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Judith Collins slams Government for scrapping KiwiBuild targets

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Thu, 31 Jan 2019, 7:07AM
National MP Judith Collins

Judith Collins slams Government for scrapping KiwiBuild targets

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Thu, 31 Jan 2019, 7:07AM

National MP Judith Collins has hit out at the Government saying getting rid of KiwiBuild targets is just spin, and they have "bugger all" chance of building 100,000 houses in 10 years.

Yesterday, the Government announced they are getting rid of KiwiBuild targets after Housing Minister Phil Twyford admitted they won't meet their first-year target.

READ MORE: KiwiBuild scraps yearly targets as part of "recalibration"

However, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Government will still build 100,000 houses in 10 years.

Judith Collins told Kate Hawkesby it is very unlikely that they will deliver on their 10-year promise if they can't deliver on year one.

"If you can't reach the first year, you can't reach the second year and you can't reach the third year target, you have bugger all chance of meeting the 10 year target."

"This is not make a wish, this is actually make a house and they don't seem to know what they are doing."

Phil Twyford said getting rid of targets is simply a KiwiBuild "recalibration".

However, Collins said that's just spin to make it look like less of a failure.

"It's just saying the same things over and over again, totally spinning it."

The MP did conceed that National didn't do enough around resource management reform and planning when they were in power.

However, she said they certainly made some "very big moves" when it came to building houses.

"There were 180,000 built in the nine years that we were in Government and when you look at the private sector in the 15-months that Phil Twyford is in the job...the private sector has built 35,200 homes and the Government has not built 46."

She said those numbers show that KiwiBuild is not the solution to the housing problem.

"You don't fix the housing situation by doing what these people have done. They have spent, in their first six-months since they came into Government, $100 million of taxpayer money on no houses at all."

"What we did [National] is we ended up with the Hobson land development...that was all under National Government. The Tamaki re-development all of that done under a National Government."

"We were doing it but also we had to bring in Resource Management Act reforms and the reforms we could get through parliament were not the ones we wanted."

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