Local Maori tribes are not construction companies. Nor, at their core, are they property management companies. And yet, successive governments have appointed increasingly large roles for local Iwi to possess and now construct houses for the NZDF.

It started in 2012, when as part of a brilliant Chris Finlayson plan for a treaty settlement, Ngati Whatua o Orakei (local iwi around Devonport) bought 250 houses used by the Royal New Zealand Navy for family housing. They then leased them back to the NZDF for occupation until the leases finished, and then they could do whatever they wanted with them:

Ngati Whatua o Orakei is closer to completing a Treaty of Waitangi deal under which it will snap up navy housing land at Devonport for nearly $96 million.

…

Most of the 250 homes on the land are occupied by families. Defence housing and property director Peter Bollmann said the Government’s recent Defence white paper signalled it was “moving out of the business of providing rental housing for personnel”.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-new-zealand-navys-594m-property-portfolio/U4BTBJ5U3RGKRE2QR46LZ74LYQ/

Those leases started finishing in February 2018, with 41 leases finishing and reverting back to the Iwi. Of the 253 properties, 40 a year are coming off a lease – leaving the NZDF families with nowhere to go in one of the most expensive suburbs of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Not all navy houses were repossessed by the iwi, but 250 is a very big portion of them. I don’t have figures for how few houses the RNZN ended up with, but the result was that NZDF put in a defence-wide policy of restricting living in an NZDF house to 6 years for an entire career. After that, you were expected to rent or buy your own.

Housing (and barracks) are a huge driver of dissatisfaction in the NZDF, especially the Army. We are frequently posted around the country, so buying and renting is at the whim of a very volatile housing market. If you were unlucky enough to buy at the peak of the housing bubble and then sell say at the end of last year, six figure losses were in order. The 6 year limitation is blunt and punitive against those who move around the country and can’t amass a property portfolio around the country. Woe betide you if you go through something like a divorce after your 6 years in NZDF housing are up.

It’s getting worse. Andrew Little announced with great fanfare that he had secured as part of the budget $70 Million for 50 houses in Waiouru, 6 houses in Burnham and 7 in Linton / Ohakea. Just one catch – the Waiouru houses were going to be constructed by the local Iwi. And then presumably managed and owned by the Iwi.

These better be some bloody good houses at more than $1M a pop – remember, the land costs nothing! These are purely construction costs.

I put in an OIA to find out more details about it. Turns out that Andrew Little has announced the project very prematurely, and “negotiations are still ongoing”:

It’s a total of $85 million to build 61 houses. $1.39 Million per house!!!!! These better be mansions! Of course, they won’t be.

Because the truth of this is that Andrew Little has not secured additional funding for NZDF houses. He has been willingly manipulated by the Maori Caucus in Labour to divert NZDF funding to local Iwi. I calculate that he could have used the funding to build 120 houses, allowing for a (very) generous $500,000 per house. With the downturn in NZ’s construction sector, I’m quite confident that GJ Gardiner or any other residential building company can easily throw up some simple 3 or 4 bedroom houses straight off the plans.

And who loses here – NZDF families. There is still no actual plan to fix the housing and barracks crisis in the NZDF. Just more money going to the grievance industry that is go-governance.

National started it.