1mo ago

Chris Hipkins overtakes Christopher Luxon as preferred prime minister in Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll

www.rnz.co.nz

Given that it's extremely rare to have a single term government in NZ, to be polling behind the opposition not even half way through your term is a dramatic swing in public opinion.

12 comments

Neither of them has a credible plan to end the 10+ years of housing crisis that New Zealanders have suffered.
- House prices were dropping under Labour.
  
  My rent went up under labour.
  
  Cool story. Unfortunately anecdotes are not data.
- You are aware that house prices have dropped significantly in the last few years, right? And not by a small amount, either.
  Out of the two, it's definitely National that have done the most to lower house prices, Labour made a colossal mess of Kiwibuild then kinda gave up.
  
  Could you please outline how you think National brought down house prices?
  I’m genuinely interested in your logic because I would have put it down to the recession, which would have happened regardless of who won the last election.
  
  I mean, neither of them did all that much, but National helped pass the intensification bill, plus higher interest rates cooled things down.
  I'm not sure what effect their other "free market" changes had, but it was mostly the economy, as well as the building industry catching up with demand.
  
  I agree that both of those things had an impact. However, the Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters Bill was passed by the previous Labour government with support from National.
  Interest rates are also set by the Reserve Bank which is almost wholly independent of the government of the day. The Minister can only appoint the Chairman but all monetary decisions are made by the monetary policy committee and politicians have no say over those decisions.
  
  You're right, very little of what National did helped, but labour achieved exactly the same thing.
  
  Bullshit. House prices were dropping under Labour and the trend reversed under National.
  
  Maybe house prices dropped but my rent keeps going up.
- The housing crisis is unfortunately a feature not a bug.
  New Zealanders are overcapitalized into housing so any real drop will hurt middle-class wealth. This is probably why everyone treats CGT as some crazy idea that will make a party un-electable, rather than a normal tax in most of the OECD.

12 comments