A radical mandate is required to address Maori – non-Maori inequality

On the 13th February The Salvation Army launched its 2019 State of the Nation report. I wrote this report for the Army as I have for the past 11 years. This year’s report has picked up on the theme of wellbeing and is titled ‘Are you well? Are we safe?
Read More →Alan Johnson – No surprise in Government’s rejection of community housing

There should be no surprise in a recent report that Government had turned its back on NGO community housing providers to instead work with developers to provide social housing. This move is both a pragmatic one and an inevitable consequence of the Government’s self-imposed budget responsibility rules. But the community housing providers v developers dichotomy is more complex than some would have us believe.
Read More →Labour & Green Budget Responsibility Rules are strangling us

The 2019 BPS faithfully follows the Government’s self-imposed Budget Responsibility Rules. Mr Robertson’s fiscal conservatism is apparent both in his fixation on these rules and in the surpluses which are expected over the next five years. These surpluses rise from $1.7 billion in the current financial year to $8.3 billion by 2023.
Read More →MUST READ EXCLUSIVE: Call it KiwiBuild but it is still gentrification

It is probably time to call the Government’s flagship KiwiBuild programme for what it is – state sponsored gentrification of state housing suburbs. As such it is little different from the previous Government’s efforts in places such as Tamaki to extract value from the public housing estate under the guise of modernisation.
Read More →MUST READ: Budget 2018 – Half of something and half of nothing

In its first Budget the Government had an opportunity to break the neo-liberal mould which has been the basis of every budget for the past 32 years but they didn’t.
Read More →MUST READ: Stepping over the homeless on our way to the America’s Cup village

The sheer indecency of Phil Goff’s and David Parker’s scramble to pour as much as $185 million of public money and assets into another America’s Cup village on the Auckland waterfront appears to have escaped most people’s thoughts or imagination.
Read More →EXCLUSIVE: The housing crisis narrative suits the Government’s agenda for now

As the Finance Minister considers how he might build 2000 state houses per year no doubt the true impact of the Labour-Greens Budget Responsibility Rules will become apparent. These rules include bringing core Crown debt down to 20% of GDP and maintaining recent historic ratios of Government expenditure to GDP. Both great neo-liberal ideas.
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