New figures released to National show Labour has hired more housing officials than it has built KiwiBuild homes, National’s Housing spokesperson Nicola Willis says.

The Labour Government has added 1205 new housing officials across Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, more than doubling the total number of taxpayer-funded housing officials. As of June this year Labour had only delivered 1105 KiwiBuild houses.

“Labour’s priorities are all wrong. To get more houses built we need more people on the tools not more people driving desks.

“New Zealand is in the midst of a housing crisis and Labour’s KiwiBuild programme was supposed to fix it. We are now almost four years into the programme and Labour should’ve delivered more than 16,000 houses by now, instead we’ve got just 1105.

“Labour’s hiring spree is not delivering value for taxpayers money. It’s had more success hiring officials than it has at solving New Zealand’s housing challenges.

“Kāinga Ora has repeatedly failed housing targets: it’s failed its KiwiBuild target, it’s failed its state house build targets and it has fallen behind on getting state homes up to healthy homes standards.

“Instead of hiring more and more advisors Labour should be removing the red-tape that slows house-building and working with the private sector to get houses built at scale and pace.

“National has a plan to remove the barriers to new housing supply and allow for housing intensification and new land supply immediately.

“We wouldn’t be adding layers upon layers of bureaucracy, a National Government would get on with building houses.”

You can find the relevant Written Parliamentary Questions (WPQs) here: WPQ 26006 (2021) and WPQ 26010 (2021).