OPINION: KiwiBuild will be reset tomorrow.
Restarted, kickstarted, taken off life support, rewritten, redesigned.
What a shocker it has been. Has there been a bigger promise that has failed so spectacularly in recent decades?
- Greens may have given away clue about KiwiBuild reset
- Jacinda Ardern refuses to stand by major KiwiBuild goal
- KiwiBuild's head of delivery Helen O'Sullivan stepping down
And what a lesson. If you think you can mess with a market like housing that has so many variables over a long build time, then your name is Phil Twyford and you didn't do the hard work.
No wonder Twyford doesn't want to see us anymore - I think he's turned The AM Show down 15 times. You can run, Phil, but you can't hide.
I've given Phil plenty during this monumental over-reach, but he deserved it. He mugged the daylights out of National and it's hands-off approach to housing, he was smug and had a plan.
Except he didn't, did he?
Two chief executives of KiwiBuild have walked away, both with questions that need to be answered.
There's a fat chance of that.
Now the reset will come in the form of rent to own, I believe, so people struggling to borrow from the banks can rent then ultimately buy the house.
That will get home owsership up. Finally, two years into it, we may finally have a decent plan.
But think about it - what a disastrous waste of time it's been. KiwiBuild, a policy designed in 2013 still being redesigned and relaunched almost seven years later.
We have wasted so much time and the people who have paid the price are those on the fringes of homeownership.
Labour's people, probably. The market has dropped and first home buyers are back anyway - with or without Labour's help.
Duncan Garner is host of The AM Show.
