Labour is playing the race card over Chinese house buyers

HERE in Whanganui and Taranaki we don't worry so much about a manipulation of the housing market. We know they are expensive items and some can afford them with a struggle to save the deposit, as we all did in buying our first home.

Those of us trying to purchase when interest rates were around 20 per cent wish we had the chance to borrow as cheaply as people can today.

Those wanting to buy today wish they could purchase at the prices at which we were able to buy into the market.

Variables are relative generation to generation - maybe it was easier for us to buy when we had so little to choose from.

Labour has tried to make a meal of the Auckland housing market, blaming the Chinese purchasers based on surnames and claims that 9 per cent of the population are buying 40 per cent of the houses. They make no comparison with the Scottish, the Irish, the Dutch, Pacific Islanders or any other nationality or ethnicity, because it doesn't suit their purpose.

Derek Cheng, a reporter with the New Zealand Herald who has close ties to Whanganui, has taken issue with Labour's analysis of the housing stats.

He makes the point that there is no differentiation between those with Chinese-sounding surnames who have been here since the gold rush, those who are recent immigrants, and those purchasing from offshore.

It does not surprise many of us that recent immigrants would have the wherewithal to purchase a new home.

Part of the criteria for immigration is sufficient funding for accommodation and support.

Not only that, those people who are over-represented in work, educational achievement, salary scale and under-represented in welfare stats, crime stats and health needs tend to be in a better position to purchase their own home, regardless of ethnicity.

Because they have better opportunities for work with higher incomes and better prospects for promotion, they can save money at a faster rate and purchase a second or improved home, and so climb the property ladder more quickly.

Would it be such a surprise then that those driven for self-improvement are also over-represented in the property market?

Comments are often made that we cannot buy land in China, so why should we let foreign-based Chinese investors purchase property here?

Well, foreigners can buy property on leased land in China and, as far as I know, the Chinese can only do the same in their homeland.

In most other countries, foreigners can buy land - albeit with some constraints as to the type of property purchased and levels of scrutiny similar to either what we have had here for some time or what has been introduced recently in announcements by the Housing Minister or the Prime Minister.

I would rather live in a country where people are respected for behaviour and contribution, rather than ethnic background.

If we held born and bred New Zealanders to the same standards of effort, contribution, social responsibility, cost to the taxpayer, we may well find that the mucky end of debates around ethnicity pale into insignificance.

Debates about who is worthy and who is not worthy of respect and consideration seem to have never ended very well and I cite Europe through most of last century as the obvious example.

The Labour Party can run over and push the race button in an effort to lift electoral prospects - it's a game politicians play when they don't have good arguments for voters lending support to their party - but it won't work. And so it shouldn't.

We're all fellow travellers in this country and either we or our forebears made a choice to come here for a better life. Some of us just have a longer tenure as New Zealanders than others.