PM John Key names new cabinet; Smith gets Environment; Bridges gets Transport; Adams gets Justice; Tolley gets Social Development

No you are not the only one Craig.

discounts to foreign buyers?

No it's more puffery. There isn't enough time for current government initiatives to do anything about residential property values before the next election.

JK is on record as saying (i) he wants/expects a soft landing on property prices (prices plateau while wages catch up - preferably before we are all dead) and (ii) that pouring money into housing is his preferred method for the country to save for the future.

What JK will never admit is that every year that the government tolerates all this money being diverted into what is actually consumer spending is another year that our businesses - especially our smaller businesses - struggle with unnecessarily high input costs and struggle to get finance to grow. So he is opting for a sputtering cargo-cult economy. Oh goody.

There are now two pathways heading towards "affordable housing". English, Smith and Bennett (along with Amy Adams who is now out of the group) fired off a request in September to the Productivity Commission to investigate planning processes and infrstructure funding in councils. This inquiry actually has potential to deliver significant results if the government has the cojones to implement the recommendations - very unlikely based on their history. But the earliest councils can start implementing any policy that does come out of the inquiry would be July 2017 too late to deliver anything before the next election.

The second pathway are the new initiatives in social housing which are basically another transfer into lower income groups. They can only work through a combination of taxpayer-funded subsidies, sourcing land at below market rates and skimping on construction. It does, howver, deliver the one benefit that the government is seeking: it doesn't deflate property values or upset the current market structures.

Re: "will they take action that reduces (house) prices by around 20% -of course they will not"

I will give three reasons why Key's Cabinent selection means there will be no effort made to make housing affordable.

1. The government wants to sell of a 1/4 of the State Housing stock. They want to get the maximum value for this sell off (Probably helps with achieving no.1 goal -tax cuts). So Key has set up a internal conflict of interest. The government could implement policies to pop unaffordable house prices or they could chase the unaffordability upwards so they maximise asset sales.

2. John Key has put Bill English in charge of selling off the State Houses. Thus silencing National's biggest advocate for affordable housing.

3. National plans to replace State housing with NGO social housing provision. Thus bringing the likes of the Salvation Army into the National tent. Don't expect much criticism of housing induced poverty from them.

This is a master class of 'full spectrum' politics but terrible economics. Productive NZ will struggle with unnecessary costs and a generation of kiwis will have their aspirations smashed.

Don't underestimate Paula Bennett.

She's female, rounded and happy.   Maybe that blinds you to her skill level.  Grey suits are not the only way forward.

I have noticed that he can't talk and breathe at the same time, a feat that requires almost no intelligence at all

I wasn't suggesting Simon Bridges is uniquely qualified to solve lifes difficult problems. Clearly he is not. Only that affordable housing solutions need integrated transport solutions. Hence the need for a Transport minister in the housing group.

It will be interesting to see how questions on GCSB that carry over from Dirty Politics revelations are treated. As Key is no longer the Minister - does that mean he cannot be held responsible for what he did/did not do in the previous term? I also wonder how the Gwyn inquiry is progressing.  A RNZ reporter who appeared before her had the emails he had collated for that appearance on his laptop mysteriously deleted whilst he was out of the office covering the election. 

You're spot on about saying he's been captured, but  not by the interests of Maoris in general, but by those of the very powerful,  manipulative Iwi. And this has accumulatively  cost us all hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified "compensation".

Finalyson has not taken the trouble to read balanced accountsof  interactions between (what we should no longer be calling) tribes and the government.He's simply bad-mouthed and dismissed reputable researchers who have become highly concerned about the rip-offs to the taxpayer by the quite shockingly inadequate scrutiny given to some of these major claims.

When we hear about child poverty in this country, we have to remember that we are talking about family poverty... And a major reason for this is the complete dismissal of the needy by wealthy, part-Maori tribal overlords and CEOs who have made sure that none of the 37 billion dollars that  the Maori economy is now worth has gone to those Maori who are genuinely disadvantaged.

The real reasons, it can be argued, for the unaddressed poverty of these families has been the government throwing money at iwi negotiators - money that did not come from the pockets of government members themselves!  - without requiring any accountability on behalf of the taxpayer, who's been forced to pay for these.

Secondly, it is extremely wealthy, politicised iwi overlords who are very much to blame for ensuring that the settlement monies which were intended to go to those most in need did not do so. This is  done deliberately

The accountability we should be requiring  is from the inexcusably rude  Minister of Treaty Negotiations - who has not supplied us with this - and from the politicised iwi negotiators  whose prime interest appears to have been looking after themselves and their whanua...and who never get taken to court when any rorts they've been perpetuating are revealed. The whole situation is shocking -  and inexcusable.