#72 - Rob Campbell - The courage to choose

In this episode, we speak with Rob Campbell – company director, economic historian, and former chair of some of New Zealand’s largest companies and public organisations – who thinks about housing from further outside the policy mainstream than almost anyone else we spoke to. Rob’s organising idea is the enclosure of the commons – a centuries-long process, as he tells it, of taking things that were once shared and turning them into private property, from farmland in seventeenth-century England to state houses being absorbed into private rentals today. We talk about why, on this reading, the housing crisis isn’t an accident but the predictable result of that process; why he warns that people sold small apartments as a first step “onto the ladder” may in fact be buying a shrinking slice of a depreciating asset; and why he believes holding land collectively, in community ownership, makes hard economic sense and not just moral sense. He also turns a sharp eye on his own generation and argues for some honest truth-telling before the country can build something better. We’d like to thank Rob for taking the time to speak with us for this episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the CHA Hub Podcast – wherever you get your podcasts from. The CHA Hub Podcast is sponsored by our Founding Partner, Westpac New Zealand.