Dave Stewart

Keith Melville’s latest effort (State housing vision unrealistic, Beacon April 8) is a lop-sided attack on the fantastic work being done by Phoebe Carr and Ruth Gerzon from WHARE (Whakatāne Housing Action Reform Enthusiasts), who are exposing how this government’s unholy and incestuous alliance with landlords is making the housing crisis worse.

Mr Melville’s use of hyperbole is often a good laugh, but I have to draw the line at his latest piece where he uses the flawed Kainga Ora review from Sir Bill English to justify the Government dropping its affordable housing responsibilities and leaving it all to private sector landlords to cash in on/sort out.

The report that Mr English and Mr Bishop constructed over a couple of texts and wink and a nod was one of the most blatant jack-ups we’ve seen from this administration.

Here is the text exchange that assigned English to the report:

Sir Bill: Chris will there be a review of KO.

Bishop: We are going to do an independent review into finances, performance, cost, etc. Commence it asap, hopefully get terms of reference and reviewers sorted before Christmas.

Sir Bill: I could help with that.

Bishop: Excellent let’s do that.

Sir Bill: “I will help if it’s a short sharp review. No public submissions or field trips,” he texted.

Bishop: “Definitely not. Three people. You and two others... No involvement from KO. Independent.”

What I would say to you is, the housing minister at the time said there would be no involvement of Kāinga Ora in the review of Kāinga Ora and further, this was all signed and sealed before Mr Bishop took it to cabinet.

A few short weeks and half a million dollars later his slim, 37-page report condemning the agency gave the Government exactly the response they wanted with Mr English talking to a few of his mates who were developers and builders.

When a draft was ready, Mr Bishop sent it to Kainga Ora, but didn't include its response until an Official Information Act request was made.

For the record, its response included pointing out that, “There was relatively limited engagement with our organisation, leading to some review conclusions appearing to be based on analysis informed by anecdotes.”

Kāinga Ora’s official response also took exception with a number of the reports’ findings alleging there were many factual errors – the list of errors is three pages long.

I was surprised that Mr Melville omitted these facts from his attack on efforts honest, up-front people in this town are doing in support of social housing.

I thought he was committed to balance in his arguments in support of landlords like himself, lest he be falsely accused of bias.

It’s important in this context because Mr Melville used Mr English’s much-maligned report to support decisions this Government is making to make social housing harder to achieve and asking private housing providers to provide the solution.

The only “solution” the Government has offered here is to order the homeless to “move on” or be put in jail.

Mr Melville has been a strong advocate of this Government’s multi-billion dollar handouts to landlords and a strong opponent of any changes to landlords’ windfall via the tax-free capital gains bonanza – policies that directly contribute to the housing crisis and homelessness – but has offered little in the way of constructive answers to a problem that the taxpayers’ subsidised housing market has created through what is essentially a free money lolly scramble to landlords and speculators.

Reading the Beacon letters page these days, I keep being reminded of Canadian/American economist John Kenneth Galbraith profound wisdom when he said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”.