• Phil Twyford said he'd like to build 100,000 homes. This got a great reception so he kept saying it.
• Once elected he realised he couldn't do it without getting money from the Minister of Finance, but the Robertson didn't want to give him the money.
• Twyford was sacked, Megan Woods was brought in to clean up the political damage.
• Woods cut some deals to sort of make it look like the govt was upholding its promise but without costing the govt much money.
• Woods' plan didn't build more houses but it did drag out the failure over a long enough time period that it was hard to say exactly *when* it failed and thus no single, huge, damaging news story.
There was never any real intention by Labour to build houses. Labour and National don't make serious plans while in opposition because it's simply easier to wait until the public to get sick of the current ruling party's bullshit and then win automatically. This is why they try so hard to make the govt of the day to look bad.
Thanks for your take on how Kiwibuild went, I like it!
If you're able to provide links to any of the information you've added, I'd consider updating the main article to incorporate the information you've contributed.
Unfortunately I made it all up! Based on my instincts built from reading too much political news and being particularly interested in this issue. I don't even have any inside knowledge. I'm fairly sure that this is basically what happened though.
The one claim that I could probably source is that it was predominantly or only Twyford who was campaigning for the 100,000 houses. However I must apologise that I am too lazy to go sift through old news reports to demonstrate this.
[Edit: I did end up doing a brief check and the initial policy was announced by David Shearer in Nov 2012, so it may not have originally been Twyford's plan. Probably he took ownership of the policy after Shearer moved on.
Here Bernard Hickey argues that Twyford always knew he couldn't get money from the Finance Minister and that he had an alternative plan that just didn't work out (and was probably a naive plan):
As for Twyford being sacked, well, checking on Wikipedia he came into Cabinet with a variety of roles and has gradually been striped of every one of them. Just recently Hipkins even took away his last responsibility, the rather minuscule role of Minister for Arms Control.
Ultimately I think Twyford made a rookie politicians' mistake: promising something that can be easily measured.
What actually happened:
• Phil Twyford said he'd like to build 100,000 homes. This got a great reception so he kept saying it.
• Once elected he realised he couldn't do it without getting money from the Minister of Finance, but the Robertson didn't want to give him the money.
• Twyford was sacked, Megan Woods was brought in to clean up the political damage.
• Woods cut some deals to sort of make it look like the govt was upholding its promise but without costing the govt much money.
• Woods' plan didn't build more houses but it did drag out the failure over a long enough time period that it was hard to say exactly *when* it failed and thus no single, huge, damaging news story.
There was never any real intention by Labour to build houses. Labour and National don't make serious plans while in opposition because it's simply easier to wait until the public to get sick of the current ruling party's bullshit and then win automatically. This is why they try so hard to make the govt of the day to look bad.
Thanks for your take on how Kiwibuild went, I like it!
If you're able to provide links to any of the information you've added, I'd consider updating the main article to incorporate the information you've contributed.
Unfortunately I made it all up! Based on my instincts built from reading too much political news and being particularly interested in this issue. I don't even have any inside knowledge. I'm fairly sure that this is basically what happened though.
The one claim that I could probably source is that it was predominantly or only Twyford who was campaigning for the 100,000 houses. However I must apologise that I am too lazy to go sift through old news reports to demonstrate this.
[Edit: I did end up doing a brief check and the initial policy was announced by David Shearer in Nov 2012, so it may not have originally been Twyford's plan. Probably he took ownership of the policy after Shearer moved on.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/plan-unveiled-to-build-100000-basic-homes/U7FKIHZNOJ3JU7THICFOWTVJ4U/
Here Bernard Hickey argues that Twyford always knew he couldn't get money from the Finance Minister and that he had an alternative plan that just didn't work out (and was probably a naive plan):
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/how-phil-twyford-lost-housing-and-kiwibuild-failed ]
As for Twyford being sacked, well, checking on Wikipedia he came into Cabinet with a variety of roles and has gradually been striped of every one of them. Just recently Hipkins even took away his last responsibility, the rather minuscule role of Minister for Arms Control.
Ultimately I think Twyford made a rookie politicians' mistake: promising something that can be easily measured.
"...Twyford made a rookie politicians' mistake: promising something that can be easily measured." bahahaha brilliant. Thanks for that.