National’s Chris Bishop promises change around Kāinga Ora

The National Party is promising to axe swathes of jobs and “clean out” Kāinga Ora, the Government’s social housing landlord and developer.

Chris Bishop, the party’s housing spokesperson, has been attacking the agency, which was set up in 2019 out of Housing New Zealand, and promised his party would do a better job of building and managing social housing if it wins the October 14 general election.

He was speaking to the Constructive Forum in Auckland last week.

But his party is yet to reveal its social housing policy it will take to the election.

When asked if there will be job losses at the agency, he said: “Hope so”.

National has also promised to cut the public service by about 8%, raising questions about how it would have the capacity for what Bishop described as radical reform.

Construction academics however warned against gutting the agency, and have called for housing issues to be taken out of the political domain.

Kāinga Ora was set up four years ago, and derailing it now would be “stupid”, Bill McKay, a senior lecturer in architecture and planning at the University of Auckland, said.

“Despite what people think they are doing a lot at the moment, and they are exploring different ways of doing things.”

On top of this, he did not believe the market could be relied upon to solve the housing crisis.

“Based on my experience, the market exploits any problem,” he said. “The market is one of the reasons we have had a housing crisis for many years.”

”I think certainly Kāinga Ora could continue to learn a bit more from experts, but not from politicians. Lurching from one thing to another is not helpful when we are dealing with big problems.”

This story previously suggested National would be leaving state housing to the market. This story has been corrected to better reflect National’s position on social housing.