If we are quite finished with patting ourselves on the back for a fairly meaningless call in Paris to restrict free speech could we get back to housing and homelessness?

By
Martyn Bradbury
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18
20

If we are quite finished with patting ourselves on the back for a fairly meaningless call in Paris to restrict free speech could we get back to housing and homelessness?

Children make up almost a third of Auckland’s homeless

More than 1300 children were counted as sleeping in temporary accommodation on one night in Auckland last year, according to figures released by the council on Thursday.

That number was almost a third of the city’s homeless population – which included those in temporary accommodation – surveyed during the point-in-time Homeless Count in September last year. 

…I’m not sure what’s worse, a third of our homeless being children or that we have a Housing Minister who seems to think the way to defeat a market corrupted by free market incentives is by offering more flawed free market incentives….

I used to feel a bit sorry for Minister of Housing Phil Twyford being blamed for failing to deliver something he can’t control – the market price for housing. When Labour was elected the market had already driven prices to the unaffordable level for the vast majority.But when he started taking Housing NZ land that should be used for more state housing to achieve that goal he became another privatiser of state assets. 

…we now hear rumours that they are dumping the 100 000 affordable houses promise.

While Grant Robertson and James Shaw continue to promise our corporate overlords that a Labour led Government will maintain National’s old austerity budget, those children living on the streets are the most obvious amputation of the politics of kindness.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. This glory she sought there in Paris was just an opportunity to again use the media for her glory not for ours.

    If Jacinda was truly genuine, why did she wnot use the time to bring “climate change” into the global glare then?

    The disapointing thing is that she blew the only chance to suppport all of us back in NZ to shine on her clarion call speech “Climate change is our generation’s nuclear moment” and “Lets do this”

    Jacinda you let us all down when on that day in April 15th nbefore the Christchurch Terrorist shootings we were all holding our placards together at the rally around NZ for “Zero Carbon” and “climate change”

    So what message have you sent us all now then?

    What a let down. “Shootings trump climate change” now it seeems.

    • “This glory she sought there in Paris was just an opportunity to again use the media for her glory not for ours.”

      I think maybe a tiny bit harsh @CG, although it’s not hard to understand your (and many others) frustrations.
      I’m not in any doubt JA’s intentions are good and she genuinely comes from feelings of compassion and concern.
      One or two others likewise.
      It’s just that I’m not sure the extent to which the surrounding apparatus of State – her advisers, senior public servants et al, have managed to capture her.
      One day they might wake up to all that, and it’ll probably be when it’s all a bit late.
      Give her a bit more space maybe – she’s only ever spent her entire life and experience in a neo-liberal world

  2. Enough State owned rental housing for the New Zealand homeless….especially New Zealand children… is the number one issue facing this Labour Coalition Government

    Children and families need the stability of a secure home, for emotional security.

    It is a core necessity of health and equality of educational opportunity and the egalitarian society

    It will affect generations to come.

  4. The ‘worth’ of the Christchurch Call meeting is reflected in the impressive silence that has come afterwards, not one MSM journo or other person crowing about it anymore.

  5. Speaking of bogus Paris agreements… how many people are aware that NZ does not count travel and shipping emissions on their carbon books? Certain polluters necessary for neoliberalism are exempt, apparently!

    Why NZ is cheating on its emissions from flights, shipping and imported goods

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/112766706/why-nz-is-cheating-on-its-emissions-from-flights-shipping-and-imported-goods?fbclid=IwAR1EvVkXC5FR08PhHWuYXKI4l4pXHk73kCDA5hXMAx_cqnKjgakrlfC3ID0

    • Nor do we count imported goods carbon emissions either… as imports beats our exports and our tourism goes to 5 million.

      If air and shipping and imported goods were correctly counted for emissions, then the government would have to recognise what a polluter of carbon our government policy is, and what a joke, our ‘clean, green, pure, NZ’ is and how things like stealing the harbour in Auckland for cruise ships & car, meth and banana imports, is a sunset industry and incredibly polluting as well as hundreds of other issues with it!

      So as we give away our land and water and natural materials so we can become one of the leading, small but vocal neoliberal promoters of trade and immigration and shipping goods and people around the continents using funny money, tax havens and government agreements that remove the costs of polluting modern day practises, of not using local labour, incredible packaging and waste demands and imported materials, our government promotes, around the world.

  6. ‘What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, the people, the people’. So went Jacinda’s opening statement at the Christchurch Call event. NZ’s downtrodden may have recognised the phrase from WINZ offices, where it is plastered all around the country. It has entered the government lexicon probably meant to remind us as a nation, and now globally, we are all important. But in this instance is it just a lazy cut and paste from a speech writer disseminating more policy rhetoric? Possibly. Could it trigger anyone unfortunate enough to visit WINZ and who recognise a piss take when they see one? Quite probably. Or maybe it represents something a little darker, more 1984, more doublespeak.

    One might be forgiven for entertaining these thoughts (for now at least, free thinking, dissent, agitation, even conspiracy is still allowed) because while Jacinda was away, news broke that MSD was rabidly and illegally spying on clients. Are these ‘the people, the people’ being spoken of? Not citizenry but those to be used, manipulated and humiliated? While Jacinda was abroad publicising the acts of the very person she has sworn to never speak of (and incidentally meeting a president considering charging journalists for leaking the truth about France’s military industrial complex), back in NZ, MSD were performing their own trickery: trying not to speak of the people they were spying on. The love, fluffiness, inclusion and support of the government appears to be a facade, a cruel joke.

    Commentators globally have varying opinions on the Call: questions raised about connection and causality between social media and expressed violence, citing pre-Facebook Aramoana as an example; debates on the vagueness, authority and context of the Call documents and authors; questions as to what ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘inequality’ have to do with terrorism issues; debates as to why society can’t express personal thoughts whether they be alternative, fringe or even antisocial (whatever that means); doubts of the legitimacy of tech company as information gatekeeper and ethical touchstone; China as an Orwellian example of how whole-scale censorship can be achieved; information doublespeak, misinformation, trivialities, obfuscation, spin and outright lies from media and government rendering any hate speech and censorship debates meaningless.

  7. We need a massive social housing program before anything. It should be the Labour goverment’s most urgent priority. The housing market has failed and we face an escalating crisis. Where will the many thousands who earn less than a living wage, the mentally ill and young adults find shelter? This is a national emergency.

    Paris was a wank. Shutting down free speech will hurt the Left more than the Right in the long run. It would not have prevented Christchurch in any way whatsoever and risks forcing people underground. Absolutely self indulgent stupidity.

  8. Housing the homeless? Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that

    Nice to see The Daily Blog touching on some really important issues

    You know

    Homelessness

    I’m sure the Right can look after themselves and dont need us to hold their hands

Comments are closed.