So Phil Twyford has put the call out for help.  

He has finally worked out what most of us knew last year when he trumpeted his much vaunted, criticised, and debated policy of building more homes than he was ever capable of.

Kiwibuild was one of those classic Labour policies, laudable but hopelessly unrealistic.

This was a party promising to cut immigration by 20 to 30,000, and at the same time line up thousands of chippies and sparkies to build a number of homes at a scale the country hadn't seen in decades.

It was fanciful.

And that's before they got to the bit whereby no foreigners would be taking part because we don't like them.

Fast forward 8 months and you have your back down on the foreign money, and now you have Phil pitching his case for all and sundry, including off shore operators to come on in and offer up some ideas on how to build a lot of homes real quick.  

Kitset, is one word that's being tossed about.

And in that lies a two-fold problem. Firstly, of course, we have no idea who is interested in any of this, given the margins are so tight.  

Then we have the quality issue.

Do we not, when pumping these things out like dollar bills, run the very real risk of producing a lot of crap that will haunt us for years to come.

And it's not like we don't have form, this country is famous for crap building.

And that wasn't even under any sort of pressure.

And then, do we not, as one bank economist has said this past week, run the risk also of over producing especially in the apartment market.

All we have to do is look to Australia who have made the very same mistake.

They saw prices rise, panicked, swung hammers and now they've got apartments galore and prices are falling.  

What we all agree on is we, at this point, are short on supply. But Phil's dream of 10,000 homes a year for 10 years has become a laughing stock,given it was ill-conceived and even more poorly executed.

If you can call producing so far exactly no homes executing anything.

The trick to solving a problem is not to create new ones, and as he sits here today, having built no homes, and with clearly no idea if he can ever do so, you'd be wanting to be slightly nervous that things under his purview are slightly out of control.