KEY POINTS:
Auckland is the problem and Southland the solution to the country's housing affordability crisis, according to Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt.
The mayor today hijacked the longrunning parliamentary inquiry into housing affordability, attacking his former city and make a pitch for his new one, where he said families could easily buy a three-bedroom house for under $150,000.
"Everything in place, it's just perfect."
By contrast, his former political stamping ground was to blame for many of the country's problems.
"We think the biggest problem this country has got is that a third of its people live in one city and that's completely thrown everything out of kilter in this country in terms of housing and other economic issues," he told MPs.
"It (Auckland) is stupid and it's in that narrow, thin little isthmus, that tiny area you are trying to cram in a third of this country's population and it's never going to be solved."
He said the only other countries in the world with a similar concentration of population in a single city were Uruguay, Armenia, the Bahamas, Iceland and the small African state of Gabon.
He said many problems such as housing affordability and roading congestion could be alleviated if more people moved south.
The Government should make Invercargill the "e-learning centre" for the country and should give potential immigrants extra points on their application if they committed to living for a set period in Southland.
But the straight-talking mayor wasn't about to gloss over some of the potential downsides of the deep south.
He admitted "it's freezing cold" and under questioning from MPs said the tan he was sporting had come from a trip to Australia.
- NZPA
