1937: First State House Built?

September 9, 2019

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 18 September, 1938: According to State history this is the day the first  State House was built in this country. The one they mean is at 12 Fife Lane, Miramar, Wellington.

First Labour 1.0 State House, yes. First State House, no.

Government has been getting its grubby hands into housing from the about the 1860s or earlier. State History simply pushes the false view that Labour came up with this programme because they think it makes them look good.

“Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage lifts a cumbersome dining table through a cheering throng toward the house’s threshold. For the government, the Prime Minister’s deed was intended to emphasise that he was the servant of ‘the people’, not above manual labour. David McGregor, son of the original tenant, wasn’t convinced by the gesture. He wryly recalled that Savage dropped the table as soon as he was through the front door.”- State housing Page 2 – The first state house; nzhistory.govt.nz

Workers’ Dwelling Act 1905

The Workers’ Dwelling Act (1905) was an earlier government gimmick to grow the State and make themselves landlords. State probably just trying to gobble up more land and control it under the guise of a popular cause.

Also, a payday for State flunkies, a sweetheart deal to help Liberal Party brown-nosing landowners flick some property off. The above house was new in 1907, built in Sydenham, Christchurch.¹

The Liberal Government (image right) were robbing the rich and spending it on election advertising in the form of real estate. Just as Labour 1.0 would do again, this had been tried before. The Liberal’s Workmen’s Homes Policy (1897) had already failed, this was simply another in a long line of reboots. Labour 6.0 called it ‘Kiwibuild’ and that hit the wall pretty quick too!²

City labourers didn’t actually want to commute out to these rural or suburban places after a hard days work anyway. They prefer living in cities, not ‘outside’.

Government: Never one to let economic realities get in the way of their schemes and scams!

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1 Ref. Christchurch, The Way Our Ancestors Knew It; Facebook

2 “The promise of building 100,000 KiwiBuild houses in 10 years has been dropped by the Housing Minister who described it as “overly ambitious””; Newshub

Image Ref. Plaque at No12 and these sentiments from Old New Zealand (as it was previously known (pre-Islamification)); Facebook

Image ref. Savage and Lee oversee moving in; The first state house, 1937, Digital NZ

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