Government homelessness policy feeble
14 Feb 2020
From Chris Leitch , Leader
Labour’s greatest Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, would be weeping tears of disappointment at his party’s feeble attempts to tackle the housing crisis.
Under Savage, Labour built 5,000 houses in the four years to 1939, and 30,000 by 1949, financed by Reserve Bank credit.
Savage campaigned on a platform of Monetary Reform, and with backing from a strong Social Credit movement won the 1935 general election.
He set about using the Reserve Bank to create the credit necessary to rebuild the nation, appointing John A Lee as housing under-secretary and they got stuck in to the task of building state houses.
That mechanism has been touched on by Dr Jenny McArthur in her Helen Clark Foundation housing report released this week.
As the Ministry of Works report ‘State Housing in New Zealand’ recorded:-
“To finance its comprehensive proposals, the Government… used Reserve Bank credit……The sums advanced by the Reserve Bank were not subscribed or underwritten by other financial institutions. This action showed the Government’s intention to ……use the country’s credit in creating new assets for the country”.
Reserve Bank credit was also advanced to the Dairy Board to build New Zealand’s fledgling dairy industry and to back other producer boards.
The International Monetary Fund’s 2012 report “The Chicago Plan Revisited” recommends governments adopt its use.
According to John Hotson, Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo, in Toronto, Canada, Savage’s use of the Reserve Bank saw New Zealand become the first country in the developed world to recover from the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
Labour’s policy manifesto included Reserve Bank funding until recently but it has wholeheartedly adopted the right wing economic agenda.
Michael Joseph Savage would no longer recognise it as his party and disown it in an instant.
No wonder Labour is languishing in the polls. Its economic policies are virtually no different from National’s.
The Chicago Plan Revisited -