Food inflation is at a 30 year high.
First time home buyers are facing rapidly skyrocketing mortgages.
Renters are being pushed to the brink.
More children are living in cars than we recorded in 2017 when Labour first came to Government.
27 000 are on emergency housing wait lists.
Our truancy rates are soaring.
It’s time to feed the kids Prime Minister.
Free nutritious breakfasts and lunches at every school with enough funding to facilitate community and school gardens to build community food resilience is what is called for as these problems become more pressing.
This funding would provide resource for local solutions and empowers communities to gain a level of self reliance.
Parents should be encouraged to gain part time work for helping to serve and grow food while enabling schools to be community education programs after hours and resourced with direct access to social services.
There are many pressures upon global capitalism right now, most we have little control over. The stresses and strains on our economy are being mirrored in our wider society every week in domestic violence, mental health and crime.
We urgently need big ideas to deal with the current level of damage our communities are already struggling with.
The poorest always get hit hardest meaning Māori, Pacifica, beneficiaries, renters and the disabled are the first to be hurt by any economic recession.
Free breakfasts and lunches would remove a huge weekly cost to struggling parents while building food security resilience in every school.
The window to being this bold is closing.
First published on Waatea News.
When I retired I volunteered with Banardos to teach families to cook basic meals with the vegetables they were taught to grown by another volenteer. When Labour came to power they stopped the funding with a promise to replace it with a better model .5 years on and still no new policy . I am sure both parties are guilty of this change for change sake but why is it aways the poorest that are made to suffer the most .
Dear Leader will feign concern, look slightly sad, and do nothing. She can’t as it would go against what ever they believe in. It is the job of charities to feed the hungry parents, hungry grandparents and the hungry children.
The Tilty Head of Compassion.
She won’t do anything because she doesn’t know what to do.
Bob and his usual naysaying.
Broccoli 2 for $3 pak n save, good size heads. Baked beans and spaghetti 3 for $5. In store made steak and onion sausages $6.50 for an 8 pack.
Shop around, it is easy if you try.
I realise the PM is responsible for everything, laziness is not one of them.
” she’s a commie” commentators aside, poor choices make up a large percentage of those struggling.
Choices. And how are the couple with 13 children crammed into two single bedroom motels in Rotorua going to cope with their grocery bill………..
Not having thirteen kids would be a start. Ok, not a helpful response especially if you are one of the thirteen kids, but at what point is not all about what a government should be doing.
Thomas Sowell said something along the lines of:
“How can you expect people to behave responsibly when the government rewards irresponsibility?”
it may not be helpful wheel but there is truth to it.
There’s a lot to unpack re “poor choices”, however.
What choices do people have? Do they know about them? Are they capable of making choices? What choices do their morals preclude? Allergies etc?
There are children working to suppliment their families income rather than working towards an education simply because their family is against receiving charity/benefits for moral and/or pride reasons. Let alone those who do not know what they’re entitled to, or have been denied it on spurious grounds.
How do you cook sausages in a broken oven? How do you fight your landlord when the risk is homelessness? How do you stop an abusive partner pissing away all the money? Where do you live if you leave them?
“Sausages are cheap” is a superficial answer.
Sounds like a healthy well rounded diet.
Blaming unfortunate people for their poor choices is demeaning.
Your fake empathy is noted Blob.
For some that combination is a gourmet meal. In your ivory tower of crayfish and caviar Bob, you sit a very lonely, sad Ole man.
I agree with you sentiments . The problem is many will walk past the fruit and veg isle and grab a frozen meal or something from the deli dept .
Thank you Trevor and I agree we live in an age of convenience( frozen foods), people do make poor choices, it is clearly lost on Bob. He is happy to demean others opinions but is actually short on solutions to this problem.
Solutions simple don’t vote Labour or Greens.
You would be the one making a poor choice then.
anyone who eats skimpy overpriced frozen meals hates themselves….and do you really see people queueing to fill their trolley with them…in my observation it’s chocolate bars chippies, coke and chicken nuggets that fill a lot of trolleys.
ps veggies are gouged through the roof….it’s the experience all over ‘the west’ that healthy food is more expensive, NZ is no exception….anecdotes of this or that item reduced ‘this week’ indicate nothing….other than ‘we need to shift that brocoli before it goes off’
Shop smart not harder. If it’s reduced buy it, freeze it. Not hard.
which does not address the issue at hand squeaky
Where are you? cause last i saw in Rotorua was Broccoli at almost 5 NZD For one, 6 for Cauli, 4.5 for Salad, and mince is at 22 NZD the kilo. Pasta was not available at all, sold out or not delivered. Who the fuck nows. Butter is at 7.50 NZD and standard cheap cooking oil was sold out too.
But i am glad you have.
Hamilto Pak N Save Clarence St butter $4.99
Thank you for your concern.
Broccoli was 3.00 for two at Pak n save yesterday. Asparagus 2 decent bunches for 6.00 (ok not cheap but I thought it would be more). That’s in Auckland central ish.
Diesel 2.80/litre at Z energy, but two minutes down the road it 2.65/litre at Mobil. Both bloody high but quite a difference
Wheel, Asparagus 2 for $5 and 91 octane $2.29lt with a 6c discount from $2.35 at Clarence St Pak N Save.
As I’ve mentioned to the naysayers, the doomsday merchants, if you’re smart, shop around. If you are overly concerned move town. The Labour government have been outstanding for their voting base, simply outstanding. The evidence is there for all to see.
But remarkably there are still deniers for whom actually I feel sorry for.
The solution is simple vote Labour or Greens.
Our current government is Labour led, and they hold a majority.
Tax the farmers and make their fertilizer more expensive, that will help for sure.
Jacinda is following the Srilankan model as it worked so well for them.
Dear Keepcalmcarryon.
How about this instead: Thanks to your inspiring ideas, all farmers are now on strike. There will be no food until you find your inquiring mind and your commonsense.
Broccoli is $4.00 at the duopoly cartel-supermarkets the farmer gets a few cents for. Wool? .70c ( Might be a bit higher now @ around $1.30) a kg. Cheapest jersey @ $200.00 for a few grams of wool.
“Dear Jacinda – we need to feed the kids!”
De establish the four foreign owned bankers taking a record $10 billion out of our country in net profits then. And while you’re at it; seize their cash assets, and freeze offshore accounts then write off all mortgages. It might not be the entire solution to Logical Fallacy AO/NZ with its head jammed up its own arse hole but I bet that kind of action would result in some delirious wine drinking interspersed by some proper, worry free shagging. I nearly forgot! Free Pot Tuesdays available at all WINZ offices and if Pot’s not your thing, how about a proper E then a bout of soaking in WINZ’s spa pools while listening to Bonobo? WINZ. We’re here to help.
RNZ.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nat-music/audio/201852763/review-bonobo-at-the-auckland-town-hall
Animal Magic
https://youtu.be/clsczmHXf9U
Raise wages: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/477972/countdown-worker-s-pay-rise-could-lay-groundwork-for-sector-wide-change-union
Make the rich pay
Problem is the rich don’t give a hoot till it bites them on the arse. Because the rich in there own little bubble gated in usually it won’t affect them until things get way worse. At that point the rich will fly off to a another locale.
JC they already are. One of my hobbies is browsing property listings, imagining I won lotto and can actually afford a house – the number of “divesting and leaving NZ” appears to be growing.
Yip and good riddance to them 🙂
pay decent wages increase the tax take and the liquidity in the actual real economy, it’s not fuckin brain surgery is it?
So we gonna charge NZD 50 per hour worked. New Min. Wage. You make say 1500 after tax, your rent is now 1000, electricity is 200, Water a 150, Phone 50 per week and food is sold out. Feel better now? you can not fix the cost of living crisis if you don’t start regulating the cost of living. Right now you try to fix the cost of work with ever increasing wages, and everyone else will roll these extra costs over to the products. You are stuck exactly where you were initially and you still can either pay rent/utilities or rent/food. Choose citizen.
as usual bratty you exaggerate for effect.
no i don’t actually.
I am all for lower living costs and higher wages. That would actually make a difference. What does not work is increasing the min wage by a pittance – worse some might actually end up in a higher tax bracket and lose some fringe benefits such as an accom benefit, and thus loose out.
You have to do both, lower the cost of living – by regulation that is, and increase the min wage.
I didn’t mention the amount the min wage should be set at…and an increase in corprate/ rich taxation wouldn’t hurt not to mention prosecutions and confiscations of assets from the criminals who committed fraud on the covid payouts but whom the IRD seem to be giving a free pass……and of course a CGT
So reduce wages and prices will drop. Sounds like the trickle down theory that is a myth.
except in a low wage economy wages are not a driver of inflation…corprate greed and cartels charging what the fuck they like are the drivers of inflation in NZ
2023 will be brutal for sure.
The only upside as I see is that the pain will be visited upon those that predominantly voted for this government. Some people are slow learners.
Err wrong, it’s been more pleasure than pain, particularly the wage increases, not seen during Nationals long hard, corrupt 9 years. Seems you’re the slow one.
Andrew,
You are absolutely correct.
The current Labour Government have and are doing nothing for their voting base.
The evidence is there for all to see but remarkably there are still deniers for whom actually I feel sorry.
The solution is simple don’t vote Labour or Greens.
Err another one completely, hopelessly wrong. Roll on another term of the Labour, Green and Maori coalition or vote for a racist, corrupt NACT coalition.
My condolences.
You need them.
Sit down Bobblehead, you’re way out of your league here. Good boy.
Thanks for your concern Sinic.
I’m sitting down.
All the best to you.
lets take a carrot grown in NZ, agricultural workers havn’t had wage rises, I’m fairly sure the duopoly is still screwing producers..so that leaves transport costs and gouging we pay world prices at a time when exports are difficult….if you can’t ship there is no world price just the NZ price which brings us back to gouging.
anyone have any figures on how much the duopoly and their lobby groups pay the labour party…we know they bribe the nats but a figure for the LINOs might be instructive.
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