Colin Craig Promises Land Grab

Guest post by Stephen Berry, from Affordable Auckland

If his latest interview with TV3 is anything to go by, New Zealand’s political village idiot Colin Craig plans to surpass NZ First’s vote in the next election by putting forward even more extreme success-hating populism than Winston Peters.

Craig wears a fig leaf of rectitude in saying urban boundaries in Auckland need to be extended. But in saying he and his Conservative Party would give property developers five years to develop their land before invoking the Public Works Act to have their property compulsorily acquired for development by the state, Craig drops the fig leaf altogether and exposes himself for what he  really is: An out-and-out confiscationist.

National should be very concerned about the prospects of entering into coalition with a supposed right-winger who wants to resurrect the very worst excesses of Muldoonist Think Big socialism combined with Proposition One from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Respect for private property rights is one of the main reasons housing in Auckland and Wellington is becoming increasingly unaffordable, and confiscations coupled with further government largesse will only make this worse. Private property owners should be left to decide for themselves how they use their land, with urban boundaries scrapped to remove the windfall gains on which so-called land-bankers rely.

Craig’s comments regarding developer profits are especially hypocritical when he says, "At the moment they have bought sections for 30 grand and they are selling them for over 400 and they just don't need that much money."

Who the hell does this multi-millionaire developer think he is passing judgement on other people as to how much they need?  I’m sure that not all property developers have expensive loony tunes political parties to speak for them, but the last person that should be passing judgements on the rent-seeking of others is Colin Craig.

My Affordable City ticket ran in the last local body election on a platform of affordable housing. The ticket’s proposals included a reduction in rates, elimination of council borrowing within three years, streamlining the resource consents process, removing the ability of non-affected persons to object to the granting of building consent, abolishing the urban limit and respecting private property rights.

Stephen Berry stood as Affordable Auckland’s candidate for Mayor of Auckland. He achieved 13,560 votes and finished, like Colin Craig in 2010, in third place.