Foreign buyers should have been banned years ago. Ignore the data that suggests it wasn't a problem. It was.
The data goes nowhere near capturing what was really happening in the housing market, especially Auckland's, where some foreign buyers were snapping up houses sight unseen.
The fact is, if we put this country on sale to the world, our citizens will end up being outbid by foreigners every time because we don't have their kind of cash.
Next to go was the Three Strikes law. That law is a dog. If that law was a household item it would be a cheap second-hand coffee pot showing all the signs of preparing to blow up in someone's face.
The reasoning behind the law was simply to lock people up for longer the more they offend.
That was a popular idea in the years spanning the Old Testament through to Dickensian England, but we've long moved on. We now know recidivist offenders need to be restored, not punished further. Punishment only entrenches their behaviour and costs us tons in imprisoning them.
But, National collected that antiquated piece of thinking because it was part of the coalition deal between National and Act back in 2008. Now neither of them need the glue of that terrible deal to bind them together. Good riddance to that law.
The last piece of junk we've had lying around is newly acquired. In fact, it's so new we haven't paid for it yet. Thankfully.
It's Auckland's East-West link. That road is so expensive it was going to cost us $327m a kilometre. To put that into perspective, Wellington's Pekapeka to Ōtaki expressway is costing us the same and that's for 13km, not 1km.
The East-West link has been described as the world's most expensive road. This overpriced junk lay around because National turned out to be a hoarder of roads. And, although it's nice to have a collection of roads, sometimes you should instead use your money for building things other than roads.
So, the spring clean is done, and it has been a good job.
But it has also been the easy stuff. Labour has only thrown out things that are easy to cancel and good for headlines. In fact, the party's entire 100-day to-do list is a bit of a cake walk. Most of the list is just a plan to set up inquiries, hold summits and pass law to spend more money.
What's not on the list are the hard jobs.
Those jobs require pulling out the gib and making some structural changes: child poverty, unaffordable housing, stretched health budgets. That's the stuff that really matters.
It would have been nice to see some tough tasks on the 100-day to-do list to show us these guys have real muscle.
But still, you have to give Labour credit. It has brought a new broom and wasted no time in putting it to use.
