The housing reset announcement revealed quite a lot about this government, confirming much of what we already knew. It illustrated the fact that they didn’t do the required work when in opposition to prepare themselves for government and they’re not doing it now that they are in government.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Megan Woods said in her housing announcement that in order to meet targets they were forced to build houses in areas where there was little or no first home buyer demand. So the only thing that mattered was meeting a target. The scandalous waste of taxpayers money obviously wasn’t a consideration. This isn’t a game that you might invent in the school playground at lunchtime. It’s a serious business involving the responsible use of other people’s money.
“There is no silver bullet when it comes to housing,” Ms Woods said. If she was bright enough to know that, why didn’t she enlighten the Oxfam man Phil Twyford, or has that thought belatedly occurred to her? Phil portrayed himself as Bob the Builder and had all the ideas and answers in Opposition. It seems he just didn’t put in the work to hammer them out to see if they were realistic.
Ms Woods said, “When policies aren’t working we are honest about that and fix them”. There’s no point in being anything but honest when everyone can see it’s barking mad to persist with a dog of a policy. Is Ms Woods aware it’s just not housing that needs fixing but a whole plethora of other Government policies? “We are clearing the decks of what hasn’t worked,” she said. Looks to me more like a rearrangement of the deck chairs at best.
If she is clearing the decks she might like to revisit her oil and gas debacle. How about building some roads? What about taking another look at silly tram and train ideas? At the very least let’s have some sensible prioritising of projects and then do the necessary work on them so as to get some responsible and realistic outcomes. Unfortunately, I think a task of such magnitude is well beyond them.
As Margaret Thatcher said – “It is always important in high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act on those mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge.”
Unfortunately, that’s exactly who we do have.
