Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland
506 Responses
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I honestly don’t know any way in which people can talk about Chinese money flooding Auckland that can’t be misinterpreted or abused in some way by racist idiots.
I really don’t. Open to suggestions.
So, the alternative is: Don’t talk about it at all. For me, not an alternative.
For me, the discussion should be not a circular firing squad, but a genuine discussion about how best to discuss this issue in a way that is least able to be abused by asshats.
(edit) Stephen: agree that it's a legitimate concern. "Legitimately concerned about" is not the same as "responsible for".
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talkie_toaster, in reply to
Then you can kindly fuck off, instead of helicoptering in your bullshit
Deep. Thanks for your productive post.
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Keir Leslie, in reply to
(A) if you can't do something in a non-racist way then maybe you shouldn't do it and (b) yes it is very hard to talk about "floods of Chinese money" in a non-racist way because you've explicitly framed it in a racist way that makes it about race in a way that echoes previous racist discourse.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
Well, you could have asked that interesting question in the beginning instead of deciding up front that people disagree that foreign money is an issue, that their feelings are bogus, that they ignore "real issues", that they're been suckered by Nats, or any of the other claims you made straight up. You've confronted people, and been answered accordingly. A smart domestic appliance like yourself could probably adjust approach without losing intellectual integrity if desired.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Well, is Swan a person? I don’t know much about their posting history. Why would I? I’m new here.
Swan is known to be a Kiwiblog semi-regular and a PAS irregular.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
“Legitimately concerned about” is not the same as “responsible for”.
OK, I regret putting that in a flowery way.
Phil, a dude I generally like and respect, was not compelled to say what he said. He chose to.
If your speech has predictable consequences and you decide to go ahead anyway, to me that makes you responsible. You could be right, and you could in fact be justified, but you're still responsible, because it was a voluntary choice. And other people can argue about that choice, and whether you were justified, and attach moral weight to it, and all that crap.
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talkie_toaster, in reply to
You’ve confronted people, and been answered accordingly.
Well, I've confronted people who I thought were wrong and been answered by some people who disagreed and some people who took the time to explicitly endorse my point of view, so yeah, it's an opinion forum and I posted my opinion.
you’ve explicitly framed it in a racist way
How?
yes it is very hard to talk about “floods of Chinese money” in a non-racist way
I really don't think it is. Chinese money comes from China. China is a country.. one with 56 different ethnic groups according to Wikipedia.
It's really hard to talk about it in a way that's impossible for determined people to interpret as racist. Because people are very elastic in their interpretations, they put words in people's mouths, they construct straw men, they do all the debating tricks we're all aware of. I can't control that. Like I said, the alternative is to not talk about it at all.
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Sue,
What i don't understand is why nobody actually questioned - beyond all the stats, was this a morally and ethically ok thing, nobody questioned whether or not this might be considered deeply racist.
it is totally possible to have a discussion about people who are not resident New Zealanders purchasing houses without making it a race fueled argument. I live in NZ i have a teeny tiny house with my Mum, I love it, I am far from surprised loads people (some of whom are not allowed to own property in their own country) visit here and want to buy a house of their own. Because it's the free Market Baby they can do it.
Currently there is not enough data on this, as to who is buying & why. There are assumptions but no cold hard facts based on data. So labour decided to grab some 'leaked data' not even a whole data set but some leaked data, throw some assumptions at it to come up with a final assumption. Nobody questioned whether or not this tower of shit stuck on shit was a shitty thing to do. But because of this towering pile of shitty assumptions we are even less likely to even start gathering actual data on property buyers.
of course what will talkback radio did if we lived on facts
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nzlemming, in reply to
If you make the assumption that property prices are being driven by non-resident foreigners,
That's the trick, though, that Rob and Twyford never actually prove.
They're basing their analysis on names, which have little bearing on residency. If a Chinese person emigrates from the PRC to NZ, their passport will reflect PRC spelling and usage. That will be the first document NZ authorities see, along with their application to immigrate which must match their passport to confirm their identity. Unless they change it by deed poll, this is the legal name they will use in NZ and the name they will purchase property under. Rob's analysis in no way identifies which purchasers are non-resident. As has been reiterated here and elsewhere, it can't because that information hasn't been collected as such, and piecing it together from primary sources at NZIS, IRD, DIA, LINZ and local councils (to verify how many purchases were made by residents) would probably be in breach of at least the Privacy Act and the Revenue Act, and possibly several others I haven't thought of.
IF property price inflation is caused by non-resident purchasers for investment, by all means, let's have that as the story and the discussion. That's not, however, what Labour did. They singled out a single nationality without a statistical leg to stand on, for all the bleating of Bayesian analysis as if it's some sort of touchstone. I, too, have some experience with statistics and, if your base assumptions are not defined rigorously, your results are not meaningful. I challenge Rob Salmond and Labour to prove that Auckland's housing bubble is caused by non-resident investment. They can't. They know they can't. The information is not currently available. Instead of fomenting a discussion about the Government's refusal to collect data to do that analysis, they decided that any headline is a good headline.
As others have noted, Auckland's problem (as well as the rest of the country, perhaps) appears to be partially that of rentiers owning too much of the property and thus preventing would-be home owners from getting into the market. There are thousands of properties vacant in Auckland at the moment, because it's more profitable to the owners to keep them that way as a land bank. Those are the discussions we should be having. Labour screwed this pooch by making it about surnames.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Nobody questioned whether or not this tower of shit stuck on shit was a shitty thing to do.
Now every time there's an attempt to flush the damn thing someone thinks they've spotted a piece of Lego embedded in the muck.
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Sue,
After their first 29 posts in 1 day i think we can safely assume someone here is not participating with the goal of balanced discussion. This is a topic and issue worthy of great debating. lets do that and ignore the troll in the corner till it fades away.
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Sue,
also what was the margin or error in Labour's stats?
or was there assumed to be no errors -
Danielle, in reply to
Do I need to provide examples of the things that were actually said and done in the “yellow peril” era? Do you actually seriously think this is (your words) “the same”?
As you keep telling us, you're new here, so I'll answer this honestly by saying that I make my living by doing historical research, so no, you don't need to provide examples for me. And no, I don't think this is *exactly* the same, because people are now cannier with their rhetoric, and don't use carpet sweepers, and are less likely to be open eugenicists, and don't put the equivalent of a small line of cocaine in every bottle of Coca-Cola, and all manner of other things which are rather different than they were a century or more ago. But if Labour is going to explicitly frame this as some sort of unwanted Chinese colonisation of New Zealand - and they have, in this instance - then they're using a variant of the same political rhetoric that's been used ever since the White New Zealand era to whip up fear and resentment. It's called a "dogwhistle" for a reason.
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BenWilson, in reply to
That’s the trick, though, that Rob and Twyford never actually prove
I don’t think such a thing really is provable under current conditions. It’s definitely not possible to model it when the data isn’t even kept. How would you go about establishing the truth of that?
ETA: If I see any sense in what they've done, it's to lay bare just how fucked up it is that we can't establish the truth of this easily just by looking up official statistics. It does actually matter a lot.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Auckland’s problem (as well as the rest of the country, perhaps) appears to be partially that of rentiers owning too much of the property and thus preventing would-be home owners from getting into the market.
There's lots and lots of contributing factors. An extremely long run of monetary policy aimed at shoveling easy debt at buyers is another one. But the idea that foreign money is a big contributor is at the very least extremely plausible. It is, after all, a pool of money that completely dwarfs our entire economy.
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nzlemming, in reply to
As a member of another sinister minority
You so sinista, mista!
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
It is, after all, a pool of money that completely dwarfs our entire economy.
Chinese floodgates will open further – fuelling perhaps as much as US$10.9 billion of new investment into New Zealand real estate – according to the Juwai.com estimate, as Beijing eases restrictions on privately held capital.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/fran-osullivan/news/article.cfm?a_id=13&objectid=11469985
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nzlemming, in reply to
I don’t think such a thing really is provable under current conditions. It’s definitely not possible to model it when the data isn’t even kept. How would you go about establishing the truth of that?
Pretty much my point. Which is why Labour shouldn't have gone ahead in the manner they have. As Stephen said, they chose to release this "analysis" - no-one forced them to.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Yes, and that's just China. "Foreign money" is literally all the money that isn't local. In other words, almost all the money, period.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
As others have noted, Auckland’s problem (as well as the rest of the country, perhaps) appears to be partially that of rentiers owning too much of the property and thus preventing would-be home owners from getting into the market. There are thousands of properties vacant in Auckland at the moment, because it’s more profitable to the owners to keep them that way as a land bank. Those are the discussions we should be having.
A problem that had its origins way back in the 1987 NZSE bubble burst. Those who got burned by that are likely today's housing rentier class who have cartelised the housing market. It's anyone's guess as to when the Auckland housing bubble will pop, because the political system doesn't have the balls to fix it.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Which is why Labour shouldn’t have gone ahead in the manner they have.
But to do nothing in the face of the Government's refusal to collect proper data .. is that what you see as a more appropriate response to the Auckland affordability crisis?
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nzlemming, in reply to
There’s lots and lots of contributing factors
I did say "partially" ...
It's just as plausible that the problem is too many people watching Homes Under The Hammer on the Living Channel and deciding to build a property portfolio for their retirement. I don't say that's the cause, but it's equally plausible. The point is we don't know and, minus that information, it was completely irresponsibly of Labour to pump out a message that a) takes external investment as a prime cause, without being able to prove it and (more reprehensibly) b) sheets that "cause" home on a particular nationality.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Pretty much my point. Which is why Labour shouldn’t have gone ahead in the manner they have.
Well, my point is that when you want to make it clear that good analysis is virtually impossible, maybe doing the best you can and everyone seeing just how weak it really is isn't a bad way of showing that better data should be kept. At this point, it's almost like the data shows most by far of the foreign investment coming from one region. The challenge is down - if you want to show that isn't true, then please keep some official stats on it. Looking at you, National, as the actual government.
Any other ideas on how to find the numbers would be cool - I don't personally know. But what isn't cool is a situation where the government literally refuses to allow the numbers to be known by anyone who isn't prepared to conduct a very comprehensive survey and analysis (and probably a very expensive one at that), the kind of thing that governments have both the power and the money to do.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It's irresponsible of National to make it impossible to even have a debate about this based on more sensible facts. Which one matters more? A possible racial gaffe by the Labour Party, or the entire nation unable to understand the potentially biggest drivers of the largest and most dynamic part of its economy?
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nzlemming, in reply to
But to do nothing in the face of the Government’s refusal to collect proper data .. is that what you see as a more appropriate response to the Auckland affordability crisis?
Absolutely not. But what they have done is made it more unlikely that the Government will collect proper data, because now they can yell "race card" instead. Really looking forward to the next Question Time and the supercilious responses from Ministers #not
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