John Minto

It should make an uncomfortable juxtaposition for the mayor and councillors.

One week they vote an extra $220 million for a new rugby stadium without public consultation and the next they are consulting on whether they should give a $30 million loan to the council’s housing arm – the Otautahi Community Housing Trust – to build 130 more council rental homes. 

Bridges colleague Mike Sabin, former policeman and former National MP, was at the heart of the moral panic over meth.

I’ve had the chance to read the interim report of the tax working group over the weekend and it’s a sorry, sad document.

The “pocket money” offer to state house tenants wrongly evicted from their homes based on bogus meth testing is deeply cynical and insulting.

Members of the Christchurch Progressive Network will attend todays Christchurch City Council Meeting from 8.30am to protest the proposal to spend an extra $220 million on a rugby stadium ahead of rebuilding council rental housing destroyed in the earthquakes.

When Helen Clark’s Labour government came to power in 1999 there were 14,000 “non-casino” pokie machines in New Zealand. Four years later there were 25,000.

Labour was asleep at the wheel.

The National Business Review published its annual celebration of unearned wealth last week with the breathlessly-reported news that this bunch of specialised parasites increased their wealth from a net of $79.9 billion in 2017 to $100.8 billion this year.

With all the self-flagellation about free speech these last few weeks most people seem to have missed ASB’s record net profit – $1.18 billion. (Net profit means profit AFTER the ASB has done all its dodgy dealings to limit its tax liabilities here – the real profit is much higher).

With its appalling record in handling the cases reported in the media so far, Housing NZ  has a huge bill ahead of it and will want to put this matter to rest asap. On their record of disrespect and callous attitudes to vulnerable tenants we expect HNZ will want to do lots of quick, grubby little deals with affected tenants and offer them “pocket money” compensation.

When someone hands out leaflets which say “Allah is a gay god” and “Allah is transgender” then this is not an issue of free speech. This is part of a calculated campaign to incite religious hatred.