Mike Hosking: KiwiBuild's ongoing failure as another government hype job falls flat

COMMENT

Well, it's not like we weren't warned.

We had Meghan Woods on the show the other day. I asked her about her KiwiBuild progress. You remember the reset? The reshuffle and desperate attempt to try and put the biggest infrastructural cluster in modern political history behind them? Well, sadly it isn't working.

It's not dissimilar to their kids' poverty promises. A lot of hype, happiness, Kumbaya and good feels but no real results.

The January numbers for KiwiBuild have been posted. Do remember, this is still a live policy. The policy didn't die with Phil Twyford's reputation as a minister. It carried on, just without the same grandiose nonsense that masqueraded as a promise or target of 100,000 houses over 10 years - or an average of 10,000 per year.

Given we are two years into the programme; things should be ramping up nicely, although perhaps predictably, they are not. In December, they managed to build seven houses. Seven. Not 70 or 700 or, God forbid, 7000. Seven.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell

At the time of the interview, Woods didn't have current figures despite the fact it was late February, which seemed odd because it's not like they had a lot of stock to count. It's not like they were telling the minister "look we think it's around 1600-ish were just finalising the numbers, could be 1630 or 1639". It's seven.

You could have sent Bob out in his lunch hour to count the lot. Anyway, low and behold come February 26 they finally manage to tally up the numbers for January.

Drum roll please. Could they top December? Could some sort of new roll be on? Could they put the year of delivery behind them, and give a bit of life to their otherwise hopelessly embarrassing attack on housing? Ah, no. No, they couldn't. For January it was seven. Another seven. Fourteen over two months.

Woods, at the time of interview perhaps, gave us a clue by saying it was December and January after all, and we all need a holiday.

Mike Hosking. Photo / Michael Craig

Brilliant, we also need houses; well that's what they told us ad nauseum when they were campaigning for office. Housing was a crisis, no one could afford a house, and they were going to change things dramatically.

They have done nothing of the sort. Haven't fixed poverty, haven't fixed a single one of their myriad social issues they promised they would and certainly haven't fixed housing. In fact at its current rate, to build the 100 000 houses they promised, is going to take more than 1190 years.

The dash board was an attempt at transparency. For that, they can be commended. For the result, all we can do is yet again shake our heads in dismay.