worker builders
on housing barges for big develop-
ments. But they all run into the same
thicket of issues. It would be a relief if
Twyford even just give us a Pantene
version of the truth: it won’t happen
overnight, but it should happen in
our lifetime, fingers crossed.
The depressing, tactless truth is that
we have an “opportunity to transition
to a low home-ownership and low
home-occupancy environment”. l