English must quit – Peters

Winston Peters ripped into Finance Minister Bill English, saying he should resign over the housing crisis.

The NZ First leader said English had been assuring New Zealanders that everything was under control – and that was dishonest.

‘‘I think standing around looking at a trainwreck of your own making is not being honest when you actually admit what you’re seeing,’’ he said on RNZ.

‘‘Bill should just resign. He’s a Treasury guy. That country drawl is no longer cutting it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s got no idea what to do now and he’s part of the problem in the sense of saying that National’s got a housing strategy. I’d like to know what it is.’’

The Government should have acted years ago to prevent the housing inflation and shortage problems the country was experiencing, Peters said.

NZ First had warned mass immigration and offshore buyers would create the ‘‘perfect storm’’.

‘‘When the bubble bursts so many, hundreds of thousands [of people], would have lost all of their investment or nearly all of it in terms of equity.’’

‘‘There’s going to be a day of reckoning and it’s coming soon. That’s not what I want. What I wanted was a country to turn aside from its ideological bends of stupidity and start having ministers act in the interest of all New Zealanders, not offshore buyers and mass immigration which have been the two drivers of this catastrophe.’’

Peters said the Government and the Reserve Bank should have pushed for house prices to fall a ‘‘long time ago’’.

‘‘The Reserve Bank, with the greatest respect, resembles nothing so much as a witches’ coven in medieval times pouring over entrails of a goat while they try and tell New Zealand they know what they’re doing.’’

But English wasn’t fazed, responding that he would not be resigning.

‘‘No I don’t think we’ll do that,’’ he told RNZ.

He disagreed the Government had run out of ideas, saying the work on the housing market started back in 2011.

Loan-to-value ratio restrictions s came in in 2013, Special Housing Areas were set up in 2012 and 2013, and there were a number of other measures and taxes that had been implemented, he said.

‘‘It’s now getting up to four years of various measures on the demand side.’’

Migration increases were from Kiwis returning from Australia or not leaving the country.