I was hoping would you have a series based on housing. It seems to me that housing issues have not been taken seriously, by all levels of government, for far too long.

We have created an environment where people who already own property have “earnt” more from land re-evaluation than they have from wages. As a result young people are almost unable to purchase their own properties. You touched on this in the podcast with Barbara Norman. I’m sure federal tax settings (negative gearing/CGT) have an influence on prices but planning policies have a much bigger influence.

It is important that more housing is built and built in the right way in the right places. These are state and council issues. In Canberra we have large houses on large blocks near commercial centres where people work and new suburbs have small blocks and apartment buildings. We have managed to get this the wrong way around.

Obviously it will not be easy to reverse this as we cannot just evict people from inner suburbs but we should have a plan for moving in this direction. Auckland is apparently showing the way by allowing 2 houses per block but personally I would go further. I also feel that heritage listing is often just a tool to resist change. As Barbara was saying, creating a vibrant, liveable, sustainable city takes time so the sooner we start the sooner we will get there.

I am looking forward to more pods in this series.

Cheers,
John