Here’s the reality…
‘Nowhere to go’ for more than 100,000 Kiwis: The worsening reality of homelessness
An advocate for people sleeping rough says homelessness is reaching ‘crisis levels’ and he’s seeing children as young as nine turn up for emergency accommodation. What’s gone wrong in Aotearoa?
…here’s the denial…
Homelessness increase not necessarily due to government policy changes – minister
The minister in charge of emergency housing has been unable to say whether homelessness has increased under this government, saying frontline providers have made “a variety” of comments to him.
Providers and advocates have told RNZ they have been seeing a spike in homelessness, with some blaming changes the government has made to emergency housing access.
But Tama Potaka told a committee of MPs there were “a lot of other contributing factors,” such as the state of the economy and the supply of rentals.
..here’s the truth…
Kāinga Ora cans hundreds of social housing building projects after review, takes up to $180m hit
Kāinga Ora is axing hundreds of social housing projects because they “no longer represent value for money”.
The state housing agency concedes that canning the projects means it will take a hit of up to $180 million that has already been spent on scoping and planning work.
Kāinga Ora has also decided to offload 20% of its vacant land following a review of its operations because the land is no longer deemed necessary for social housing.
It includes a 1.5ha plot of vacant land in Albany which the agency paid nearly $20m for in 2018 but has sat vacant ever since.
The Herald revealed last year that taxpayers had forked out an additional $1m on consultants, architectural services, legal advice, valuations, arborists, geotech reports and council rates for the property on Don McKinnon Drive.
The vacant plot will now be sold off.
Today’s announcements come as part of a major “reset” the agency is undertakingafter concerns emerged that it had lost focus on its core role as a social housing landlord and veered too far into the role of property development.
This followed a review led by former Prime Minister Sir Bill English that found the agency’s debt had jumped from $2.7 billion in 2018 to $12.3b by June 2023, and was set to increase to $23b by 2028.
Bill English wrote that report using money put aside for public housing.
The irony.
By killing off public housing, National decimated the construction industry and many workers left for Australia.
This isn’t social policy, it’s public housing vandalism, a self mutilation masquerading as cost cutting and that’s the kind of malice right wing voters love.
The collective contempt for state tenants is welded onto the cultural bigotry of our calcified political tropes and reactionary voters like bashing state tenants, beneficiaries and Māori with all the glee of book burners.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
Can the free market ever provide housing for the majority of the population?
Supposed master of Free Market Capitalism Adam Smith on how tenancy works;
“[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more.”
The character of landlords;
“[Landlords] are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind”
On the nature of rent increases; “every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends… to raise the real rent of land.”
From Chapter 11 The Wealth of Nations.
Private Landlords are parasites.
It should be obvious that the only way to provide housing for all is through state intervention.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTEAROA! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!
Please note I call Adam Smith the ‘supposed’ master of Free market Capitalism because I believe that like Karl Marx, Jesus Christ and others he has seen the truths he told’ twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.’ (Kipling)
Good to read Adam Smith – often referred to but rarely met.
Yes Greywarbler but what infuriates me about references to the ‘Father of Capitalism’ is that he is usually misquoted.
The only growth this government is promoting is POVERTY .
The national party has cancelled a Kainga Ora building project in Porirua this is disgusting as this is a high needs area with a lot of poorer families. And yet Bishop is saying we need more housing hence his many reforms including the RMA bill. He is also selling state owned land and cancelling many other social housing projects for those that need it the most. They did not get a mandate to do this in fact his boss said he would not sell state assets during the election when he was asked.
Bishop seems connected with religion but true ones wouldn’t own him. Perhaps it is short for bike shop and prompts the thought ‘Get on your bike and ride mate’. What other families in NZ have gormless boys who pass their exams with as much thought as passing bodily waste? What to do with them? Well they can always become MPs if they aren’t sorted to be captains of industry or anything.
Well spotted. Those who can, do. Those who can’t become politicians.
They pass exams and have degrees for Africa but with no emotional intelligence, they flounder around aimlessly and eventually wash up in parliament. Might explain a lot.
Look, poor people don’t matter, okay? They’re human refuse, no different to the diseased flotsam you see floating down one of New Zealand’s many pristine waterways. (100% Pure!) They’re scruffy, they smell, they’re bone-idle parasites, and they don’t even have the common decency to have cultivated an extensive property portfolio in their spare time, of which they have copious quantities. More importantly, they don’t vote for NACT. Most of them don’t vote at all.
Now, that being the case, why would our infallible and enlightened political overlords give them the time of day? If Christopher Luxon has taught me anything, it’s that everything in life is transactional, and poor people have no money. Because they’re poor. (Neither wealthy nor sorted, the scum!) The homeless are a blight upon our leafy suburbs and worse, they’re actively hampering growth. (The money sort of growth, which is the only sort that matters, clearly.) Challenging times call for difficult choices. Obviously the very best course of action for everyone, but mostly this government, is to quietly scoop them up and deposit them in a convenient landfill somewhere nobody cares about… like Gore. Or Putaruru.
Out of sight, out of mind! It’s the NACT way!
A big cheesy grin to that.
Cancelling our long-held census system is another support and tool of our democracy threatened, lost. How can we see this backward step in our country and not be alarmed. Are people unaware that a democracy is more than having a well-paying job and the devil take the hindmost?
It has been obvious to many caring and interested NZs for some time that NZAO governments are playing at governance, striking poses, not really interested in the country at all. Not bothering to keep good records is a further aid to dilatory and destructive government leaving vast numbers of our people only slightly acknowledged, instead of being full citizens interwoven into Kiwi society and prosperity.
The song is – ‘I didn’t know the gun was loaded And I’m so sorry my friend’. Andrews Sisters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76iuJMuXWqA (About crocodile tears which won’t count in the future, and don’t now.)
On wilful ignorance. 0.27s Donald Rumsfeld Known Unknown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REWeBzGuzCc
We want governments that are worth the money they cost, and deliver the governance we can expect. Unstaunch professionals with some proficiency should stick to their job and do it well. People in governance need to be more than eager beavers, who are good at building underwater homes. Governance needs people proficient in the basics of needs of a modern society, working in all domains; with knowledge of people and how to achieve well for them and the whole country.!!!!!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/564560/the-traditional-census-has-been-switched-off-what-happens-now
New Zealand In Depth
The traditional Census has been switched off: What happens now?
9:01 am on 19 June 2025 Kate Newton , Senior Journalist, In Depth
2023 will be the last year the government will ask every person in NZ to participate in the Census. Photo: RNZ
The slogan of the 2023 Census was ‘Tatau Tātou – all of us count’. Demographers worry the decision to scrap the five-yearly survey of every New Zealander means that will no longer be the case…
Instead, from 2030 Census-style statistics will be created from a combination of data already collected by other government agencies, known as ‘administrative data’, and annual surveys of a sample of the population.
This approach was heavily signalled in consultation that happened last year…
Announcing the change, statistics minister Shane Reti said: “Despite the unsustainable and escalating costs, successive censuses have been beset with issues or failed to meet expectations.”
It will end more than 150 years of continuous data collection across nearly the entire population. Demographers who spoke to RNZ fear that once it’s happened, the change might be irreversible.
They warn it may magnify rather than solve the problem of under-counting Māori and Pasifika populations, and that important data currently only captured by the Census will be lost….
…Len Cook was New Zealand’s chief statistician from 1992 to 2000 and has also served as national statistician in the UK. He says the change has come just when an accurate picture of New Zealand’s population is crucial.
“We’re in the middle of what I call a population storm, where falling fertility, rising life expectancy, and huge migration volatility means that pretty much every one of our 67 local authorities now is changing in an entirely different way from the other,” he says.
“We really need to be able to make sure that we’re going to know in each of these places what’s changing and what’s driving it.”..
…Cook has kept a close eye on what’s happening in the UK, which had planned to move to a similar system for its next Census in England and Wales in 2031.
The day before Reti announced an end to New Zealand’s five-yearly Census, the UK Statistics Authority recommended to the government there that the planned move should not go ahead, and instead a traditional Census should be held. The UK is a “trailblazer” in the statistical world, Cook says.
“If the UK is not prepared to make this move in six years’ time, then we need to have a damn sight better explanation of why New Zealand is going to do it now.”
Moving to an administrative model would take New Zealand further away from the systems used in many countries we compare ourselves to, he says. Australia, the UK and the USA all currently use a full population-wide census…
…Massey University sociologist Professor Paul Spoonley says he is “very nervous” about the changes.
“The Census is an all-encompassing data collection exercise which makes sure that everybody is part of that exercise and is asked the same questions. Administrative data doesn’t do that, so there are big data gaps.”
Spoonley says there are other countries that have moved to an administrative model, but they also use a population register to keep track of data…
Stats NZ acting chief statistician Mary Craig said at the announcement that there would be a lot of work over the next five years to ensure the administrative data it will rely on is up to scratch.
“There’s a level of data from everybody, but does it actually have all the attributes that we would need for this type of exercise? No.”…
…Spoonley says even if New Zealand’s collection of administrative data can be made more systematic, it still won’t include all of the information the Census currently collects.
There are plenty of things only the Census asks about, particularly around dwelling conditions and household make-up, and te ao Māori data variables like iwi affiliation and te reo proficiency.
“What are the surveys going to look like that make up for the data deficiencies – are they going to be adequate? And we need a big sample to make sure we are capturing all of those communities in sufficient depth.”
He agrees that the 2018 and 2023 censuses were costly, and also cost the country dearly in robust statistics.
But the government should have considered previous models for running the Census before it decided to scrap it entirely, he says. “We’ve had 35 censuses in New Zealand. It provides an enormous and rich database.
“We’re breaking that continuity with no guarantee that we’re going to get good quality data that tells us what’s happening in New Zealand.” If the new approach also goes awry, he says, “We’ve got no comeback.”
“We’re a modern society that relies on good quality data to make good quality decisions at a national and local level. The risk is that we’re not going to have that data to make those decisions, and the problem is that that will become apparent at a moment that’s too late to rectify it.”..
Te Kāhui Raraunga and Data Iwi Leaders Group lead data technician Kirikowhai Mikaere says her organisation was involved in some of the consultation behind the changes, but she still has many concerns about how it will go ahead…
…Administrative data, we know, doesn’t necessarily have the robust coverage for some key variables for iwi Māori – in particular for the iwi affiliation variable, the Māori descent variable, and te reo Māori,” Mikaere says.
“One of the concerns of moving to a system that relies on the combination of administrative data and smaller annual surveys, is that it might roll back the progress we’ve made and negatively impact the quality of Māori data.”
Rural and remote communities, and those with vulnerable populations, find it harder to access government services. The new approach could compound that problem, Mikaere says.
“Administrative data is primarily collected from the delivery of services. If you don’t access those services, then you’re not seen in administrative data.”…
‘I know, we’re a horrible lot us kiwis. All lefties should leave in disgust immediately and move to…well you all like Hamas going by the banners at the protests, so Gaza could be a good place? Not?’
Jonzie’s response to debate follows the Rob Muldoon school of ‘If -you -don’t- like- it -here -why -don’t-you- go -to- Russia? cliche of the 1970s.
A perfect example of the defensive posture of the braying rightwing fuckwit when surprised fouling nests.
Probably stealing birds eggs too.
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