Orwell strikes again
Around 9 pm last night Trevor Mallard made a rather bizarre post on Red Alert. And presumably one of his colleagues stepped in and hid it from view as it disappeared for around several hours.
One would have thought they would have learnt from the Chris Finlayson episode, that it is a bad idea to delete stuff you regret, as it is cached and stored all over the place.
As people on Red Alert asked what happened to it, it then reappeared a few hours later.George Orwell would be proud his novels were so accurate!
The post was rather stupid, to be blunt. It says/said:
It is going to be interesting to see how hard the Nats push their policy of shifting from a pretty strict zoning system based on a right to enrol if in zone to giving flexibilty to schools to pick and choose students.
Being in the Auckland Grammar zone increases the value of a house by between $100 and $150k, it will be interesting to see how Nikki Kaye balances her pretty extreme free market views with the writing off of property values.
Big + for Jacinda I think.
I know Labour are desperate to try and talk the Auckland Central race up, but really describing Nikki as holding “pretty extreme free market views” is hilarious. All I can say is that whatever Trevor is inhaling needs to be reclassified from Class C to Class A!!
More to the point, Trevor needs to visit Auckland more often. The Auckland Grammar zone is here. Almost none of it is actually in Auckland Central. It is almost all in Epsom and Mt Albert. I can only presume he was desperately trying to come up with an issue, and this is the best he could come up with.
The only parts that are in zone are the CBD on and east of Queens Street, and Grafton. Now I don’t think anyone thinks many families live in CBD apartments, and their value is not greatly affected by the Grammar zone (look at apartment values on Queen St vs Albert St). So that only leaves Grafton which is around 5% of the electorate.
I do like the fact that Trevor defends school zoning on the basis that house values in Epsom will decrease too much if one makes it more flexible. Good to see Labour focused on helping kids get the best education.
Incidentally, while I think it is very unlikely the Grammar zone will disappear, I would say it would be incredibly popular in the other 95% of Auckland Central, as their parents would get a choice of schools.
UPDATE: Clare Curran has commented that the Red Alert post disappeared due to a technical glitch, and it was not done deliberately.