Don’t mention the war

This is Budget week. Within a few days, we will hear what the world’s first Wellbeing Budget is all about. Apparently Jacinda thinks it is so marvellous that the world will follow in our footsteps. Somehow I think she will be proved wrong. Socialists like Jacinda live in a bubble and think they are the stars within it. I doubt that the rest of the world will agree with her.

One thing that is not being mentioned in this momentous week is the government’s flagship policy, Kiwibuild. It seems that the prime minister makes a habit of not speaking the names of people or things she abhors. First, it was the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre. Now it is Kiwibuild.

It’s the crumbling collapse of the KiwiBuild monument that Labour MPs dare not mention this week. It must be ignored as Grant Robertson’s wellbeing Budget takes centre stage.


It’s a sad flagging idea turned promise that barely gets mentioned by Labour’s brass, who are more brassed off and embarrassed than they let on.

So they should be. It is a monstrous waste of taxpayer’s money; a project that is so badly thought out that the government has already failed to meet its first modest target and has also, to its shame, already had to buy back houses because nobody wants them. This is a disaster of epic proportions.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke to the formidable Business NZ pre-Budget lunch in Auckland on Friday, and went through her Government’s achievements and challenges. The failures are never mentioned. So let me help. The PM deliberately ignored her big, useless elephant in the room.

KiwiBuild, the flagship policy, the one that moved votes to Labour as National floundered around denying a housing crisis existed, was not mentioned once by the PM. Not once. Not one brief word, not even a second. No thank you, life’s tough enough without the obvious flakes letting you down.

Like an ostrich, she sticks her head in the sand and hopes no one will see her. I have news for you, Jacinda. Kiwibuild is not going to go away.

I heard her say housing, but then she mentioned Housing First, which is a programme for the genuinely homeless. It’s doing well, especially as a distraction to the Kiwiflop of the year.

These people don’t dream about KiwiBuild at $600,000 for a Papakura 3-bedder. They don’t have the bus fare to get there in the first place. They need shelter, not broken promises from misleading misfits.

If we look back 18 months, the promise was to build affordable first homes for young families. Sure, there was going to be some government money put into it, but that has happened anyway. Nobody ever expected Kiwibuild houses to cost $600,000. That is no different from the open market, and no one is calling that affordable.

My mistake was thinking Twyford knew what he wanted and knew what he was doing. A great con he pulled, and maybe acting should be his next thing. Maybe 100,000 acts over the next 10 years.

And the crowning glory representing another gigantic cardiac arrest must surely be the KiwiBuild homes that no-one would buy. This is sadly true.

So, as the budget looms, the government’s policy is to talk up its successes and to completely ignore the things that have not gone well, thus continuing to live in a world where fairy dust solves every problem.

Someone needs to tell Jacinda that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was an evil character in a children’s book. Brenton Tarrant and Kiwibuild, however, are very real indeed.

The Wellbeing Budget could well be the next embarrassment for this government. Just wait and see.