Pragmatic National to ditch market-based rent policy

National leader John Key has announced that he wants his party to abandon its policy of market-related rents for state houses before the next election, saying 'I don't favour a move back to market-related rents, and I don't think the party will support a move back to market-related rents'. Partly justifying the move, Key said that re-imposing market rents was likely to be more expensive in the long run. But as former housing minister John Luxton says, the party still has the political belief in the correctness of the policy, but that they lost the argument with the public a long time ago, and is therefore giving in to pragmatism. He is quite right in saying, 'I think it takes another thing off the agenda that Labour will use their firepower to suggest there's a marked difference' between the parties. Additionally, National is signalling that it would build even more state houses than Labour has.