Dear Prime Minister
As we approach Christmas I would like you to please consider the following shameful fact.
According to the 2018 census there are an estimated 4,833 children living in dwellings with no amenities.
Think – that’s the equivalent of the total number of pupils of at least 5 New Zealand High Schools who live in dwellings that have zero….
Cooking facilities
Tap water that is safe to drink
Kitchen sink
Refrigerator
Electricity supply
Refrigerator
Bath or shower
Toilet
Tell me again how addessing Child Poverty in our country is a priority
We should be ashamed.
The rich 1% have to start paying their fair share .
You commissioned a tax working group. You largely ignored their recommendations.
When are we going to see significant tax reform that creates a fairer society for our children?
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
Spot on. JA is making Tony Blair (the soft right winger) look left. The TraitorKey would be embarrassed with how little JA’s doing to rectify the inequities of NZ society, and (in his RARE defense) he never had an outright majority.
The time is approaching when street protest on a big scale is necessary to show our corrupt leaders who’s actually in charge. The people have the physical numbers and I think the desire to peacefully and forcefully cause a lot of disruption that will get the attention of the Govt’s and their new beige supporters. We don’t have China’s Red Army to worry about, thankfully. Our own Police and Army would be most reluctant to try and muscle it’s own people if the protester numbers were very high (and generally law abiding.)
I’d prefer our Unions got off their bums and made a start on returning to some degree of solid representation of the working people by signing up the workers in serious numbers. Probably not going to happen until the people rise up in serious opposition to our neo liberal masters first. Wait and watch.
It used to be called ethnic cleansing. or getting rid of ‘useless eaters’. I’m not sure what term Jacinda uses.
I’ve thought about this some more. I think depriving children of poor families the basics of life in an industrial society is now called social development.
Eugenics ?
You forgot to mention families who have to choose whether to heat or eat or neither, and depend upon the kindness of strangers.
Chris Trotter wrote an excellent article a month or so ago describing the Professional Managerial Class.
Political careerists ( who make up the majority of parliament) should be added to his list of abetters of neoliberalism.
“ The PMC is distinguished by the role it plays in mediating Capitalism’s relationship with its most injured victims. Without the PMC army of lawyers, probation officers, social workers, health professionals, teachers, journalists and “communications specialists” to extinguish the fires ignited constantly by economic exploitation and social exclusion, the whole of capitalist society would soon be engulfed in flames. .”
Dear Prime Minister. Regarding this countries worsening housing crisis.
Stop sitting there in what is at best, utter indifference and or being completely clueless to at worst complicit and thoroughly intransigent.
Even the ANZ are stating the bleeding obvious, that the housing model that has failed NZ cannot continue without severe consequences. And at least they have put their money where their mouths are and upped the loan value ratio to counter speculation. Jesus wept, if a major bank is waving the red flag, something is horribly wrong!
How the hell can she and her equally culpable Finance Minister sit idly by while this disaster worsens? How? Are they stupid or was this whole dedication to eliminating child poverty, pure unadulterated bullshit, all along?
Ardern is rapidly going from an inspirational brilliant leader to a rotten, self serving status quo nothing whose presence is harming this country. And that is the most astounding thing about this.
Yeah, time to give Social Credit a go next election. And I will. Done with this ‘hard cop, good cop’ routine between Labour and National. They and their neo liberals Mont Pelerin mates in London can go f@ck themselves.
Fuckin scumbags.
Yeah well at least if she resigned then we could have capital gains tax that would be a start, because it was only whilst she was PM that we won’t get it.
I’d actually like to support that people should be free to live the lifestyle they want to live, many used to live without amenities and be happier for it. Life is not all about the warm, dry house that we are being brainwashed into in the woke, middle class, suburban world.
Soon hunting huts and the outdoors will be outlawed as not good enough!
I’d also like government to allow people to live a traditional and natural lifestyle in particular for Maori if they want it! Love and social relationships are more important than the woke mod cons.
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/this-way-of-life-2009
Lived in Flatted in a cold, damp, villa during my student days, had the best time! Was out studying and doing stuff. Generations were bought up in, aka Boomers, Gen X and Silent generation, seem to be thriving.
It’s highly possible pollution and processed foods is doing more harm to the modern kids who have asthma and so many other on going health issues. Politically, blaming housing helps the construction industry doing a storm overcharging in NZ!
Many people in NZ would love to build their own houses or live off grid in a tiny house. We need to allow people to help themselves to live the anti-consumer life they want to live and the councils and governments need to come on board to help that, not do the opposite and prosecute people trying to help themselves with housing, and make it illegal for people to live cheaply.
There was the famous case of Eric Brewer (part Maori), who constructed a driftwood home on Taupuae Beach near new Plymouth, and lived naked most of the time, clothing only when he want walk-about. He burned driftwood in his hut, and the smoke exited through the roof (I visited him).
His hut ‘spoiled the view’ of the upmarket housing development that was gradually turning the beautiful natural landscape into yet another dysfunctional suburbia predicated on an infinite supply of fossil fuels.
New Plymouth District Council had him evicted and had his hut demolished, leaving him homeless.
Of course no council officials actually did any of the dirty work, which was contracted to others.
I’m sure the same kind of thing is happening all over New Zealand, but perhaps not widely reported.
The serving of banks, corporations, opportunists and ‘developers’ (ruiners of the natural landscape) is what government is all about, both central and local. There is the pretence of caring for the future, which is pure sham, of course.
Hence, any strategy that would actually addresses the ‘climate emergency’ recently declared (such as Permaculture) is shunned, almost vilified in government circles. The government cannot allow people to live healthy, natural lives and stop mindless consumption. It’s phony systems would implode in a matter of weeks
Nature is what ‘good’ citizens do at the weekend and on holidays, and usually involves substantial use of fossil fuels.
That’s why we’re ‘fucked’, both as a society and individually. The maniacs will keep promoting dysfunction based on converting fossil fuels into toxic waste until they can’t. And unfortunately there is still a bit of money-printing to do before the whole system falls over…..leaving those who have the least skin in the game in the best position to survive!.
But let’s be clear, no one survives Abrupt Climate Change, which is what our so-called leaders have orchestrated for us.
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png
Never forget that life on this planet evolved to be adapted to an average of 230 ppm atmospheric CO2, peaking at around 280 ppm (determined by orbital factors) and it is now almost 420 ppm and rising faster than at any time in geological history.
With the doubling of atmospheric CO2 (230 ppm to 460 ppm) clearly in site and likely to be achieved in less than 20 years, everything and everyone is ‘fucked’. It’s only the thermal lag of the oceans and the massive amount of energy involved in the phase change ice-to-water that is giving us some ‘breathing space’.
Once the last of the ice in the Artic Sea melts (next year?, the year after?) everything moves into a completely new climate regime of massive positive feedbacks.
The entire political establishment is firmly locked into denial of reality on practically everything, from the Ponzi nature of finance to the dire consequences of operating a consumer society based on fossil fuels.
I had an interesting discussion with my local MP yesterday, which I will elaborate on at a later stage: suffice it to say I was pleasantly surprised that he is not a complete idiot or outright liar -as has been every other parliamentarian I have engaged with over the past 20 years or so; Maurice Williamson, Ross Robertson, Roger Douglas, Chester Burrows, Nick Smith, Harry Duynhoven, Jonathan Young, Andrew Little etc.- and could actually have a sensible discussion on the topic.
Live life well in the few remaining months of current economic arrangements, and be prepared for the mayhem that Neoliberalism has unleashed.
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