Category: market
Voting National is not compatible with caring about climate change. Full-stop.
Generation Zero have just released an article suggesting “You can do Both … Vote Centre-Right [and] Care About Climate Change.”
They offer three ways this is supposedly possible… in reverse order:
3) Don’t Vote for ACT or the Conservatives (which is true, but kind of like saying if you care about people, don’t murder anyone)
2) Consider party voting United Future, Maori or New Zealand First (OK, those parties do/will prevent some of National’s most extreme policies, but you’re still actively blocking the possibility of a Prime Minister who’s actually sure he believes in climate change)
And worst of all:
1) Vote for National but make it clear that you care about climate change (Sorry, No.)
They seem to have forgotten their own previous release about how Bill English (deputy PM and the guy basically in charge of everything except selfies and smear campaigns) thinks climate change is “a non-issue at the moment, because there are more pressing concerns,” and wants to adapt to climate change after the effects are felt rather than mitigate against it now.
If you doubt their anecdotal account, English later confirmed in Parliament that he did say it, and does think it. Besides, it’s entirely consistent with National’s record. They provide little more than lip service to climate change – and often not even that: they don’t even answer questions about it, including Generation Zero’s!
The truth is: If you want to vote centre-right and care about climate change, vote Green. In global and historical context the Greens and Labour are centre-right. (National are hard right and ACT have no place being mentioned in a blog with the word “centre” in the title).
However, it’s doubtful whether a “climate voter” can vote for any party that supports sustaining the capitalist system, given that capitalism is based on an unavoidably anti-environmental premise: that we can have infinite growth in a finite world. Sorry, that’s not possible, and neither is prioritising both Creation and Mammon.
National’s big housing announcement: tinkering for the middle-class, hand-outs for the rich
One-word summary: Pathetic.
I’ve blogged before about National’s staggering denial of the housing affordability crisis. It seems they’ve now woken up somewhat, as they’ve released a housing policy as the flagship policy announcement of their campaign launch.
They claim to have “overhauled” the existing scheme (introduced by Labour in 2007) whereby you can withdraw from your KiwiSaver savings for a deposit on your first home, and many people can get a government top-up too.
In fact, they’re only making a few changes to the scheme:
1) They’re increasing the house price limits – you can now buy a house worth more and still be eligible for the top-up. This is good and necessary, given our skyrocketing house prices. But it will be generally wealthier people gaining eligibility.
2) That’s even more true for the second change: Currently, the top-up is $1,000 for every year you’ve been in KiwiSaver, to a maximum of $5,000. National will double these amounts, but here’s the kicker: only for those buying or building brand new houses.
3) Aside from the top-up, you can currently only withdraw your employee and employer contributions for your first home deposit. National propose to let you withdraw your annual government contributions (max $521/year) too. I’m actually 100% behind this, and don’t know why it’s not already the case – but, again, the people with the maximum government contributions will usually be wealthier.
4) In October, the Reserve Bank introduced Loan-to-Value ratio restrictions, meaning most buyers now need a 20% deposit for a home loan. This has slowed house-price inflation, but also priced poorer people out of the market. Under National’s proposal, first home buyers will now only need a 10% deposit. This will certainly help, but it’s only a partial backing-away from the Reserve Bank’s policy.
I agree with most of the above, and I’m glad the government have stopped ignoring at least one aspect of the housing crisis.
But there are at least five significant problems, which mean this policy completely misses the mark:
Firstly, it’s pretty small-fry. A lot of it is good, but “tinkered” or at best “expanded” is more accurate than “overhauled.” A couple with maximum eligibility will be able to draw $7,294 more of their savings for their house deposit. If they can afford a new house, they’ll also get $10,000 more from the government. They’ll also probably benefit from being able to buy with a lower deposit – let’s round up the total benefit to $20,000. But that’s still only how much house prices inflate in Auckland and Christchurch every few months. (If you’re buying on your own, all these amounts will be halved, except the house cost/inflation of course.)
Secondly, it helps the better-off the most. “Maximum eligibility” does not correspond to maximum need, but maximum privilege. This is already a flaw with KiwiSaver and the home withdrawal scheme – the people with the most to withdraw are those who’ve earned the most since 2007. But it’s compounded under National’s proposals.
Even more significantly, while the proposed expansions let normal buyers withdraw more of their own savings, they give an extra hand-out of $5,000 per person free money to those who can afford to build or buy new houses. How many people do you know who can afford a new house, let alone for their first home? If you can think of anyone, I’m guessing they either have parental assistance, inherited wealth or very high-earning jobs (you can earn quite a lot and still be eligible, btw). Acknowledging that even these privileged people need help buying homes is admission that our house prices are out of control. But it’s disgusting that the less-well-off are denied this generous and much-needed hand-out.
Thirdly, National’s numbers look impressive by themselves (90,000 helped! Thousands of $ of support! Only costs $218 million!), but if you actually whip out your calculator and analyse them, you’ll notice that only the 10,000 luckiest will be eligible for the big bucks, their mortgages will still be officially classified as 150% unaffordable, and even with these big benefactors pushing up the average, the average assistance is only about $2,000 per home-buyer.
Fourthly, this only helps people buy their first home; it doesn’t do anything about the investors with multiple homes, crowding the market and pushing both rents and house prices sky-high. Unlike in most other countries, you can still “earn” tax-free passive parasite income off other people’s poverty, and unlike Mana, Green and Labour, National don’t see a problem with this (not surprising, since many of them are property investors themselves).
Fifthly, the best National can offer is modifying an old Labour idea, which speaks volumes about their lack of vision. Labour thought up KiwiSaver in the first place, and now they, Green and Mana actually have new ideas to help people into home ownership – and, unlike for National, the most emphasis goes to the people that need it the most.
Housing crises are great for Brownlee’s net worth
Graph from The Press
A quick recap on the NZ and Christchurch housing affordability crises:
– 80s-present: NZ housing affordability worsens throughout the neo-liberal era (p. 13-14, 68-70).
– 24/1/2011: Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington and Tauranga house prices assessed as “severely unaffordable.”
– 2010-2012: Canterbury earthquakes reduce housing supply and increase rental housing demand.
– 20/3/2012: National and Gerry Brownlee decide to leave the market to sort out the Christchurch housing crisis.
– 18/6/2012: Brownlee suggests rent rises in Christchurch aren’t “astronomical” compared to other cities.
– 29/6/2012: Brownlee and John Key deny there’s a housing crisis in Christchurch.
– 7/7/2012: Brownlee says he can only see positives in Christchurch’s skyrocketing rents.
– 29/10/2012: John Key rules out a capital gains tax like most countries have, simultaneously showing just how out of touch he is.
– 27/8/2013: Housing is now less affordable in Christchurch than Wellington.
– 14/5/2014: Christchurch rents projected to hit Auckland levels in January 2015. Housing Minister Nick Smith suggests “the real problem” is not enough rental accommodation for tourists.
– 15/5/2014: The Budget offers a pittance and cuts for housing, and worse for Chch.
– 19/5/2014: An OECD report finds New Zealand has the most over-valued houses in the developed world. Key, true to form, disagrees with the OECD, and tries to spin the news as a positive as more people are entering the “housing market.”
A consistent theme emerges in the current government’s attitude to these developments: (a) there’s no crisis – if anything it’s a good thing, (b) if there is a crisis, the market will sort it out by itself (because dog-eat-dog individual selfishness systems are great for the vulnerable, eh).
It’s tempting to say they’re simply idiots, but it’s better to ask which groups in society are they representing, and which aren’t they?
For most groups in society, the above information amounts to a housing crisis nationwide, and particularly in Christchurch. But for one group, rapidly rising rent and house prices doesn’t amount to a crisis, but an opportunity for increased profit. This is the group that treats housing as an investment, not somewhere to live: rental property investors.
Gerry Brownlee and many other National MPs are in this group of people. Most of Brownlee’s rental properties are in his own Ilam electorate, where rents in one suburb (Aorangi) rose by 51% in a year. I think this is a pretty important conflict of interest at the best of times, but even more so amid the housing crisis Brownlee and his party are determined to ignore.
I recently wrote to Brownlee, essentially asking him to clarify the question I asked in an earlier blog:
How much passive income does Brownlee get for his properties, and how much has it gone up since 2010 and him subsequently “letting the market sort out” the housing crisis?
If you’re interested, here’s Brownlee’s response. My attempt to name-drop the Official Information Act backfired – it turns out this info isn’t available under the OIA because it’s not government info. So the public don’t get any more detail than what’s listed on the register of pecuniary interests. I asked if he’d answer my questions anyway, as a goodwill gesture to one of his constituents… I’ll let you know if he replies.
If National win this year’s election, it will be because of personality and PR. If they lose, it will be because of housing. It’s the biggest issue in Brownlee’s electorate and the country. While National are denying, blaming and doing nothing, Labour are making supply-side and demand-side action on the housing crisis the centre of their campaign.
This is why we need a living wage
More free healthcare for kids and extended parental leave are both great ideas in the Budget – stolen from Labour of course but I’m still glad they’re doing them.
Nonetheless, this can’t seriously be called a “family focussed” budget while they’re still doing next to nothing about the housing affordability crisis, the jobs crisis, child poverty and inequality.
Perhaps (though only perhaps) it’s more fair to say that they’re not ignoring these issues; they just have faith in the magical power of the market to solve them all.
But their own numbers show that’s working about as well as Brownlee’s “let the market sort it out” worked for the Christchurch housing crisis. Yes, the economy is growing again, but that growth isn’t making its way into the pockets of ordinary workers. From 2014-2018, they’re forecasting 14.2% GDP growth, but only 4% wage growth.
In fact, this supports Thomas Piketty’s inequality thesis quite nicely: the natural and inevitable movement of capitalism is for wealth to accrue to the already-wealthy. In other words, you can’t solve inequality and poverty just by growing the economy. You need more radical interventions, as Piketty suggests. Mana’s tax policy – shifting the tax burden from poor and middle-income earners to the unproductive, untaxed income of the 1% – is a good start. Another much-needed policy is a minimum wage that allows people to live with dignity in society – the calculated Living Wage. This would mitigate against inequality across the board and end working poverty.
We can no longer use tough economic times as an excuse. We can afford these measures; we just need to decide to prioritise them, instead of letting our economic growth accrue to the unproductive parasite 1%.
Landlord, local MP, regional czar, next-door-neighbour-to-my-doctor, guy-who-took-a-photo-of-me-once
Inspired by comments on the Standard, I checked out the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament here. I was particularly interested in Gerry Brownlee’s* four** properties in his (and my) stomping ground of northwest Christchurch.
In ensuing Facebook discussion, a few questions quickly presented themselves:
- How much passive income does Brownlee get for his* properties, and how much has it gone up since 2010 and him subsequently “letting the market sort out” the housing crisis?
- How is someone whose decisions have such a massive impact on the Christchurch housing ‘market’ allowed to own potentially millions dollars’ worth* of properties here?
- Is it even ok to be both landlord and local MP for several houses’ worth of people?
- Is he a ‘good landlord?’ Are his properties part of the 44% of NZ’s rental housing assessed as in poor condition?
- Who’d like to become one of his tenants? (there are ways of finding out the addresses.)
* It’s possible that Brownlee only has a small pecuniary interest in the listed properties. The Register doesn’t declare other owners, if any.
** As at 31/01/2013. Apparently it’s become five since then.
Cut Your Hair 