Soaring rents, skyrocketing suicide rates, environmental scientists too frightened to talk and 100 000 hungry children – Merry Christmas NZ

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
25
22

So, soaring rents…

Auckland’s static rental market now equal with Wellington’s: Trade Me
Rents in Wellington City now match those of Auckland for the first time, according to Trade Me rental figures.

Advertised median rents in the capital are now up 5.8 per cent on November last year, bringing it to $550 per week.

In Auckland, meanwhile, rents have stalled for the eighth consecutive month at $550 a week, although they are still 3.8 per cent higher than a year ago.

…skyrocketing suicide rates…

New Zealand suicide rate highest since records began
The number of people who have taken their own lives in New Zealand is the highest since records began, with 668 dying by suicide in the past year.

It was the fourth year in a row that number has increased. It was also the highest number of suspected suicide deaths since the coroner’s annual provisional suicide statistics were first recorded in 2007-08.

Figures released on Friday by Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshall show the number of Māori deaths is also the highest since records began, with 142 deaths from July 2017 to June 2018.

…environmental scientists too frightened to call out pollution…

‘We speak out at our peril’: Science on water quality has been ignored, scientist says
A leading freshwater ecologist says scientists have been vilified and ignored for speaking out while New Zealand’s rivers and lakes have become more polluted.

He urged his fellow scientists to push for greater recognition of their science when it came to policy-making, and said if they didn’t, they risked being a group that watched from the sidelines while the situation got worse.

Professor Russell Death, a freshwater ecologist at Massey University, gave a keynote address at the New Zealand Freshwater Science Society (NZFSS) conference in Nelson on Tuesday, where he received the Society’s top prize for freshwater scientists.

In a candid speech, he told his fellow scientists that the pollution had happened “on our watch” and it was time for scientists to acknowledge they had played a role.

…and 100 000 hungry children…

New Zealand ‘rather late’ to wake up to the reality of child poverty – Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft
One in five Kiwi kids lives in a household that doesn’t have access to enough healthy food, according to the latest Child Poverty Monitor report.

This is no improvement on last year, despite the coalition Government’s best efforts, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft told The AM Show on Monday.

“You could fill Eden Park twice over with the number of kids who are doing it tough. That’s unarguable – it’s about 100,000,” he said.

“If you take food, education, housing, health, they are struggling in a way that no New Zealand child should. In a country that’s had such great economic growth over the last 15 years – big growth in gross domestic product – we could be doing better, and we’ve got the opportunity to do it.”

…and what are we spending our time on arguing?

Māori Santas!

We have lost perspective on what actually matters in this country. It’s partly a current affairs and news environment more focused on petty gotchas and infotainment, it’s partly a smug conceit by the Left who have ignored those issues because Labour is in Power.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Merry Christmas comrades.

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25 COMMENTS

  1. “The Left” is not the Left, Bomber, and I strongly suspect that you know it… it’s about CLASS

    The Identitarian bullshit is not remotely “Left”, and you know it (need an emotional support squirrel, now?)

  2. You are right Martyn, these ARE the central issues we should be focusing on. The question is to organise effectively to bring about real change to address these.

    • Those issues are just consequences of allowing a capitalist system to reign.

      Its an increasing global consequence.

      Collapse from the bottom up.

  3. ‘We have lost perspective on what actually matters in this country.’

    Some of us haven’t, Martyn. But we know what you mean.

    If it’s any comfort, we are living in a world that has been driven into ever-greater instability and madness by the globalised financial-economic system, which ‘knows the price of everything and knows the value of nothing’, as it progressively exploits people and trashes ‘the planet’.

    It goes without saying that we are still being driven in completely the wrong direction by those who continue to promote the money-lender, globalisation, ‘free’ trade, fossil-fuel-addiction, overconsumption (of all the wrong things) agendas.

    If it’s any comfort, living conditions are worse than in NZ for most of the world’s populace. And being made worse by the day everywhere., of course.

    A mighty crash -financial, economic, environmental and social- is coming, that much is certain. But apparently not just yet.

    I read this morning on interst.co.nz:

    ‘in Canada, an official housing agency is warning over the risks of very high household debt-to-income ratios. It exceeds 200% in both Vancouver (240%) and Toronto (210%) and is over 170% nationally, they say. (New Zealand’s national debt-to-income ratio is 124%..)

    ‘Overnight the ECB said it will formally end its €2.6 tln QE bond buying program on December 31. However it also said will keep reinvesting the existing stimulus reservoir for years, bolstering an EU economy which is facing both an unexpected slowdown and new political turmoil.’

    ‘And in the US, their monthly Federal Budget Statement is about to be released showing that the deficit rose from -US$100 bln in October to almost -US$200 bln in November and +40% higher than the same month a year ago. Markets don’t seen to think this matters, and it won’t until suddenly it does matter.’

    As the talkfest in Katowice comes to an end, geochemistry continues to respond to humanity’s fossil fuel addiction: Atmospheric CO2 measured at Muana Loa has already hit 410 ppm. So, 412 to 415 ppm is to be expected in late May 2019. ‘No worries’, that will be ‘only’ 185 ppm above the recent 800,000-year average.

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png

    Presumably, the ‘we can fix this mess’ narrative -whether it be environmental, social, economic or political- will continue to touted by our so-called leaders, even as they make matters worse.

      • I wasn’t thinking specifically about planetary overheating when I mentioned the ‘we can fix this mess’ narrative. I was thinking in general terms … you know, how politicians and bureaucrats are forever looking for, or promoting, ‘solutions’.

        You are absolutely right; the reduce emissions narrative, even if it were genuinely adopted and enforced, would not fix the damage already done; indeed, it would not even prevent further damage being done.

        As a whole, humanity continues to dig a deeper and deeper hole for itself. And for most other vertebrate species.

        ‘Climate change: Arctic reindeer numbers crash by half

        The population of wild reindeer, or caribou, in the Arctic has crashed by more than half in the last two decades.

        A new report on the impact of climate change in the Arctic revealed that numbers fell from almost 5 million to around 2.1 million animals.’

        https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46516033?fbclid=IwAR3wuVqVCqrAJTt8VEjijqs6L_97RbuEpiymoW-axRTIpDuzIT3cIydB1_Q

      • We ‘fix’ it with a dozen or so of beer, down the throat, and into the bloodstream, it does work wonders, all looks better and in balance soon after.

        Nothing to worry about, once depression sets in again, repeat the same dosage, and continue as long as the symptoms may persist.

        For any side effects and further information, NEVER consult your doctor, he only works for big pharma.

  4. If only there was an alternative political voice to Labour who could really call all this out, and not get distracted with c-words and trans-activism and identity politics and etc etc etc etc….

    Oh, wait…..

    • Except that they are polling well below the threshold.
      In our seriously flawed voting system (I’m all for proportional representation and in general MMP isn’t the worst PR system) voting for a party that doesn’t meet the threshold becomes a wasted vote, a vote that has no part in determining the proportionality of the house.
      What does this mean? If you’re intending to vote for a party that won’t meet the threshold, you might as well stay in bed on election day.
      We’re stuck with the the parties that now sit in the house.
      New parties in NZ have only made it into parliament via a waka jumper winning an electorate seat.
      I struggle to think of an electorate MP who has a very strong personal following and could take that following to a new/different party.
      All the incumbent parties (sans Greens) lined up to prevent IMP/Mana. It’s a big call to effect a change of direction beyond what we have now.

  5. The true lefty Hone Harawira is gone and I use to vote for him but he only has himself to blame. Sadly now our people have to rely on labour and if they don’t deliver we will be looking to the newly formed Maori party who are trying to reinvent themselves. I see and hear some good things happening but lets wait and see its still early days

  6. With todays annoucement from Stat’s NZ …. Time for a tax increase on those that can afford it. The net worth of the richest 20 percent of New Zealand households has risen $394,000 since 2015, to reach a median of $1.75 million. 5-15% increase would do it!

    At 15%, that’ll be around another $175m in tax revenue! That’ll build some houses!

  7. These statistics reflect negatively on Ardern so won’t get reported by her media mates.

    The poor are probably fucked worse under Ardern then they were under National, at least under National they weren’t swept under the rug.

    • You’re a disgraceful fraud who should never be let out of what corner you broke out of.

      After 16 years of studied abuse the former National Government and now opposition parties. What we are now hearing from them and their true believers are the most pathetic contributions I’v heard from any conservative, in such a weighty debate in all my contributions here.

      Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger would retreat at such a pathetic contribution, and as far as BM is concerned, that thing is scripted and a pathetic contributor. Unless conservatives are scripted they are useless. Even Jenny Shipley is impressed with Jacinda’s performance.

      I presume National has had no change in housing policy in there 16 years. The first point is the government should govern for every one and not just their special friends. And we know all about Jenny Shipley’s special friends in the now mud pit Mainzeal. And now this thing has the balls to say National have found the light when they had to change their leader twice to hide their housing policies. And now the thing talks about special media friends.

      You can’t impugn the motive of the Prime Minister when you are over here saying they’ve shifted their policy when they’ve been saying the same thing about housing for two years.

  11. I think everybody knows what the problems are and the symptoms of them too. And one of those problems ,perhaps the biggest problem, is how to get people to start to act rather than to look on as we all burn to the ground.
    We NZ/AO people are tough, strong, creative, intelligent and determined but we’ve been rendered inactive by an as yet unidentified psychological force.
    The French are fully aware of that invisible force and burn and rage to keep [it] out and they have macron sitting up and taking notice, that’s for sure.
    We NZ/AO’ers can only succumb, suffer and understandably complain.
    The Banksters are the hardware problem, I think we all know that. But the software is where the glitch is. Our politicians should be hiding in fear and so should those few who committed all those unforgivable crimes against us and yet they still get away with doing what they do. It’s as if we’re trapped in a nightmare. Some of us are seemingly afflicted with a kind of sleep paralysis.
    The truly lost are the people of the Right Wing. They have no idea. They’ll sell each other out within the blink of an eye and if they can turn a dollar over in the process, then all the better. They cheat and steal and stab each other in the back and are, to be frank, an embarrassment to the rest of us on the Global Stage and yet? They keep going back for more. And if I had to be generous, I’d say they know not what they do. They just do what they’re directed to do by a soulless politic that’s trying ever harder to hide lies, swindles, double deals and outright theft and tax fraud. And one final word on The Right. They’re in the mythical Left too. The Right are everywhere, like a bad smell.
    A truly conscious guided NZ/AO government would act. Not fuck about like this. They’d know the problems and they’d know the solutions and they’d get of their arses and get the job done.
    Kick the banks out. Write off mortgage debt. Renationalise what were our stuff and things and then pour that money, currently going off-shore, back in to our society. We’re the population of an Australian city. We have an almost unbelievably diverse range of vital resources spread out over a landmass the size of the UK, there’s only 4.7 million of us and we have the above issues?
    We have problems all right. And those problems are us. It’s how we fix us. That’s the thing.
    And Martyn Bradbury was right to describe us being as being in an echo chamber here. We preach to each other but we achieve nothing. Except to provide enforcement systems with a decent data base of radical thinkers, writers and activists and to let off steam so that we don’t put on fluro vests and smash shit up.

  12. Report out today:

    ‘Wealth of top 20 percent rises by $394,000’

    https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/wealth-of-top-20-percent-rises-by-394000

    “The net worth of the richest 20 percent of New Zealand households has risen $394,000 since 2015, to reach a median of $1.75 million, Stats NZ said today.

    Over the same period, from the year ended June 2015 to the June 2018 year, the net worth of the bottom 40 percent has not increased.”

    Trickle down disproved yet again, I suppose.

    The attitude of some is, nobody in NZ Inc has to suffer, even the poor can get free food from the foodbanks. Go and get your food handout they may say, and bugger off, leave me alone.

    Yet food in such food parcels is often low quality, canned food, sugary and salty food, fatty food, crap food, not healthy at all.

    And those who are accepted at food banks need to first prove they have no more entitlement from WINZ, who are as hard as nails as they used to, never mind the new ambience in the front room of the offices.

    We get BS galore, even under this government, reforms are only going to be considered after an expert group will have received and reviewed submissions.

    And then they will pick what they feel they can impose on society, having in mind the middle class, who will rage against any tax hikes that may come.

    NO hope, no hope, that is what I have.

  13. 3
    15 December 2018 at 7:24 am
    “Appalling news from the UK today, with a report from the TUC showing that the average worker is earning a third less in real terms than they did in 2008:”

    http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/12/torches-and-pitchforks-time.html

    Another reason Brexit happened and why the UK were negligent in deciding in 2004 not to impose any labour restrictions on the expanded EU like other countries in Europe did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union

    When you have a big influx of workers, labour rates fall.

    NZ is facing increasing poverty because like the UK our government has welcomed in as many new workers as possible which benefited some people at the expense and long term stability of social and financial cohesion here and created a fragile economy that increasingly relies on Ponzi’s to function while at the same time rocketing up the cost of living from housing, transport, food, power, fuel, insurance, water, rates, services… Also hiding the figures by for example calling someone working 1 hour a week, ’employed’.

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