Labour Fiddles While National Turns a Blind Eye on Housing Inequality

The Opportunities Party says Labour’s promise to ban negative gearing on rental properties is a purely symbolic move that won’t get a single kiwi family from a car or garage into a real home.

“Labour and the other old parties are simply relieving themselves into the wind if they think such measures will address the underlying issues that have led to the current housing affordability crisis”, says TOP leader Dr Gareth Morgan.

“National’s Stephen Joyce is right in his assessment that the Labour policy will reduce the supply of rental properties,” Dr Morgan says, “I can’t think of a more direct way to smash investment in rental housing. With loan to value ratios of 40% its bloody hard for anyone to negatively gear right now anyway so of course the supply of rentals will dry up.”

While Labour fiddles, National refuses to acknowledge there’s a fire raging with Minister Alfred Ngaro this weekend threatening dire consequences for those who call out the National Party for having no clothes on when it comes to meaningful government action on the housing issue.

Only The Opportunities Party is proposing substantive change to a tax system that currently puts wage and salary earners at a permanent and insurmountable disadvantage compared to those who already own one or multiple properties.

TOP will remove the current tax advantages that owning either more and more expensive housing or multiple houses bring. Being a landlord or “speculator” has nothing to do with that problem. People can still own multi-million dollar mansions or multiple bungalows and reap huge tax advantages over those trying to get ahead on salaries and wages.

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