Well, yesterday was exciting – until it wasn’t. The day started with hope that we might get rid of this lacklustre Prime Minister. But ultimately finished in farce around midday as he appeared for the briefest of moments to declare that he had everyone’s support, when obviously he had very little, surrounded by back-stabbing bastards who remain loyal as long as nobody sneezes. Then after the election, it will clearly be time for him to Lux off into the corporate world in which he so belongs. An intellectual, political powerhouse, he is not.
Why am I writing about this? You may ask, given that it has nothing to do with architecture? The simple answer is that of course, in the axing of Chris Penk, the Minister for many things, Lux-once has not only got rid of the only competent person with any understanding of Defence, with Penk having been in the Navy and as a commander of an Australian submarine (although I’m not quite sure how he managed that as he is a Kiwi, but regardless), Luckson has now had to re-deploy two of his incredibly lame ministers in charge of Penk’s portfolios, such as Defence and here is where it impacts us in housing, as Minister of Construction. Meanwhile, our penile headed Prime Minister, and I say that reluctantly but honestly, in that his head resembles nothing more than a shiny plastic dildo, and should be put to use in similar means, sticking it into places where the sun doesn’t shine. However, Penk’s demotion places him in the unique position of clearly been the only person in the National cabinet that has not been a suck-up to the PM, who is the very definition of an ailing, lame duck, head of Government. Luxtux is not the future, that’s for sure.
By the election, and when Luxon no doubt gets rolled in the coming months after the election, whether he wins or not, Penk will be the lone person standing remaining unsullied and available to lead the National party once again. Bishop never really had a chance, except if he was to be elected by the common man or woman, as Bishop is a boy from the Hutt, and comes across as a boy from the Hutt, and gets things done as a boy from the Hutt, whether we agree with their focus or not. Similarly other members such as Stanford and Brown also get things done, but Brown just seems loathsome to me, as a product of his fecund Christianity and his obsession with roads everywhere, he is somebody that I would dearly like to see fall under the rear wheels of a truck. Penk on the other hand, has been a breath of fresh air to the construction industry.
Now hold on, I know what you’re going to say: that he knows nothing, and that has been the good point about it, because knowing nothing but being prepared to listen, has been a refreshing change from our previous succession of Ministers of Construction, who really have no clue and thereby took that to mean: do nothing. At least with Penk he has made several changes, moved legislation on, and produced at least an attempt to see some forward action in the field of construction, which previous Ministers have really, never managed. Not that I am particularly a fan of National, and clearly not a fan of ACT, or New Zealand Facist, but there is an opportunity here for a change. For some unknown reason, the Labour party has been labouring under the misapprehension that by doing nothing, they will inherit the Crown of Government purely by dint of the coalition falling apart at the seams. Well, that nearly happened yesterday, but ultimately it did not, and Luxury got back in to limp once more towards the finish line of possibly the worst government we’ve had since Rob Muldoon exited the election in a blaze of brandy, photo-glory, mumbling and shuffling into his ice cubes and leaving the country in a wreck, which took two whole decades to recover from.
In a similar manner, by trusting in Willis as a clearly inept financial minister, with a severe lack of imagination and understanding, Luxitive has condemned New Zealand to an extended downturn in economic events, one that is taking many years to climb out of the mire of debt. One of the few high points of this, and I know it doesn’t seem like a High Point at the moment, is that New Zealand’s housing price crash was desperately needed and desperately overdue. To all those that own property, the housing price crash will be a catastrophe, especially if you have to sell in the short term. But it has reduced our ridiculous mortgage-to-income ratio from an average of nine, now down to an average of six, making new buyers an option again. This is still far from what is needed for us to get to the desired mortgage-to-income average of three but to be honest, I don’t think that day will come. Many years ago, I went to a presentation by Gareth Morgan, who at that stage was setting up some form of opposition party to have whoever was in government, and he was talking about the rise of unaffordability of housing. He noted (correctly, of course, being an economist), that a housing correction was needed and there were only two ways of achieving this. Either fast, i.e. crash, or slow i.e. stagnation and deflation over many years. We started off with one and ended up with the other. Nobody likes either, but one hurts shorter and one hurts for longer. What is important for the construction industry is for prices to stay low, so that people can afford to build again.
We need for our industry a steady supply of new work to be coming through our books, both in the designing and drawing, as well as the consenting and construction. That’s the life blood for us in our business in this town, in this city, in this country, that we need construction in order to grow, and also in order to work our ways out of the morass that we find ourselves in. It is ironic that Laxon bangs on in his confession about the need for growth, while at the same time, his finance minister is stopping any growth by stifling the economy, and reducing us all to working from home, or staying on the dole, long-term. Again, looking back in history, at the Labour years following Muldoon’s demise, there were three long years between 1984 when Muldoon crashed the economy, and 1987 when David Lange and Roger Douglas rose to power and set about reinvigorating New Zealand’s moribund state of decline, and at last gave the common kiwi something to cheer about, and start us off in the opposite direction that we have been on periodically for a number of years.
Labour’s current viewpoint that if it leaves National alone, it will eventually shoot itself, clearly came unstuck yesterday, and they should be out widely proclaiming alternative campaign strategies today in an effort to get the public to focus on a viable alternative to National, especially now that Luckless has revealed he is a dead man walking. But I am listening to the news today, and I hear no mention of what Labour is doing as an alternative to what National has done. Surely Winston Peter’s time in the limelight is over, given the depth of the wrinkles on his face with long lost crevices encasing memories of what he used to be in his prime, before he just became the Minister for the Elderly. Similarly, young whippersnapper, David Seymour, surely the only minister that brings out the urge to connect his face with the larger end of a baseball bat, repeatedly, and his ACT party, has reached perhaps a low point in political savvy given the recent appointment of Paul Henry as a political candidate, which will probably last about as long as did Stuart Nash’s stupid run at being a politician yet again. Nash has gone, Henry will go and hopefully, Shane Jones too, will also dry up and blow away, with his incessant rhetoric around drilling for oil and slaughtering New Zealand’s native wildlife. We have no need for that here. We are not Texas. We don’t need to drill for oil.
We need to be buying electric cars, and building more solar farms, constructing more windmills, seeing as wind and solar are two things that New Zealand will never run out of. Yes, my car runs on petrol, but that’s why I live in Wellington, in that I don’t need a car to get to work. Yes, Aucklanders do need their cars at present, but their shiny new train track will at least start a reformation for them to avoid a full-blown cart economy at some point in the future. In the meantime therefore, I predict that National’s popularity will continue to decline and Chris Penk, if he keeps his powder dry (and he should know this having been Minister of Defence), he may yet spring back another time. In the meantime we are sorely lacking a coherent, Minister of Construction, having been settled with a replacement Minister, who know not only knows nothing, but is disinclined to listen, as has been showing with his numerous other portfolios. Roll on November, roll on the election.
In other news, of really significant effect for us here in Wellington, Mayor Little and Minister Bishop made a trip to the Arlington development today (might this have been scheduled for Minister Penk a mere day or two before?) and declared that work would begin. That’s great news – but also rather sad that it is now only going ahead at a third of its size. Not High density, barely Medium density, what we really don’t need is more Low density in the centre of Wellington.
While previous plans included more than 300 units, construction will start next year on 104 units. The units will be made up of 55 one-bedroom, 37 two-bedroom, and 12 four-bedroom units. The land will have one seven-storey building for one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, with the four-bedroom units in a terrace formation. Bishop said construction would start at the site next year, and would be completed by 2029. The minister said the Arlington development in Wellington’s Mt Cook suburb had been paused by the previous Labour government due to the cost. Costs had blown out on a plan for 301 apartments from $296 million budgeted in 2021 to $419m, he said.
Half the site will now be left empty. Anyone got any more news about this project?
