Some facts on the situation

By now you would have read or seen either on The Herald or TV3’s The Nation about this special investigation into Auckland Housing and international buyers. Well if you want to unite the Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative sides of our political spectrum then Labour’s Phil Tywford did that – against him.

Keith Ng spelled out some facts over at Public Address:

My last name sounds Chinese

I don’t own a house, but if I bought one, I hope that cynical politicians wouldn’t blame people whose “last name sounds Chinese” for..

driving up house prices beyond the reach of hard-working Kiwi first home buyers

..as if people whose “last name sounds Chinese” can’t be a hard-working Kiwi, as if we are taking their houses.

And if I became a property investor, I hope that I’d be judged like every other property investor, and not hung up as a political scapegoat as if wewere some kind of foreign parasites, but they are wise stewards of property reaping the rewards of thrift and hard work.

I hope they wouldn’t treat us as if we were not them, based on whether our “last name sounds Chinese”.

Here’s the thing with Labour’s “analysis” of Auckland house sales, which the Herald are running with. Behind the curtain, there’s nothing more to it than going through house sale records and asking “do these names sound Chinese?”. It cannot tell you whether these people are speculators, investors or owner-occupiers, and it cannot tell you whether they are offshore, immigrants from the 90s, or if their ancestors have been here since the goldrush.

You can’t magically MATH your way from a last name to a residency status. They have one piece of real data: “39.5% of last names in a list of house sales sound Chinese”. All the assertions that Labour are making beyond this are complete bullshit.

Based on Labour’s analysis, buyers of Chinese descent accounted for 39.5 per cent of sales — more than four times the 9 per cent level of ethnic Chinese in Auckland’s population who are New Zealand residents or citizens…

“It’s staggering evidence that strongly suggests there’s a significant offshore Chinese presence in the Auckland real estate market. It could not possibly be all Chinese New Zealanders buying, that’s implausible.”

What Phil Twyford has done is just a sleigh-of-hand with percentages:

……..

Full post here: http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/my-last-name-sounds-chinese/

I wonder if Councillor Mike Lee (so Bruce Lee) would pass the Twyford Chinese Sounding Name Test if Mike wanted to buy a house in Auckland?

The sad point out of this comes that there was a debate to be had on housing in Auckland. Twyford just reframed the narrative and sent it off course.

Well done.