Kainga Ora: Just How Can Costs Get That Far Out of Control?

There is recent reportage that Kainga Ora (Housing NZ) has been building houses that cost well above market rates, and that the ministers

Earlier than this, in January this year, Business Desk published an article that HNZ's cost escalations were running at 7 times the cost of general building cost inflation.

HNZ are the biggest developer in the country, and can leverage volumes beyond the dreams of most developers. 

It prompts a series of questions:

How is it physically possible for costs to get this far out of control for such a big organisation? It looks like incompetence or worse.

Are the building industry leery of tendering to government, and build in big contingency cost cushions, becasue of management practices within the agency? How do you fix that?

What checks are there on the way contracts are awarded, and their valuations? It has the appearance of none.

What is going to be done to reassure the public that the causes, whatever they may be, will be rooted out and permanently dealt with? 

In many other countries cost over-runs of this magnitude and nature would be cause for a public investigation and inquiry, to assure there has been ineptitude but no malfeasance: how about here?