BLOGWATCH: How desperate are Labour? Read this Standard post and gasp!

We have real problems on the Left if this gasp inducing post on The Standard is anything go by.

Their argument is ‘always look on the bright side of life’ and claim that there is no depression in NZ.

It’s so fucking ludicrous and shows how blind tribal Labour have become.

Greg Presland is a member of the Professional Managerial Class who now dominate Labour and sees woke virtue signals as the mission for Labour now, not the economic bread and butter issues that impact the poor.

Hilariously he brings up hate speech before mentioning economics, something he actually gets chastised for in the comments section of his own post.

I believe an ACT/National Government would be the most dangerous far right experiment this country will have seen since Roger Douglas, and because of that, we must get Labour back in power, but to refuse ,as Presland does, to see the pain outside his own privileged economic bubble shows how difficult it will be when people like him have so much influence in the Party.

Labour have failed to be transformative and have failed us on the issues that truly matter.

As TDBs own Professor Susan St John points out…

The Government’s media response to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) Child Poverty Report 2022 proudly claims “Child poverty declines in spite of COVID” .

Sure, material hardship rates for many children improved between 2013-21, thanks to government measures, rising employment rates, improving wages.  BUT the MSD report itself is at pains to say that these results do not reflect anything like the full extent of the pandemic period. Let’s not forget too, the huge efforts of the proliferating private charities and foodbanks, which while utterly necessary, remain a disturbing indicator of policy failure.

The government’s media release has a misplaced congratulatory tone. 

• • Government policy means child poverty measures improve during COVID-19 in contrast to them rising sharply during the GFC.

• • There are 145,000 fewer children in hardship in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic than when hardship numbers peaked after the GFC in 2011.

• • There were 70,000 more jobless households with children during and immediately after the GFC then during COVID-19.

• • Rates of hardship for Māori rose to 36% after the GFC, and 47% for Pacific people. These have since dropped to 20% and 24% respectively. This means there are 40,000 fewer Māori children in poverty now than there were after the GFC.

• • Around the GFC (2007 to 2011) less than 40% of households with children said they had enough income to cover the basics. This is now 61%. That’s 150,000 more households who can meet their basic needs now.

There are no health warnings in the Government’s media release about how to interpret the data and the limitations of the figures. The data for the latest MSD report was collected during the period July 2020 and June 2021, with reference to the previous 12 months. A family interviewed early in the piece would be reporting income for the 2019/2020 year. So much of the data is prior to the full Covid pandemic, and does not capture anything at all of the severe impact the 2021 lockdown had on low-income families, or the recent devastating cost of living pressures. Remember too, thousands of worst-off children live in emergency accommodation such as motels and garages and are excluded from the survey on which the child poverty report is based because their families have no residential address.

The media release appears tone deaf to the intense pressures that private charities have been constantly reporting in 2022, the thousands of children in damp, cold housing with blighted life trajectories, the crippling rent rises and the entrenchment of the foodbank industry on scale unimaginable to most New Zealanders. The claims on the one hand that child poverty has declined, and the on-the ground reports from those coping with the covid and cost of living fallout on the other suggest the poverty indicators relied on in the Child Poverty Reduction Act are not fit for purpose in times of crisis. 

The government would be advised to pay close attention to what the report actually says. Even though families on average appear to do better from 2013, the report shows 120,000 children were still in hardship in the 2021 survey. Of these, around 60,000 children were living in severe hardship (and remember those in motels or other make do accommodation like garages were not in the survey). 

…as TDBs own John Minto points out…

• Why are the number of children living in grotty motels STILL INCREASING?
• Why is the number of children living in cars STILL INCREASING?
• Why are the number of children in tents STILL INCREASING?
• Why is Labour still ONLY FUNDING 1600 new IRRS places (for state house and social housing providers combined) each year for the more than 24,000 families on the state house waiting list?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to keep the proportion of state house at just 3.6% of total housing stock when it was 5.4% in 1990?
• Why has Labour not instigated an industrial-scale state house building programme such as the first Labour government did in the 1930s? (Labour then built 3,500 state houses each year – equivalent to 10,000 today on a population basis)
• Why is the government planning to sell 55 to 60% of crown land in Auckland to private property developers when we have a housing catastrophe for low-income New Zealanders?

…let’s also add the appalling decision to remove Children’s Commissioner oversight from Oranga Tamariki.

How about the million a day being spent to kettle beneficiaries into dangerous motels?

How about the 30% jump in demand from Food Banks?

Look, ACT and National ARE NOT the solution and this Blog will fight tooth and nail against those right wing arseholes, but to pretend as Presland does that Labour have done anything meaningful on the economic justice issues that matter as opposed to woke wank virtue signals is simply delusional and shows how out of touch Presland as a member of the Professional Managerial Class has become.

If Presland is the best defence the Left have, we are in bigger trouble than I feared.

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