Mike's Minute: Some political operators want to undermine your future

Author: Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2026, 9:51am

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Perhaps the Labour Party's small target election year strategy has started to unravel as one of their MPs, Helen White, told us all of her desire for house prices to fall.

She wants them to come down.

They have already come down of course, through a series of events that included her last Government's approach to the economy.

The booming inflation they created, the bulging debt from all the spending and the general fiscal waste that saw interest rates spike, the country failing to collect the migrant numbers it had previously had, as well as the cost of building skyrocketing. As a result, the property market has broadly gone backwards for what many suggest now is a historic period of time.

So she should be happy.

Which is the problem with economic illiterates like her.

The Labour Party of course don’t see things the way she does for obvious reasons. Two-thirds of New Zealanders own homes and many see them as a nest egg for retirement.

Watching prices fall undermines our futures.

Helen made herself a headline because she was asked about the Opportunity Party, the leader of which is standing in her Mt Albert electorate.

They too want to wreck the property market with the land tax. Helen didn’t know much about that, all she knew was she wanted prices to fall.

Sadly, this is the sort of trouble Chris Hipkins is going to have to start to mop up.

Once you get into election mode a lot of random questions get asked of previously unheard-of MPs, some of whom manage to almost immediately display the attributes the party had been hoping could stay hidden, at least until election day.

Helen is already infamous given Mt Albert is deep Labour territory, and she almost lost it in 2023. So, her start to 2026 doesn’t bode well.

But the overarching message here is the bedrock of many New Zealanders savings strategies is under fire from increasing numbers of political operators.

They want your retirement blown sky high with a property crash.

I'm backing that approach not to be overly popular.