Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, November 28th, 2023 - 130 comments
An increase in lung cancer rates and a decrease in the amount that working families receive so that tax credits for landlords can be put in place tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of this Government. Your blood should be boiling by this stage and it is only two days in.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 7th, 2021 - 75 comments
Money does not grow on trees, it grows on houses. It is pure magic!
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, September 2nd, 2019 - 17 comments
When an organisation that exists to help abused people, itself abuses people, I suspect many people will have a lot to say. Here’s my initial take.
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, June 6th, 2019 - 77 comments
Teaching is approaching a crisis point. Sure it has taken 9 years of the last Government’s rule to wreck the system. But this Government is expected to repair quickly the damage that the last Government caused.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, June 1st, 2019 - 101 comments
National has engaged in the most crass form of beneficiary bashing in opposing Government changes to the benefit system announced in the budget and passed under urgency.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 24th, 2019 - 34 comments
IBM has staged a debate between an IBM computer and the world debating champion. The human won but the debate suggests that it may be just a matter of time … and the computer had remarkable things to say about poverty.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, July 22nd, 2018 - 89 comments
Earlier this year the United Nations expressed shock and concern at New Zealand’s rates of child poverty, homelessness, incarceration and violence. What is this Government doing to address these issues?
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, July 3rd, 2018 - 99 comments
Elements in the media clearly think that the payment of a modest amount to families with young babies will cause them to breed babies for a business.
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, June 15th, 2018 - 68 comments
Jacinda’s baby is going to be big news soon.
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, May 26th, 2018 - 54 comments
What lies behind the homelessness crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand? Is it a housing crisis or are the homeless to blame? If the problem is a housing crisis, why is there an assumption that the homeless themselves need extra services to secure and maintain rental housing?
Written By: - Date published: 6:39 am, December 9th, 2017 - 15 comments
When history buries treasures, those treasures don’t have to remain buried.
Written By: - Date published: 6:20 am, September 20th, 2017 - 49 comments
Stunningly depressing piece by Kirsty Johnston in The Herald yesterday – Number of New Zealand children hospitalised with malnutrition doubles as food costs bite.
Proud of your legacy, National?
Written By: - Date published: 6:22 am, September 14th, 2017 - 5 comments
Under Labour’s Families Package 70% of families with kids do better than they do under National’s tax plan. Labour launched their online calculator yesterday…
Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, July 21st, 2017 - 29 comments
The catholic bishops of Aotearoa have released a pamphlet urging parishoners to vote. And apart from conservative positions on euthenasia and drug liberalisation the policies they support have a decidedly progressive bent.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, July 13th, 2017 - 129 comments
ACT’s David Seymour thinks that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. If that sounds familiar it should – the Nats have said more or less the same thing over the years.
Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, July 11th, 2017 - 101 comments
As covered by Vernon Small on Stuff: “Labour is promising to scrap National’s Budget tax cut plan. Instead it will funnel the cash into higher Working for Families payments and extra help for those with young children. It’s a package it says will deliver up to $48 a week extra to middle income families.”
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 18th, 2017 - 7 comments
And now for something completely different.
Written By: - Date published: 11:14 pm, March 4th, 2017 - 47 comments
First they came for the budgeting services. Now we know that every social service agency has to provide clients’ private personal data to the Ministry of Social Development or get no funding. Apparently it’s essential to Bill English’s much-touted and little understood “social investment” strategy, which is sounding more like something out of Orwell’s 1984. […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, February 12th, 2017 - 22 comments
Constructive and positive ‘conservative’ organisations everywhere should be outraged at the way the use of ‘traditional family values’ gets corrupted, and they should be doing more to speak out against it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, November 22nd, 2016 - 52 comments
On Checkpoint Nigel Hampton QC described the Pike River mine as a ‘crime scene’ and a ‘homicide scene’, and he questioned the motives of those rushing to seal the mine.
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, August 24th, 2016 - 17 comments
Dr Kate Amore and Rev Tric Malcolm will discuss this issue on Friday 26th August at 5:30pm at Connolly Hall, Wellington. Amore’s research released today shows “As the housing market gets tighter, single people have more flexibility and potentially more options open to them, whereas families with children don’t. People [landlords] are less likely to want them, and they have more requirements of housing,” she said. All welcome.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, July 26th, 2016 - 28 comments
National pays electoral homage to our vulnerable children. They talk a big game about putting “the needs of our most vulnerable children and families at the centre of decisions”. Their actions tell a different story – of under-funding at CYF and falling numbers of social workers.
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, July 11th, 2016 - 77 comments
Essential reading, two pieces highlighting institutional racism today. Someone needs to ask the Maori Party how proud they are to be propping up this government.
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, July 10th, 2016 - 62 comments
Temuera Morrison has made a powerful video for the Women’s Refuge annual appeal. He’s making a difference. You can do something the Key Government won’t do. You can make a difference. You can stop keeping mum about domestic violence and you can help fund your local refuge.
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, June 30th, 2016 - 84 comments
Bill English didn’t know the cost of the parental leave bill that he vetoed on the grounds of cost, and he didn’t care enough about it to speak to the matter in Parliament last night.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, June 18th, 2016 - 19 comments
“We request that you withdraw the financial veto certificate against the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill.” You can sign the petition here.
Written By: - Date published: 3:54 pm, June 16th, 2016 - 102 comments
So – like Canterbury, like Auckland, the democratic process can get stuffed as far as National are concerned.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, June 6th, 2016 - 30 comments
For the first time in 130 years, more young adults (18 – 34) in America live with their parents than with a partner. How long before we pass the same milestone – or have we done so already?
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, May 26th, 2016 - 49 comments
Sue Moroney’s bill to extend paid parental leave passed its second reading last night – bravo to all those who supported it! The Nats’ threat to veto is profoundly anti-democratic, overriding the will of Parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 pm, May 8th, 2016 - 174 comments
I was asked by trp to respond to his post earlier today separately. I’ll start by re-quoting a comment from Anne: I can vouch for the truth of that statement. That is not to degrade the ever present ‘intimate’ violence perpetrated by men against women and children. However women are just as capable of performing […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:01 pm, March 22nd, 2016 - 32 comments
If ‘home is where the heart is’ then what’s the story when everything’s heartless?
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