30 Oct 2017

The Panel with Stephen Franks and Ellen Read (Part 1)

From The Panel, 4:03 pm on 30 October 2017

The government won't be announcing whether they can pay for all its proposed policies until a mini-budget before Christmas. The prime minister's confident the coalition agreements will be within the budget, but should it be releasing the details now? A stamp duty for foreign buyers has also effectively been ruled out, we speak to Liam Hehir, lawyer and political commentator, about this approach. Stephen Selwood, Chief executive of Infrastructure New Zealand, tells the panel about the logistics of facilitating affordable housing in Auckland. The government and new housing minister are demanding a higher number of affordable homes, and an idea has been floated suggesting a large-scale development at Paerata. The panellists discuss whether property owners with empty houses in Auckland should be encouraged by the government to rent them to critical workers like nurses and teachers. They've been dumped, at least temporarily, from their government roles, and now decisions Australian politicians Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash made over the last year could be challenged. We get analysis from our panellist, lawyer Stephen Franks, over the continuing citizenship scandal.