Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
3 JULY 2016
Prime Minister’s housing announcement positive and negative – still playing the blame game
The positive from the Prime Minister’s housing statement today is that at last it’s an admission by the government that
housing is in crisis in New Zealand, says New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters.
“The negatives are that this $1 billion loan won’t even remotely cope with the number of houses needed for immigrants
coming into New Zealand annually, let alone our natural population increase.
“After eight years of doing nothing, this monetary sum won’t make up the huge deficit in infrastructure that National
has allowed to build up.
“The second serious negative is that the government refuses to take responsibility to provide a house building policy
for which central government should be responsible. Here after, this government will seek to blame local government for
the housing crisis on the pretence that they, and not central government, is responsible for the massive demand that now
exists.
“Remember it was Mr Key who was screaming at the government when in Opposition about a housing crisis and what were they
doing about it.
“It is a far bigger crisis now and he’s done nothing but added to the demand with mass immigration, with numbers even
bigger than Labour’s.”
ENDS