Labour’s Surname Campaign Disgusts

“We are reaching a very sad point in New Zealand politics when the use of ethnic surnames becomes a tool for a political party to try to win votes,” says Affordable Auckland’s Mayoral and Albany candidate Stephen Berry.

“Phil Twyford should be embarrassed and ashamed to be fronting a televised scapegoat of the Wangs of New Zealand for blame over Auckland’s hyper-inflated housing sector. It is racist, it is disgusting and this sort of political discord has no place in liberal New Zealand.”

The Affordable Auckland candidate is just as concerned about affordable housing in Auckland as the Labour party but will have no truck with using negative racial sentiment for further his own political career. “Auckland’s house price rises are being driven by our woefully inadequate ability to increase the supply of land and houses. We need to take steps which increase supply to meet demand, making debasing racial attacks irrelevant.

“There are several ways this can be achieved at local body level. The most powerful tool the Council has to make affordable housing more available is to abolish the Metropolitan Urban limit to open up land supply. Currently only 0.7% of Auckland is urbanised and there is plentiful empty land surrounding the city. The Auckland Councils own study released yesterday proves Aucklanders want to have a stand-alone house on its own yard and they are still searching for this even in our over-heated property market.

“The second biggest factor keeping property prices high is the cost involved in dealing with the Council to even get permission to build. Len Brown admits it costs on average $30,000 per home to acquire resource consent. This figure increases when you factor in delays caused by NIMBYism, character and planning regulations. Even now in Hobsonville, residential development is being held up because ATEED wants to play venture capitalist by creating a Council controlled film industry when it is clear we need as many residential homes as we can to be built as quickly as possible..

“The solution to the housing crisis is not politicians playing the race card. The solution is getting the regulatory environment fixed so that Aucklanders have the ability to get on with buying or building their own home as cheaply as possible.”

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