The problem with these theories is they conveniently skip over an awkward historical reality: pre-colonial housing standards were hardly the utopian communal paradise modern academics like to romanticise. Traditional Māori housing largely consisted of small raupō, timber and earth structures with dirt floors, smoke-filled interiors, little insulation, minimal sanitation and limited protection against disease or harsh weather. Life expectancy was dramatically lower than modern standards, tribal warfare was common, and entire communities could be displaced, enslaved or wiped out through conflict, famine and scarcity long before Europeans arrived.
Pretending nothing improved post European requires wilful blindness. Colonisation also introduced large-scale infrastructure, modern medicine, sanitation systems, permanent timber housing, steel tools, roads, plumbing, electricity, literacy, organised commerce, banking and legal property rights. Over time New Zealand went on to achieve one of the highest home ownership rates in the developed world during much of the twentieth century. Millions of ordinary working-class families, Māori included, benefited from those systems.
Yet modern academia increasingly talks as though private property itself is some sinister colonial conspiracy imposed on innocent collectivist societies living in harmony until capitalism arrived to ruin everything. Apparently having legal ownership of your own home, the ability to borrow capital, accumulate wealth and pass assets to your children is now considered evidence of oppression rather than progress. By that logic, the bank manager is basically the new imperial governor.
The real issue facing Māori, Pacific and non-Māori families alike today is not “colonial housing structures” but the same brutal economic pressures hammering every working household in New Zealand: inflated house prices, endless bureaucracy, restrictive planning laws, mass immigration pressures, construction costs, stagnant productivity, high interest rates and decades of political cowardice from governments terrified of upsetting the property market. None of those problems are solved by another taxpayer-funded thesis blaming nineteenth-century colonisation for twenty-first-century zoning regulations.
But universities keep circling back to the same ideological comfort blanket because it is easier to blame history than confront present-day policy failure. The formula is now painfully predictable: capitalism bad, colonialism worse, Western systems inherently oppressive, more public funding required for further research. Entire academic careers now appear to depend on stretching colonialism far enough to explain literally everything from housing affordability to supermarket prices.
At some point New Zealanders are entitled to ask whether universities are still researching solutions, or simply producing increasingly elaborate ways to turn the past into a permanent political industry.
Steven is an entrepreneur and an ex RNZN diver who likes travelling, renovating houses, Swiss Watches, history, chocolate art and art deco.
16 comments:
If the msm would ridicule maori claims the whole industry would lose credibility.Maori housing requirements were eased by infanticide. The tribe provided for all within. They did not rely on support from other tribes, except by the use of captives as slaves. The state now does the capturing of input from the colonist inspired tribes on maori behalf. Very many non maori plan families to match their ability to provide. A disproportionate fraction of maori seem to willfully proliferate to ensure support from others..
Apart for the fact that maoris living in state houses (fashionably called social housing now) don't require mortgages, the occupants of some let them fall into a level of filth and untidiness that mirror the pre-1840 housing maori occupied. If no one believes me have a look at the flats on Randwick Rd in Lower Hutt just south of the small shopping centre of Moera. An absolute graffiti-scarred disgrace. Add in those on a marae near Ohau and Manakau and it is clear nothing much has changed.
Yes, Steven, it is "those same brutal economic pressures..." - it's just that Maori are disproportionately NOT working households and are in fact way too often dysfunctional ones. It's not surprising that they find home ownership difficult and, as Allen accurately notes, too few know how to maintain them even when they have one provided. Those lack of appropriate role models and other familial dysfunction all comes at a cost. It's a just pity everyone else has to bear it both financially and socially. It all comes back to a lack of personal responsibility - a concept these neo-Marxist modern University academic types seem unable to grasp in their pursuit of claimed research, to justify their worthless degrees.
Colonialism and mortgages.
As global expert Clooney says: What else?
Attacked your neighbour, cannibalized him, taken his wife, enslaved the family, taken his primitive whare - who needs a mortgage ?
"....entire communities could be displaced, enslaved or wiped out through conflict, famine and scarcity long before Europeans arrived."
The academics at UoA must think that the rest of us cannot read. Many of us are well aware of what pre-European NZ was like for the indigenes.
Steven Gaskell, like all people who think that we have arrived at the highest possible stage in the development of human society, fails to think historically.
Yes, pre-European Māori society, like all early societies, rested on communal property. Yes, it was in material terms an impoverished society, at a low technological level which, like all other early societies, could not develop the forces of production without the institution of various forms of private property to give individuals the incentive to lead that development. But private property, having fulfilled its historical role, can now give way to a higher form of society, one again based on collective ownership, but at a much higher technological level.
Frederick Engels described this wide sweep of human progress (he is talking here about ownership of agricultural land, but the same idea applies to land for housing):
“All civilized peoples begin with the common ownership of the land. With all peoples who have passed a certain primitive stage, this common ownership becomes in the course of the development of agriculture a fetter on production. It is abolished, negated, and after a longer or shorter series of intermediate stages is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage of agricultural development, brought about by private property in land itself, private property conversely becomes a fetter on production, as is the case today both with small and large landownership. The demand that it, too, should be negated, that it should once again be transformed into common property, necessarily arises. But this demand does not mean the restoration of the aboriginal common ownership, but the institution of a far higher and more developed form of possession in common which, far from being a hindrance to production, on the contrary for the first time will free production from all fetters and enable it to make full use of modern chemical discoveries and mechanical inventions.”
The housing shortage is real (except for those who own multiple properties of course). It can never be solved while housing land remains a commodity to be bought and sold on the market. All housing stock need to taken into public ownership and allocated on the basis of need. The entire rents and mortgages system should be abolished.
Does this mean that every middle-class family in Mt. Eden should be thrown out of their home? Of course not. People who demonstrate an attachment to a dwelling should be guaranteed security of tenure, including the right to pass it on to their children. China's President Xi Jinping may be a neo-Stalinist dictator, but he got one thing right when he said " Houses are for living in, not speculating with."
Property rights? Apart from property rights, water, sanitation, education and healthcare, what have the Romans ever done for us?!
Terry, you should refresh your memory of the old saying about being thought a fool?
But thank goodness you aren't running the country, for it would present a broke, dystopian existence.
Firstly, where would all the money come from to buy all the housing stock, or is your proposal just for it to be taken?
And then allocated on need? Oh yeah, and just 'how' and by 'who' would that be done? Corruption would overrun the system all-but instantaneously, and revolt and warfare would soon follow.
When things are given and no price paid it seldom ends well and I can think of many spoilt brats that prove that point, and too many in our welfare system, similarly.
I have lived long enough to hear some ridiculous proposals, but yours takes the cake by a country mile.
To Terry Coogan. Yes, of course houses are "for living in". However, home ownership is highly attainable for those who are educated, get good employment, save hard and think outside the square. In times past we paid interest rates on mortgages of 18%.
People had two jobs. Some bought sections and lived on site in caravans.
It is too easy to say the present generation is "hard done by". There are many factors involved. Expectations, work ethic, greed and envy (not forgetting lattes and avocado on toast.)
Also, I admire Winston for his superannuation stand. It doesn't affect me, but who else is looking after the elderly? Previous generations who worked hard, were uncomplaining, didn't think the world owed them a living and valued education and employment.
That's the crux of the matter and that's why Winston gets votes and will continue to do so.
If need, be the only criteria to be deserving of lodgings, Terry.
Who the hell actually builds the houses.
As clumsy as Capitalism is it works better than all the other systems.
Would be communists need to relocate to we're they can appreciate the reality of the red life style they so desire.
More evidence that unversity professors are leftists who have never run anything or built anything or made payroll by running a successful business which pays taxes to keep the professor housed and fed.
I agree with a lot of what you say Janine, but let's also not forget the dogs, piercings, and tattoos. As for Winston, never forget his unacknowledged true love for the baubles of office and that it was he who quashed the TPB and, earlier, also put JA into office. An 'office' and its repercussions, that future generations will continue to pay for.
Terry, apart from the minor inconveniences of communism, millions dead, abject poverty for the masses, totalitarian oppression, etc. the main problem is that when everyone owns something then no one owns it. There’s no incentive to do anything extra because there’s no return. Even worse, stick your head up and it will be, literally, cut off.
Terry Coggan: "The housing shortage is real..."
When the first settlers came to NZ, there was nothing in the way of housing. Colonists were obliged to set to and build their own. This history is well known. Or ought to be. As a country, we've spent the intervening years playing catch-up. I have pointed out elsewhere that, in the early years of the 20th century, my grandparents spent some time living in a tent.
However. At present, there isn't a shortage of housing in Wellington. The population here is static, if not falling, and there are many vacant properties.
Let's not forget that, during the lockdowns associated with the pandemic, all of the homeless in NZ were accommodated. The way that was done was variably disastrous. Here in Wellington, most of the rough sleepers were back on the streets as soon as they were able to escape the accommodation provided to them by Social Welfare. And they have caused as much trouble as they ever did for other citizens.
"But private property, having fulfilled its historical role, can now give way to a higher form of society, one again based on collective ownership, but at a much higher technological level."
I call bollix on that statement. The collective ownership concept was instituted by the former USSR. It failed there, too, as it fails everywhere. Collective ownership falls victim to the Tragedy of the Commons. When the USSR fell, everyone in an apartment was given ownership for a nominal sum. Nowadays, private property ownership is the norm in Russia. We know: we have family there.
"People who demonstrate an attachment to a dwelling should be guaranteed security of tenure, including the right to pass it on to their children."
It's difficult to think of a more patronising statement. It doesn't even deserve a rebuttal.
Engels thoughts were theoretical. Those theories have been tested and were found to be false.
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