Panel Discussions
hosted By Susan Wood

In response to DAVID SHEARER interview

SUSAN WOOD
Time to welcome the panel. Political scientist Dr Bryce Edwards from Otago University; Herald columnist Fran O’Sullivan; and the Unite Union’s Matt McCarten. Morning to you all. Interesting politics, Bryce. Will it play out well for the electorate?

DR BRYCE EDWARDS - Political Scientist
I think so. I think this will be very popular, and Labour are very smart on this because National are very vulnerable on housing and the prices going up, especially in Auckland. But it also has to be seen in the context of this being Shearer’s last roll of the dice, really. He is desperate, and I think it will work for him, though. This will put Labour up in the polls, but it’s kind of desperate, and it will be seen as that because it’s essentially playing the race card. Let’s face it, the elephant in the room is Asian buyers, and so it’s xenophobic. In some ways, it could be seen in a minor way like Don Brash’s Orewa moment. He’ll get the boost, but he’ll have to get used to being accused of being racist, the Greens and NZ First are when they push these policies. And Labour really are pushing the xenophobic policies on land sales, on foreign investment, and we’re seeing race being a big part of what this debate is. It’s dog whistle politics.

SUSAN Do you think it’ll be played out as xenophobic? I mean, we are buying properties in Hong Kong and Singapore.

MATT McCARTEN - National Secretary, Unite Union
Well, listen to Bryce - it’s true, it’s absolute nonsense. (BRYCE CHUCKLES) This is driven by a real concern.

BRYCE Oh, it is.

MATT In Auckland now, less than 60 per cent of homes are now owned by New Zealanders. I mean, are actually owned. It’s the first time it’s got that. Last year, 4700 homes were built in this country. 2600 were bought offshore. It is a real problem.

BRYCE It’s a real problem.

MATT And so what we’ve got now in NZ, where it was 30 per cent owned by first-home buyers, it’s now 5 per cent, so it’s a real issue. Now, the Chinese are third behind Australia and Britain. New Zealanders are going to say, ‘Something’s got to happen.’ And I think it’s a very clever policy. Quite separate. It’s needed. It’s going to put National on the back foot, and it will work.

SUSAN But, Fran, will it work, when you’re talking 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the markets by foreigners. You’re exempting Australians, which are one of the biggest groups. What real impact will it have?

FRAN O’SULLIVAN - NZ Herald Columnist
Well, exempting Australia is really the point which it falls a bit, because Australia, very much it’s been marketed, NZ’s been marketed again with the no capital gains tax, with the no stamp duty, and so there’s been a lot of Australian investment. But I think there’s issues in Auckland, and they’re going to have to play this really, really carefully because Auckland is an immigrant city anyway, and you’ve got to be careful that this is not seen as a tap on China only, and a lot of the push has come from China. But I’d like to point out also at the Mood of the Boardroom breakfast we had this week in Auckland, David Parker raised an interesting thing, and that was that he was thinking about immigration more broadly in relation to jobs. Like, he was raising the question, ‘Why are Asians coming in and working on our farms, working in our rest homes, wiping old people’s bums, basically?’

SUSAN Because no one else will do it?

FRAN Well, he said there was an issue about training our people to take those jobs, but I think you’ve got to be careful, because often people are here because we won’t do it.

SUSAN Yes, now, popular politics, Bryce, no doubt. The performance. Let’s talk about David Shearer’s performance. We know he’s on notice. He’s got till spring to get his act together. Did he perform in a leaderly-like way in that interview with Corin?

BRYCE Oh, he’s finessing his communication style, absolutely. I think he came across well. He was careful not to give it that strong overtone of racial politics, but nonetheless, that was still there. And it will be enough to save him for the next wee while, I think.

SUSAN Matt? Shearer’s performance?

MATT I think it was much better than it has been recently, and I think that everyone knows. Himself and everyone knows there’s a time, and that’s right. And I think he has let himself down in the media, the way he’s presented, and I think today was a good presentation.

SUSAN Good for him or good across the board, because I-

MATT Good for the party. I mean, the question always is, ‘Or who?’ And there’s no one who’s obvious in Labour.

BRYCE I think Cunliffe’s-

MATT Yeah, I know. I’m just saying there’s no one obvious.

FRAN Look, he’s hitting an issue which needs to be hit.

MATT Exactly.

FRAN And I think there’s a vulnerability here. There’s a vulnerability also with the Canterbury rebuild. There’s a vulnerability with our youth unemployment. These are big issues that centrist parties - and I count Labour and National as centrist parties.

BRYCE Absolutely.

FRAN Ones who are going to be leads and the next government should be looking at now, and, frankly, it’s the role of the Opposition to keep the government on their toes, and I think that was a much better performance than we’ve seen for a while.

MATT I think the Chinese and the Asian thing, which is a concern in terms of perceptions and everything, but you’ve got to see that what Labour are promoting is what most other Western countries actually do, when you’re talking about capital gains. In China, they’ve actually now restricted that people can only buy two homes, and the party apparatchiks, as we all know, money’s been flowing to them. (FRAN CHUCKLES) They’ve had lots of property. No, no, but it’s real. It’s real.

BRYCE That might be a more sensible policy here.

MATT They’re then take the money, and they’ve actually been buying in Auckland.

FRAN Well, I mean, really, what you’ve got is-

MATT And so what we’ve got to do is we have obligation-

SUSAN Let Fran go.

FRAN Well, I mean, you know, let’s face it, lots of people just leverage up the equity in their homes, existing equity, which gets bigger in the current boom to buy a second, third, fourth, fifth house. And that’s the principle that’s been sold to a lot of New Zealanders.

SUSAN And that’s been a lot of those low-deposit mortgages as well.

FRAN Yeah, absolutely, and based not on cash, not real cash, and I think you could change things overnight if you actually insisted that people put cash up, not just equity, and leveraging against that.

BRYCE But that will hit the poor. That will make the poor-

FRAN No, no. It would hit speculators, because you’d have to have an existing house with equity in it to actually leverage the next one. If you had to save that-

MATT 95 per cent of homes in this country are bought by people who are overseas or have already got homes. 95 per cent.

SUSAN All right. We’ll leave it there. I find that hard number to believe.

MATT It used to be 70 per cent.

SUSAN No, is that number correct? I think the numbers-

BRYCE 4 per cent. I’ve seen research that shows about 4 per cent of new buyers are overseas people that don’t intend to come here.

SUSAN Yes.

BRYCE Because we’ve got buyers overseas that are buying, and they’re not living here, but they intend to come here.

FRAN But you also have a lot of people who have recently come to NZ. They might be going through the immigration process.

SUSAN And they’ve got to be allowed to have a home as well.

BRYCE Which shows why this is scapegoating, really.

MATT No, no. Labour in their policy is actually allowing for that. What they’re saying is that if they’re coming here on permanent residency, they can buy, but if they don’t stay here, they’ve got to sell up.

SUSAN Right, we’ve got to leave it there.

ENDS

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