NZ’s exodus – thanks, Labour Government.

 

Why Kiwis can’t afford to buy a house – they keep voting Labour.

Article: NZ Centre for Political Research: 

Housing affordability is set to become a key election issue. Ill advised policies from local and central government are turning the Kiwi dream of home ownership into a fantasy. According to the 2008 Demographia Survey, New Zealand now has the least affordable houses in the world: 

“Overall – New Zealand and Australian urban markets have the worst housing affordability at 6.3 time’s annual household earnings, followed by the United Kingdom at 5.5 time’s, Ireland 4.7, the United States 3.6 times and Canada 3.1 times annual household earnings. When interest costs on mortgages are added – New Zealanders are in the worst position. Based on local interest rates, a 100% 30 year mortgage to illustrate a consistent example – a New Zealand household can expect 18.6 years of income to go towards house cost and mortgage interest (excluding rates, taxes, maintenance and other costs); Australians 17.9 years, the British 14.1 years: the Irish 9.6 years; the Americans 8.3 years and the Canadians 7.9 years”. The co-author of the Demographia Survey, Hugh Pavletich, puts it this way:

“The sad reality is that due to ignorance and inadequate management skills – our local authorities are deliberately starving and inflating the price of land on the urban fringes and denying too many people the opportunity of affordable housing. Currently in New Zealand – the sections cost more – and often much more – than what a completed house and land package should cost”. Hugh goes on to issue a challenge:

“The problem – and the solutions are not at all complex. The only “ingredient” required – is the will and commitment to restore housing to affordable levels. As New Zealanders – we owe it to ourselves to start on this path – now”.

So what has caused this housing affordability crisis and what can be done about it? There are a number of reasons, but prime amongst them is the dramatic surge in net migration – caused to some extent by the government’s mismanagement of the immigration portfolio – the early 2000s. From having a net loss of 11,000 long term residents in 2000, within two years the situation had turned right around with a net migration inflow of 38,000, followed by 35,000 the next year. This put considerable pressure on hospitals, schools and of course, housing. 

Under the law of supply and demand, the building industry should have been able to meet the demand for additional housing. To some extent it did: while 19,000 new dwelling consents were issued in 2001, by 2004 that had risen to 33,000, dropping back to 26,500 last year. But the sheer size of the migration inflow meant that the supply of housing could not keep up with demand. This created a critical supply shortage that put upward pressure on house prices and was the catalyst for house price rises across the country. According to the Reserve Bank, a net migration inflow of 1 percent of the population causes house price rises of around 10 percent. 

But while immigration created the demand for new housing the real culprit in constraining supply is government. 

In many areas – including the key Auckland housing market – land supply has been limited through local government’s adoption of urban boundaries. These boundaries have been designed by environmentalists to contain residential housing within municipal limits in order to prevent urban sprawl. But this policy has created a critical shortage of land for the building of new homes in some areas, forcing section prices through the roof. 

The Registered Master Builders Federation has researched the key drivers of New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis in the period from 2002 to 2007. They have  identified four main factors: the escalation in land costs have contributed 50 percent of the cost increase over the last five years, excessive council fees and levies are responsible for 15 percent, the increase in government compliance costs is also 15 percent, and the rise in labour and material costs have contributed 20 percent. First and foremost, the Federation have identified that land costs have had the single biggest impact on the un-affordability of housing by effectively doubling the cost of a section over the last five years. In their submission to the Commerce Committee’s Housing Affordability Inquiry, they state, “In many cases availability of land is not necessarily the issue – it’s the constraints the relevant local authority has imposed that are driving up land cost. For example, Auckland has a self-imposed growth limitation policy [with the intention of 'building up' rather than 'building out'], and Wellington has recently imposed in-fill constraints. Both these measures have resulted/will continue to result in artificial lifts in land cost. We suspect that in most cases, decision makers will not be fully aware of the consequential effects of the policies that they have adopted on land availability and cost”. 

The Federation has established that the rise in local council infrastructure levies and fees has created the single largest percentage increase in the growth of housing costs, escalating by an astonishing 900 percent over the last five years: “local authorities are using Infrastructure Fees and Development Levies in ways that are unreasonable and inappropriate, as they try to avoid raising general rates to fund their general infrastructure requirements”. 

They go on to state: “We surmise that many local authorities, looking to avoid increases in general rates, have loaded infrastructure/development costs onto the construction of new houses via infrastructure/development levies. Avoidance of [for example] a 1-2% rise in general rates across all ratepayers has resulted in a ~$10,000 impact on new homeowners – with the consequential across-the-board impacts on home affordability.” 

Another major cost driver is the rise in compliance costs across the building and construction industry. According to the Federation, many of the demands of the new Building Act 2004 are seen as excessive. In particular, whereas 9-10 pages of plans used to be sufficient to obtain a building consent, 30 pages of detail are now required, more than doubling the design time needed to produce the plans. Consent delays have also soared with the standard three month consenting period having blown out to six to nine months in many areas. Such delays have a serious impact on cash flows – builders must allow for it, and clients are forced to carry the costs of construction and renting for far longer than they should. 

The Federation also notes that “in too many cases Resource Management Act consents are being required for minor building site works and/or the RMA consenting process is not being conducted in optimal tandem with the Building Act consenting process.” They explain that the delays in the building consent process are largely caused by the “uncertain and inconsistent” treatment of consent applications, noting that “for some two years the particular standard to be achieved was unclear and variable” as a result of a lack of leadership from the government. 

They conclude: “We are extremely concerned that the building and construction industry will become far too ham-strung by undue rules, regulations and requirements, such that we have a significant compliance ‘bureaucracy’ effect which in turn significantly impacts on housing affordability.”

In its submission to the Housing Affordability Inquiry the Reserve Bank urges the government to take a cautious approach to schemes that increase demand for affordable housing: “The Reserve Bank is of the view that government policies should focus on increasing the responsiveness of housing supply to changes in demand rather than schemes which increase demand… A review of planning practices may be required, with a view to possibly relaxing ‘urban fences’ and encouraging medium density redevelopment in existing urban areas”. The problem is that rather than addressing some of the legitimate concerns that identify government as a key contributor to New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis, Labour is in denial. Instead of dealing with the crucial issues of constraints on the supply of land and the excessive cost of bureaucracy, the government has introduced a Housing Affordability Bill that completely ignores them. Labour’s Bill encourages local authorities to adopt a policy regime that will require property developers to allocate a proportion of their development for “affordable housing” – which the council will then administer. By essentially confiscating property rights, this new Bill would make Karl Marx proud. The housing affordability crisis has occurred under Labour’s watch: a dramatic surge in net migration created an unprecedented demand for new housing, but rather than freeing up market mechanisms to respond to the increased demand, they effectively did the opposite. Not only did they fail to address government regulations that were strangling the supply of new land, but they introduced legislation that slowed-down housing construction. In fact, Labour’s record in this area brings to mind the words of economist Thomas Sowell: “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it”.

People Power NZ create “mirror site” in website format so as to breach the EFA.

People Power NZ is delighted to announce that we have created a “mirror site” of our blog www.peoplepowernz.wordpress.com in website format, at www.people-powernz.org for the express and intent purpose of publically violating the Electoral Finance Act and its ludicrous distinction between “blogs” and “websites”.
 
While the Electoral Finance Act does not apparently cover blogs that oppose a particular political party, websites are covered by the legislation, with the ”dontvotelabour” website being recently shut down as an example of this draconian law.
 
We would invite the Electoral Commission to:
 
1/ Attempt to make People Power NZ comply with the Electoral Finance Act, by making us publish our names and addresses on the website.
 
2/ Attempt to shut down the People Power NZ website for non-compliance.
 
Unlike dontvotelabour creator Andy Moore, People Power NZ DO have the money to fight this issue in the courts, assuming of course that this issue reaches this stage.
 
So…….come and get us.
People Power – “Power to the People”
 
www.peoplepowernz.wordpress.com

Bryce Edwards: Anti-Labour website shut down.

ePolitics meets political finance in the case of Andrew Moore’s Don’t Vote Labour website being shut down after the Electoral Commission informed Moore that he stood to be fined up to $10,000 if he continued to publish it without providing his personal details. In stark contrast, the Commission has also publicly stated that political party websites don’t necessarily need to comply with the same rules. The shutting down of this anti-Labour website is the first case under the EFA that shows just how ridiculous and anti-democratic the EFA is. [Read more below]

Under New Zealand’s electoral law all websites that advocate for or against a political party are classified as ‘election advertisements’ during election year. They must therefore include the name and residential address of the authorising publisher. While some types of website activities are exempt under the Electoral Finance Act (EFA), such as blogs and newspapers, general websites are not.

Therefore the Electoral Commission has contacted Andrew Moore to demand that he publish his name and home address – No PO Box numbers allowed – to comply with the EFA. Like many individuals Moore doesn’t want to have his residential address publicised on the internet. He says that ‘Since I live at home, there is no way that I would be prepared to do this, as it would place my family and the house itself at risk’. This is a fair point. Political activists risk abusive calls, letters, visits, and possible property damage or worse when their home addresses are widely publicised. And the more radical the opinions expressed by the activist, the more likely their homes are to be targeted. So anyone not wanting their family home address being publicised on a politically contentious website is making a fair point. Moore is also probably correct when he says that the Electoral Commission’s actions are ‘a breach of freedom of speech’.

A drafting error?

Kiwiblog points out that the prosecution and shutting down of websites such as dontvotelabour.co.nz is not merely due to a drafting error or oversight in the EFA, but a deliberate choice made by those political parties: ‘Labour and the Greens voted against an amendment which would have had all non commercial speech on the Internet defined as not being an election advertisement’.

It’s possibly ironic (or ridiculous) that Moore will probably soon re-launch his website as a blog and the Electoral Commission will be unable to touch him.

Political party websites not prosecuted

It is perhaps another sign of the ridiculousness of the EFA that political party websites do not necessarily need to have authorisation. The Electoral Commission spokesperson Peter Northcote says that political party websites would not necessarily fall within the definition of an election advertisement unless asking for votes. ‘If you look at the Labour site, it’s not shouting ‘vote for us’. It’s a corporate website.’ To that end, the Electoral Commission has not yet scrutinised the websites of political parties, choosing to prioritise shutting down sites such as dontvotelabour.org.nz According to the NZ Herald, all but one of the political party websites do not currently carry the details of who has authorised the sites and where they live.

Northcote says that the Commission is unable to say exactly when the line is crossed when a political party website becomes an election advertisement, and thus ‘It’s one of a number of the greyer online areas that we are seeking legal advice on’. See: Political party websites side-step election laws

This all makes a mockery of state intervention into politics and ePolitics. Not surprisingly, the NZ Herald has blasted the shutting down of the website in an editorial – see: Absurdity of vigilance already felt. The Herald comments:

Is this going to be the story of the year: constant vigilance of any form of public speech to ensure it complies with all 148 clauses of the act? How absurd that New Zealanders can no longer make a political statement in an election year without satisfying a welter of petty regulation.

The newspaper also raises the point that the defenders of political finance reform constantly made the argument that the issue wasn’t about free speech, but about restricting those who wanted to spend ‘big money’: ‘When the Herald first raised its voice against this prospect, some said we overstated the threat to free speech. The financial restrictions applied only to expensive speech’. This event clearly now puts paid to that dishonest argument. After all, the Moore website is not some expensive election advertisement – Moore says it’s only cost him about $50.

The Herald points out that although the ‘Justice Minister expects the commission to “use common sense”’ when dealing with situations such as ePolitics, ‘but how is it supposed to know whether anonymity on the web is within the law’s tolerance?’ The paper says that ‘Those who delight in absurdity could have a field day from now until the election’.

Should rightwingers be defended?

So who is Andrew Moore and what are his politics? He’s a Christchurch Act party member. Does this therefore mean that the left shouldn’t defend his right to publish his views on the web? No. Moore might have a lot of objectionable politics, but the clampdown on him by the EFA-mandated Electoral Commission should obviously still be opposed.

It’s also worth pointing out that Moore has been relatively upfront about his membership of the Act party. And Ironically, for the vast majority of people that might view his website, this information is probably a lot more useful and important than knowing where he lives.

But did Moore set up his website to deliberately flout the EFA? Obviously he did. But that doesn’t make any difference. It’s good to see him testing the EFA and the Electoral Commission. His experiment has been very instructive. And regardless of his intentions, he’s still been the victim of an anti-democratic piece of legislation. Similarly, if a trade union set out to flaunt an anti-democratic and anti-union element of the Employment Relations Act (such as its prohibitions on many types of strike activity), this would also be something that the left should support.

For a different view on all this, try No Right Turn’s blog post entitled A martyr in his own mind. This argues that the requirements for including your name and address are ‘not onerous’, and Moore has ‘chosen to play the martyr’, and ‘This is not something anyone should have any sympathy for’.

NZ Listener: Money doesn’t talk.

by David W Young

Big business has no reason to cross the government’s palm with silver.

A curious feature of the never-ending debate about the Electoral Finance Act is the depth of concern some people have about the influence of big business on politics. The act’s defenders apparently believe there is a real risk that corporate New Zealand could use its deep pockets to hijack the political process. This fear is odd. It certainly over-estimates the influence that businesses have on politics, and probably exaggerates their interest in changing an election outcome.

For most companies, it makes little sense to get out the chequebooks for politicians. In New Zealand, chief executives don’t have to pay money or lay on gifts to get face-to-face time with a political leader. It is a very inefficient way to get the policies you want, compared with employing lobbyists or public relations professionals, or calling the politicians yourself. It’s also an easy way to upset shareholders and staff: no matter how the cash is divvied up between the parties, someone is going to be unhappy.

The only real reason for a company to give money to politicians is a fairly boring one: the earnest desire to be a good corporate citizen. Buying carbon credits and building Habitats for Humanity have become much more popular and effective ways of feeling good.

Few listed companies make political donations these days. Telecom gave it up in 2006, shortly after government intervention in the sector saw its share value plummet. Then-chief executive Theresa Gattung had warned the government off regulation by invoking the potential loss of money to “mum and dad” shareholders, not by threatening to cut the rather meagre $50k donation and corporate box time.

Across the Tasman, free market think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs has pointed out that Australian businesses are putting less money into politics than they used to, because the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s effectively gave companies the playing field they wanted.

Simply put, big businesses don’t need to spend time in smoky back rooms plotting to overthrow hostile governments – they can move offshore more easily than ever before.

Last election, there were $3.2 million of declared donations over $10,000. As political scientist Bryce Edwards points out, this is a fraction of the money the parties get from the taxpayer through parliamentary funding. Still, it’s a fair whack. We’ll never know how much came from businesses, unions and wealthy individuals – but having spent a few years working for a political party that was big on fundraising, I’d say most came from the latter.

Advocates of the Electoral Finance Act point to these millions – and those spent by members of the Exclusive Brethren supporting National – as evidence that a law change was needed.

It would be hard to find a less competent bunch of political interferers than the Brethren. But even if they had got their act together, there’s little evidence that big money can sway an election result in any serious way.

In the United States, presidential candidates need tens of millions of dollars just to be taken seriously. Even there, however, economist Steven Levitt finds that money doesn’t buy victory. Levitt has discovered that a winning candidate can cut campaign spending by half and his or her vote will drop by only one percent. Similarly, a loser can double it and his or her vote will climb by only one percent.

In New Zealand, the Act Party has historically been the richest party after Labour and National, but hardly the most successful. Some of the big business lobby groups themselves have plenty of cash but low public esteem.

Businesses do have sway, but it doesn’t come through their wallets. They participate in business confidence surveys to which pundits and the government are sensitively attuned. Business leaders serve on public boards. Chief executives are regularly consulted by the main political parties. Lobby groups participate behind the scenes on policy formation.

Despite efforts by several parties, small business owners have never voted as a bloc. There are enough of them to ensure that if any party could come up with the right policy prescription to woo them in 2008, business really could have an impressive amount of influence on politics.

Who hates free speech and freedom of expression the most?

Trick question: they all do – equally!

Mike Moore: Repeal electoral act … that’s progress.

5:00AM Thursday January 31, 2008
By Mike Moore

 

Dissent is the lifeblood and oxygen of progressive politics. It always has been.

We social democrats trace our history of dissent back through the centuries as we wrung concessions out of the powerful and privileged.

The Magna Carta, the glorious revolution in Britain when it was decided that ordinary men and women had rights, that the monarch was accountable to the law, not above it, and had to seek the approval of Parliament to take and spend the people’s money, makes up this progressive history.

We have our martyrs and heroes. The Levellers, Chartists, all who fought for a more equal, open society and system, are our ancestors.

The Parliamentary Act of Tolerance, to allow freedom of religion, the progressive widening of the franchise to give more people power to vote, eventually women, made British liberal/labour thinking gravitate towards parliamentary action.

Democracy gives the people power. The European radical tradition, which did not have a parliamentary outlet, caused revolutionary reaction.

Trade unions were at the forefront of seeking social justice through parliamentary reform, the right to collectively bargain, the right to strike, struggles fought and still being fought for generations. Progressives have an anti-authoritarian genetic make-up.

Progressive political thinking did not begin with the election of the first Labour Government, or even the progressive liberal governments earlier. There were many Australian-born ministers in the first NZ Labour Cabinet – dissenters, trade unionists, who were hounded out of Australia.

Dissenters throughout history have had a strong, religious backbone. The right to believe, to worship how you wanted, motivated great progressive, and not so progressive, movements.

The Enlightenment was about freedom of religions and freedom from religion. If we were all God’s children, surely then we were equal in His eyes and should be equal under the law. The king did not have divine rights to rule.

Christianity played a huge role in the beliefs of early Labour, we owed more to Methodism than to Marx. Branches of my union, the Printers Union, were called ‘chapels’; the father of the chapel, even in my day, was the chairman of the union branch.

Our first Labour Prime Minister, Savage, was a strong Catholic; Nash, a lay preacher; Nordmeyer a Presbyterian Minister; Kirk a young Salvation Army member; and Lange, initially a devout Methodist. Labour’s relationship with the Ratana Church was the key to holding power in Maoridom for generations.

Early New Zealand Labour personalities dissented. Many went to prison for their principles. Paddy Webb, later a minister, was stripped of his parliamentary seat and lost his civil rights for 10 years because of his opposition to conscription during World War I.

Tim Armstrong, Bob Semple and Peter Fraser were jailed for seditious behaviour. Walter Nash was fined for importing seditious material. That’s two future Labour Prime Ministers with criminal convictions.

Anti-sedition laws in New Zealand were extended by the 1920 War Continuance Act (Sedition) to include the promotion of class warfare. Teachers had to swear oaths of allegiance to weed out those who might have undesirable political opinions.

We didn’t close down dissent. It was the Conservatives who famously jammed a radio station in the 1930s. During the 1951 waterfront dispute, a National Government used wartime legislation, still on the books, to censor the media and make it an offence to assist those declared by law to be strikers.

Years after I was elected to Parliament, I read an interview with my mother who told the story of delivering leaflets supporting the workers at night with me in a pram covered with illegal leaflets. As a boy, I delivered ‘No Maoris, No Tour’ leaflets. More recently we saw splendid dissent during the anti-Vietnam War, anti-nuclear and the anti-apartheid struggle. One current minister was ejected physically from the parliamentary gallery for protesting against the extension of the powers of the Security Intelligence Service.

This short history of democratic Labour and dissent is to remind people of Labour’s traditions. Why and how we stand on the shoulders of others in our historic commitment to human rights; freedom at home and abroad.

Early Labour took unpopular, minority stands, attacking the Government of the day for their imperialist slaughter of Samoans in an early independence uprising. These are the historic planks that made our platform.

Why then the problem now with Christians? Is it because we don’t approve of their brand of Christianity?

Why then this historic blunder of the Electoral Finance Act, which contradicts this fine tradition?

Why the silence of the lambs in the civil rights movement who so publicly condemned me when I suggested we should merge tax and social benefit numbers to prevent fraud?

Geoffrey Palmer was at his thundering best when he attacked Muldoon for his retrospective and fast-track legislation, and for using SIS files on opponents.

There’s a cost to disagreeing, as I found when I published an article comparing all this to Muldoonism. The response was furious and focused. Civil Rights groups have been eerily silent. The Human Rights Commissioner, bravely and almost alone, has spoken out.

Is it all a cock-up or a conspiracy that we have enacted such a repressive, unworkable, flawed law to cover election year activists?

Bit of both. Traumatised by the Brethren, who the Government believed were prepared to use private detectives to check out family members and spend millions, the Government has used the hammer of the state to smash a few nutters.

We are all affected by the heavy-handed response. The consequence has been legislation that will be tested in court and be found to be unworkable. Good.

Why should you have to register with the state if you want to oppose or support a political party, or promote public policy? Lawyers have suggested that cartoonists who seek to persuade readers could be covered, even theatre.

You may have to ask permission of a candidate to email or write a letter in their support, but not if you rubbish them. A private poster on your own wall is covered – is graffiti?

Someone could set up a free giveaway paper, lose a million dollars, go broke, and that’s not covered. Even MPs who voted for the legislation can’t work out how to spend their own electorate allowances.

People are going to test this law, perhaps get a terminally-ill person in a hospice to be an agent. A heroic defence was suggested, that is the law of common sense. Unique in world jurisprudence – tell that to the judge or electoral commissioner who closed down an anti-Government webpage. The blogger wouldn’t give his address because he lived at home and might upset mom. Is this silly or sinister? Both.

My plea to the party I love is to just repeal the act. Accept it’s wrong in substance and principle before it hurts us further and does the exact opposite of what’s intended by encouraging big money to circumvent this law. J’Accuse.

Don’t Vote Labour: The video.

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=XpDzpWZugSc

Press Release: 31/1/08: “Strike 3″ for People Power.

Mt Roskill Labour Electorate office makes it “Strike 3” for People Power New Zealand.

The Mt Roskill Electorate office of MP Phil Goff was the third successful strike for People Power New Zealand today, as the independent citizens initiated lobby group continue their active protest against the Electoral Finance Act.

“Labour-Leader in waiting Phil Goff was an enthusiastic champion for the passage of the Electoral Finance Act becoming law, so is a worthy recipient of a visit from People Power NZ”.

“It is a mystery to us why the citizens of Mt Roskill would continue to vote for a local MP who actively restricts their freedom of expression, and who actually resides in Clevedon, not Mt Roskill, however in a few short months, Mr Goff will be settling into the Opposition benches within Parliament, so it won’t matter for too much longer” said a spokesperson from People Power.

“Mr Goff will also have to think of some other campaign ideas in his Mt Roskill Electorate, aside from his tried and tested trick of getting one of his electoral lackeys to park his van in a Mt Roskill street, attach a sign that reads “visiting Electorate – back in 5 minutes”, when all the while Mr Goff isn’t even in the suburb at the time!

Labour is gone, and Goff is off, and it will all be thanks to the citizens of Mt Roskill exercising “People Power”.

ENDS
 
People Power – “Power to the People”
 
www.peoplepowernz.wordpress.com

“Don’t vote Labour” website re-established.

www.dontvotelabour.net