As part of today’s long-anticipated reset of the Government’s flagship KiwiBuild policy, Housing Minister Megan Woods says the number of houses to be built in the next 8 years has been “scaled back” from 100,000 affordable homes to just one really nice home.

Woods was forced into formally declaring a reset of the policy after the Government’s first strategy – pretending they misspoke and meant to say they wouldn’t build 100,000 houses – failed.

Woods did her best to put a brave face on the situation at a press conference this afternoon, insisting the policy was still popular, and the only real hiccup was the Government’s failure to build virtually any houses at all.

“When we talk to people around the country, they’re really enthusiastic for KiwiBuild, they love the policy, they think we should stick at it,” she said, “but the one thing that keeps coming up again and again is, they don’t like that the houses don’t actually exist.”

The fact that there are “almost no houses” instead of “lots of houses” was frustrating for people, she said.

“What we didn’t fully anticipate, was that when we said 100,000 houses, people expected at least one tenth that many, so we’ve heard you, we’ve listened, and we’re no longer saying we’ll do anything like that at all.”

In spite of this, she hoped the Government’s new target would be something the country could get behind.

“Wouldn’t you rather one really nice house that does exist than 100,000 houses that don’t exist?” she asked.

There currently exist no blueprints for the house, as consultation is still underway to see what exactly New Zealanders will be looking for in the property, but Woods did say it would have “plenty of light,” some grass, and “hopefully two bathrooms” for when “someone is already using the bathroom.”

As a surprise, Woods also revealed that the Government had met its 100,000 target in another way, producing 100,000 affordable wooden kiwis, in the form of this incredibly easy-to-solve puzzle:

An assistant passed around the wooden kiwis to the group of gathered reporters, with whom it didn’t seem to go down as planned.

“Did… you spend taxpayer money on these?” asked Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien.

Woods explained the kiwis were bought in bulk, and cost $3 each, $1 for each part.

“There aren’t actually one hundred thousand of them,” she said, defensively.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood by her minister’s plan this evening, saying she thought Woods had done “a great job” under the circumstances, and had no comment on the tens of thousands of wooden kiwis found in a rubbish skip on Bowen Street.

“Oh look, I think the key word here is patience,” she said. “This is a very large, complex undertaking and I have absolute faith that, given enough time, and then maybe some more time, and then maybe account for holidays, Megan will absolutely be able to build a house.”

Ardern also pointed out that while the government had fallen well short of its initial 100,000 homes target, it was performing “much better” in relation to its target of 100,000 measles cases.