Paula Bennett, aka the Cars and Garages Minister, was forced to admit there are few state homes in the regions for the homeless to move into.

﻿OPINION: Finance Minister Bill English's Budget that didn't throw a penny at the Auckland housing crisis, and his unawareness that Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett was offering $5000 to the homeless to get out of Dodge last week, demonstrates how smug and slack the Government has become about even bothering to sing from the same hymn book.

Bennett's five grand offer was almost universally laughed at by those who would have to put it into practice in the appointed towns and regions tasked with finding affordable shacks for new residents - and by those hanging on for dear life in Auckland living in the most degraded of circumstances in the dim hope that they might score a job in the throbbing metropolis, rather than arrive in a region where there was even less hope of finding a job.

Shunting the homeless off to Huntly, Ngaruawahia, Gisborne, New Plymouth and Lower Hutt was a surprise to the leaders of those towns as TV One news revealed that Gisborne had six state houses available and 46 for sale, similar to Whanganui were there were six available homes and 25 on the market, while in the Waikato no state homes were available and what private housing there was, is in hot demand.

Bennett, aka the Cars and Garages Minister, was caught out and had to make the mumbling admission that there were few houses available in Huntly but er … "that is only one of the many we have named".

Meanwhile Government-appointed 'flying squads' have been instructed to descend on those living in cars to bring news of the great incentive to encourage them to saddle up and take their publicly embarrassing wagon trains south.

While the regions objected that there was no room in their inns, and pointed out that they have their own social housing problems to deal with thanks very much, another more upmarket wagon train lay abandoned on the remote Waikaia Bush Road in Central Otago.

A major rescue mission costing hundreds of thousands of dollars had to be mounted to stage a rescue of a group of 38 4WD adventurers stranded in blizzard conditions overnight. After their rescue the entitled group of misadventurers rushed on to a bus trying to avoid talking to the media, happy in the knowledge that weren't going to be asked to make any financial contribution toward paying for their expensive and dangerous rescue.

With 38 SUVS lying abandoned on the road till the thaw of spring perhaps these luxury vehicles could be decommissioned as the playthings of the rich and stupid. Those living in cars making their slow way south and being turned away from towns could take possession of the commodious vehicles to complement their humble housing fleet.

All bitter satire aside, Bennett's ill thought-out and badly researched five grand offer to make it all go away is yet another example of National's visionless and callous approach to the problem of housing.

This combined with the Prime Minister re-directing Auckland's housing crisis and blaming it on the local council for not releasing land is further evidence of Steven Joyce textbook bullying to take the spotlight and pressure off Government.

With central and local governments at war in a bad game of chicken over who pays for the infrastructure – never the developers, land bankers or speculators, and with no immigration strategy, the populace is supposed to become marinated to the idea of commissioners being put in place and the suspension of local democracy in Auckland as it was in Canterbury with ECan.

The Government's refusal to limit overseas buyers or impose a capital gains tax has produced righteous indignation and a growing clamour for Government to do something.

John Key's response is to make it the super city's problem, threatening that if the council says no to releasing land, the developers will take the council to court, "and the developers will win!"

This is running classic Joycean interference at the expense of democracy while the prime minister sets out to grab the sound bite and appear the action man tough guy while setting the tone for things to come.

With no real money in the Budget given to growing employment and industry in the regions and cities to the south, all rhetoric and roads still lead to Auckland.

Like a film set facade of a town where it all looks good up front, out the back in the empty back lots the real deal is being done with Government and the developers.

Key blithely boasts about Government being out of the business of building social housing for many decades as if this notion was old-fashioned and quaint while flagrantly reaffirming an unsavoury partnership with the developers. Threats to interfere with local democracy to achieve jaded Government objectives means Auckland ratepayers - already paying top dollar - will see massive rates increases and blame the super city.

Rents will go up, more will be made homeless and have to live in cars, overseas investors will snap up the new properties … and on and on it will go, property speculation and overseas ownership world without end, forever and ever and no amend.