The New Year has begun and we have another statistic the Government doesn’t want to know about and chooses to ignore.



Auckland has now risen from being the world’s fifth less affordable city in which to live to fourth behind only Hong Kong, Sydney and Vancouver. Even cities which have been known to be hugely expensive for many years lag far behind. London, for example, is 12th and New York City is 21st.



The government just shoves this sort of negative information under the carpet while most media commentators are not much better. More often than not they give a simplistic assessment as to the causes citing moderate pay, high house prices and not enough houses being built, RMA reform and local Government.



Because much of our media are bound by political correctness they just tip toe around the root cause of housing unaffordability.



And that root cause is out of control immigration.



New Zealand has net immigration of 70,000 a year.



This means we are accepting the population of a city the size of New Plymouth or Rotorua every year.



Well over half of those 70,000 immigrants, most of whom are cashed up, settle in Auckland every year, pushing up house prices and making it nearly impossible for ordinary Kiwis to buy a home.



It’s obvious the first major step to make housing more affordable in Auckland – and New Zealand for that matter - is to apply a brake to immigration.



The government won’t do it.



But the New Zealand public are waking up. With this year’s general election they have the chance to tell Mr English and his government what they think of their irresponsible and damaging immigration policy.



Bizarre as it may sound, we need to get Auckland’s housing affordability down to the levels of London and New York.



If we don’t, Auckland could knock off Hong Kong as being the least affordable city in the world.



That would be appalling.

source: data archive