It wouldn’t take much for a demagogue promising to ‘ make New Zealand great again’ to amass a horde of supporters
or as long as I can remember, New Zealand has prided itself on being a so- called “classless” society. The class system, as British as Yorkshire puddings and Worcestershire sauce, was not for us, thank you very much. We may have been colonial simpletons with a funny accent, but we were egalitarian — and proud of it.
I say “were” because the fair go mentality we built our nation on ( atop the Maori land that provided the foundations upon which colonial New Zealand flourished) is in grave danger of disappearing forever, buried under the weight of crushing inequality and a mushrooming housing crisis that threatens to strangle the Kiwi dream.
That dream included a fair wage, a decent education, and a home to call one’s own. It wasn’t particularly grand — in fact, it was typically Kiwi in its modesty — but it promised a good life to those who were willing to work for it. And you didn’t need a university degree to achieve it.
When my parents started work in the 70s — my father at a sawmill and my mother at an electricity authority — they were able to save enough money to put down a deposit on their first house at age 20. Imagine that.
Granted, they lived in Rotorua rather than Auckland, but the ripple effects of the current Auckland housing crisis are now being felt throughout the North Island.
Housing prices in Rotorua rose 20 per cent during the year to June 2016, fuelled by exasperated Aucklanders fed up with clinging on to the out of control runaway train that is the Auckland property market. And really, who could blame them?
For a growing majority of New Zealanders, the Kiwi dream is increasingly unattainable, as housing costs soar, inequality skyrockets and we begin to confront the reality that our very own homegrown class system has come of age.
In no other stratum is our burgeoning social hierarchy more apparent than the propertied gentry of Auckland, of which I’m both embarrassed and grateful to admit that I am one. As one of those extremely lucky and rare millennials who managed to purchase an apartment at the right time with the assistance of my family, I now stand upon the lauded property ladder, guiltily avoiding the gazes of my educated, hardworking friends who have a snowman’s chance in hell of owning a home of their own. It’s not fair. It’s certainly not egalitarian. It’s not the Kiwi way. But it’s undeniably happening, and our leaders seem content to sit on their hands while the class divisions deepen rather than upset property and business- owning voters.
It’s also likely that it will only get worse, and home ownership will become almost the exclusive domain of baby boomers, debt- strapped Gen X- ers and millennials with financially