There's been precious little progress with KiwiBuild. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
There's been precious little progress with KiwiBuild. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
OPINION:
Some simple questions for you this Thursday morning.
How is it possible to announce three years ago, a large-scale house-building programme on 26 hectares of inner-city Auckland land, and in the ensuing 36 months not build a single house?
How is it possible in 2017 as the new leaderof a troubled political party to, in your first announcement, promise light rail to Auckland airport up and running by now, to have not produced a single centimetre of track?
How is it possible to have bought, at the cost of $30 million, a chunk of land designated for houses, and then after eight months still not have done a single thing about it, the steering committee you promised to set up has not been set up, far less a house built.
How is it possible the person you hired to review your Covid response and MIQ issues when it comes to the myriad outbreaks, writes essentially the same report over and over again, the latest being the review into the February outbreak that led to Auckland being level-adjusted twice.
The report uses terms like ... haven't learned from previous occasions, same mistakes recurring, confusing messaging ... this, of course, a year into the pandemic.
There are the slightly more subtle questions that can be asked, like when you announce a series of policies to "tilt the housing market towards the first-home buyer" ... when exactly is that going to happen given the announcement was made in March and it's now heading towards the end of July and there is literally no sign of a first-home buyer being in better shape to buy their home given the market continues to do nothing except go up?
An actual question I asked last week of government minister Kris Faafoi, who happened to be on my show, was given your EV feebate will raise about a quarter of a billion dollars, what happens to the money if not enough people buy EVs?
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi. Photo / Mark Mitchell
He had no answer.
I asked the director general of health Ashley Bloomfield how much thought he had given to vaccinated people getting preferential treatment when it came to ongoing level adjustments, he did have an answer as it turns out, the answer was "not much".
Obviously I am barely warmed up here, I could go on for several columns, but I am assuming I am not the only one increasingly gobsmacked at just how little is actually getting done in this country.
It's one thing to debate policy or ideology, for example the crisis that's unfolding in just about every industry in this country when it comes to labour.
The profound lack of understanding that you can not grow, if you can not hire ... and the attitude of the government to the border being ... that labour shortages are easily solved simply by hiring locals and paying them more.
Almost as though business leaders are so thick they haven't thought about that, far less been trying for years to no great avail ... hence we bring talent in.
Mind you, the Government has on their watch seen the number of people unemployed for 10 years or more, more than double.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
They still call these people on job seeker "job ready" ... when you are that naïve, and think a person who hasn't held down work for a decade is "job ready", it's no wonder we have the labour crisis we do.
So we can go back and forth on the merits or otherwise of specific approaches to any given issue or crisis, that's what separates out parties philosophies and it's why we have elections.
But what this lot can't hide from is the black and white abject failure of announcing something that literally never actually happens.
That is simple dishonesty, it is deception, or if you accept that somehow in making the announcements they hoped something would come of it, then maybe its less dishonest, more pure hopelessness.
Either way, having followed this game since Muldoon I have never seen such a disorganised, unprofessional, inexperienced dangerous bunch of no-hopers.
It is why no one believes the cycle bridge at $780m will ever be built.
