Is Twyford now going to apologise to the “kids” at Treasury?
In May 2018 Stuff reported:
Housing Minister Phil Twyford has slammed the “kids at Treasury” over an analysis that halved the impact KiwiBuild would have on residential construction, and provided a sunnier forecast from another agency.
“Some of these kids at Treasury are fresh out of university and they’re completely disconnected from reality,” Twyford said.
In the Budget documentation on Thursday, Treasury analysts reduced the amount of additional residential investment they believe the Government’s flagship KiwiBuild policy will bring in by 2023.
At the Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update in December, the analysts predicted the policy would bring in $5.4b additional residential investment over 2018-2022. The analysts changed that figure to $2.5b in their Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, released on Thursday. …
Well the reality is the “kids” at Treasury were right and Twyford was the one completely disconnected from reality.
If there is any criticism you can make of the Treasury analysis, it was actually far too generous, even when halved. The actual impact of Kiwibuild in residential investment looks to be close to zero.
Ministers don’t have to agree with advice from Treasury, or from any agency. But denigrating public servants as “kids disconnected from reality” is insulting and abusive.
Time has proven the kids were right, so surely it is now time for Twyford to apologise to them.