putting the why in twyford

wading into the nz politics scene wasn't on the cards for my night tonight at all (was more thinking of 'netflix and chill') (by myself), and yet i find myself sitting at my desk and squinting at screeds of online debate and trying to read articles on the auckland housing market on my phone screen, instead of watching don draper seducing some poor woman whilst delivering a speech on integrity within the golden age of advertising.

anyway, in a nutshell: labour's housing spokesman phil twyford and indeed labour itself find themselves in hot water this week after warning kiwis of a "tsunami of chinese money" coming into the country, as a result of all the nasty mainland asians coming and buying up all the property in auckland - and they have the stats to prove it. kind of. twyford claimed that almost 40% of all housing purchases made within a certain period were made by chinese buyers, but only 9% of auckland's population is of chinese descent. his implication by giving these disparate percentages is that foreign chinese investors are unabashedly buying up all of auckland's property and stealing nz land right out from kiwis' feet whilst simultaneously jacking up the prices of said land. fine. that's a legitimate threat in nz right now.

i haven't gotten to the controversy, though. it turns out, the data he was using is based on the surnames of buyers within only a three month buying period, from only one real estate company. labour determined the ethnicity of these 'chinese' buyers only from their family names. i won't pretend to know anything about any kind of housing. i do, however, know a bit about having a chinese-y surname. i feel icky, reading about this. i feel icky reading about how phil twyford saw that 'lee', 'kim', and 'wu' were some of the top 20 last names within that three month period to buy auckland property and cried "chinese investors". i'm not going to throw around phrases like "racism", "racial profiling" or "race-baiting", but even if all 20 surnames were ones that imply asian origin, is this really data to promote a new housing policy with? is that really all you're going to use? seems like a terrible idea. that, and a lost opportunity to talk about the actual threat of foreign investment, or nz's unreasonable housing prices, or any other serious topic undermined by this outburst.

i don't know. like i said, i'm no housing/economics guru. i didn't even do a lot of research on this. i wasn't really commenting on the housing side of it all really. i'll say this. to my man phil: i can't wait to buy my first home here, you've made it so welcoming.