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ASHBURTON GUARDIAN, Wednesday, June 12, 2013
WORLD
www.guardianONLINE.co.nz
Palestinian terms ‘insurmountable’ Palestinian preconditions for peace talks make a return to negotiations impossible for Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says. “To me the setting of preconditions is an insurmountable obstacle,” Netanyahu told the foreign affairs and defence committee, a parliamentary statement said. The Palestinians say they will only return to negotiations if Israel stops building on land they want for their future state and if the Jewish state agrees to negotiate on the basis of the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war. Israel demands talks “without preconditions” and refuses publicly to freeze settlement building. US Secretary of State John Kerry has postponed an expected trip to Israel and Palestinian territories to attend White House talks on Syria, US officials told AFP on Monday. The visit had not been formally announced but a tentative
Abbas more time to decide whether to drop his insistence on a settlement freeze. Last week, Kerry warned that if his efforts to kick-start the peace negotiations, frozen since 2010, fail now, there may never be another chance. Israeli news website Ynet quoted Netanyahu as telling a meeting of senior members of his Likud party last Tuesday that he had received no US request for a settlement freeze. It also reported him as saying that continued settlement building in the occupied West Bank “has no effect on a peace agreement.” But he told the parliamentary committee that the alternative to statehood for the Palestinians would be for them and Israelis to share one country, and that was not an option. “If we go into direct negotiations, it is likely to be very hard but the alternative of a binational state is one we do not want,” he – AFP said.
Benjamin Netanyahu schedule from the office of Israeli President Shimon Peres had said the two men would meet on June 11. Israel HaYom, a newspaper considered close to Netanyahu also said Kerry had been due to arrive on Tuesday. It said he delayed to give Palestinian president Mahmud
• Malkovich to rescue A US tourist says actor John Malkovich played a starring role in coming to his rescue when he fell and gashed his throat on scaffolding in Canada. Seventy-seven-yearold Jim Walpole fell in Toronto while on a trans-Canadian trip. Walpole tells the Toronto Star that Malkovich, who was appearing at a local theatre, applied pressure to slow the bleeding until medics arrived. The injury required 10 stitches. Ben Quinn held Walpole’s head. He said by phone yesterday that Malkovich “had everything under control” quickly, didn’t want attention and called later to check on Walpole. – AP photo ap
The remains of a crashed World War Two Dornier bomber, the only surviving German Second World War Dornier Do 17 bomber, rests on a barge after being raised from the English Channel off Deal, southern England, yesterday.
German bomber raised from sea A British museum yesterday successfully recovered what could be the last intact model of a famous German World War Two bomber from beneath the English Channel. The aircraft, nicknamed the Luftwaffe’s “flying pencil” because of its narrow fuselage, was shot down off the coast of Kent county in south-eastern England more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain.
It is believed to be the only known complete example of the German Dornier Do 17 bomber. “It has been lifted and is now safely on the barge and in one piece,” said RAF Museum spokesman Ajay Srivastava. The bomber will be towed into port today, he added. The museum had been trying to raise the relic for a few weeks, but the operation was delayed by
strong winds. In 2008, divers discovered the undamaged aircraft submerged in 15m of water. Experts say the bomber is remarkably undamaged despite the passage of time. Museum officials plan to conserve the relic and put it on exhibition next to the wreck of a British Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft that also was shot down during the battle. – AP
Mandela remains in ‘intensive care’, but stable Nelson Mandela remains in serious but stable condition while being treated in intensive care for a lung infection, the South African government says. The 94-year-old was rushed to a Pretoria hospital at the weekend, in the latest health scare that has prompted South Africans to come to terms with the mortal-
ity of their anti-apartheid hero. “He is receiving intensive care treatment,” presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj, who served jail time with Mandela, said. He “remains in hospital, and his condition is unchanged”, the presidency said in a statement. The government had described Mandela, South Africa’s first
black president, as being in a “serious but stable” condition on Sunday. Yesterday, Mandela was visited by his former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and their daughter Zindzi. The former president’s two other daughters paid him a visit on Monday, while his current wife
Graca Machel has been by his bedside since his admission to hospital. Little information has been released about his condition, but he has a long history of lung problems since being diagnosed with early-stage tuberculosis in 1988. It is the fourth hospital stay in
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0.8365 0.5047 0.8020 0.5929 1.4467 77.3500
Sell 0.8372 0.5050 0.8025 0.5931 1.4718 77.3700
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A bank economist has warned of consumer spending sprees and widespread economic fall-out if house price rises continue, just as QV showed the sector continuing to rocket ahead. Felix Delbruck, Westpac Institutional Bank senior economist, said borrowers could remortgage, “effectively using the house as an ATM”. QV this week released data showing house prices nationally rose 1.7
per cent in the three months to May and 7.1 per cent in a year. They’re now 5 per cent above the 2007 peak. Mr Delbruck said a rising housing market could boost domestic spending, putting further inflation pressures on the economy and sparking more interest rate hikes than the Reserve Bank was indicating. The International Monetary Fund has already warned that New Zealand’s housing market is overvalued by as much as 25 per cent and economists are awaiting the Reserve Bank’s Thursday announce-
ment, looking for further details of the new loan-to-value ratio regime to quell the riskiest end of the lending market. QV said Auckland and Canterbury were showing the strongest price growth, reflecting low supply levels. Auckland prices are up 3.5 per cent in the three months to May and 12.7 in a year and are 17 per cent above the 2007 peak, while Christchurch prices are up 10 per cent in a year and are 10.8 per cent above the 2007 peak. Areas outside Auckland and Canterbury showed modest price
rises, reflecting the gradual lift in demand over the past year but with a more balanced supply. Mr Delbruck worried about the effects of a rocketing market, saying it was true that, about two years ago, people had been paying down debt, but that trend now appeared to have reversed. Mortgage growth had picked up since early last year “and indeed now seems to be growing slightly faster than household incomes”. “Every house sale will add to the economy’s total mortgage debt if the buyer takes on more debt than the seller pays down.
“Provided that this increase in debt isn’t reinvested in housing, it’s potentially available for spending on consumer goods and services,” Mr Delbruck said, predicting house prices to rise nationally 18 per cent over this year and next. QV operations manager Kerry Stewart said Auckland prices were still very high and a “somewhat desperate” feeling was emerging among buyers searching for good houses at reasonable prices. The speed with which people had to make an offer had seen some forgo the usual due diligence. – APNZ
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Prince Philip will celebrate his 92nd birthday in hospital where is recovering from exploratory abdominal surgery. The colourful royal is said by Buckingham Palace to be “progressing satisfactorily” after undergoing the operation at the London Clinic on Friday. The palace won’t reveal if the Queen, 87, and other members of the family will visit the duke, who is expected to spend up to two weeks in hospital while his results are analysed. – PA
Report: Housing is now a battle between young and old
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just pray that he recovers,” said Kennedy Moraga outside a private specialist heart clinic in Pretoria, where he is believed to be receiving treatment. Meanwhile, access to the revered statesman has been restricted to close family members in a bid to reduce the risk of further infections. – AFP
Former Coronation Street actor Andrew Lancel has left a Liverpool court a free man after being cleared of child sex charges. The 42-year-old, who played Frank Foster in the popular soap, was found not guilty of four counts of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy, dating back to 1994. Lancel, who also had parts in British television shows Casualty and Heartbeat, was said to have “used his status” to “flatter and gain the trust” of his alleged victim. – PA
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seven months for the man beloved as a global symbol of peace and forgiveness and the father of the “Rainbow Nation”. The African Union Commission chief, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said she has heard that Mandela is “responding positively to treatment”. “He has done his part. We
• Coro actor cleared
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1.8513 Samoa, Tala 1.7732 South Africa, Rand 8.0346 8.0666 Thailand, Baht 24.3000 24.3400 Tonga, Pa’anga 1.3293 1.3921 US, Dollar 0.7865 0.7869 Vanuatu, Vatu 73.5756 75.5328
By Anne Gibson Housing has become a battle between old and young, a new report says. Priced Out – How New Zealand Lost Its Housing Affordability, from public policy thinktank the NZ Initiative, argues that home ownership in a large part depends on your age. If you’re young, you are more likely to be locked out of housing and may never be able to climb the first rung on the property ladder. Authorities such as the Auckland Council, who thought a rural-urban boundary would work to the advantage of ordinary people, save transport costs and restrain unnecessary local authority outlays, were wrong, the report claims. It says that fears Auckland would sprawl over farmland are exaggerated and opening up more rural areas for housing would ease house price pressures. Less than 1 per cent of New Zealand is built on “even after including landfill and roads”, the report says. Artificial land restrictions, antidevelopment attitudes, over-powerful planners, tight building regulations and gun-shy councils have all been blamed for New Zealand’s housing crisis in the report written by former Local Government Minister Michael Bassett and research fellow Luke Malpass. Auckland’s rural-urban boundary had been almost completely shut for many years, the principal cause of rising land values. “The MUL (Metropolitan Urban Limit) favours the old and the rich and it punishes the younger and poorer,” the report says. Dr Oliver Hartwich, initiative executive director, said: “It is scandalous that ordinary New Zealanders are increasingly priced out of the housing market. “We need to restore housing affordability to improve social mobility.” Hugh Pavletich, the Christchurchbased co-author of the annual Demographia Housing Affordability
survey, agreed with the report, which draws on Demographia data to show the median cost of a house in Auckland is now 6.4 times the city’s median income. “New Zealand has 270,000sq km of land area of which only 1800sq km is urban. Auckland takes up only 530sq km and Christchurch 188sq km. Only 0.7 per cent of all land in New Zealand is urbanised. We have about the same land area as the United Kingdom which has a population of 63 million,” Mr Pavletich said. He advocates building on farmland and abolishing city limits. “There is no need to constrain our cities. We couldn’t urbanise a further half a per cent of our land area over the next 50 years even if we met all the demand for all the housing that’s needed,” he said, praising the Government for its aim to have 39,000 houses built in the next three
years. The report shows land prices in Auckland make up more than 60 per cent of the cost of a home. Auckland Council’s draft Urban Plan advocates 70 per cent of all new development be constrained within the city limits, sparking a widespread outcry from many communities. The report found that when Auckland rural land is freed up, it is always “too little and too late” and said there was nothing approaching a free market in housing: “It is a market largely created and manipulated by government – whether from Wellington or by local councils.” Spreading on to farm land would ease pressure fast. “Even if New Zealand were to double its built footprint, less than 2 per cent of the country would be built upon. Settlement patterns in comparable cities in other countries show
that doubling built-up areas produces a capacity to house far more than double the population.” Urban sprawl fears had resulted in restrictive, prescriptive zoning which had conferred a virtual monopoly market power on landowners near the city fringes, the report said, further blaming councils for high levies, fees and development contributions. These had been “death by a thousand cuts” to housing supply, pushed up by the leaky homes crisis as councils sought to protect themselves against claims of negligence and passed on more costs. “Nothing was done to rein in the agendas of planners,” the report said, blaming councils for their “hopelessly conflicted position” as the sole provider of infrastructure while also deciding on where the urban boundaries should be. If people did not like the service
from a council or council-run company, there was little choice but to grin and bear it, the report said. “In the Auckland region, where an estimated 13,000 new houses are required each year, absurdly high prices are being paid each week for very ordinary homes while only 4000 new houses are being added to the total housing stock each year,” the report said. Auckland’s rural-urban boundary favoured those who owned houses and made it more difficult for people to make the first step on to the ladder. Someone who bought an innersuburb Auckland house for $70,000 in 1975 could find it worth $1.5 million today. US cities, with fewer zoning restrictions, had not experienced New Zealand and Australia’s sharp house price upturn. Expectations about housing have changed too as people demand bigger places and many first-home buyers have an unrealistic expectation of what standard of house is available at what price. Home ownership rates are now around 1916 levels, before large-scale Government intervention, the report says. Auckland Mayor Len Brown defended the draft Unitary Plan and said urban sprawl was not the way forward. Auckland would be a sustainable city with a balance of going in, up and out and simply advocating building on farmland was not an option, he told the Herald. Getting more affordable housing was crucial for Auckland and people often forgot just how many houses had been built in the previous boom last decade, he said. The city must plan for growth and do that responsibly, Mr Brown said. “The type of house we have now will be a different house to what we have in five or 10 years time. Aucklanders are renowned for looking for different housing types, whether or not they are renting, and/or owning,” Mr Brown said. – APNZ