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“It kinda balances how we’ve flooded the whole country with the homeless, destitute and starving” they forgot to add.
The Minister for Housing, Chris Bishop, has announced a range of new initiatives to lower house prices while keeping landlords and developers rich, in a speech delivered to the Real Estate Insitute today, and leaked two days ago.
One aim is to scrap archaic laws designed to keep people’s living spaces more than three metres away from steel foundries and exploding gas works, along with removing local councils’ ability to monitor building standards. That will enable developers to build more homes faster, cheaper and – most importantly – cheaper and faster than under any Labour government, the minister probably might have said.
He also threw in the notion that expensive houses are “fundamentally an issue of intergenerational equity” to ensure that the eyes of most in the room glazed over and they began to wonder how long it might be before lunch.
Outlining measures to do away with sensible restraints, the Minister also announced new builds would no longer be required to have minimum floor sizes. “Having floors that reach to the walls is intergenerational, aspirational and – quite frankly – out of reach of this country’s nouveau pauvre. Which their new walls will be!” the Minister is likely to have quipped.
Responding to critic saying the moves would bring back the likelihood of shoebox apartments, the Minister asked if anyone knew what was smaller than a shoebox. “I’ll tell you,” he is thought to have answered. “An egg carton, with space for six eggs. And if that’s good enough for battery hens, then it’s good enough for homeless people living in cars. Sheesh.”
In other news, the Government announced Monday it was cutting funding to many budgeting services. “We looked at the figures and found that many clients were now unable to afford the bus fare to budget advice offices, so why should we fund a service that’s so under-utilised?”
While it continues to cut funding for nice-to-haves like hospitals, public transport and food banks, the Coalition has announced a new funding model for essential services. “We’ve signed up for a premium account with GoFundMe,” a Treasury spokesperson told WWNews. “So if people need financial assistance to help with urgent medical treatment, houses falling into rivers or attacks by armed terrorists, they can quickly set up their own page and receive a portion of the money they need.” It’s expected any money raised will be taxed at the lowest rate. The access code is TRUBLU/JUSTEATCAKE.
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The Government also announced targets for improving access to mental health services, reducing waiting times for emergency mental health presenting at hospitals and more funding targets. The mental Health Minister, Matt Doocey, was unable to give a target time for the introduction of the targets, saying that setting a target for those targets would depend on other targets, such as targeted incentives for landlords and developers, being reached within a targeted timeframe. “I could give you an answer, but it would be like throwing a dart at a dartboard,” Mr Doocey wished he’d thought of saying.
In other other news, the Prime Minister is set to travel to Washington DC to attend the Nato Summit, where he’s expected to be in the same room as many world leaders, often at the same time. That’s if the RNZAF Boeing makes it to the runway at Whenuapai.
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