NeoKindness: Housing & Welfare risks Labour becoming a Government of empty gestures

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The Government pockets are bulging, the economy supported directly by the State has avoided economic armageddon, the billionaires are far richer and Labour have an absolute democratic majority.

So why the hell is poverty and housing affordability so out of control?

Because Labour point blank refuse to lift welfare and turned the taps on corporate banks flooding the market with cheap speculative cash that has seen house prices and rentals spike insanely!

It’s doubly cruel to damn beneficiaries into poverty while lifting their rents.

Matariki as a public holiday, an environmental emergency that doesn’t actually trigger emergency powers, hate speech legislation that has nothing to do with stopping white supremacy terrorism and hollow Kiwibuild promises. All empty gestures that don’t challenge the neoliberal hegemony causing the root problems.

With a Parliamentary majority, there are no excuses. Yes Covid makes it harder, but that just makes the leadership required to be greater.

Jacinda and Grant can be that great, we are seeing it with their handling of Covid, but we must have more!

The housing market is structurally building a vast bias towards speculators that will rob the promise of tomorrow for a feudal today.

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Jacinda’s kindness risks becoming a NeoKindness if welfare isn’t doubled and mass state housing rebuild undertaken.

It’s as simple as that.

History is watching to see if our walk matched the talk.

 

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19 COMMENTS

      • It’s all about publicity, and having a reason to smile. Smiling means I’m happy, smiling means everything is just great. Look I got rid of that nasty covid again, give me some praise, let me show everyone my pearly whites. What’s that? Tooth decay amongst poor people and children? That don’t matter. Look at me. I got rid of the nasty virus again. You should all be thankful. Now whose child does this bunny belong to? C’mon, it’s almost Easter, cheer up. Keep smiling. Everyone look at me. I’m kind. You should be too.

      • Don’t blame the player blame the game. Notice how the ‘article’ has no author. The feckless media are as much to blame as the government here.

  1. The only reason, actually the entire reason Jacinda does next to nothing is simply because National voters who voted for her like things just the way they are.

    That equals her fear of losing that vote.

    That equals her natural position of conservatism.

    That also highlights Jacinda is in government not to make a positive difference for those less fortunate, rather it means she in government for the sake of it.

    Housing is fast becoming an ugly blight on her government. One that is unforgivable.

  2. The trouble is alot of staunch lefties are homeowners, but not very money-savvy and don’t have the capacity to understand how it’s going to work out for their children when it’s time for them to leave the roost. Neither do they have much awareness of how prolific some property investors are. (I recall looking at a house to rent years back and the landlord owned most of the street.) therefore they are not able to extrapolate into the future

  3. ‘risks Labour becoming a Government of empty gestures’

    I disagree, Martyn. You cannot become what you already are. And LINO (Labour In Name Only) have been a bunch of shysters delivering empty gestures from day one, i.e. 2017.

  4. She was a socialist FFS. But I guess she was only ever a theoretical socialist, a university debating club socialist. Could argue the finer points but never got her hands dirty in a Sue Bradford kind of way. Now she’s acting like she wants to be accepted on to the fund raising committee of a Howick PTA. But surely all is not lost. There must be a strong left wing in the Labour government MP’s. They must be ready soon to champion the cause of the poor and the working class.

    • Was she really a Socialist?

      The daughter of a Mormon cop, born in Morrinsville. A women who learned her trade working for Tony Blair?

      Sounds more like a Tory to me!

  5. ” RISKS ” being a government of empty gestures !!!!
    Bomber they are already past the finish line. You know they will never act to address the inequalities you blog about. How much longer will you keep the faith in ya old mate Adern ?
    The next three years are a neo liberal FPP free pass thanks to Covid and a cuddly mum and a non threatening Uncle Robert.
    There is no nirvana just more of the same medicine but with a sweeter taste.

  6. ” RISKS ” being a government of empty gestures !!!!
    Bomber they are already past the finish line. You know they will never act to address the inequalities you blog about. How much longer will you keep the faith in ya old mate Adern ?
    The next three years are a neo liberal FPP free pass thanks to Covid and a cuddly mum and a non threatening Uncle Robert.
    There is no nirvana just more of the same medicine but with a sweeter taste.

  7. Tax is not fair in NZ.

    Firstly 40% of people in NZ get more tax back than they pay in taxes.
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/81429047/small-number-of-taxpayers-bear-the-brunt-of-new-zealand-tax-bill

    Then you can be a charity and pay zero tax.
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/96742698/how-some-new-zealand-business-make-billions-and-pay-no-tax

    Then if you are a business you don’t seem to have to pay tax. Unlike OZ that publishes the data as part of their IRD, NZ of course hides the fact many NZ big businesses earning mega bucks here, pay zero taxes!

    https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/news-federal-budget/2019/12/12/companies-no-tax-australia/

    I’m in favour of a stamp duty on all sale transactions of 1%. It’s easy to collect and hard to evade!

    Aka 30,000,000 mega mansion pays $300,000 tax when they sell it.
    $300,000 affordable home pays $3000 tax when they sell it.

    No exceptions.

    BTW, The four largest private landowners in New Zealand are all foreign-owned forestry companies, an RNZ investigation has found.
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/400417/green-rush-foreign-forestry-companies-nz-s-biggest-landowners

  8. The government’s management of the Covid crisis is a reflection of the quality of health professionals we fortunately still have in this country,even with our grossly underfunded health system. Would that the advice they receive on Housing, Education, Climate Change, Energy and the Environment was even one trillionth as good.But lets face it folks our government is advised a…holes who serve Beijing.And that way they get all the baubles of office without thinking and writing real policy for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

  9. Brainwashing by the woke and neoliberals that rezoning land will work is part of the problem! Rezoning land not zoned for housing already and diverting resources into that, is part of the problem. There are plenty of ways to increase affordable housing. First many houses in NZ are two story and can be converted into a granny flat and house with the addition of a kitchen. This costs very little and probably takes a couple of months… what is stopping this is the councils would prefer 22,000 homeless than allowing a simple change with a small charge for the resources/building consent change…. They could also allow tiny homes to be permanent on sites for a set council fee of say $5k for a 10 year license… and just make sure neighbour disturbance and amenity was maintained (aka not a slum and nobodies rights being affected).. this would be great in more rural areas where section and lifestyle sizes are greater. Would help areas like Hawkes Bay and rural Auckland provide affordable housing options.

    Why housing is getting less affordable is because multimillionaires and billionaire and Rogernoms have the ears of government. Start with the myth that deregulating zoning and new builds will solve the housing crisis which they are been doing for the last decade but the opposite is happening, prices are increasing. Doh!!

    The new builds are driving up the costs because developers build and charge for example $800k for a 2 bedroom in Auckland on a tiny piece of land and then the surrounding old housing with 3 beds + are driven up on larger land plots.

    As Kiwis can’t afford this, the developers then lobby the eager government to make them available to foreign investors to buy, get more warm bodies into NZ to consume, and allow people from Singapore and OZ and foreign companies and individuals to buy in NZ just like Kiwi’s with zero or few restrictions. Then put Granny or the kids in there and it’s occupied.

    10 years ago you could buy a 3 bed house with commuting distance to Auckland for $250k and a studio apartment in Auckland city was under $200k. As soon as government started the mass immigration while turning a blind eye to extensive foreign money laundering (https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/business/chinese-canadian-mogul-edward-gong-used-auckland-mother-and-sons-finance-firm-to-hide-53m/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/william-yan-aka-bill-liu-to-keep-nz-citizenship-despite-money-laundering-conviction/YMYXI6UP6MG6UTYBNQO2SLRGJE/ https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/115157974/woman-discharged-without-conviction-for-laundering-money-for-international-drug-ring) and all the new build Rogernomics developments sprang up as Ponzi’s, it drove up all the house prices.

    The council zoning changes are driving up the land prices not lowering them because a land that can have housing is worth 10 times more than farm land and you don’t have to spend a cent, apart from lobbying government and councils to change the zoning!

    Fletchers and Lord Sleepyhead are set to make incredible fortunes off the back of this.

    If developers bought land already zoned with services it would cost more. That is not the point of it, the point of multimillionaire operating in NZ is to buy cheap land, pretend you are helping the housing crisis, but actually the big goal is to get that farm land re-zoned and make more multimillions (and then get the rate payers and transport to do all your infrastructure) – instead of putting resources into land ALREADY zoned for intensive housing and ready to build!

    Meanwhile the developers actually building the housing are going bust! The houses never get built and when they do they are horrendously expensive as the Ponzi is about rezoning farm land, not building housing for residents on NZ incomes, in NZ already here. So many Kiwis and others meanwhile become a cropper and their grandiose developments never get built as they are too greedy and don’t know what they are doing.

    Instead the government and councils should be encouraging small builds and developers to work together to build as they don’t go bust like the greedy ones!

    • Government should be encouraging people to build their own houses because then they are getting fit for purpose housing, not speculative housing from developers and stop the speculative McMansions and 30 million oligarch Mansions being the inequal, not fit for purpose housing stock of the future.

      • That’s all very well, but until you can get the speculators and property developers out of the equation, and until people can afford to save for a deposit while they are paying eye watering rents, it ain’t gonna happen.

    • The last time I was north of Auckland in the Albany-Orewa district (it must have been 2005) the asking price for a modest SECTION was $360,000.

      In 2020 I bought a quite nice HOUSE on a generous section here for $408,000. A few months ago the house next door sold for just under $420,000.

      Why anyone would want to live in or near Auckland baffles me.

  10. I think land taxes would be the best “solution”. However, whatever changes are made to the tax system, there will be “winners and losers”: this is the problem. It is these “transition” problems that often stand in the way of worthwhile change. A government has to decide whether to push ahead with worthwhile changes, and perhaps lose electoral support, or heed the plight of the “losers”, and refrain.

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