Following the opening gambit of an ad-hominem attack on Labour housing spokesman Phil Twyford for alleged "racism". Mr Church then describes the data used by Mr Twyford as ‘shonky’ and says ‘it has so many holes in it that it would be marked with an ‘f’ if it was submitted as a High School Economics project’. Amazingly, Church then goes on to elucidate the following:
“Mr Twyford uses ‘asian sounding’ surnames as his means to identify which buyers are ‘Asian Investors’ - without any way of knowing whether the buyer is a New Zealand immigrant who lives here, or an investor based in China”.“On that basis Mr Twyford should be blowing the whistle on Scottish foreign investment in this country - because a large number of kiwi homes are owned by people who have names starting with ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’”.This has to be about the most specious, infantile attempt at constructing an argument one could possibly imagine -there are so many non-sequetors to it. Firstly he is comparing apples with oranges -existing owners with new purchasers. Then he is claiming all individuals with Scottish names are Scottish investors - clearly not true since these individuals are descendants of migrants going back as far as 1848. they are therefore New Zealand investors, Just as are the descendants of previous generations of asian extraction.
Clearly it is Mr Church, not Mr Twyford who should be standing in the corner wearing the Dunces Cap!
Fair play to Scoop for publishing this Press Release without comment, which is about all the attention it deserves. Not so the Herald on Sunday. As Senior Journalist, Russell Blackstock has to carry the can for this particular piece of drivel.
No-one should place a shred of credence in the weasel words of "local commentator" Ron Hoy-Fong. Of course as a property investor he has an interest in price escalation and knows very well that the mechanism is simply one of increased demand acting upon a limited supply determining a rising price. It is amazing how easy it is for his kind to feign ignorance of this most fundamental tenet of their otherwise beloved “neo-classical” economics and suggest that somehow the problem is one of greed on the part of Kiwi homeowners who wish to sell their property – it is mere fogging of the real problem of speculation and in fact it is racist of Hoy-Fong to make the claim he does.
Despite describing himself as a third generation New Zealander it is clear that Hoy-Fong places himself in a different category to the "regular Kiwis" he is so keen to blame. How a person who has thirty houses can call his neighbours greedy is beyond belief!
As for the authors of this so-called “report”, Russell Blackstock & Simon Plumb –they are obviously either extremely politically and economically naïve, or have a vested interest in brown-nosing to the speculator or wealthy migrant cohort, or they are mouthpieces for the ideologues who wish to keep New Zealand in a permanent neo-colonial state rather than see a maturing democracy.
No Property Sales to Non-Residents!
Progressive Capital Gains Tax on second and subsequent property ownership!
No comments:
Post a Comment