Homeless die outside Goldsmith’s office, Upston doges latest beneficiary screw up while child poverty explodes – welcome to Old Zealand
The true ugliness of this Government exposed viciously this week.
Right after passing laws to arrest the homeless that Government policies have created, a homeless man dies outside Paul Goldsmith’s electoral office…
Person dies outside Paul Goldsmith’s Auckland office
A person has died outside of the offices for National Party MPs, including Paul Goldsmith.
In a statement, police said they were called to Epsom in Auckland at 7.50am on Friday after reports of a person being found unresponsive and later pronounced dead.
The death is not believed to be suspicious.
Signage outside the building shows it as the office National MPs Paul Goldsmith, Nancy Lu and Melissa Lee, alongside other businesses.
The Post reports the person is believed to be a rough sleeper.
RNZ
…as the Welfare Minister doges more questions over how rushed legislation punishing Beneficiaries has caused benefits to be wrongfully cancelled…
Minister Louise Upston denies dodging questions over missed benefit payments
Social Development Minister Louise Upston has appeared to avoid reporters waiting to ask about benefit payments being wrongly suspended, using a side corridor to enter Parliament’s debating chamber on Friday afternoon.
A spokesperson from Upston’s office denied she was dodging reporters, saying she took a different route to speak to officials before entering the House.
MSD said it became aware of the problem and told Upston about it on 13 August, but Upston told Parliament this week wrongful suspensions had not occurred – before changing her answer after further questions to say it had “possibly” happened.
Meanwhile, a beneficiary advocate said the government was playing with their lives.
The benefit payments were incorrectly stopped following a law change that was rushed through Parliament last year.
The new law requires some beneficiaries to re-confirm their circumstances at least once every 52 weeks, to check whether they are still eligible.
MSD said processing delays caused by a high volume of people confirming their circumstances meant some of their paperwork was not checked in time, so their benefit payments stopped.
RNZ
…a Child Poverty stats explode…
New Zealand has gone in ‘wrong direction’ on addressing child poverty – action group
A retired paediatrician says changes to government policy can reverse the growing number of children in poverty.
Child Poverty Action Group has released a manifesto calling for cross-party support to reduce the number of children living in material hardship.
The group’s CEO Lyn Amos told Morning Report child poverty was a “political choice” and urged for all parties to make policy changes.
StatsNZ figures show the number of children in material hardship rose by 47,500 between 2022 and 2025.
The manifesto’s lead author, emeritus professor Innes Asher said most political parties agreed in 2018 to halve the number of children in poverty by 2028, “instead it’s gone up”.
“They’ve been pulled down into material hardship at a very time that we had a pact in 2018, the Child Poverty Reduction Act, when we all agreed that it should be halved by 2028 to six percent, and it’s gone up now to 14 percent.”
That meant one in seven children were living in poverty, she said, but the impact was more pronounced for some groups, with one in four tamariki Māori, one in three Pacific children, and one in four disabled children living in material hardship.
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said poverty persisted because of failures in the labour market, housing, health and disability, education, welfare and tax settings.
It said these were down to political choices and all parties needed to be held accountable.
RNZ
…welcome to Old Zealand!
This should all be a nationwide scandal causing deep humiliation and shame, but in a country where Ryan Fox’s favourite pie shop being broken into can dominate headlines…
Rollers Bakery, home of Ryan Fox’s favourite pie, targeted in attempted break-in
The popular Auckland bakery behind Ryan Fox’s favourite pie is closed after an attempted break-in early this morning that left staff shaken and the building damaged.
NZ Herald
…and where Seven Sharp’s lead story for the week was a Police Officer chasing a cow…
‘Only in New Zealand’: Runaway cow dodges cop, halts traffic on SH1
A runaway cow led a lone police officer on a zigzagging dance across a South Canterbury state highway this morning, holding up traffic as amused motorists filmed the standoff.
TVNZ
…we are an emotionally infantile low horizon imagination culture without the conscience to appreciate our obscenity.
Homelessness
Is there a more brutal karma than a homeless person dying outside the Electoral Office of the political architect to arrest the homeless that his Governments policies have created?
Beneficiary Bashing
The reason so many beneficiaries are having their benefits suspended is because the Government (after sacking the back room staff) decided to force everyone to reapply for their benefits every 52 weeks and because they sacked so many staff they decided to allow AI to triage the process with a design to make it as obtuse and difficult to get. This has NOTHING to do with the welfare of those needing it and everything to do with coming top with new ways to cancel people accessing help in te first place.
Bureaucratic Cruelty
Remember the explosion in our child poverty stats is designed. This Government believe cruelty and stick is the best way to ‘get people back to work’ in a work environment where there are no jobs. They chose not to include these people in Working For Family credits and allow the poorest to become more entrapped in poverty.
We should all be deeply ashamed at the way this Government treats the poor and we are a worse nation for our callowness.
Independent Media is more important than ever, especially in the lead up to the Election. TDB is the largest Left Wing Blog in NZ and we have been operating for 13 years. We get zero funding from NZonAir and we don’t have no rich backers. If you can donate please do so here or directly into our account –12-3065-0133561-56
I also remember houses used to cost $50k back in the day, they’re well over a million now. Why is that I wonder.
What’s a homeless guy doing in Epsom anyway? He should have been booted out to South Auckland somewhere. /s– Just in case.
The current corporate government couldn’t care less whether pensioners freeze during winter or homeless people are dying.
Their apologies are just political management marketing and are as hollow as the current cabinet and government caucuses.
Goldsmith would be frustrated that a dead body is blocking his entrance and when will it be moved.
That homeless person is expendable, one of Luxons and his colleagues total failure.
Pack up your thinker then go over there and sit down and comprehend this. Make a cuppa tea and take your time.
At around 1970 AO/NZ’s economy was one of the strongest in the world per head of population. Homelessness and poverty on such a scale as we have today was inconceivable.
Today. Whole families of people live in the streets, our four main banks are now exports-competitor australian owned and we have 26 multi-billionaires with a combined wealth of $129 billion dollars. And that’s just the multi-billionaires. You want to read about the 3118 multi-millionaires each with a net fortune of $50 million?
The total population of AO/NZ is 5.3 million, our primary industry is agriculture and our advantage is that we can export fresh foods etc to a winter bound northern hemisphere and yet we’re broke as fuck. Apart from the multi-billionaires and the multi-millionaires of course.
I think there needs to be three spicy new questions put on the block.
Who? How? And what are we going to do about it?
Referencing the catch- title ‘Old Zealand’. Where’d you get that from?
Little Davey Sezmore was right, the poor and homeless have no ambition. The itinerant should have pulled their self up by their ACT Branded Bootstraps and more fittingly passed away outside Luxons office.
Joking aside, a sad, sad, situation.
“Old Zealand” ?
In Old Zealand there were not homeless on every corner. There were high wages, there was feather bedding in govt departments, there were wards with food for too loose units, there was collectivism, there were heaps of state houses being built. Roger Douglas, David Lange, David Caygill, Geoffrey Palmer, Mike Moore, Phil Goff, Richard Prebble closed down ‘The Fair Go’.
How could the country afford no homelessness several generations ago when the country as a whole was less rich than it is now?