Audrey Young: KiwiBuild reset - Megan Woods gives masterclass in surrendering to failure

Housing Minister Megan Woods and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson at the KiwiBuild "backdown". Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

It is clear the Government can't make up its mind about targets.

It's good for child poverty reduction to have an overall target and short-term targets, so much so that it is now a statutory requirement to set targets.

It is not a good idea to set a target for child immunisations.

It is a good idea to set a target for the reduction of road deaths over 10 years.

It is not good to have targets to reduce the rate of suicide because that could be interpreted as a tolerance for any suicide.

It is not a good idea to set a target to lift NCEA results but it is a good idea to set a target date to reduce the prison muster.

It was not a good idea, in hindsight, to promise 100,000 KiwiBuild houses over 10 years, even though the problem was with the short-term targets.

But it is a good idea, apparently, to deal with the KiwiBuild nightmare by ditching every target that might not be met and say, as Housing Minister Megan Woods did repeatedly: "We will build as many as we can as quickly as we can."

It is not a line that would be acceptable in many other policy areas.

Imagine the farmers saying: "We will lower methane emissions as much as we can, as quickly as we can."

But Woods gave a masterclass today in political communication that should impress not only her hapless predecessor, Phil Twyford, but every other member of the Cabinet that could be prone to trouble.

Let's not call it a reset. It was a backdown to behold, a political surrender painted as showing courage and honesty to voters.

The groundwork and admissions of failure had been laid over the previous two months since the Cabinet reshuffle removed Housing from Twyford.

Outlining the backdown, Woods showed why she has become the Ms Fixit in Jacinda Ardern's Cabinet, or for the baby boomers, the Allan Martin of the Cabinet – of LV Martin and Son.

"It's the putting right that counts," he used to say.

In putting KiwiBuild right, Woods put all the emphasis on the future, one that contains no targets for affordable KiwiBuild homes but which will apparently still be built if she can get the incentives right for private developers.

The Government's puny subsidies and grants that have helped a few people but not nearly enough to get into first homes, including KiwiBuild, will be relaxed and renamed (First Home Loan and First Home Grants) to open them up.

National's housing spokeswoman Judith Collins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

More importantly Woods announced a very handsome $400 million to allocate to various schemes yet to be approved to help low- to middle-income first-home buyers get on to the property ladder.

Some such schemes, such as rent to buy or shared equity, are already being operated by the likes of the Housing Foundation and Habitat for Humanity.

They could scale up or the Government could come up with its own scheme.

All the detail has yet to be submitted to the Cabinet by Woods and approved, and it is a $400m idea that will be raw meat to Judith Collins.

Greens Party co-leader Marama Davidson sat next to Woods throughout her nearly hour-long press conference, claiming Green credit, as she rightly should, for another policy ticked off from the party's confidence and supply agreement with Labour.

Woods sold the $400m for schemes as an evolutionary step in the large role Governments have historically played over the years in helping Kiwis get into home ownership, be it by a State Advances Loan, a Post Office home ownership account or a Welcome Home Loan.

She will publish a monthly "dashboard" giving updates on all sorts of data related to home building in New Zealand but you can guarantee there won't be a target among them.