When National's plan cannibalises its marginal voters
The party promising to lend you 95 per cent of a house is the same party working to make that house worth less.
Grant McLachlan
6 days ago3 min read
How National’s business model is ruining farming
Six parties debated in the dairy capital. Nobody named the thing killing the primary sector.
Grant McLachlan
Sep 63 min read
Walker’s words are worth a commission
Hamish Walker spent three and a-half hours in Queenstown traffic and wrote a column about it. By his own account, he is “selling around two houses every month” to people leaving town because of the traffic.
Grant McLachlan
Sep 33 min read
Should Christchurch City Council tear up the Wolfbrook Arena naming rights deal?
Ratepayers built the arena. Two developer families have since put their name on it. Between them sits a Commerce Commission refund, two Financial Markets Authority warnings, a High Court finding, and a fast-track bid the Government itself has now declined.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 249 min read
ACT’s small-state pitch is a big-state con
Andrew Ketels wants a leaner public service. Follow the money and it is his own client base that keeps getting bigger.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 234 min read
If social media is addictive enough to sue over, is property media too?
Four American states are on trial against Meta this week over algorithms engineered to hook children. New Zealand has spent three decades building a media, political and financial machine that runs the same trick on adults — and calls it aspiration.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 2222 min read
The problem with MMP is Luxon, not MMP
A Prime Minister who can't manage his own coalition wants voters to fix his problem for him.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 64 min read
Pegasus Brief — Treated like mushrooms
Days after 16,000 signatures were carried onto the steps of Parliament, the Government fast-tracked a motorway it says will “unlock housing” at Pegasus — then this week finally confirmed what it had spent weeks declining to confirm or deny.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 59 min read
Why is Queenstown asking the public to fix a mess it approved?
A resort town let ribbon development swallow its only roads, blacklisted the journalist who exposed its wastewater failures, and is now asking the public for ideas on how to fix what its own decisions caused.
Grant McLachlan
Aug 213 min read
Who really wins when councils scrap minimum parking rules?
Central and local government stripped car parking requirements from new developments to fix the housing crisis. It has made land more valuable, planning weaker, and streets unliveable — for residents and for the businesses whose customers can no longer find a park.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 316 min read
Is Steven Joyce still running the show?
Two boardroom rescues and a courtroom costs judgment inside five weeks have put the same handful of National-aligned names back at the centre of the party's donor world.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 85 min read
Is OneRoof talking down Jacinda's premium the night before her auction?
OneRoof ran its “celebrity homes don’t sell for more” story the night before Jacinda Ardern’s own auction — and its own numbers say otherwise.
Grant McLachlan
Jul 85 min read
Whose land is it — and why settle the question now?
The Conservation Amendment Bill reopens two centuries of argument about who owns the back country and what it is for — and it does so in an election year, by a government whose biggest donors deal in land.
Grant McLachlan
Jun 258 min read
Who is the state really housing?
How New Zealand’s great housing experiment turned from sheltering the poor to subsidising the people who profit from them.
Grant McLachlan
May 3010 min read
Cannibalising Pegasus: How a 77-hectare slice of a championship course becomes a land bank
A developer has bought 77ha of Pegasus Golf Course — clubhouse, practice range, six holes — and wants it rezoned for housing. That contradicts the consent that built Pegasus, the zoning that protects it, and the reason the course exists at all.
Grant McLachlan
May 2015 min read
Immigration is the economy, stupid!
“It’s the economy, stupid” is a phrase coined by Bill Clinton's campaign strategist James Carville in 1992, highlighting that voters prioritize their personal financial situation over all other issues. In New Zealand, immigration has been the driver of economic growth.
Grant McLachlan
May 174 min read
A very natural progression
A real estate empire’s fundraiser, its donations, its former chief executive and a friendly columnist all point the same way. The pattern is the story.
Grant McLachlan - Column
May 1623 min read
Fame for sale: Why celebrity property hype should come with a warning label
New Zealand's property media is drowning in celebrity clickbait and engineered prestige — pumping prices with star power while buyers absorb the risk when the glamour fades.
Grant McLachlan
Apr 519 min read
