Grant Robertson campaigned on rent caps when he wanted to be leader of the Labour Party with Ardern as his number 2.

He has ironically now been made the deputy PM and is also the finance minister under Ardern’s leadership.

He also has gone out on record refusing to rule out rent capping for the New Zealand rental housing market.

It would seem we are only a short time away from the introduction of some seriously bad socialist policy.

Below is a quote from an economist with some experience in rent controls and perhaps some good reading for our finance minister

• Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities.
  • The Political Economy of the New Left : An Outsider’s View (1971), p. 39
  • Variant translation: In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.
    • As quoted in “The Rise, Fall and Revival of Swedish Rent Control” by Sven Rydenfelt, in Rent Control : Myths and Realities (1981) edited by Walter Block and Edgar Olsen, pp. 213, 230