Ardern scraps 100,000 affordable homes plan

The NZ government has performed a spectacular mea culpa on one of Labour’s signature policies.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Picture: AFP

The New Zealand government has performed a spectacular mea culpa on one of Labour’s signature election policies, walking away from a pledge to build 100,000 affordable new homes within a decade.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government insists their commitment to low-cost housing remains, announcing on Wednesday a raft of changes to their “KiwiBuild” policy suite.

“KiwiBuild isn’t working so we are changing it,” Housing Minister Megan Woods said.

“When policies aren’t working we are honest about that and fix them.”

KiwiBuild is one of the Ardern government’s flagship policies, and the Prime Minister is hopeful that Wednesday’s “KiwiBuild reset”, first announced in January, will change the course of the ailing $NZ2 billion housing program.

The ambitious goal-setting and spending, in partnership with developers, was aimed at helping first homebuyers crack the property market — as well as providing an economic stimulus and apprenticeships.

One year into the planned decade of house-building, just 141 houses had been constructed, well short of the first benchmark of 1000. Targets of 5000 by June 2020 and 10,000 by June 2021 have now been discarded.

“When I lifted up the hood and had a look at what was ­happening with Kiwibuild, the targets were providing some ­perverse outcomes,” Ms Woods said on Wednesday.

That included unsold properties and developers ignoring the needs of larger families.

Opposition Housing spokesperson Judith Collins lashed the changes as “a massive retreat”.

AAP