Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

The last thing I did before the Waitangi day holiday was talk to Kieran McAnulty about the financial strife surrounding Kainga Ora, and it's bugged me ever since.  The Labour Housing Spokesperson denied the agency was in financial difficulty.  He told me that Housing New Zealand's asset base was so large there was no problem borrowing more money to keep its construction schedule on track.  And that bugged a lot of you too.  The typical response was typical socialist – just borrow more and more to fund your ideological programme.  But it doesn't really have anything to do with your political bent, it's basic fiscal management.  The world is full of people who have the assets to borrow whatever they like, but the devil in the detail is whether they have the capacity to pay it back.  Increasingly we don't.  Yes, our debt is internationally insignificant and still not at an extreme level.  We're not the UK or the United States who have debt ratios over 100% of GDP, and