By my reckoning there would be a 29th of February at least twice in that 10 year period

24 times 365 is 8760.
24 times 365.25 times 10 is 87,660.

He’s one the best they’ve got Dave. But that doesn’t say a whole heck of a lot for the rest of the team, does it.

For the next 60-odd years that fact used to be dredged-up and spouted by Labour members, toadies, functionaries, etc. with all the solemnity of a catholic catechism, on every occasion possible – but now, and notwithstanding arrangements made under the Employment Contracts Act – here’s Labour’s most recent spokesman on finance making calculations which involve workers being engaged on house construction 7 DAYS A WEEK!!!

Now it’s not really so long ago since FOL and Labour “conferences” wouldn’t have been complete without the likes of Skinner, Knox, Kelly (Senior) and dozens of similarly stunted mindsets all outraged about evil employers who wanted to extend the hours of their precious “workers.” Here we have the not-so-glowingly-competent Parker seeking to implement what his union forbears fought so hard for so long to avoid.

The only conclusion possible: Labour is even more disastrously inept that any prior determination has yet registered.

Point remains though; he ran a export oriented high tech start up. He didn’t just sit on his arse and practice law (not that law is easy). He tried to do something positive. Baking the cake, rather than just arguing about how it was sliced

For this alone, he stands out from the Labour party, his career isn’t in public sector, ngo or unions.

I tend to give him a break for that.

Graeme, how do figure that?

In humour, obviously. My rationale is stated.

Mostly, I was making a point about percentages being (almost inherently) misleading.

Which means DPF’s calculation of 7000% was more than 8200% too high

Graeme, how do figure that?

Labour’s own release says that they will introduce the policy with the aim of delivering 10,000 houses by the last year of their first term and then reinvest the proceeds into building another 10,000 the next year and so on for 10 years.
http://thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/KiwiBuild_Factsheet.pdf

If we assume a Labour led government gets voted in at the 2014 election and retains this policy through coalition negotiations (a reasonable bet). Then that means they deliver 10,000 houses in 2017 towards the end of their first term and maybe a further 30,000 over a possible second term. Given the difficulty of holding together a workable coalition for more than two terms and the likelihood of National rebounding – I would consider the chance of a third term in 2020 (making a total of 70,000 homes) to be low and chances of an historic fourth term in 2023 (bringing the total to 100,000 homes) being close to 0%. (Perhaps iPredict could run a bet on how many houses will actually get built)

In terms of the cost the media seem to have assumed that ALL the houses will be under 300k – the policy doesn’t really say this, it says they will be a range of sizes and costs. I would think they will be going for an average cost of under 300k – this is very achievable outside the main centres – I suspect that a large number of the Auckland homes will be apartments to save on land costs, the policy seems to support this.

The dollar value is open to hundreds of variables. The policy says it’s 300k for the build it also says they’ll be charging a profit margin of the government’s cost of borrowing plus 1% that’s around 3.5% on todays historically low rates but would be much higher in a high inflation high interest rate scenario (like if government were stoking inflation through money printing or massive public works projects). Also we are talking in 2012 dollars but we are 5 years from the first houses being built, so I assume they plan to adjust by inflation – is that the CPI or inflation in building costs (the latter likely to be much higher).

So 100,000 houses for $300,000 is a great positioning statement for Labour. With the small disclaimer that the only thing we can really guarantee about the policy is that they won’t build 100,000 homes and they won’t cost $300,000

It’s exactly the type of a high value business the country needs.