Jacinda Ardern, Phil Twyford, and Phil Goff at a KiwiBuild event. The policy's interim targets have been scrapped.

KiwiBuild's "interim" targets for this electoral term have been scrapped as the Government recalibrates the programme.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Housing Minister Phil Twyford told media from their caucus retreat on Wednesday that their commitment to building 100,000 affordable homes over the next decade remains intact, but the interim targets for this term did not.

The Government has been dealing with the fallout from an admission by Twyford that the Government would not be able build 1000 of the homes by July 1, its first interim target. Instead it expects to build just 300.

The KiwiBuild policy aims to build 100,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers over 10 years, half of them in Auckland.

While in Opposition, Labour said the "ramp-up" period would mean only 16,000 of those homes would be built in its first term. Once in Government, Twyford set three interim targets to get to that 16,000 - 1000 by July 2019, another 5000 by July 2020, and another 10,000 by July 2021.

Those targets are now gone, but new interim targets could appear as part of the recalibration process.

Ardern said the interim targets had not been a "useful way" to demonstrate the Government's progress on the policy.

"Yes we still need to be transparent, we still need to demonstrate to voters the progress we are making."

"We had interim targets. And now we are looking at the KiwiBuild programme and the timeline for delivery - but that 10-year goal of 100,000 homes remains."

"It's a 10-year programme and we're six months in," Ardern said.

Twyford said he would deliver a paper to Cabinet in a few weeks that would look to recalibrate the policy.

He wanted to increase the incentives for the private sector to develop the KiwiBuild homes, as the lacklustre pickup for the "buying off the plans" scheme is the main culprit for the first missed target. He was also keen to make sure the deal was as good as it could be for first-home buyers. There had been a lack of demand for the houses in some areas.

Many of the KiwiBuild homes over the decade are supposed to be delivered through huge building projects led by the State using the new Urban Development Authority (UDA). But the UDA is still a year or more away from being established.

"One of the things we are trying to achieve here is to build long-term partnerships with the country's bigger residential development companies and construction firms, much in the ways that successive governments did for decades in the 50s and 60s."

"The idea is to provide a package of assistance for developers that will be enough of an incentive to get them to commit to serious volumes of affordable homes over a number of years."

Twyford said while some parts of the policy could be changed there were some non-negotiables: the 100,000 target over 10 years, the fact that it is for first-home buyers, and the role of the state as both a mega-developer and a partner of business.

He did not mention the price caps as a non-negotiable factor.

"No government in the last 40 years has seriously tried what we are trying to do. And that's change a failed market," Twyford said.

Earlier in the day, Ardern opened her caucus retreat by telling MPs 2019 would be the year of "delivery" for the Government.

"We do not claim perfection, but we do claim a considerable advance on where we have came from," Ardern said.

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