I heard Bill English interviewed on Radio New Zealand earlier this week. He was asked about growing inequality caused by National’s economic policies and the depth of poverty now being experienced across New Zealand’s low-income communities. Would this be reason to adopt new policies or perhaps explore new policy options?
He was also asked about the housing crisis. Shouldn’t the government be doing more to make houses more affordable for first-time buyers and put an end to impossibly high rents?
With the smug, casual arrogance of the wealthy English said there was no need to change policy settings and the government’s approach was working for New Zealanders. English claimed National’s so-called “social investment” policies would deliver better outcomes for struggling families while on housing he said the real problem was local councils failing to make enough land available for urban development and the government was addressing the issue.
There was nothing there we haven’t heard before. To put it more bluntly there will be no changes to policy settings because National supporters – middle class property investors, business owners and farmers – are very happy increasing their share of our national wealth at the expense of the rest of us.
Inequality is an issue English will acknowledge only long enough to divert the conversation to the hoary old capitalist myths namely: economic growth will create better jobs, increased productivity will raise incomes, technology will bring higher-paid jobs, hard work will be rewarded and anyone who fails does so because they deserve to fail.
The unemployed, the marginalised and working people on low-incomes – and their children living in poverty – are simply the expendable detritus of capitalism.
In English’s eyes they are morally weak, lazy, good-for-nothing bludgers and his government spends more time dehumanising and demonising this group than they do on any single political issue.
The government wants us to leave these people out with no political voice and just enough income to keep them and their families trapped in poverty. Our “social services” are nothing of the sort. They are there to dispense poverty and reinforce middle-class myths about the poor.
It is this view which is so well described in the Ken Loach movie “I Daniel Blake…” – if you haven’t seen it make the effort and get angry enough to do something.
New Zealand’s low-income communities are full of Daniel Blakes.
The answers won’t come from the Labour Party. They are as mired in capitalism and visionless confusion as they have been since the 1970s.
The answers will come from mobilising our communities.
So here is my single prediction for 2017; that here in Christchurch we will defeat the government’s plans to sell off 2,500 state houses. Bill English and Paula Bennett have bitten off more than they can chew.
How quickly can a nation become ‘third world’? Immigration is resulting in overcrowded living situations, this is obviously only going to intensify as the housing shortage grows.
Homelessness and crime are going to dramatically increase! Soon the transport and social problems will result in the brake down of society and subsequently the economy – I doubt people will being lining up buy property in NZ when/if this happens.
Immigration, including foreign student inflow, and growth in tourism, is simply being used to mask the fact that we have virtually no real growth in this country, that is growth in productivity and quality living standards.
Some may improve their lives while many remain stagnant or drop down the ladder.
With a hopeless media, poorly informed voters and many desperate people clutching any straws to survive, the government has so far got away with this trick. The price to pay comes further down the line, in the future, and it will not be a good price that people will have to pay.
In short, the public have been conned massively about the “brighter future” that John Key promised, about what the government has done and supposedly “achieved”, too many fell for the nonsense, and the MSM kept feeding poor quality and biased information, thus helping the government (they prefer).
The rot sits very deep in this country, very, very deep, we need to rid ourselves from all this BS next year, there is NO alternative now.
What bugs me is that English and many of his ilk (Brownlee as well) claim to be Catholics, but seem unable to follow the teachings of their pope (or his ancient predecessor). Pope Francis, for example has recently said this in his Evangelii Gaudium:
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.
Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.
The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of [Saint John Chrysostom], one of the sages of antiquity: “Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs.”
http://www.crs.org/stories/pope-francis-care-poor
The Vatican runs deeper than we know. But the truth will out:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160325064546/http://one-evil.org/content/acts_vatican_holocaust.html
100% Helena
Thanks for this we always thought the Vatican was evil and secretive.
I totally agree. English like his predecessor Bolger are renegade Catholics who espouse greed and selfishness and have the arrogance to attend Mass. Go along with euthanasia and adopt social investment euthanasia denying support to poor who are losers according to English. if public morality dips we must as of necessity pay homage to the economy.
Like Key did with Aroha from McGeehan Close, maybe English will wash the feet of the poor as his watershed socially responsible moment to ease the suffering of the poor, the low-income and those STILL on Zero-hours contracts.
What a photo-op that would be?
Only keep Brownlee away because he will tell all the poor to “Piss off!” if they don’t want their feet washed.
Maybe we could get top Sports Stars and retired Sports Stars to fly in and rescue the poor, or ‘pass the soap’, to reference another Key photo-op moment.
This country, once caring and egalitarian has gone to the pigs
…Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/9.html
The privileges of wealth and power are as obscener whether here, the US, Russia, Europe, China, or elsewhere. So much for Bill English being a “christian”.
If he dpoesn’t address growing social inequality in this country he will be swept away like so many other oligarchs throughout the world.
Privileges don’t come greater than those claimed by John Paul Getty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwqPupRlg1U
As Nietzche said, there was only ever one christian, and he died on the cross.
Maybe G. Morgan will shine a light
Another rich self appointed arbitrator.
He does what suits his ego.
Does this sound familiar? .. “Bubbles usually occur when money is cheap and plentiful, banks are lending aggressively, regulation is poor, there is widespread individual participation and unbridled greed comes to the fore.
Gold is showing signs of a bubble run again as is the New Zealand residential property market.
Banks play a major role in the NZ Housing Market boom because they were aggressive lenders to the plethora of speculative investors & greedy middle class.
A decline in the highly leveraged domestic residential property would have a much greater impact on wealth than in the 1987 sharemarket crash or the finance company debacle in 2008; for example, a 10 per cent fall in New Zealand house prices would wipe out over $60 billion worth of individual wealth.
This compares with losses of just over $20 billion following the 1987 sharemarket crash and $4 billion of finance company losses. In 2008/2010 73 finance companies got wiped-out and $18 billion of finance for developers disappeared.
Most investors don’t believe there will be a fall in domestic house prices just as they believed in the 1980s that the New Zealand share prices wouldn’t decline”. I missed the late 80’s and most of the 90’s. I was doing my OE. I remember people telling me how bad it was with people committing suicide, farmers going belly up & small businesses too as well as house sharing … I think this time round it might be worse?
Whats the solution? Build fucking State Houses! https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/state-housing-in-nz
“With the smug, casual arrogance of the wealthy English said there was no need to change policy settings and the government’s approach was working for New Zealanders.”
English is a buffoon and soiled by his close association with the master slime ball J Key.
We will see him gone next year for sure john.
It only takes one good man to stand up and throw a rock into the pool of truth. Shouldn’t be too long before the ripples hit our shores : http://www.starshipearththebigpicture.com/2016/12/21/shocking-mayor-rudy-giuliani-twitter-confession-re-911-pizzagate-mass-media-lies-clones-cgi/
By the way, seems Dolly the sheep was a test run to gauge if we were awake. We weren’t.
The Banks are the problem and our politicians are simply minions to them.
They sex up debt, they bleach the minds of the middle class, whoever they are, they cause $-mayhem for their profit. It’s the banks to whom we should focus our rage. The Banks are the enemy. We just need to crush their all-bought-and-paid-for politicians to get to them
NZ / Aotearoa is an exception to the rest of the world.
We have plenty of everything for everyone on fertile Islands the size of the UK but with a population of Melbourne AU.
Our poverty and debt levels would be hilarious for their irony if they were not so deeply sad and disturbing for their cruelties and brutality.
You’re right too in suggesting civil ‘disobedience’ must begin immediately.
( I bet that statement has me on a ‘ list’. )
The N.Z. that I once knew, the N.Z. I grew up in, is some 8 years dead. By coincidence , this is when National took office.
100% I to born in 1944 grew up in the best country in the world John Key has left us with the worst of all county with dirty water and a sinking property market and full of speculators who will run for the boats next year as the Nactional boat sinks so sink them all and drain the wellington swamp of these evil doers so we can restore our country and “make NZ great again”
Next election call “make NZ great again”
The slow-paced, largely egalitarian society of full employment and trust that was NZ got killed by the phony Labour government of the 1980s.
Subsequent National, Labour, National governments have simply continued implementing the same agenda, of providing opportunities to exploiters.
That is why John is absolutely right when he says: ‘The answers won’t come from the Labour Party.’
However, I do not see the banks, corporations and opportunists that control NZ voluntarily giving up their control (or their financial benefits). Nor do I see the general populace waking up to the way they are continually lied to and scammed. So, it will take collapse of the global financial-economic system to bring about change.
That collapse is coming, but not for a while.
Oh no it didn’t it started much longer ago than that and it started sadly with Labour in the mid eighties. Clark had 9 years of great economic times and left 150,000 kids in poverty. The party that started as a working class party but sadly lost its way.
It began its slow death in 1984 and was completely lifeless by the early to mid-1990s. Clark’s government continued to flog the corpse as did Key and his mates from 2008, and all signs are that trend will go on from 2017 regardless of who wins the election.
The wealthy elite smiling away in unison. Smug and arrogant. They love the colour BLUE.
So out of touch as are most in Labour too.
Your right John it is us the people in our communities that are making the difference. I recommend a new affordable magazine from the states called ” YES ” .
It highlights the positive community and individual activities that are under way both there and worldwide. Well worth checking out.
” at the expense of the rest of us ” this is paramount and very important for when one suffers – we all suffer and we are a community tho the ones at the top do not think so. The well healed and wealthy often made their millions off the backs of others suffering and/or the environment suffering ===>>> Jonky Donky.
I now feel we need a complete political change and to leave this system behind as it has not worked and continues to be ineffective. Where are the millions to come to parliament and just take over ? ? ? ? We need more fire in our bellies and more commitment to peace and justice and good will for all. We can not count of these smiling idiots in your photo above, nor can we count on Labour either. WE THE PEOPLE – that is where the change will come and IS COMING ! ! Lets set a date and go to Wellington and take our country back ? ? ?
Oh fuck, John Minto. Another jab at the Labour Party which you could participate in making something you more approve of. But Oh, No. You’re correct on your assessment of English–but flail away at the fringes, not realistically going to effect any policies you want –this time–!!! I admire your earlier achievements, but am sick of you not helping oust National in the only way currently possible. There will be no revolution, start enrolling voters and help be Labour.
There will be no revolution so long as King and Mallard and others remain and frankly having a leader who then quashed the idea of a capital gains tax means Labour would never be part of it anyway.
Thanks for reminding us, John Minto, this is refreshing reading, although depressing also, but I prefer it to the endless commercial ads with brainwashing and the trivial nonsense the MSM so often present us. Stuff to think, and to act upon, that is what this post contains.
I am Daniel Blake, I have been there and know how disgustingly unfair, unreasonable, stigmatising and punitive the so called “social security system” is here in New Zealand.
Paying benefits that are too low to life from, and a little too high to die while dependent on them, that can hardly be called “one of the best welfare systems in the world”, that we are so often told.
And this new “investment approach” is total BS also, as there is not really more available mental health treatment and other medical treatment, that is if we look at the per capita rates (in a country with a growing population), that they make available.
More funding though to more case managers at WINZ, to apply more or less “subtle” pressures on beneficiaries, to move the hell off state support, and accept any kind of job there is, that is what they are doing.
Some will get worsening health conditions and cost us all more down the track.
There has been no change in inequality, as measured by the Gini Coefficient, since the mid 90’s.
Maybe the John has another measure he’s not telling us about?
http://www.inequality.org.nz/big-rise-inequality-unchanged-latest-household-incomes-report/#!prettyPhoto/-1/
It is hard to see something amiss, when one’s head is inserted so far up one’s anal passage, as to let no vision of, or light from the world penetrate therein. 4:22 in other words…..
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair,
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/apr/08/global-inequality-may-be-much-worse-than-we-think
The Gini index is a troublesome measure, though, because it only captures relative changes. If the incomes of the rich and the poor increase by the same rate, then the Gini index remains the same, even though absolute inequality is increasing. In other words, if person A has $10k and person B has $100k, and then both of them double their income, the Gini remains the same, even though the income gap will have grown from $90k to $180k.
Economist Robert Wade argues that this is a highly misleading measurement, as it obscures the true extent of inequality. We should be using the absolute Gini index, he says. So what happens if we do that? We see that inequality has exploded over the past few decades, from 0.57 in 1988 to 0.72 in 2005.
Mexico: 26th June 2015
http://latincorrespondent.com/2015/06/oxfam-study-highlights-mexicos-drastic-wealth-inequality-crisis/
The level of inequality in Mexico is so extreme that its four wealthiest inhabitants have amassed fortunes equivalent to nine percent of the nation’s GDP, while 53.3 million people (45.5 percent of the population) live in poverty.
New Zealand June 16, 2014
https://www.oxfam.org.nz/news/richest-10-kiwis-control-more-wealth-remaining-90
The richest ten per cent of New Zealanders are wealthier than the rest of the population combined as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.
Oxfam New Zealand’s Executive Director Rachael Le Mesurier said the numbers are a staggering illustration that the wealth gap in New Zealand is stark and mirrors a global trend that needs to be addressed by governments in New Zealand, and around the world, in order to win the fight against poverty.
“Extreme wealth inequality is deeply worrying. Our nation is becoming more divided, with an elite who are seeing their bank balances go up, whilst hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders struggle to make ends meet,” said Le Mesurier
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair,
I got a giggle out of this one today: I guy I know who works in “security” said jonkey was put under “surveillance” by one of his own and certain activities required his quick exit.
Jonkey put us all under surveillance but it turned around and bit him in the ass instead. Sweet justice!!
Better play nice, Mr English et al.
As things stand, opposition to the National party and its government is never going to have the money which the supporters of National have, with the power that goes with it. Any non-National government needs to take rapid action to strip away the wealth which feeds National. It will be a big fight and National and their wealthy supporters will fight dirty. But fight we must.
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