OPINION
Peter Allan Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
Christopher Luxon was in Queenstown on Thursday (September 7) and made a few announcements about tourism, as you would expect him to.
I suppose he has to fly the flag down this way, although you actually wonder why he makes so much of an effort considering his electorate candidates in this part of the world, Joseph Mooney and Miles Anderson will both win easily, and the combined National and Act vote in the Queenstown/Central Otago area will be strong as well.
Maybe Luxon just likes visiting the area and looking at the scenery.
But what got me was a very snarky line in the New Zealand Herald reporting on the trip – about housing in Queenstown.
Yes, the place is desperately short of worker accommodation. But it has been for years and shock horror, some people have to travel from Cromwell to go to work each day and it takes them thirty minutes.
Actually, it will take them much longer in rush hour, but a half-hour commute is not uncommon in various places around the country.
What annoyed me was this comment about the number of empty houses in Queenstown. “Data from the 2018 census shows roughly 5000 empty homes in the district, a shockingly high 27 per cent of the housing stock.”
Why is this number shockingly high? Has the Herald’s Derek Cheng got something against people who have done well enough in life to own a second house, and who want it available for their use when they have a holiday in Queenstown or Wanaka?
Why is this a “shockingly high” figure?
This is a country where people are free to work hard and accumulate assets. Many thousands of people have bought second properties in the Queenstown Lakes District.
Believe me, they pay for the privilege. Land prices are crazily high, building costs the same, and the rates on a 2 million dollar house – which is not much above the average for the district – will be around $150 a week.
If you’re paying that sort of money just to hold the property and can afford to, why should you be obliged to rent it out to help solve the accommodation shortage?
People have choices here. The government and the council do as well and could go a long way towards easing the accommodation crisis by making it easier for hostel or apartment-type rental accommodation for workers to be built.
They continually make it difficult, hence not much is available.
For a newspaper reporter on a whistle-stop visit to say that 27 per cent of houses in Queenstown is a “shockingly high” rate, is out of touch with reality and the right of New Zealanders to do what the hell they want to with their assets.