New Zealand is a poster-child for unaffordable housing and market instability. It’s disingenuous for anyone to contend that house prices, annual price growth, overburden costs and building costs are sustainable. OECD house price data for the period 2000-2023 shows nominal house prices here increased ~395% compared to ~177% for all OECD countries, and ~113% for Euro area countries. During the same period real house prices here increased ~209% compared to ~62% for all OECD countries, and ~37% for Euro area countries. Housing affordability, measured by price-income ratio, has worsened ~98% over the period, compared to ~22% for all OECD countries, and ~21% for all Euro area countries. Further, the housing cost overburden rate here — the share of the population spending more than 40% of household income on housing costs — for households in the bottom quintile of income distribution is the second highest in the OECD for owners with a mortgage (~54%) and the third highest for private renters (~57%). Essentially the poorer you are here the more you pay for your housing. Housing policy mainly favouring greenfield and backyard subdivision to build low density houses has failed to produce improved, socially-diffuse, housing affordability. With over 40 years of urban and economic development experience in both Australia and New Zealand it wasn’t too difficult to connect the dots between neoliberal political agenda and unaffordable housing. Our politicians on the right (and the left) resemble zombies stuck on the road to nowhere — caught in the headlights of a neo-liberal theocracy and unable to move forward or even back to the time when our collective social conscience was alive and well.