Warm in the Beehive, Frozen on the Streets
A kuia and her mokopuna were found sleeping in a freedom camping site. Tamariki arriving soaked to youth hubs, having slept in the rain. These aren’t isolated tragedies, they’re the Māori reality with a government obsessed with balance sheets and tax brackets.
While Prime Minister Christopher Luxon boasts that “New Zealand’s economy is growing four times faster than Australia’s,” Māori advocates warn that whānau are freezing on the streets.
This is not just a cost-of-living crisis. For Māori, it is a crisis of survival.
I have had the privilege of working with Claudette for decades at Waatea, and I believe she is doing the best journalism of her entire career down at Parliament as Waatea’s Press Gallery Journalist.
She has fast developed a reputation for asking the hardest questions on Māori issues inside the Press Gallery and she is feared for her tenaciousness.
I think she’s fucking incredible.
I’m not alone, Bernard Hickey referred to her interview with Luxon this week as a must watch…
…the spin this Government is pushing to gloss over the economic implosion THEIR POLICIES have created are outrageous!
Rents fall for first time since 2009
Rents have fallen on an annual basis for the first time since late 2009, property research firm Cotality says.
Its latest data points to an update from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which showed national median rents in the three months to May were down 0.3 percent from the year before.
It follows reports of drops in the price being asked for advertised rental properties.
Cotality chief economist Kelvin Davidson said it was a notable change after big rental increases between 2021 and 2023.
“I think it’s quite significant. There aren’t many periods in the past where rents have fallen. The latest numbers are only down slightly but you have to go back to 2009 to find a period where annual rental growth on these numbers has been negative and before that it was the late 1990s. So around the Asian financial crisis and the GFC.”
He said it showed a shift in the market.
The grim reality of WHY rents are dropping is terrifying.
Bernard Hickey points out renters simply don’t have the money as homelessness explodes…
- inflation is rising back towards 3% later this year from 2.5% early in 2025, with prices of ‘essentials’ ie food, rent, rates, electricity and petrol rising twice as fast as disposable income for renters;
…there are 28 000 less jobs…
…70 000 Kiwis have fled overseas and the economy is flat lining BECAUSE of this Government’s economic policies!
The Economy is so damaged from National’s 2024 construction costs that the knock on effect has been devastating.
Business investment is now so weak that banks have not lent any net new money to non-landlord businesses and farmers since May last year!
READ THAT AGAIN!
Business investment is now so weak that banks have not lent any net new money to non-landlord businesses and farmers since May last year!
Jesus wept that is destructive.
Add that alongside to the Centrix report this month that showed the cost of the Government’s shutting down of construction saw over 12 000 jobs gone in a year!
The incredibly negative impact on the economy from this Government’s ideological experiment has borne a bitter, bitter harvest and no amount of of ‘we are fixing Labour’s mistakes’ can gloss over the fact that these negative economic conditions that we are experiencing ARE THE DIRECT RESULT of National’s own policies.
Claudette wasn’t going to let Luxon spin without challenging him!
He was also challenged by Waatea News reporter and former National MP Claudette Hauiti about homelessness. Here’s the exchange:
Claudette Hauiti: Prime Minister, In Ngāmotu, Taranaki and New Plymouth, we found a kuia and her mokopuna in a freedom camping site and advocates in Te Tai Tokarau have counted 6,000 tamariki living beneath the breadline in freezing conditions. How is it that you can allow that to happen?
Luxon: Sure, we understand we’ve got some real challenges in our housing market. That’s why we’re trying to make it easier to build more houses so that more people can be accommodated in safe, dry, affordable homes. That’s why you’re seeing us actually do everything we can to make sure that rents are not going up. We’ve got stable rents in New Zealand for the first time in a long time. That’s why you’ve seen us take 6,000 people off the State House wait list. That’s how we’ve moved 2,100 kids out of emergency housing into proper homes because we’ve prioritised them above others to get them to state houses and community houses. We know it’s still challenging. Sorry.
We know we’ve got real challenges in homelessness and no New Zealander wants to see people being homeless. That’s why we spend half a billion dollars with other organisations that actually can provide the wraparound support with people who have often got very complex and challenging needs.
MSD is constantly available there for people who need any housing assistance, but we have made progress on getting kids out of emergency motel accommodation, making sure we get the state house wait list down, keep rent stable, and hopefully open up new land so we can get more houses built.
For the record:
- The Government announced last month it had abandoned plans to build 3,780 new Kainga Ora homes;
- Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials reported to the Government in June (the report was released publicly last week) that homelessness had risen between 25% and 225% in our major cities in the last year after the Government tripled its emergency housing rejection rate;
- The Government removed 2,826 or 84.5% of homeless people from emergency housing in motels between November 2024 and May of this year, hitting its target of cutting the numbers by 75% five years earlier than originally planned, although it acknowledged it didn’t know where about 15% of them went; and,
- The Salvation Army called this morning on the Government to increase housing supply and funding for homelessness NGOs.
The Salvation Army Homelessness report out this week shows MSD rejections of applications for emergency housing rose 386% in the last year, 14 in every 1,000 people lived in uninhabitable situations and 1 in a 1,000 was living without shelter.
The Prime Minister’s response when challenged on these stats was to double down on austerity budgets and cutbacks saying more was needed. A multi-millionaire with a Hawian batch who just came back from holiday lecturing the homeless that there must be more cut backs seems a tad uncouth doesn’t it?
This Government is failing us all to help corporations and empower the rich.
You can’t pretend not to notice!
Hating Jacinda, Trans people and Māori doesn’t justify allowing the rich to screw us all!
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And how about this Martyn. This goes destroying our health system. They promote higher immigration numbers with less health support…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/568412/health-nz-admits-it-can-t-afford-to-employ-all-nurses-wanting-work
Claudette smashed Luxon.
It’s pretty obvious now , to all but the deluded, that Luxon doesn’t have a clue…
Flailing around with ridiculous answers about making changes that will make houses more affordable for these people and get them off the streets and out of cars is a
straight out bullshit answer.
The average house price in N.Z. now is around the $800,000 mark…
Even the adult children of the upper
middle class can’t even afford that without a big fat handout from mummy and daddy let alone those people who are on the bones of their
arse for whatever reason.
The task of getting and keeping your head above water, let alone actually buying a house and taking on and servicing a huge mortgage is strictly for the off spring of the well heeled now.
The well heeled are well heeled in many cases because they have been fortuitous to ride a property market from the late 1970s where house prices were 3 times the average single income to now where they are 9 times the average joint household income or 13 times a single income.
Many people who have benefitted from this freak show truly believe that somehow they personally have done something special…that they are economic geniuses in their own right….and if they’d bought a 2nd or 3rd house when they were so cheap then they rivalled Warren Buffet .
Luxon is one of these people…buying 5 houses on the N.Z. property gravy train pyramid scheme looking for the next mug to give him a tax free profit.
Luxon’s naked greed of looking to benefit and feast off the entrails of a rapidly rising housing market ,without lifting a finger, has helped to snatch away any chance of the poor and underprivileged ever achieving home owenership.
And now he has the audacity to suggest that by ,(possibly), bringing down the price of gib board and a few other building items that that will somehow help get these people into a home is pure fanciful gobbledeegook .
In fact it’s straight out fuck you Jack i’m o.k dishonesty!
Lets cut to the chase, Luxon is sorted and operates in a different dimension, it is a waste of time anyone asking him questions trying to get a useful response. All questioning of Luxon brings is more frustration at his total out of touch and weak leadership. This country is at the crossroads, Luxon and this hopeless govt have no idea what direction to take.
Luxon is so out of touch with reality.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360774755/knife-wielding-assailant-allegedly-threatens-kill-striking-nurses
This is what is happening because of his policies and placing Simeon Brown in health when Brown is so far out of his depth it’s beyond embarrassing. A bank teller destroying our once world leading and proud health system.
Simeon Brown attacking nurses that are striking for better wages and condition, yet he and his CoC are solely responsible for axing pay equity and sending Nurses to Australia because they are under valued and under paid. This governments corruption in paying Board heads up to 80% more whilst telling nurses to take cuts and do more with less. The CoC is a fucking joke and we can’t wait until they are voted out!
0.3% fall in rents what a fucken joke .Thats $1.80 per week on a $600 house .Fancy having an orgasam over that .
Hosuing is racist thing Kim, whne i applied for ste hsuing corpation hosue back in 1980, there was tick box asking you where you would prefer to live. I ticked the central Lower Hutt box and was told I would not get one in that area. The reason was because I was a Māori we got put in those ugly blocks of flats in mostly rundown areas like Pomare, down the end of Jackson Street, Petone and Porirua, namely Cannons Creek. Pakeha got the best houses in the nice central Lower Hutt areas, and many went on to be able to buy those homes under the national government who sold many. You see Kim the people working in these government departments were mostly Pakeha they allocated the houses they had the higher decision-making roles, and they decided where people would live, and they were fucken racist. I also know this as my aunty worked in the SHC office, and she told me this was common practice. Just one example of Pakeha privilege in Aotearoa.
One thing I have noticed about Luxon is he Waffles a Heck of Alot to the extent that he possibly thinks that using Alot of Words Sounds Impressive.
He could easily CONdence down his Word Salad into smaller sentences which would sound better that Waffle-dom.
Maybe he learnt well from Sir Lies-Alot(aka John Key) as to how to use alot of words but have made absolutely No-sense whatsoever at the end. But the Complacent and Deep Into the NZ National Party Pocket Mainstream NZ media give Weakling Luxon the Photo opportunities and Attention he desires and feeds upon.
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