What Salvation Army ‘State of the Nation’ reveals about National’s real agenda
Hahahahahahahahahahah – hungry children and lots more homeless – hahahahahahahahahah
The numbers are devastating and an indictment on what National calls its welfare reforms.
• seemingly entrenched rates of child poverty and child abuse
• the burgeoning incarceration rates of prisoners, along with high recidivism rates
• an alarming lack of safe, affordable housing that has resulted in a level of homelessness not seen in New Zealand in the lifetime of most Kiwis.
Where National claim they have had successes, there are only more questions.
Most of the ‘reductions’ are because Government agencies have played around with how they count these problems…
The number of confirmed cases of child abuse or neglect has fallen by almost 22% over the past ve years to 16,394 (almost the same as the year before). This recent decline is due to Child, Youth and Family changing its practices and de nitions. There is no evidence that recorded violent offences against children have fallen over this period however.
…and declines in youth prosecutions has more to do with Police desperately turning a blind eye to anything that is going to clog up the courts and place even more people into our groaning prison system.
As for the 50 000 children National have thrown off welfare, no one knows where they are or what they are now doing. Bill English trumpets dumping 25% of sole parents off welfare without knowing where they are now as a triumph. All National have perfected are neoliberal welfare agencies who delight in cutting off benefits for any reason they can.
This isn’t victory, it’s merely hiding the problem, that’s the reality.
212,000 New Zealand children (20% of under 17-year-olds) live in income poverty. That’s not winning, that’s losing, terribly.
The Monster of our prison empire fed by a corrupt mainstream media and tough on crime Politicians is a disgrace.
- The proportion of convictions resulting in a prison term increased from 9.6% in 2010/11 to 11.3% in 2014/15, and to 12.1% in 2015/16.
- In inflation-adjusted terms, the average cost of keeping a prisoner in prison has risen from $86,700 in 2010/11, to $91,000 in 2014/15, and in 2015/16 to $92,800.
Income growth is going now where.
- Despite strong job growth, unemployment fell by just 1,000 people during 2016.
- Wages and salaries for employees rose by 1.8% during 2016, but by almost 10% in in ation-adjusted terms over the past ve years.
- The number of people receiving working-age bene ts declined by just over 4,000 to 297,000, while the number of people being paid a retirement pension rose by 26,000.
As for housing, it’s a disaster.
- Almost 10,000 consents for new dwellings were issued in Auckland during 2015/16— the highest in 11 years. At the same time, the region’s population grew by 45,000 people, further adding to its housing shortage, which is estimated at more than 18,000 houses over the past ve years.
- Rents continue to rise faster than wages and salaries. In December 2016, it took 12.9 hours of pay at the average wage to afford the average rent—0.5 hours of pay more than a year earlier.
- Average household debt rose 6.7% during 2015/16 to $144,400, while total household debt reached a record-equalling 96% of GDP.
After 9 years of National, most have gone no where and the wealthy have benefitted.
Will it change?
Only if the property market pops.
National needs the property bubble, it keeps pushing up values and makes property owning NZers feel like they are multi-millionaires. Middle class NZ have been taken hook line and sinker with this and are happy to allow mass surveillance, 220 000 kids in poverty, 41 000 homeless and unethical political behaviour to ensure they can still get a gold credit card from their bank.
Property owners don’t care about those who have lost out, the millennials just want the same property speculation rights as boomers and the rest are left to sleep in cars.
This only changes when the market pops.
So, if we change the Government we get a Labour Party that’s going to ‘smash’ the gangs. We even had Little banging on about how “it’s time for the Government to get off its backside and build some bloody houses”.
How about the same hard man rhetoric for poverty??.
If someone from Labour could stand up and talk about smashing poverty maybe I’ll get to vote again. If I may be so bold as to suggest that kids in poverty don’t need $500,000 ‘affordable’ homes…they need a family not being gouged for rent and shuffling around every 6 months….so how about it Labour?.
No more landlord subsidies..they should charge rents people can afford, and pay to make their houses fit for purpose (ie rent caps and warrants of fitness)…throw that into the mix and you might find the housing crisis starts to fix itself.
And if those sorts of policies lose Labour the election, well at least then we will know where we stand as a supposedly caring and equal society THEN maybe we can draw the lines in the sand and work towards real change.
Well said Siobhan. Little bangs on about populist policies but won’t tackle the real social issues, but heaven forbid to criticise him over on the Standard.
‘New Zealand house prices look to be peaking, according to Finance Minister Steven Joyce, while he’s also warning home buyers to consider whether they can afford higher mortgage rates in coming years.
Speaking to Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Select Committee Wednesday, Joyce said his view is there is “not much upside” in house prices as the supply of new builds increases and as interest rates are forecast to rise.
Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf echoed Joyce’s comments……’
http://www.interest.co.nz/property/85903/nz-house-prices-look-have-peaked-joyce-says-treasury-warns-borrowers-rising-interest
‘Income growth is going now where’ : nowhere.
“and makes property owning NZers feel like they are multi-millionaires.”
Really?
It’s fleeting, I assure you.
Until the rates come in and the rip off is nearly into telephone number territory.
The local bodies get to lurk in the shadows every time. They’re seldom seen and rarely heard from. Snuggled under a welter of ‘ten year projections and ambitions’.
Please also add in the misery created by ambitious and over-paid local bodies. The people who can’t manage potholes, water supplies, sewage, aggressive beggars, public loos, public transport or scrupulous oversight of construction and its components.
Them. The ones behind the elected suits, too. They each and all have a ticket clipper in each hand…
Local government is definitely a major part of the problem. Councils operate as inefficiently as possible, squander resources as quickly as possible on boondoggles, rorts and entertainment, pass the cost of all their inefficiency and squandering into ratepayers, and raise the rates every year. Not content with spending ever-greater sums of ratepayer money every year, council bureaucrats ensure that the debt level of districts increase inexorably.
I see local government as the leech that ‘sucks the blood out of districts and will eventually cripple them.
All local elections are rigged to ensure that members of a particular ‘club’ get positions on the council, where they can participate in the looting and polluting of communities. And strategic planning is more-or-less completely non-existent, ensuring absolute catastrophe for most towns and cities in NZ in the fairly near future.
What is more, the system has been set up to ensure there is no accountability anywhere and that there are no mechanisms for holding ANYONE to account.
Agree with u on this A Few Know the Truth, and where is the legal mechanisms to deal with such rorts? Wot is it that we can do to stop them, I do not want to see Key, English, Collins, Bennett, etc walk away after doing this to us with our dollars, plus the many Mayors and Councillors, plus the CEO’s and other bureaucrats who allowed the pollution and sell offs, exploitation and oppression to continue. I am not a lawyer, but surely there is a legal way to challenge this?
gfc was a warning about the perils of debt new zealanders have not headed that warning they borrowed and borrowed with no thought that you have to pay the money back when the bubble popes the squealing will deafening anybody who hasn’t used this window to pay down debt deserves every thing they get. banks have knowingly
pushed debt like a crack dealer.
So john key does not want to be unpopular its a bit late for that after all the damage he has done to our country. I for one will never forget him and his antics and how he fooled too many dumb NZers into thinking he is actually a nice guy who cares when really he is just another rich prick that doesn’t give a dam and thinks he knows best
So CYFS notifications are down from 150,000 to 142,000? Didn’t I read somewhere this might be attributed to fewer social workers being hired by CYFS to handle cases?
I heard ex-Act-Nat MP Steven Franks on Radion NZ discussing this yesterday on the Jim Mora hour.
What a selfish, judgemental, narrow-minded, little man he was. Evidently it is a lifestyle choice for the poor to be poor. And the bad taste of children to choose the poverty-stricken families they were born into. If ever their was a psychopath, it is him.
Great info here in this post (see above), some other researched info and analysis can be found here, challenging the propaganda we get from English, Bennett, Tolley and the “gang” in government:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/msds-selective-and-poor-responses-to-new-oia-requests-on-benefits-advisors-reports-mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/msds-selective-poor-responses-to-new-o-i-a-requests-post-nzsjb-upd-27-11-15.pdf
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services-msd-withholds-o-i-a-information-that-may-prove-their-trials-a-failure/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/mhes-spes-msd-withholds-o-i-a-info-that-may-prove-trials-a-failure-post-nzsjb-upd-fr-14-04-15.pdf
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-medical-appeal-board-how-msd-and-winz-have-secretely-changed-the-process-disadvantaging-beneficiaries/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/mab-process-how-msd-discretely-changed-it-further-disadvantaging-clients-nzsjb-updated-20-09-16.pdf
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/msd-and-dr-david-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-claiming-worklessness-causes-poor-health/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/msd-dr-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-on-worklessness-and-health-publ-post-19-09-16.pdf
They have many tricks in the back, and sadly the MSM cannot bother doing their own research, so the government gets away with far too much.
This tiers in perfectly with Frank’s piece on Bill English. English lied his head off when he claimed that his government was handling social problems in this country. The Salvation Army confirms it with their timely report.
The question now is, are NZers willing to put up with it??