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Rottenomics - the story of New Zealand’s leaky buildings disaster
The story of New Zealand’s leaky buildings disaster.
- GenresNonfiction
186 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 18, 2021
"Rottenomics" is the punning title of Peter Dyers excellent and deeply disturbing report on the scandal that is the "Leaky Building" crisis in New Zealand. (Sir) Roger Douglas was one of the instigators of New Zealand's neoliberal, monetarist revolution in the 1980s, which became known here as "Rogernomics", in imitation of "Reaganomics" in the USA. Read, and despair.
Five stars for readability and vitally needed and well-garnered information for any interested New Zealander, and perhaps too from those overseas, who might wish to learn some lessons applicable to their own society, or treat as a bit of a warning if intending to emigrate; that New Zealand is not exactly the paradise that it can seem from outside and if you buy a property here, caveat emptor. In the absence of any sort of official NZ enquiry into this financial, social and infrastructural disaster (surprise, surprise), then this is the book is the only complete repository of information as the why's and wherefores of this appalling scandal. (Unlike the earlier leaky building (condo) scandal in British Columbia, where there was an enquiry - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...) New Zealand may be a small relatively open and relatively uncorrupt society, but it's a country where anyone important knows everyone else who is important, and where incompetence, political dogma and ambition and commercial interests and greed too often collude to the citizens' detriment. So no enquiry in NZ, and therefore no accountability. There are some very bumpy carpets in politicians' offices where such matters, and many others prior scandals, have been swept under.
You can explore a bit of the background on Peter Dyer's web page. https://leaky-buildings.peterdyer.nz and there are useful references to reviews. It's pretty telling too that Peter Dyer is not a New Zealander, but an interested party who moved from the US to this country in 2004, his training not as a builder but as an engineer in machine shops, where the major lesson he learned was "get it right first time". If you visit his site, and I recommend this, you can see how he's laid out his chapters and follow up other information, such as reviews of his book. No native New Zealander - reporter or writer - has thought to do the same as Peter Dyer. .Reading the reviews will also provide you with some excellent summaries of the information and the arguments that Dyer puts forward and means that I don't have to here.
He starts with the very personal story of "Sarah" whose rotten home caused major financial distress, but worse, severe and disabling health problems. Her experience is mirrored by tens of thousands of others throughout New Zealand.
So briefly, what was, and remains, the problem? The most obvious and the most blamed is the use of untreated radiata pine as a framing timber which, if any defects in the construction (and there were many) and it gets damp or wet, rots very easily and very quickly. (New Zealand's housing stock is 95% light timber framing, an advantage in our earthquake prone country but too often of dubious standard and which requires a lot of expensive regular maintenance to keep weatherproof in our often harsh climate). Dyer claims around 174,000 private homes are affected, one way or another, and many public buildings such as hospitals, schools etc, are additional to this. He estimates the cost of the private buildings alone is around $47 billion dollars, or one fifth of NZ's total annual GDP. This is much higher than "official" estimates, but of course, we're not supposed to know that, as they've been kept secret.
The chapters describe all the various factors that conspired to make this crisis worse and worse, the holes in the Swiss cheese model of failure, but ultimately Dyer pins down responsibility to neoliberal dogma - it permeates Treasury from the chief to the cleaners, is now the established and unshakeable orthodox mantra of politicians left and right, and is amplified by a media corrupted by its own commercial imperatives. .
The most pointed and ironic observation comes in the preface. Sir Roger Douglas was one of the three ministers in the David Lange's cabinet that hijacked Labour's government and pushed through the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. And I say "pushed", basically they were extremists and they admitted as much. Douglas admitted as much "The quicker (and more thoughtlessly presumably) you can push through as many reforms as you can, you give no time for an opposition to effect any challenge" (I paraphrase) - and of course, in Labour pushing through these reforms, for the right-wing National party opposition such policies were as milk and honey to their own views. Anyway as part of his justification for these reforms, Dyer writes that Roger Douglas stated these aims "First, better living standards for all New Zealanders. Second a fairer, more just society that provides worthwhile jobs for all who want them, education that truly meets the needs of our children, health care that we can be proud of and decent housing for all New Zealanders" In almost every respect of its stated aims, neoliberalism has failed. Living standards have risen very slowly for most, and not at all for those at the bottom, inequality in a previously egalitarian society became hugely worse very quickly and remains so nearly forty years later, student fees and stressful indebtedness have hardly helped our children's education and housing prices are now a ransom on one's secure future. Indeed in 2020 the visiting UN rapporteur, Leilani Farha, has called the country's housing crisis a "significant human rights crisis" and says it is time the right to housing was wrenched from the hands of the private market. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/4...
So is this book political? Of course it is. Is it a polemic? Yes, supported by a huge amount of incontrovertible evidence and reference. Is it true? Yes, as all the reviewers of the book, experts in the building industry, agree. I am not sure why Peter Dyer came to New Zealand, but if it was to escape the extreme capitalism and neoliberalism of the USA, he's found out that New Zealand's rather more parochial version is just as stupid and just as destructive.
There's an informative interview with Peter Dyer here. https://soundcloud.com/user-1of200/bo...
Five stars for readability and vitally needed and well-garnered information for any interested New Zealander, and perhaps too from those overseas, who might wish to learn some lessons applicable to their own society, or treat as a bit of a warning if intending to emigrate; that New Zealand is not exactly the paradise that it can seem from outside and if you buy a property here, caveat emptor. In the absence of any sort of official NZ enquiry into this financial, social and infrastructural disaster (surprise, surprise), then this is the book is the only complete repository of information as the why's and wherefores of this appalling scandal. (Unlike the earlier leaky building (condo) scandal in British Columbia, where there was an enquiry - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...) New Zealand may be a small relatively open and relatively uncorrupt society, but it's a country where anyone important knows everyone else who is important, and where incompetence, political dogma and ambition and commercial interests and greed too often collude to the citizens' detriment. So no enquiry in NZ, and therefore no accountability. There are some very bumpy carpets in politicians' offices where such matters, and many others prior scandals, have been swept under.
You can explore a bit of the background on Peter Dyer's web page. https://leaky-buildings.peterdyer.nz and there are useful references to reviews. It's pretty telling too that Peter Dyer is not a New Zealander, but an interested party who moved from the US to this country in 2004, his training not as a builder but as an engineer in machine shops, where the major lesson he learned was "get it right first time". If you visit his site, and I recommend this, you can see how he's laid out his chapters and follow up other information, such as reviews of his book. No native New Zealander - reporter or writer - has thought to do the same as Peter Dyer. .Reading the reviews will also provide you with some excellent summaries of the information and the arguments that Dyer puts forward and means that I don't have to here.
He starts with the very personal story of "Sarah" whose rotten home caused major financial distress, but worse, severe and disabling health problems. Her experience is mirrored by tens of thousands of others throughout New Zealand.
So briefly, what was, and remains, the problem? The most obvious and the most blamed is the use of untreated radiata pine as a framing timber which, if any defects in the construction (and there were many) and it gets damp or wet, rots very easily and very quickly. (New Zealand's housing stock is 95% light timber framing, an advantage in our earthquake prone country but too often of dubious standard and which requires a lot of expensive regular maintenance to keep weatherproof in our often harsh climate). Dyer claims around 174,000 private homes are affected, one way or another, and many public buildings such as hospitals, schools etc, are additional to this. He estimates the cost of the private buildings alone is around $47 billion dollars, or one fifth of NZ's total annual GDP. This is much higher than "official" estimates, but of course, we're not supposed to know that, as they've been kept secret.
The chapters describe all the various factors that conspired to make this crisis worse and worse, the holes in the Swiss cheese model of failure, but ultimately Dyer pins down responsibility to neoliberal dogma - it permeates Treasury from the chief to the cleaners, is now the established and unshakeable orthodox mantra of politicians left and right, and is amplified by a media corrupted by its own commercial imperatives. .
The most pointed and ironic observation comes in the preface. Sir Roger Douglas was one of the three ministers in the David Lange's cabinet that hijacked Labour's government and pushed through the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. And I say "pushed", basically they were extremists and they admitted as much. Douglas admitted as much "The quicker (and more thoughtlessly presumably) you can push through as many reforms as you can, you give no time for an opposition to effect any challenge" (I paraphrase) - and of course, in Labour pushing through these reforms, for the right-wing National party opposition such policies were as milk and honey to their own views. Anyway as part of his justification for these reforms, Dyer writes that Roger Douglas stated these aims "First, better living standards for all New Zealanders. Second a fairer, more just society that provides worthwhile jobs for all who want them, education that truly meets the needs of our children, health care that we can be proud of and decent housing for all New Zealanders" In almost every respect of its stated aims, neoliberalism has failed. Living standards have risen very slowly for most, and not at all for those at the bottom, inequality in a previously egalitarian society became hugely worse very quickly and remains so nearly forty years later, student fees and stressful indebtedness have hardly helped our children's education and housing prices are now a ransom on one's secure future. Indeed in 2020 the visiting UN rapporteur, Leilani Farha, has called the country's housing crisis a "significant human rights crisis" and says it is time the right to housing was wrenched from the hands of the private market. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/4...
So is this book political? Of course it is. Is it a polemic? Yes, supported by a huge amount of incontrovertible evidence and reference. Is it true? Yes, as all the reviewers of the book, experts in the building industry, agree. I am not sure why Peter Dyer came to New Zealand, but if it was to escape the extreme capitalism and neoliberalism of the USA, he's found out that New Zealand's rather more parochial version is just as stupid and just as destructive.
There's an informative interview with Peter Dyer here. https://soundcloud.com/user-1of200/bo...
February 11, 2020
Informative
June 21, 2021
An industry in which the regulated is the one controlling the regulator only works in the neoliberal fantasy.
It’s like you giving speeding tickets to yourself, it won’t happen.
Peter exposes how the absence of important institutions and the focus on performance-based, as oppose as science-based, policies led to the leaky building disaster.
After the catastrophe comes a colossal bill for the society to pay. It happened with the financial crisis. It’s still happening with the leaky buildings. It will happen with the dairy industry. As Peter wisely quote Hegel, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
Every claim made in the book is followed by sufficient evidence. A great work.
It’s like you giving speeding tickets to yourself, it won’t happen.
Peter exposes how the absence of important institutions and the focus on performance-based, as oppose as science-based, policies led to the leaky building disaster.
After the catastrophe comes a colossal bill for the society to pay. It happened with the financial crisis. It’s still happening with the leaky buildings. It will happen with the dairy industry. As Peter wisely quote Hegel, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
Every claim made in the book is followed by sufficient evidence. A great work.
December 28, 2019
Informative but a bit too much focus on left wing, it’s all neoliberalism’s fault. Is it the only reason that those building things (both owners and doers) became greedy and without ethics because Rogernomics told them they should?
Also, in the time/cost/quality triangle (that all construction theoretically subscribes to) quality went down, cost went up (by the end of the 80s) and time did (uncertain?). Were there lots of very cheap buildings out there for a while? Or lots of developers making a killing? Or stuff getting built super quick? Or just more poor stuff but very poor quality? Left a bit unsure of that.
Also, in the time/cost/quality triangle (that all construction theoretically subscribes to) quality went down, cost went up (by the end of the 80s) and time did (uncertain?). Were there lots of very cheap buildings out there for a while? Or lots of developers making a killing? Or stuff getting built super quick? Or just more poor stuff but very poor quality? Left a bit unsure of that.
March 23, 2020
Somewhat depressing how badly fucked up NZ buildings are.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews