The housing crisis – Crisis? What crisis? – is still with us after years of denial by the National Government. I wrote this a year ago when they were claiming there was no crisis – denial being the mantra de jour – no housing problem, no homeless, no child poverty, no job problem, no economic problem, no water quality problem, no climate change, no provincial problem.
They are promising us now that they will fix housing, yet they are doing nothing that differs from the neoliberal and corporatist delusions they and Treasury have followed since 1984. Those same delusions that created all the problems. It is pathetic that they are going after the populist treat the symptom policy option, instead of trying to identify and treat the root causes. Here I discuss some root causes.
We need to change the framework, not just add populist surface policies that seek to empty the toxic river with a bucket, while doing nothing about the toxins flowing in at the top.
Frankly, I seriously doubt that National have the intellect to see, let alone critique the dysfunctional ideologies through which they see the world. Gold fish in the goldfish bowl …. what water?
