Mike Hosking: KiwiBuild fiasco could bring this Government down

COMMENT: Do you think it says something about the mentality, outlook, and perhaps even sheer arrogance of Phil Twyford, that he decided on our behalf, without the permission or knowledge of Cabinet or the Prime Minister, to simply change the rules on KiwiBuild?

The original deal was, if you were lucky enough to be drawn from the ballot you would appreciate the Government's help in getting you into a first home 0 and therefore wouldn't flip it, or flick it, for profit.

But unbeknown to just about anyone, apart from Grant Robertson and Shane Jones, Twyford decided that wasn't a good rule. He decided you could change it, instead of 100 per cent of the profits being taken off you, if you were caught, you had to give back just 30 per cent.

In other words you got to keep 70 per cent of the profits.

In what person's right mind is that fair, sensible, logical - or even sane? And what moron would think they can do that with other people's money? And what grandiose clown thinks he can do that without even getting the boss' sign off?

If you don't think that's as good an example as you will ever get that this whole KiwiBuild thing is a snake oil scam, then you are as mad as Twyford.

By the way, if you don't want to flip the house you can rent it out as well. Oh, you're not really allowed to, but if they catch you, you will only be pinged for part of your windfall.

So what do we have so far?

• A housing scheme that doesn't have enough money put in, in the first place. That's Treasury's assessment.

• A housing scheme that won't contribute anywhere near what the Government said it would to the market. That's from Treasury and the Reserve Bank.

• A housing scheme that isn't even close to getting people locked out of the market into a home, given the prices.

• A housing scheme in parts of the country that's actually more expensive than the open market prices already in play.

• A housing scheme that doesn't actually have any real demand, given they extended the ballot in places like Wanaka.

• A housing scheme with some homes in Auckland now on the open market, due to the fact the people who won the ballot didn't want the property, and the runners up didn't either.

• A housing scheme that is unilaterally being fiddled with, with our money, by a bloke whose head is so big it can't get through a door.

• And now, a housing scheme that because they changed the rules unilaterally, now needs a dedicated team to monitor who is selling their houses for the profit they're allowed to keep due to the changes of rules, and that team costs upwards of half a million dollars a year.

Does any of this make any sense at all?

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As I have said all along this is a house of cards, it's a jack up, it's a fantasy, it'll never happen, it won't work.

And it will be the one major policy that haunts this Government and potentially destroy them, and crazy Twyford is leading the charge.