KEY POINTS:
After nine years of languishing on the Opposition benches, you might have thought National would have got its head around a problem as serious as public housing. Yet the only policy anchor the new Government seems to have in this area is that there'll be no new state
rental housing in Hobsonville in Prime Minister John Key's Helensville electorate. Certainly not at Housing New Zealand's showpiece, "sustainable mixed community" development of 3000 homes on the old Hobsonville airbase.
Which makes one question the sincerity of National's claimed desire to house all sections of society. This landmark project had been more than 10 years in the making, planned as a textbook public and private partnership, in construction and ownership, to create a fully functional community accessible to a cross section of New Zealanders.
Included in the mix were to be 500 "affordable" self-owned homes and 500 state rental homes. All going to schedule, infrastructure development is to begin in a few weeks and house building in 2010.
But as promised by Mr Key during the election campaign, denizens of this brave new world will not have to fret about what the poor renters at the bottom of the gully are up to.
Hobsonville Land Company, the Housing NZ subsidiary in charge of the huge "new town" development, has been instructed to take state rentals out of the plans.
Before the election, National said it would cap the country's state rental housing stock at present levels of around 67,000, and concentrate on upgrading existing houses, rather than building new homes.
Then suddenly last week, after being briefed by officials that 2200 families in South Auckland desperately need state housing, Housing Minister Phil Heatley had a change of heart.
"I've seen how serious the situation is," he said. "We need to balance an increase in the number of state houses in the area and also better utilise the current stock."
National had suddenly discovered what the rest of us already knew - that hundreds of poor families were living in garages and sleep-outs and needed help.
Unfortunately, Mr Heatley then reverted to type and said an unspecified number of new homes would be built somewhere - again unspecified - in South Auckland. As though South Auckland needs another unplanned suburb of low-cost state rental accommodation.
Isn't there anyone in the National Party hierarchy who appreciates the mistakes of the past? For that matter, wasn't there anyone at Housing New Zealand brave enough to say, "Please minister, if you're serious, we could start building 500 rentals in Hobsonville almost immediately."
The Hobsonville development harks back to the pioneering new town developments of Europe. The plan is to create an entire community with a cross section of housing types, schools, workplaces, heritage areas and reserves.
It will have fibre-optic cabling, dedicated bike and pedestrian routes, ferry and bus links, retail and community facilities.
It could be housing people within two years. But not, now that Mr Key is in power, the sort of cash-strapped family he grew up in.
In 2006, Mr Key said including state housing in the Hobsonville development would be "economic vandalism". It was "a very upmarket area" he said, and the people of West Harbour had invested "millions of dollars in their property".
Herald political editor Audrey Young noted he sounded "like a rich man holding his nose at the thought of the poor getting too close to the rich".
And during the recent election campaign he repeated his nose-holding.
All of which makes Mr Key's image-creating first major speech as National Party leader in January 2007 sound a touch hollow. He called it "The Kiwi Way: A Fair Go For All" and delivered it in a hall "just down the road" from the state house he grew up in the wrong end of Christchurch.
"Part of the Kiwi Way is a belief in opportunity and in giving people a fair go," he said. "We have grown up to believe in and cherish an egalitarian society. We like to think our children's future ... will not be dictated by the size of their parent's bank balance or the suburb they were born in.
"We want all kids to have a genuine opportunity ... That's the Kiwi Way and I believe in it. After all, I was one of the many kids who benefited from it."
He contrasted his childhood with present-day New Zealand where "there are streets of people who believe they are locked out of everyday New Zealand the way most of us experience it ..."
They believe they're locked out because its's true, Mr Key. Thanks to attitudes like yours.
The Prime Minister is good at preaching the egalitarian dream, but given the chance to start practising it by giving today's underprivileged kids the opportunities New Zealand gave his family, he doesn't want to know. Certainly not in his electorate.
