Exempting tenants from accountability has a parallel with another extreme policy, its deal with National to let developers ignore urban planning rules.
“At the heart of the problem is a government policy to “sustain tenancies” rather than turfing people out on to the street. It has resulted in just three Kāinga Ora evictions since the Labour Government came to power in September 2017.
Those who endure the consequences are going without sleep, suffering severe stress and mental anguish, with some seeking court-ordered restraining orders for protection, and others selling their homes to escape.
The policy has been panned by political opponents, who say it breaches the Government’s legal responsibilities as a landlord to ensure its state housing tenants are safe and free from being terrorised by other Kāinga Ora clients.
The policy also emboldens rotten apples and lets them off the hook, National claims.
The Tenancy Tribunal has ruled the no eviction stance is at odds with the state’s legal obligations, ordering Kāinga Ora to pay thousands of dollars to affected claimants.
There is now talk of a class action to hold the Government to account and there is no shortage of people keen to sign up.”
……………………………….
A good investigative reporter article, well worth the read. A classic case of Labour academic woolly wishful thinking that if you are just nicer to horrible people, they’ll be nice back.
Being intimidated and harassed by the tenants of a property also happens in private rentals. The cost of a private rental adds to the daily stress so people head for the bottle or drug. When off your face the ugly you is shown or waiting for the next fix as small stuff will set you off.
In a lot of cases it is the drugs, alcohol and homes that people grew up in with violence, physical , sexual and verbal abuse, alcohol and drugs.
One problem property affects the whole street. Those on the anti social property know that they can get away with a lot, often it is the people who they bring to the property which also increases the bad behaviour.
Semi detached rural properties are required, drug and alcohol rehab, education on what the boundaries of being a neighbour is. Counselling to understand the damage that occurred in the childhood home.
Yes. I think you’ve nailed the core problems & the solutions.
Do you see this Labour government doing these things, implementing these harm & harassment mitigations, & underlying problem solutions?
I’m afraid I don’t.
I actually think they’d be more likely to have occurred under Bill English / Whanau Ora & the targeted spending he envisaged for dealing with specific people & whanau who were identified as in most need of comprehensive state-funded help & deliver a return of less needed social spending on them in the future.
Saying such things here is not likely to be popular tho. ☹️
Yeah right Gezza National paid lip service setting up Whanau Ora to fail by under funding .
Labour has thrown a lot more money at Whanau Ora.
But with lack of stable housing intergenerational violence and neglect it is bound to fail. And as a former front line voluntary worker its pissing into the wind raking water uphill a former Social Worker told me over 40 years ago.
Nothing has changed in that time.
Social Workers don't last long in this failing system they get burned out very quickly compounding the problem.
It's not going to be fixed until direct intervention takes place.
That it is putting social workers into the families in a stable housing situation.The family Court's and child protection are not making any difference but have contributed to making it worse.
The Canterbury University research project of having live in Social Workers had a 72% success rate of turning dysfunctional, violent drugs including alcohol, gang families .It only took 6 months of intensive intervention,fixing communication,discipline,budgeting,getting rid of losers out of influencing families,keeping drugs including alcohol out. It cost $72,000 per intervention.That sounds like a lot ,but these families are million dollar plus welfare,crime.education failures that can cost multi millions.
It's time for this trial to be expanded into the community.
That's not happening any time soon so the band aid solutions continue and continue to fail.
So instead of building more houses we will be building more Prison's finishing schools for criminals to gain their PHD's in crime and failure.
Labour’s too good at “throwing money” into problem areas. It’s shite at getting value out of that hastily flung money in terms of improved outcomes, because its Ministers are so inexperienced they allow themselves to be confused, diverted & hamstrung by overwhelming departmental inertia.
Look at what they threw at Mental Health, just as one example. Results? No improvements at all, in fact Covid’s reportedly making the lack of mental health services deliver even worse MH statistics.
…getting rid of losers out of influencing families,keeping drugs including alcohol out.
Wonder how they did that? Do you know? When did this project actually start?
Evidence based, targeted funding to those most in need of the full range of support & remedial.
Because he called it Social Investment the woke & the stupid & the Opposition at the tiime sneered, derided, & shouted it down, not bothering to work out that it didn’t mean rewarding execs & shareholders of private companies providing contracted services.
It meant getting a social return on the investment of that targeted funding. Turning broken families & individuals around. Giving them better education – even if just basic literacy & numeracy, tools many still lack. Teaching them saleable, useful skills, creating more choices for them, more options for their future that included becoming increasingly more financially independent & better socially connected , more skilled, more secure in themselves as contributing members of the societies they live in.
At the moment, about 8400 inmates, including pre-trial, in a population of just over 5 million, 164 per 100,000. In 2035, predicted population 5.3 million.
Will that population in 2035 include more or fewer of the age which most often ends up in prison, as our population ages?
Does the target figure include pre-trial detainees? Are home detention figures included?
Return them to the same family, same community that produced them and then be surprised when they reoffend?
Exactly. Bill English’s Social Investment policy aimed to break that cycle by changing the famiily & background to which they were returning & (unsurprisingly) reoffending again because nothing which caused them to be anti-social & /or criminal offenders had changed.
Government works in silos when it comes to addressing the cause of difficult behaviour due to waiting times and not having the specialist support. The welfare of children is my priority as there are no bad kids just bad parenting.
The worst tenants require some sort of new tenancy conditions clearly stated which cover harassment, intimidation and unlawful use of the property. Tenancy education classes and refuge support services for the person who signed the lease as they could be being intimidated by the new partner and their mates. OT needs to step up and place children in a safe environment away from adults who are incapable of looking after their self.
I have seen it that once you provide a skip bin people clean up and this is self rewarding. Then provide a vegie box with quick growing plants, either the plants die or the person nurtures them. People need purpose.
I would add, it’s been 14 years now since I retired from the Public Service, so I don’t know if departmental Policy policy & Operational policy are still developed in the same way.
But we used to have to do a Strategic Risk Analysis (using a well-respected Risk Assessment Tool – the RAT) of all new policies, looking at what could go wrong across multiple areas identified as to be impacted by the proposed policy change. You had to identify what risk mitigation or elimination strategies would be employed were the foreseeable problems to arise after implementation.
I’d love to see the Risk Assessment for this “sustain tenancies” policy – if there ever was one.
The covid ruling of "no evictions during lock down' has contributed imo.
Plus housing all the homeless during and after lock down. With people 'home' all day and night, these problems are magnified. (Though some cases look like 'benign' neglect by the Minister not responding to cases .)
We have not since World War two had such problems of people having to accommodate others and/or stand lengthy separations. Stress and anxiety is at a very high level after 2 years of covid rules.
Covid has laid bare the inequities and their horrible outcomes. Many of those inequities began with Meth and lowered "job seeker" benefits plus cruel penalties, when people lost homes for very minor infringements. That pendulum has swung too far in some cases.
Those trying to find systems to work for such disparate individuals have a hard unrewarding task, as one leader said "some have meth as their main need and they are selfish with it." It would be unfair to say those same Public servants are not looking at outcomes, just they are trying to meet all needs and failing another group.
RATs are many in these covid times, and the PM commented "These are hard times to plan" . Now we have a new strain for the Government to worry about.
Treetop private landlords are less likely to take on problematic tenants as they can chose from the best of the best tenants (you know the one who have glowing references, no pets are scrub up well etc).
Social housing and motels are used to house people in extreme need, who likely wouldn't stand a chance in the private rental market.
I am not saying tenants in private rentals or even home owners can be shitty neighbors.
Kainga Ora numbers would be higher. I had across the street class A addicts who had a lot of guests, roaming dogs, screaming domestics. Neighbours on either side (shared main wall), were too scared to complain. The rent usually becomes too much so they get kicked out. Person who signed the lease was great with her kid for 18 months until the rent ballooned and due to desperation she took in a boarder. She got hooked on drugs and she lost the control of her home.
Why don't TV1 & TV3 have proper investigative journos looking at this kind of scenario that flows on directly from rent increases going so high they go beyond someone responsible's ability to pay.
In that one example you cite there, Treetop, the collateral damage of unintended / unforeseen consequences (aka blowback) is so immense that no ordinary person would ever have expected that outcome.
But you do. Why isn't Sunday, starring Miriama Kamo, covering this kind of nightmare – instead of many of the soft fluffy magazine-style snippets it features
When the wrong person gets in the door of a vulnerable mum she is at risk of being abused and manipulated and thinks the rent will be halved having a flat mate or a boarder's portion of the rent will pay the rent. A cycle of abuse starts, then Kainga Ora eventually find the mum an affordable rental but her self esteem is so low and the wrong type exploit her further.
To not see that outcome, the people not seeing it have not got the right people doing the blowback.
How do the government think a single mum can afford to pay $370 pw?
The answer to that one is that they aren’t living on the benefit or in a low-wage job so they have NFI of the stress and struggles of those who live from benefit paycheck to paycheck & have nothing left over when something breaks or they encounter a sudden unexpected financial burden.
Short answer: The university-educated policy wonks are all far too well paid & too distant from their “clients” to know or really care.
This is where a Minister with community connections, intelligence, & a bit of steel up their spine can make all the difference. Rejecting policy papers that don’t tackle the problems they should already be well versed in. Too many of them seem to just read departmental briefing papers.
They need to read relevant werking gruppe reports & also to get out & about & and find out for themselves what & where the problems are. Imo.
" Why isn't Sunday, starring Miriama Kamo, covering this kind of nightmare – instead of many of the soft fluffy magazine-style snippets it features"
From Sunday's blurb Kamo says; "Our journalists are the country’s finest. I’m proud to work alongside them and to be a part of bringing their stories to the nation. They are trusted practitioners who fearlessly hold power to account, who make change in the lives of New Zealanders, and who help shape our country’s narrative and identity.”
Exactly, gsays. It’s not really about in depth examinations of significant national & international current affairs, it’s about catering to the widest audience – hence the relatively short duration of multiple “stories”.
It’s not to say they don’t sometimes have items covering significant issues, particularly in Kiwiland, but they are nearly always too short, have an “angle” rather than a neutral presentation, & are too “once over lightly”.
TV journalism in Kiwiland is nowadays mostly of rubbish quality, compared to, say, the 70s, 80s, & 90s, maybe some parts of the 2000s. ☹️
The semi detached rural still leaves them with a connected neighbour.
I don't see any "good" solution – hiffing them from tenancies of last resort puts them on the street, with the kids, and that will make everyone more difficult to locate and help. Taking the kids away for being bad neighbours might be a bit much, too.
Putting them all together makes a slum, and that's before looking at different gang affiliations folks might have.
permaculture would say find the solutions at each site rather than trying to design generic ones that can be enforced from the top down.
Is the problem anti-social behaviour? Is it socio-economics? The effects of colonisation? Trauma? Patterns of thinking that are hard to change because of all the above plus drugs and alcohol and violence?
It comes down to loss of personal control or being controlled. The injustices of life, not being nurtured with love, economic pressure, violence, addictions and not having a purpose or the opportunity to reach your potential.
Semi detached rural is not suitable for children due to being unsafe. I needed to clarify semi detached rural. A property which has no neighbours too close.
The detached country home is what is suitable. Just like how some individual health services are more expensive due to the need. It is as much a health need as a housing need.
I would not just leave a person there without addressing the issues which put them there.
"Sustaining tenancies, but not if they were the neighbours of the politicians or bureacrats who came up with this policy (whoever they are) ……….
Its utter cruelty towards the decent tennants, all of whom will be social disadvantaged. What a way to treat these people. Shameful.
And those anti social tenants should be kicked out. They need to know the consequences of their actions…….The what about their children arguement doesn't really stack up either. What these people are modelling to their kids is I can be a real a….hole to other people and get away with it.
Its naive to think that people who induge in nasty anti social behaviour will suddently change if we show them "kindness". These people have deeply entrenched problems that there are absolutely no quck fixes to. Moreover I would bet that there are no signs of these people wanting to change "I have been a real b…d to my neighbors, and I realize I feel bad about that. I will get counselling".
Meanwhile they get away with terrorizing vulnerable people, making their life miserable.
Whoever is responsible for this policy lacks empathy
I'll be looking at signing up on behalf of my Parents … currently in the process of outlining their situation to Thorn Law, the law firm concerned.
Over the past two years, I’ve speculated here & elsewhere on social media that it’s a widespread situation as Kianga Ora appears to almost exclusively allocate social housing to deeply dysfunctional (read ruthlessly violent & anti-social) people with “complex needs”. I guessed that, like my Parents (90 & 91 yo), they’d be elderly enduring enormous suffering throughout the Country … and so it turns out …
great stuff Swordfish. I wish you all the very best with the legal action.
It is an absolute fucking scandal.
I think the reality is there is some people we can't help and a significant part of that is they don't want help. Not the whole picture. Your parents neighbour doesn't sound like he has kids, but if he did, that would be an unsafe environment for those kids.
I say evict this neirbour. Its not as if the house is going to stay empty because there are only 2 people on waiting list for a state house and neither of them in Whangarei. Would be interested to hear any updates.
Thanks for your moral support, Anker … really appreciate it.
He does indeed have kids … & they are pretty clearly turning into / aping their Parents … very sad to see. They were last seen around 10 weeks ago, there for just a couple of hours in the morning … from the moment they arrived just a constant stream of "Fucks" & "Fuck Offs" shouted outside & slamming front door repeatedly … exactly like both of their parents … really dysfunctional family. Can see quite clearly how it becomes intergenerational.
But a real shame … the son seems to be about 11, the daughter around 6 or 7.
God that is disturbing Swordfish (the kids). And those who say we have to keep these people there because of the kids, no, no, no.
If the Govt is serious about the problem of anti social people, then give them a state house, but with conditions. 2 or 3 at the most strikes and you are out. So clear expectations of how to treat the neigbourhood. No loud noise after 9pm, no abusive or threatening behaviour etc etc. And all the blahing on about what to do we these people. Well I don't care too much about them. I do about your parents and all the others who have put up with these sorts of neighbours. Perhaps if they don't behave they do get sent to a country complex with others of their ilk. It might be really bad for them, but its terrbile for decent tenants. These people can then get a get out of jail card with good behaviour………….I mean really its like basic parenting. If the kids don't behave, they get the "naughty seat".
I do believe there are some people who can't be rehabilitated. Someone mention sending in social workers, but I am not sure what they would do.
In solidarity Swordfish, I have just left a comment on The Daily Blog where Pat O'Dea has written a column "No more evictions"I suggestion he read your piece about your elderly parents and also challenged him to live in a State house for two weeks next to these anti social tenants (of course a challenge that is not possible, but I did hope he might put himself in the shoes of people whose lives are blighted by these tenants).
I also wished the tenants all the best with their legal action.
And yes of course these kids would be apeing their parents.
Social workers sent around to spell out the rules and offer a course on emotion regulation and respecting others. Totally up to the anti social people whether or not they take it, but they are out very quickly if their behaviour doesn't improve. Sad for their kids of course, but we can't solve every problem.
Had a quick read of O'Dea … typifies the Woke & their fellow travellers … pre-determined abstract theoretical views on good vs bad demographics, divorced from reality … & hence paternalistic romanticisation of entire social groups … for all the Intersectional talk of Lived Experience, there is, in fact, zero interest in judging each individual case on its merits through empirical observation [unless it adheres to the pre-determined precepts of Critical Theory] …
… well, apart from supplementing his abstract views of eternally innocent & virtuous social housing tenants across the board with an assumption that his own experience is typical / universal … it seems he's had just a couple of relatively minor noise, behaviour issues from social housing neighbours over the years … and apparently has decided that this must be not just the norm but in fact the universal experience.
Kids of the Prick nextdoor to my Parents have largely lived elsewhere with their mother ….. (many major borderline-violent confrontations between he [tenant] & her [estranged former partner] over the last 4 years, Parents often woken by them) ….. an extra source of stress … but kids were there around 30-40% of the time through 2018 / 19 … then hardly there at all in 2020, then on and off this year. They never settled at night … often screaming & stomping tantrums at 2am / 3am / 4 am a few metres away from my Parents on other side of non-soundproof dividing-wall … and often transported there in early hours of morning !!! (like I say deeply dysfunctional family) so were another source of stress & sleep deprivation.
Although he was largely OK with his kids, there were more than a few exceptions where he inflicted violent intimidation on one or both … usually through the early hours of the morning … my Parents worried for their safety.
One of the key reasons the daughter hated being there … often screaming to her mother {dropping her off] that she didn’t want to go in.
Left a comment on O'Dea's Daily Blog post this morning … but hasn't been published yet (possibly never) … so I might as well stick it here … as you can see, I'm rapidly losing patience with these people:
You casually assume your situation – "isolated and infrequent" behaviour – is somehow the universal experience … you're wrong … and, like the blindingly dogmatic Middle / Upper-Middle Woke, your really quite callous core demand in this post (ludicrously dressed up as some sort of moral purity) represents a clear & present danger to innocent people, low income people & elderly people living next to these violent anti-socials … it's a form of narcissism = ostentatious moral posturing while simultaneously enabling elder abuse & supporting a kind of State-sanctioned domestic terror (both of which you seek to obfuscate because they don't fit into your pre-determined ideological dogma).
The way I'm feeling at the moment … I'd happily see you forced to live with my elderly Parents' nightmare … & have armed guards making sure you didn't leave for a year. Same goes for HNZ Senior Managers, certain Cabinet Ministers & the casually sadistic Woke enablers.
You / they need to be parachuted into social housing on the other side of a dividing-wall from all the relentless violent intimidation & extreme anti-social behaviour that results in severe sleep deprivation, constant high stress & all the dire health consequences that inevitably follow … you think you're one of the Good Guys but you've actually drifted into borderline-Sadist territory, prioritising your own prestige enhancement among your little cadre of clueless ideologues.
Let's be clear, people like you are the antithesis of the genuine Left.
If you want to create a Kiwi version of Britain's crumbling Red Wall then you're going the right way about it … you're doing your rhetorical little bit to destroy the lives of lifelong Labour / Alliance / Green voters.
Thanks Swordfish. I hope he publishes it, but he probably won't. At least he will have read it.
I have had a few comments to make on the post. The usual "well what would you do with these people". While I did make some suggestions, at one point I said "I'd evict them". That's all I said.
Somehow we think we have to solve these peoples unsolvable problems. One person suggested counselling and I almost said "you have to be f…g joking", but refrained.
I don't know of anyone in your parents situation, but it takes very little effort to empathize with the nightmare they and others are experiencing, how it could be fixed so easily and what an outrage it it is. I do feel very angry about it.
I am equally angry with Labour and Greens about the gender ideology bills, because I think gender ideology is just that an ideology and the party seems to be completely captured by it. You may not share my view of it and that is o.k.
As a member of the Labour Party (just)I am not sure what to do really
I am equally angry with Labour and Greens about the gender ideology bills
Yeah, of course one The Standard's former authors along with her Green MP boss have been central to these campaigns.
Queer Theory zealots, hopelessly immersed in all the esoteric fantasies of 1960s French Postmodernist dogma associated in particular with Derrida & Foucault [albeit acquiring these ideas second-hand … unlikely they've actually read any of this from the original sources]. They're much more likely to have been influenced by the more recent application (& quite often mangling) of these theories by Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick & others.
It's probably the most Year Zero of the various branches of Critical Theory in terms of its attempts to destroy all social norms & more generally the foundations of liberal democratic society. A kind of Permanent Cultural Revolution with all the never-ending social mayhem that that entails.
Anything associated with the normal, the commonplace, the majority, anything that is widely-accepted or can be categorized – in fact any sort of stability whatsoever – is deemed inherently "oppressive" & hence must be disrupted, subverted, dismantled. It's particularly keen, of course, on destroying social binaries … esp around biological sex, gender, sexuality. Hence their Blank Slatism fantasies & so on.
There's a rational middle-ground between Sex Essentialists & Queer Theory/Gender activists.
With Gender activists, & more generally Woke Critical Theory cultists, we're talking about inflexible dogmatists who've deluded themselves they're some sort of intellectual-cultural elite that exclusively possesses morality & wisdom … whereas in reality they've developed a highly dubious moral compass & have zero understanding of complex reality, not least because most appear relatively divorced from day-to-day society.
It's no surprise that this sort of elitist little cult, prioritising esoteric whims over cold hard material reality, attracts those from more financially privileged backgrounds … high decile single-sex schools have so much to answer for … they tend to create these Walking-Talking Horror Stories.
I am a left winger from way back, but gender ideology first drew my attention to cancel culture and the shut down of debate.
I am a second wave feminist and I know it is not possible to change your sex. I have enormous concerns about the affirmation only approach and the medical transition of children.
Its good to know of other people on the Standard who see what is really going on.
It must be absolute misery for your poor parents Swordfish. Such human excrement should be kept well away from civil society. We all know the issues of gangs and drugs and that your parents are suffering the end result of that is awful
The urban planning things seems a cheap way to try and solve the housing crisis. It has to potential to pit neighbours against neighbours and to create a shitty landscape from an archetectural point of view.
Solomon’s ancestors began the fight for justice long before him, but he has been instrumental in moving a settlement forward. For nearly 40 years, he has led the fight for reparation, first filing a claim on behalf of the imi (tribe) in 1988, which culminated in this week’s bill being passed.
Moriori had a pacifist philosophy which chief Nunuku-Whenua introduced to his people around the 16th century. The covenant of peace banned rank, violence and warfare. The imi lived undisturbed for many centuries until their first contact with European settlers in 1791, who arrived on the HMS Chatham, bringing with them diseases and the start of a new colonial era.
“In late 1835, about 900 people of two mainland Māori tribes sailed on a British ship to Rēkohu … the newcomers were welcomed and fed by Moriori in accordance with tikane Moriori (Moriori custom). Some Moriori wanted to resist the invaders, but the elders…urged the people to obey Nunuku’s law of peace … Upon returning to their villages they were attacked, and many were killed. Māori accounts put the number of Moriori killed in 1835–36 at about 300, or about one-sixth of the population. Those Moriori who survived the invasion were enslaved and forced to do manual labour,” the official account of Moriori history states.
Imi?? I thought it was a typo but no, it's state-sanctioned terminology. Moriori language must transpose imi for iwi. See section 2 here:
An excellent succinct summary of our history! Note how the settler govt exercised native admin via recognising slavery as the traditional Maori prerogative. Such de facto creation of third-class citizenry seems quite innovative (section 3).
Particularly noteworthy are the consequences delineated in Section 5. Ownership produced by conquest as state policy integrated pakeha & maori trad political practice.
I see no evidence that the treaty signed by this govt includes an apology from the two offensive Taranaki tribes to the Moriori for that 1830s genocide. Put that alongside the apparent failure of the Waikato tribes to apologise for their earlier genocide in Taranaki, and various other maori genocides around the country in different eras. I suppose it's technically possible that apologies have been made without any subsequent media reportage to inform us of such occurrences. More likely, nobody feels apologies for genocide are necessary, since genocide is traditional.
Moriori ought to be honoured for pioneering peaceful coexistence in Aotearoa, long before Te Whiti got the idea. I doubt I'll live to see that, but rectifying historical injustice does actually need to be done properly. Tokenism is insufficient.
Yes, that’s something that has intrigued me. The Crown has – rightly – acknowledged its outrageous, oppressive, suppressive behaviours toward “rebellious” resisters & innocent Māori & offered it unreserved apologies in Treaty Settlements.
But I never see or hear anything about Māori warring on & enslaving other iwi/nations, & driving some iwi completely out of their traditional nga rohe, as occurred in – and following – the Nga Puhi-inspired Musket Wars.
One sees occasional multi-iwi disputes arising over settlement claims where more than one hapu or iwi claims for recompense for the same parcel of land. But I don’t know, where these claims are the result of iwi taua invasions & land stealing, whether the affected iwi sort out any muru/utu/compensation & expression & acceptance of apologies between themselves post the official Crown Settlement.
I agree, Dennis and Gezza. I have heard Maori accept the 'Right of Conquest' for pre Treaty of Waitangi events, but it seems that apologies and compensation apply only to post-treaty things.
This does seem a bit dodgy on pure moral grounds. Letter of the law rather than spirit of the law?
Wakatū owners are descendants of the chiefs and families of these hapū that belong to four tribes, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama and Te Ātiawa. Our ancestors travelled from Kāwhia and North Taranaki to conquer the region (Te Tau Ihu) between 1828 and 1834.
What is not mentioned is that they slaughtered all the peoples already living there. Just a decade before the ToW.
But according to the wookies – only white people are capable of wrong.
I don't have any objection to telling the whole of NZ's history. Unless we can come to terms with our past and repudiate it's errors we will remain entangled with it's ghosts.
But the moment you see that history being selectively re-written, you know some other agenda is in play.
Just to clarify – I regard the invasion of the Waikato and Parihaka, etc, as despicable breaches of the Treaty, and agree with belated (if inadequate) compensation for the descendants of those wronged.
But I am a teacher of language, and I struggle to accept the wording which pretends that pre-treaty Maori never committed any offences themselves, and that offences happened only after the treaty was signed.
I also struggle to understand why sometimes in the late stages of the NZ wars in the South of the North Island there were as many Kupapa as British colonial troops repressing the local tribes.
To me there seems to be an obvious imbalance in terminology.
Ah yes – you touch on another verboten topic – that almost always alongside British colonial troops were Maori from other iwi playing an often vital role in crushing their own former enemies.
Yep, if you want truly brutal genocidal violence … you'd need to head back to the Musket Wars .. three decades of horrendous massacres, at least 20k dead (vs about 2k in the New Zealand Wars), tens of thousands enslaved, some really brutal torture, cannibalism, massive upheaval, iwi massacred, others permanently driven from their nga rohe.
Bears zero relationship to the Woke's highly paternalistic 'Noble Savage' Romanticisation of pre-1840 Māori as some kind of peace-loving flower-power San Francisco Hippies.
The brutal inter-tribal warfare that dare not speak its name among polite Woke society.
And, no, that doesn’t remotely justify what happened after 1840 … but it’s important to highlight the bullshit double standards, the sheer hypocrisy & the Peter Pan fantasy world that sits right at the heart of Critical Theory / ID Politics and its on-going application in New Zealand.
Good to see that graph. It provides the basis for class analysis of investors. Let's pretend there are still leftists who can do that. As a non-leftist, I'll provide this simulation to help them:
Class A: 10,254 own more than 50 dwellings
Class B: 11,944 own between 21 & 50
Class C: 96,107 own between 6 & 20
Class D: 264,366 own between 3 & 5 dwellings
Class E: 223,051 own 1 or 2 dwellings
So we immediately see that the legendary mum and dad investors are a minority of the investor class as a whole, ranked only 5th in the hierarchy. The five sub-classes are accompanied by business owners as capitalist vested interests in Aotearoa, and it would probably be pc to include iwi too.
Dennis, you might want to look at the figures referenced by Blazer again.
My reading of the graph in Blazer's reference is that 10, 254 houses are owned by owners of more than 50 houses (about 205 or fewer owners that works out as). Another 11944 owned by owners of 20-50 houses which makes between 239 and 597 owners.
According to you, investor owned houses would total between 2.3 and 4.6 million houses when there are 1.8 dwellings in NZ according to the census.
Read correctly, there are some 625,000 houses owned by investors and that leaves some 1.2 million owned by the occupant. The census says that 64% of NZ homes are owned by their occupants.
McFlock, I read p 34. How do we reconcile the two figures? One based on census figures of more than just 2018 btw and one based on your reference? Genuinely at a loss here……
Okay, I did take another look. Perhaps different interpretations of the graph are produced by the non-equivalence of investors & humans that Valocity used? When dwellings are co-owned the maths gets too murky for me!
Regardless, those five classes of ownership are wealth-generated, right? So the differential analysis does produce accurate relativity between classes.
The graph titled "Homes owned by investors by portfolio size" referred to the number of homes owned by investors who owned certain numbers of properties. For example, 10254 houses owned by investors each owning at least 50 houses, so at most 200 investors.
I don't doubt that mum and dad investors are over emphasised. The article states,"The analysis, which cross-referenced names on roughly 1.7 million publicly available property titles, shows investors with up to two properties only own just over a third of investment properties."
The study referenced by Blazer also said, as McFlock also stated from another source,"Investors are shown to now own more properties than either first home buyers or single homeowners.
Although the difference is slight – a difference of 15,638 homes – it’s a reversal of 2015 when first home buyers owned 78,086 more properties than investors."
Does anybody really think that the parliamentarians will change anything? Really?
We wonder why families can't get a roof over their head, drug addicts, aggressive renters of Kāinga Ora properties are not moved on? I doubt that our leaders will give them a roof over their heads.
It would take some extraordinary guts to end this, almost hero status really.
We are governed by the same type of people as the elite that earns 70 x a workers income and find they are under paid. Meanwhile all that rort is financed via debt (shall I mention 16 Billion dollars?). Good luck to us then.
Yep… and you would think that hundreds of thousands of the disenfranchised and homeless would be out on the streets protesting the obscene inequities portrayed by that data linked to by Blazer in 3 above rather than protesting so called freedom restrictions by public health orders or against government's timid efforts to combat climate change or cleaning up rivers. (not implying that the same cohort of people are involved of course)
After the barrage of business people and National and Act attacking MIQ, and wanting to be rid of it, they may have been wanting its demise prematurely. Covid Omicron taking off round the world in the last two days sounds very serious and hopefully Jacinda and her advisers will continue to be very cautious about further relaxation of the borders.
Jim Bolger's appearance on Q&A harks back to a time when National was mostly made up of people who were decent citizens to say the least. Looking back over the last few years to the sleazy, unlikable types National took on board, it would be hoped they can select better candidates and party members. No Mervs or Michelles.
Agree. Children's bodies are being mutilated by an experiemental treatment that countries such as Sweedon and Finland are rolling back. 22,000 de-transitioners and counting.
Brief outline of my Parents' experience (though it doesn't even remotely encapsulate the full enormity … it's a multifacted nightmare that goes beyond the prolonged violent intimidation):
I'm believer that spelling matters and in this case the spelling of Te Reo matters. Is there a way that you can do a global correct to Kainga Ora all the way through?
Also somewhere there is 'entires' that perhaps is 'entries?
Sounds as though some suggestions for Kainga Ora would not go amiss.
Perhaps KO needs to sell the other side of this duplex unit where one side is in private ownership. Use the funds to invest in another building for social housing.
They could also look to see if there are other instances of one in private/one still in public ownership that are causing problems and work out a plan to sell these as well.
It is called managing the portfolio. I am sure that a private landlord who found that one of their units were becoming a mecca for troublemakers because of whatever they would be cashing in and reinvesting in another place.
Your parents' neighbouring tenant sounds as if there are mental health issues (perhaps drug or alcohol induced) that seem to be running rampant and not being dealt with. Nobody should be expected to put up with this.
Have you seen where massive forest clearance has been going on in brazil for mining gold , the same brazil were going to by our credits from supposedly!!!
Yes and this area this area is referred to the lungs of earth and along with man made deforestation we had also forest fires doing their bit.🤯 I could say that their are too many vested interests and applying arbitrage to achieve a financial gain with no tangible benefit to the environment or climate. Just juggling the numbers !!!
Those links really speak to a complex picture – while Brazil may be at one stage of deforestation – other nations are seeing increases in forest cover. Overall the total is not changing all that much.
I respect worldindata but if you have a close look at some of those forest cover stats they look very dodgy. Almost all the Eastern European stats show huge increases in native forest cover. I really can't believe that Malaysia's has increased either. Haven't any way of verifying the figures unfortunately.
Good skeptical thinking there ! What I think is happening – and this comes from other sources I don't have the time to track back down at the moment – is that in Eastern Europe at least there has been a substantial reduction in farming. Especially as populations age and agriculture becomes more land efficient – the unused farms revert back to forest reasonably quickly.
I can't speak precisely to Malaysia, but it's actually a very developed and rapidly urbanising society – again as people escape poverty and move off the land – it reverts to forest as at least one possibility. This doesn't gainsay the horrible practise of palm oil plantations – but that's another issue.
That link to the deforestation story is really quite interesting and well worth some time reading. Brazil is indeed a mess and the erosion of the Amazon should be resisted – but the bigger picture isn't hopeless either.
Just got back from 6 months in WA to our spot in Moreton Bay QLD. We're renting a tiny little unit about 15min drive from downtown Brisbane. But out the back is a 200 acre wilderness that's teeming with wildlife. So we just went for a walk and in a 2hr period we spotted:
Multitudes of ducks, herons, bitterns, water dragons, sea eagles, spoonbills, white herons, a flock of pelicans, and one snake.
The only downside is that if you sit down to enjoy a view, you immediately become the subject of a tug-of-war between ants size of small mice and mosquitos you could mistake for dragon-flies.
Watching that scene, I remember that day well now, mary. It was an amazingly relaxing & fulfilling day. One of the best I’ve had just being at one with the natural world in my backyard, so to speak.
Being calm, moving very little, talking gently to the birds, waterbirds & eels.
Quite magic.
The Creator, whoever they were or are, did a fantastic job of creation.
The endless loop. The inevitable flaw in the Christian 8 Muslim apologetics debates. They argue that their Abrahamic God has to exist because everything in the universe has to have had an ultimate cause. To which the atheist response, naturally, is "So who or what caused God?" To which the apologists reply: "God is outside the universe" (or "God is both outside & inside the universe"). "He always was & always will be."
These things are easy to say but actually rather difficult to get your head around, so I don't bother. Our universe just looks designed to me. With layer upon layer of complexity. I suspect it had one or more designers. That's all.
I suppose we should be grateful that we avoided the nu xi land variants down under.
With the multiple mutations of the spike protein naming the variant after the letter most suitable for a transformer character was apt. But surely they are now at risk of running out of letters.
Richard Harman, editor of the Politik website and former "Chief TVNZ Political Correspondent", told Jim Mora & listeners this morning how Judith Collins made history:
"She's the first major New Zealand political party leader to have a successful vote of no confidence passed in them, certainly since the Second World War and I would think stretching back before that."
So we ought to give her credit for this remarkable success. Put it on the cv, Jude! Maybe Swordfish will relish the research challenge of establishing how far back the actual precedent lies – presuming there even is one. If not, she really has made history!
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Barbara GradyIllustration by Samantha Harrington. Photo credits: Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, European Space Agency. In an empty wind-swept field in Richmond, California, next to the county landfill, a company called RavenSr has plotted out land and won ...
Although NZ readers may not be that interested in the subject and in lieu of US Fathers Day missives (not celebrated in NZ), I thought I would lay out some brief thoughts on a political subject being debated in the … Continue reading → ...
TL;DR:Chris Bishop talks up the use of value capture, congestion charging, PPPs, water meters, tolling and rebating GST on building materials to councils to ramp up infrastructure investment in the absence of the Government simply borrowing more to provide the capital.Meanwhile, Christopher Luxon wants to double the number of ...
When I was invited to come aboard and help with Greater Auckland a few months ago (thanks to Patrick!), it was suggested it might be a good idea to write some sort of autobiographical post by way of an introduction. This post isn’t quite that – although I’m sure I’lll ...
On the turning awayFrom the pale and downtroddenAnd the words they say which we won't understandDon't accept that, what's happeningIs just a case of other's sufferingOr you'll find that you're joining inThe turning awayToday’s guest kōrero is from Author Catherine Lea. So without further ado, over to Catherine…I’m so honoured ...
Hi,Tickled was one of the craziest things that ever happened to me (and I feel like a lot of crazy things have happened to me).So ahead of the Webworm popup and Tickled screening in New Zealand on July 13, I thought I’d write about how we made that film and ...
Hi,I’m doing a Webworm merch popup followed by a Tickled screening in Auckland, New Zealand on July 13th — and I’d love you to come. I got the urge to do this while writing this Webworm piece breaking down how we made Tickled, and talking to all the people who ...
One simple statistic said it all: China Premier Li Qiang asked Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell what percentage of the company’s overall sales were made in China. “Thirty per cent,” said Hurrell. In other words, New Zealand’s largest company is more or less dependent on the Chinese market. But Hurrell is ...
One occasionally runs into the question of what J.R.R. Tolkien would have thought of George R.R. Martin. For years, I had a go-to online answer: we could use a stand-in. Tolkien’s thoughts on E.R. Eddison – that he appreciated the invented world, but thought the invented names were silly, and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 9, 2024 thru Sat, June 15, 2024. Story of the week A glance at this week's inventory of what experts tell us is extreme weather mayhem juiced by ...
After a busy week it’s a good day to relax. Clear blues skies here in Tamaki Makaurau, very peaceful but for my dogs sleeping heavily. In the absence of a full newsletter I thought I’d send out a brief update and share a couple of posts that popped up in ...
Now in the land of Angus beef and the mighty ABsWhere the steaks were juicy and the rivers did run foulIt would often be said,This meal is terrible,andNo, for real this is legit the worst thing I've ever eatenBut this was an thing said only to others at the table,not ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from the Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is ocean acidification from human ...
She's not a girl who misses muchDo do do do do do, oh yeahShe's well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet handLike a lizard on a window paneI wouldn’t associate ACT with warmth, other than a certain fabled, notoriously hot, destination where surely they’re heading and many would like them ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past somewhat interrupted week. Still on the move!Share Read more ...
What does Budget 2024 tell us about the current government? Muddle on?Coalition governments are not new. About 50 percent of the time since the first MMP election, there has been a minority government, usually with allied parties holding ministerial portfolios outside cabinets. For 10 percent of the time there was ...
Somewhat surprisingly for what is regarded as a network of professionals, climate science misinformation is getting shared on LinkedIn, joining other channels where this is happening. Several of our recent posts published on LinkedIn have attracted the ire of various commenters who apparently are in denial about human-caused climate change. Based ...
1. On what subject is Paul Henry even remotely worth giving the time of day?a. The state of our nationb. The state of the ACT partyc. How to freak out potential buyers of your gin palace by baking the remains of your deceased parent into its fittings2. Now that New ...
Last time National was in power, they looted the state, privatising public assets and signing hugely wasteful public-private partnership (PPP) contracts which saw foreign consortiums provide substandard infrastructure while gouging us for profits. You only have to look at the ongoing fiasco of Transmission Gully to see how it was ...
The Democratic Façade Of Local Government: Our district and city councillors are democratically elected to govern their communities on one very strict condition – that they never, ever, under any circumstances, attempt to do so.A DISINTEGRATION OF LOYALTIES on the Wellington City Council has left Mayor Tory Whanau without a ...
I can feel the lowlights coming over meI can feel the lowlights, from the state I’m inI can see the light now even thought it’s dimA little glow on the horizonAnother week of lowlights from our government, with the odd bright spot and a glow on the horizon. The light ...
Another week, another roundup of things that caught our eye on our favourite topics of transport, housing and how to make cities a little bit greater. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday, Connor wrote about Kāinga Ora’s role as an urban development agency Tuesday’s guest post by ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s moves this week to take farming out of the ETS and encourage more mining and oil and ...
In 2019, Shane Jones addressed the “50 Shades of Green” protest at Parliament: Now he is part of a government giving those farmers a pass on becoming part of the ETS, as well as threatening to lock in offshore oil exploration and mining for decades. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the ...
Hi,Today’s newsletter is all about how easy it is to get sucked into “rage bait” online, and how easy it is to get played.But first I wanted to share something that elicited the exact opposite of rage in me — something that made me feel incredibly proud, whilst also making ...
Seymour said lower speed limits “drained the joy from life as people were forced to follow rules they knew made no sense.” File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, June 14 were:The National/ACT/NZ First ...
It sounded like the best word to describe yesterday’s talks between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and his heavyweight delegation of Ministers and officials and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and New Zealand Ministers and officials was “frank.” But it was the kind of frankness that friends can indulge in. It ...
Open access notables Wildfire smoke impacts lake ecosystems, Farruggia et al., Global Change Biology:We introduce the concept of the lake smoke-day, or the number of days any given lake is exposed to smoke in any given fire season, and quantify the total lake smoke-day exposure in North America from 2019 ...
Don’t put it all at risk. That’s likely to be the take-home message for New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his meetings with Li Qiang, the Chinese Premier. Li’s visit to Wellington this week is the highest-ranking visit by a Chinese official since 2017. The trip down under – ...
I know the feelingIt is the real thingThe essence of the soulThe perfect momentThat golden momentI know you feel it tooI know the feelingIt is the real thingYou can't refuse the embraceNo?Sometimes we face the things we most dislike. A phobia or fear that must be confronted so it doesn’t ...
Struth, what a week. Having made sure the rural sector won’t have to pay any time soon for its pollution, PM Christopher Luxon yesterday chose Fieldays 2024 to launch a parliamentary inquiry into rural banking services, to see how the banks have been treating farmers faced with high interest rates. ...
In April, 17,656 people left Aotearoa-NZ to live overseas, averaging 588 a day, with just over half of those likely to have gone to Australia. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, June 13 ...
Auckland’s draft Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP) 2024 is open for feedback – and you only have until Monday 17 June to submit. Do it! Join the thousands of Aucklanders who are speaking up for wise strategic investment that will dig us out of traffic and give us easy and ...
Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrives in Wellington today for a three-day visit to the country. The visit will take place amid uncertainty about the future of the New Zealand-China relationship. Li hosted a formal welcome and then lunch for then-Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in Beijing a year ago. The pair ...
We are still in France, getting from A to B.Possibly for only another week, though; Switzerland and Germany are looming now. On we pedal, towards Budapest, at about 20 km per hour.What are are mostly doing is inhaling a country, loving its ways and its food. Rolling, talking, quietly thinking. ...
The big problem with the last Labour government was that they were chickenshits who did nothing with the absolute majority we had given them. They governed as if they were scared of their own shadows, afraid of making decisions lest it upset someone - usually someone who would never have ...
This morning I did something I seldom do, I looked at the Twitter newsfeed. Normally I take the approach of something that I’m not sure is an American urban legend, or genuinely something kids do over there. The infamous bag of dog poo on the front porch, set it on ...
We have some news on the upcoming War of the Rohirrim anime. It will apparently be two and a half hours in length, with Peter Jackson as Executive Producer, and Helm’s daughter Hera will be the main character. Also, pictures: The bloke in the middle picture is Freca’s ...
The cows will keep burping and farting and climate change will keep accelerating - but farmers can stop worrying about being included in the ETS. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, June 12 were:The ...
This is a guest post by our friend Darren Davis. It originally appeared on his excellent blog, Adventures in Transitland, which features “musings about public transport and other cool stuff in Aotearoa/ New Zealand and around the globe.” With Te Huia now having funding secure through to 2026, now is ...
In some ways, there may be less than meets the eye to the Government announcement yesterday that the He Waka Eke Noa proposal for farmers to pay for greenhouse gas emissions has been scrapped. The spectre of farmers still having to pay at some point in the future remains. That, ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Since entering office, National has unravelled practically every climate policy, leaving us with no effective way of reducing emissions or meeting our emissions budgets beyond magical thinking around the ETS. And today they've announced another step: removing agriculture entirely. At present, following the complete failure of he waka eka noa, ...
The blue billionaireDistraction no interactionOr movement outside these glazed over eyesThe new great divideFew fight the tide to be glorifiedBut will he be satisfied?Can we accept this without zoom?The elephant in the roomNot much happens in politics on a Monday. Bugger all in fact. Although yesterday Christopher Luxon found he ...
What if New Zealand threw a fossil fuel party, and nobody came? On the weekend, Resources Minister Shane Jones sent out the invitations and strung up the balloons, but will anyone really want to invest big time in resuming oil and gas exploration in our corner of the planet? Yes, ...
This is a guest post by Meredith Dale, senior urban designer and strategist at The Urban Advisory.There’s a saying that goes something like: ‘what you measure is what you value’. An RNZ article last week claimed that Auckland was ‘hurting’ because of a more affordable supply of homes, particularly townhouses ...
A Prime Minister directs his public service to inquire into the actions of the opposition political party which is his harshest critic. Something from Orban's Hungary, or Putin's Russia? No, its happening right here in Aotearoa: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Public Service Commission will launch an ...
This is a repost from a Yale Climate Connections article by SueEllen Campbell published on June 3, 2024. The articles listed can help you tell fact from fiction when it comes to solar and wind energy. Some statements you hear about solar and wind energy are just plain false. ...
Politics were going on all around us yesterday, and we barely noticed, rolling along canal paths, eating baguettes. It wasn’t until my mate got to the headlines last night that we learned there had been a dismayingly strong far right result in the EU elections and Macron had called a ...
Respect Existence, Or Expect Resistance? There may well have been 50,000 pairs of feet “Marching For Nature” down Auckland’s Queen Street on Saturday afternoon, but the figure that impresses the Coalition Government is the 1,450,000 pairs of Auckland feet that were somewhere else.IN THE ERA OF DRONES and Artificial Intelligence, ...
Selwyn Manning and I discuss varieties of post colonial blowback and the implications its has for the rise of the Global South. Counties discussed include Palestine/Israel, France/New Caledonia, England/India, apartheid/post-apartheid South Africa and post-colonial New Zealand. It is a bit … Continue reading → ...
Hi,Today the New Zealand press is breathlessly reporting that the owners of toy company Zuru are officially New Zealand’s wealthiest people: Mat and Nick Mowbray worth an estimated $20 billion between them.While the New Zealand press loses its shit celebrating this Kiwi success story, this is a Webworm reminder that ...
TL;DR: The six things to note in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty in the past day to 8:36 pm on Monday, June 10 were:20,000 protested against the Fast-track approval bill on Saturday in Auckland, but PM Christopher Luxon says ‘sorry, but not sorry’ about the need for ...
Given the headlines around the recent findings of the ‘independent’ review of Kāinga Ora by Bill English, you might assume this post will be about social housing, Kāinga Ora’s most prominent role. While that is indeed something that requires defending, I want to talk about the other core purpose of ...
“How does it feel to beOne of the beautiful peopleNow that you know who you areWhat do you want to beAnd have you traveled very far?Far as the eye can see”Yesterday the ACT party faithful were regaled with craven boasts, sneers, and demands for even more at their annual rally.That ...
A defiant Resources Minister Shane Jones has responded to Saturday’s environmental protests by ending Labour’s offshore oil exploration ban and calling for long-term contracts with any successful explorers. The purpose would be to prevent a future Labour Government from reversing any licence the explorers might hold. Jones sees a precedent ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 2, 2024 thru Sat, June 8, 2024. Story of the week Our Story of the Week is Yale Climate Connection's Resources for debunking common solar and wind myths, by ...
This is where we ate our lunch last Wednesday. Never mind your châteaux and castles and whatnot, we like to enjoy a baguette in the shadow of a nuclear power plant; a station that puts out more than twice as much as Manapouri using nothing more than tiny atoms to bring ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by John Mason in collaboration with members from the Gigafact team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is the ocean acidifying? Acidification of oceans ...
The largest protest I ever went on was in the mid 90s. There were 10,000 people there that day, and I’ve never forgotten it. An enormous mass of people, chanting together. Stretching block after block, bringing traffic to a halt.But I can’t say that’s the biggest protest I’ve ever been ...
Hi there,I wanted to put all of Josh Drummond’s Webworm pieces all in one place. I love that he writes for Webworm — and all of these are a good read!David.Why Are So Many “Christians” Hellbent on Being Horrible?Why do so many objectively hideous people declare themselves “Christian”?Meeting the Master ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: On reflection, the six things to note in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty this week were:The Government-driven freeze in building new classrooms, local roads and water networks in order to save cash for tax cuts is frustrating communities facing massive population ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past somewhat interrupted week. Still on the move!Share Read more ...
Hi,One of the things I like the most about Webworm is to be able to break down the media and journalism a little, and go behind the scenes.This is one of those times.Yesterday an email arrived in my inbox from journalist Jonathan Milne, who is managing editor atNewsroom.I don’t ...
Wrote something over at 1/200 on a familiar theme of mine: The way we frame the economy as a separate, sacred force which must be sacrificed to, the way we talk about criminals as invaders who must be repelled, the constant othering of people on the benefit, people not in ...
A nice bit of news today: my 4600-word historical fantasy-horror piece, A Voyage Among the Vandals, has been accepted by Phobica Books (https://www.phobicabooks.co.uk/books) for their upcoming Pirate Horror anthology, Shivering Timbers. This one is set in the Mediterranean, during the mid-fifth century AD. Notable for having one of history’s designated ...
There was no less razzamatazz about the 2024 Budget than about earlier ones. Once again the underlying economic analysis got lost. It deserves more attention.Just to remind you, the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU), is the Treasury’s independent assessment and so can be analysed by other competent economists (although ...
There are two failings that consistently characterise a National government. One is a lack of imagination, the other is their willingness to look after their mates, no matter what harm it might do to everyone else.This is how we come to have thousands of enormous trucks carving up our roads. ...
The Kotahitanga Parliament 1897: A Māori Parliament – at least in the guise of a large and representative body dedicated to describing the shape of New Zealand’s future from a Māori perspective – would be a very good idea.THE DEMAND for a “Māori Parliament” needs to be carefully unpicked. Some Pakeha, ...
Dumbtown, is how my friend Gerard refers to people like ZB listeners - he’s not wrong.Normally on a Friday I start by looking at Mike Hosking’s moronic reckons of the week which he vomits down the throats of his audience like helpless baby birds in a nest, grateful for the ...
Should sick leave be part and parcel of the working conditions from Day One on the job, just like every other health and safety provision? Or should access to sick leave be something that only gradually accumulates, depending on how long a worker has been on the payroll? If enacted ...
Today marks the beginning of Schools Pride Week in New Zealand, an important calendar event largely run by rainbow rangitahi to advocate for safer, more inclusive school environments. ...
The Government’s announcement of a roadshow consultation on work health and safety is a smokescreen for its plan to throw out regulations which keep workers safe. ...
The Government has reportedly scrapped a policy that would have gone far to fix gender and ethnic pay gaps and instead is implementing a watered-down voluntary system. ...
The Government knew its changes to the school lunch programme would risk achievement, attendance, nutrition and wellbeing of New Zealand children, as well as having wider impacts on reducing child poverty, and made the changes anyway, new documents show. ...
Two months have passed since the National Government said it was a question of ”when, not if” New Zealand would recognise Palestine, in response to Labour’s call. ...
Today the coalition government has announced that a select committee inquiry into banking competition will be led by the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.New Zealand First campaigned to take on foreign owned banks, and we committed to that in our coalition agreement by ensuring the inquiry has a broad ...
The National Government is doing everything it can to delay taking action on climate as it announces that years of work on agricultural emissions will start from scratch. ...
Tens of thousands of people showed up to have their voices heard and march against National’s unpopular Fast Track Approvals Bill in Auckland over the weekend. ...
The Government deciding to lift the oil and gas ban in the middle of a climate crisis is a severe step backwards that will have serious consequences for our future. ...
This week the Justice Select Committee has heard numerous submissions on the removal of Māori Wards. “I am feeling invigorated by the powerful oral submissions that I have heard throughout the week.” Said Local Government spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “People from all facets of life: whānau Māori, whānau Pākehā, rangatahi, kaumātua, ...
Today’s March for Nature sends a clear message that our country is deeply against the Fast Track Approvals Bill proceeding because the cost to the environment would be unacceptable. ...
The recent attacks on Te Pāti Māori and its MP’s are part of a continuing narrative of attack on all matters Māori. If we could respond to baseless inuendo we would. If there is any evidence then show us so we have a reason to engage in a conversation. The ...
The Government’s move to pour billions into potholes whilst remaining inactive on climate change does nothing to solve our transport system's core problems. ...
“The Government needs to provide leadership for New Zealand’s mental health sector, which appears to have lost out in the Budget despite the promises Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey made on the campaign trail,” said Labour mental health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s announcement that would see some workers’ entitlement to sick leave reduce flies in the face of yet another promise National made during the election campaign. ...
Cutting a third of the staff at Ministry for the Environment will undermine years of work to clean up our fresh water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and leave us unprepared for a changing climate. ...
The National Government has shown all their talk about meeting climate targets is just hot air as they cut more than $3 billion in climate-related work, said Labour climate spokesperson Megan Woods. ...
The Green Party’s Te Mātāwaka (Māori and Pasifika) caucus has labelled this year’s Budget as unambitious for Māori and unapologetic in its disregard for Te Tiriti. ...
The Government’s bloody-minded commitment to delivering trickle-down tax cuts at all costs comes at the expense of investment in people and planet. ...
This year’s Budget reflects the heartlessness of the Coalition Government when it comes to Pasifika, according to the Green Party’s Te Mātāwaka (Māori and Pasifika) caucus. ...
The budget today is a sad state of affairs and the country can now see the result of Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ wrong choices and the Government’s broken promises. ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has repeatedly said she will not be borrowing for tax cuts and denied fiscal irresponsibility. Today, the budget has revealed Nicola Willis has borrowed $12 billion – and her tax cuts cost $10 billion. ...
The Government has today announced that it is making it easier for people to build granny flats, Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop say. “Making it easier to build granny flats will make it more affordable for families to live the way that suits them ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Auckland King’s Counsel Gregory Peter Blanchard as a High Court Judge. Justice Blanchard attended the University of Auckland from 1991 to 1995, graduating with an LLB (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts (English). He was a solicitor with the firm that is now Dentons ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says new data released today shows encouraging growth in the health workforce, with a continued increase in the numbers of doctors, nurses and midwives joining Health New Zealand. “Frontline healthcare workers are the beating heart of the healthcare system. Increasing and retaining our health workforce ...
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee has today announced a comprehensive programme to reform New Zealand's outdated and complicated firearms laws. “The Arms Act has been in place for over 40 years. It has been amended several times – in a piecemeal, and sometimes rushed way. This has resulted in outdated ...
The coalition Government is delivering record levels of targeted investment in specialist schools so children with additional needs can thrive. As part of Budget 24, $89 million has been ringfenced to redevelop specialist facilities and increase satellite classrooms for students with high needs. This includes: $63 million in depreciation funding ...
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The Herald has been looking at the hole the government has been digging for itself by not meeting standards expected of responsible landlords.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kainga-ora-the-human-cost-of-living-next-to-neighbours-from-hell/F6EAATWTSTH2ORNM7ED3U3M5FY/
Exempting tenants from accountability has a parallel with another extreme policy, its deal with National to let developers ignore urban planning rules.
From the link:
“At the heart of the problem is a government policy to “sustain tenancies” rather than turfing people out on to the street. It has resulted in just three Kāinga Ora evictions since the Labour Government came to power in September 2017.
Those who endure the consequences are going without sleep, suffering severe stress and mental anguish, with some seeking court-ordered restraining orders for protection, and others selling their homes to escape.
The policy has been panned by political opponents, who say it breaches the Government’s legal responsibilities as a landlord to ensure its state housing tenants are safe and free from being terrorised by other Kāinga Ora clients.
The policy also emboldens rotten apples and lets them off the hook, National claims.
The Tenancy Tribunal has ruled the no eviction stance is at odds with the state’s legal obligations, ordering Kāinga Ora to pay thousands of dollars to affected claimants.
There is now talk of a class action to hold the Government to account and there is no shortage of people keen to sign up.”
……………………………….
A good investigative reporter article, well worth the read. A classic case of Labour academic woolly wishful thinking that if you are just nicer to horrible people, they’ll be nice back.
And, typically, no Plan B.
Being intimidated and harassed by the tenants of a property also happens in private rentals. The cost of a private rental adds to the daily stress so people head for the bottle or drug. When off your face the ugly you is shown or waiting for the next fix as small stuff will set you off.
In a lot of cases it is the drugs, alcohol and homes that people grew up in with violence, physical , sexual and verbal abuse, alcohol and drugs.
One problem property affects the whole street. Those on the anti social property know that they can get away with a lot, often it is the people who they bring to the property which also increases the bad behaviour.
Semi detached rural properties are required, drug and alcohol rehab, education on what the boundaries of being a neighbour is. Counselling to understand the damage that occurred in the childhood home.
Yes. I think you’ve nailed the core problems & the solutions.
Do you see this Labour government doing these things, implementing these harm & harassment mitigations, & underlying problem solutions?
I’m afraid I don’t.
I actually think they’d be more likely to have occurred under Bill English / Whanau Ora & the targeted spending he envisaged for dealing with specific people & whanau who were identified as in most need of comprehensive state-funded help & deliver a return of less needed social spending on them in the future.
Saying such things here is not likely to be popular tho. ☹️
Yeah right Gezza National paid lip service setting up Whanau Ora to fail by under funding .
Labour has thrown a lot more money at Whanau Ora.
But with lack of stable housing intergenerational violence and neglect it is bound to fail. And as a former front line voluntary worker its pissing into the wind raking water uphill a former Social Worker told me over 40 years ago.
Nothing has changed in that time.
Social Workers don't last long in this failing system they get burned out very quickly compounding the problem.
It's not going to be fixed until direct intervention takes place.
That it is putting social workers into the families in a stable housing situation.The family Court's and child protection are not making any difference but have contributed to making it worse.
The Canterbury University research project of having live in Social Workers had a 72% success rate of turning dysfunctional, violent drugs including alcohol, gang families .It only took 6 months of intensive intervention,fixing communication,discipline,budgeting,getting rid of losers out of influencing families,keeping drugs including alcohol out. It cost $72,000 per intervention.That sounds like a lot ,but these families are million dollar plus welfare,crime.education failures that can cost multi millions.
It's time for this trial to be expanded into the community.
That's not happening any time soon so the band aid solutions continue and continue to fail.
So instead of building more houses we will be building more Prison's finishing schools for criminals to gain their PHD's in crime and failure.
Labour has thrown a lot more money at Whanau Ora.
Labour’s too good at “throwing money” into problem areas. It’s shite at getting value out of that hastily flung money in terms of improved outcomes, because its Ministers are so inexperienced they allow themselves to be confused, diverted & hamstrung by overwhelming departmental inertia.
Look at what they threw at Mental Health, just as one example. Results? No improvements at all, in fact Covid’s reportedly making the lack of mental health services deliver even worse MH statistics.
…getting rid of losers out of influencing families,keeping drugs including alcohol out.
Wonder how they did that? Do you know? When did this project actually start?
Labour want a 30% reduction in the prison population over 15 years
And you see that as a bad thing do u PR ?
Depends.
Lowering the prison population because less people are committing crimes = good
Lowering the prison population because people that should be sent to prison but aren't = bad
What improvements would you make to the system if you could hold sway …not including bringing back the rack etc
First off you have to reach these people before they're born
Go to any unit and you'll see any amount of guys in there with older family members already in prison
Actively target these families with all manner of support networks required
As an example the average prisoner will be/have
1. Poorly educated with probable learning disabilities, not necessarily dumb but basically never went to for very long
2. Mental health issues and/or addictions
3. Lack of empathy. They are the single most important person in the world, not their kids, not their families, them.
They start off not seeing Plunket or other health services
Do poorly at school
Have…chaotic home lives
Have no real job prospects nor even want a job
Yet prison is where its supposed to sort them out?
No. It needs to happen before they get to prison, when they're young.
@ Pucky
That’s the approach Bill Emglish wanted to take.
Evidence based, targeted funding to those most in need of the full range of support & remedial.
Because he called it Social Investment the woke & the stupid & the Opposition at the tiime sneered, derided, & shouted it down, not bothering to work out that it didn’t mean rewarding execs & shareholders of private companies providing contracted services.
It meant getting a social return on the investment of that targeted funding. Turning broken families & individuals around. Giving them better education – even if just basic literacy & numeracy, tools many still lack. Teaching them saleable, useful skills, creating more choices for them, more options for their future that included becoming increasingly more financially independent & better socially connected , more skilled, more secure in themselves as contributing members of the societies they live in.
Would have been good to see it implemented
🙄 Bill English
* Evidence based, targeted funding to those most in need of the full range of support & remedial *services.
At the moment, about 8400 inmates, including pre-trial, in a population of just over 5 million, 164 per 100,000. In 2035, predicted population 5.3 million.
Will that population in 2035 include more or fewer of the age which most often ends up in prison, as our population ages?
Does the target figure include pre-trial detainees? Are home detention figures included?
Not sure about the pre-trial but home d doesn't count, only those in prison I believe (but who really knows with a government)
So school then is that what you,re saying ?
One part of it but there is no quick fix, there is no one thing
Take a crim, remove their addictions, teach them functional literacy and then what?
Return them to the same family, same community that produced them and then be surprised when they reoffend?
Return them to the same family, same community that produced them and then be surprised when they reoffend?
Exactly. Bill English’s Social Investment policy aimed to break that cycle by changing the famiily & background to which they were returning & (unsurprisingly) reoffending again because nothing which caused them to be anti-social & /or criminal offenders had changed.
When was that Canterbury trial project run?
I wrote a long reply and it did not post.
Government works in silos when it comes to addressing the cause of difficult behaviour due to waiting times and not having the specialist support. The welfare of children is my priority as there are no bad kids just bad parenting.
The worst tenants require some sort of new tenancy conditions clearly stated which cover harassment, intimidation and unlawful use of the property. Tenancy education classes and refuge support services for the person who signed the lease as they could be being intimidated by the new partner and their mates. OT needs to step up and place children in a safe environment away from adults who are incapable of looking after their self.
I have seen it that once you provide a skip bin people clean up and this is self rewarding. Then provide a vegie box with quick growing plants, either the plants die or the person nurtures them. People need purpose.
It was a good idea, would have been interesting to see it implemented
I would add, it’s been 14 years now since I retired from the Public Service, so I don’t know if departmental Policy policy & Operational policy are still developed in the same way.
But we used to have to do a Strategic Risk Analysis (using a well-respected Risk Assessment Tool – the RAT) of all new policies, looking at what could go wrong across multiple areas identified as to be impacted by the proposed policy change. You had to identify what risk mitigation or elimination strategies would be employed were the foreseeable problems to arise after implementation.
I’d love to see the Risk Assessment for this “sustain tenancies” policy – if there ever was one.
The covid ruling of "no evictions during lock down' has contributed imo.
Plus housing all the homeless during and after lock down. With people 'home' all day and night, these problems are magnified. (Though some cases look like 'benign' neglect by the Minister not responding to cases .)
We have not since World War two had such problems of people having to accommodate others and/or stand lengthy separations. Stress and anxiety is at a very high level after 2 years of covid rules.
Covid has laid bare the inequities and their horrible outcomes. Many of those inequities began with Meth and lowered "job seeker" benefits plus cruel penalties, when people lost homes for very minor infringements. That pendulum has swung too far in some cases.
Those trying to find systems to work for such disparate individuals have a hard unrewarding task, as one leader said "some have meth as their main need and they are selfish with it." It would be unfair to say those same Public servants are not looking at outcomes, just they are trying to meet all needs and failing another group.
RATs are many in these covid times, and the PM commented "These are hard times to plan" . Now we have a new strain for the Government to worry about.
Treetop private landlords are less likely to take on problematic tenants as they can chose from the best of the best tenants (you know the one who have glowing references, no pets are scrub up well etc).
Social housing and motels are used to house people in extreme need, who likely wouldn't stand a chance in the private rental market.
I am not saying tenants in private rentals or even home owners can be shitty neighbors.
Kainga Ora numbers would be higher. I had across the street class A addicts who had a lot of guests, roaming dogs, screaming domestics. Neighbours on either side (shared main wall), were too scared to complain. The rent usually becomes too much so they get kicked out. Person who signed the lease was great with her kid for 18 months until the rent ballooned and due to desperation she took in a boarder. She got hooked on drugs and she lost the control of her home.
Why don't TV1 & TV3 have proper investigative journos looking at this kind of scenario that flows on directly from rent increases going so high they go beyond someone responsible's ability to pay.
In that one example you cite there, Treetop, the collateral damage of unintended / unforeseen consequences (aka blowback) is so immense that no ordinary person would ever have expected that outcome.
But you do. Why isn't Sunday, starring Miriama Kamo, covering this kind of nightmare – instead of many of the soft fluffy magazine-style snippets it features
When the wrong person gets in the door of a vulnerable mum she is at risk of being abused and manipulated and thinks the rent will be halved having a flat mate or a boarder's portion of the rent will pay the rent. A cycle of abuse starts, then Kainga Ora eventually find the mum an affordable rental but her self esteem is so low and the wrong type exploit her further.
To not see that outcome, the people not seeing it have not got the right people doing the blowback.
How do the government think a single mum can afford to pay $370 pw?
The answer to that one is that they aren’t living on the benefit or in a low-wage job so they have NFI of the stress and struggles of those who live from benefit paycheck to paycheck & have nothing left over when something breaks or they encounter a sudden unexpected financial burden.
Short answer: The university-educated policy wonks are all far too well paid & too distant from their “clients” to know or really care.
This is where a Minister with community connections, intelligence, & a bit of steel up their spine can make all the difference. Rejecting policy papers that don’t tackle the problems they should already be well versed in. Too many of them seem to just read departmental briefing papers.
They need to read relevant werking gruppe reports & also to get out & about & and find out for themselves what & where the problems are. Imo.
" Why isn't Sunday, starring Miriama Kamo, covering this kind of nightmare – instead of many of the soft fluffy magazine-style snippets it features"
From Sunday's blurb Kamo says; "Our journalists are the country’s finest. I’m proud to work alongside them and to be a part of bringing their stories to the nation. They are trusted practitioners who fearlessly hold power to account, who make change in the lives of New Zealanders, and who help shape our country’s narrative and identity.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/sunday/the-team/miriama-kamo
Maybe stories about poor people, gangs and inequality don't fit with Audi's (principle sponsor) brand image.
Also, the "flagship current affairs programme" is there first and foremost to keep eyeballs on the screen for the advertisements.
That is how chief executives get paid.
Exactly, gsays. It’s not really about in depth examinations of significant national & international current affairs, it’s about catering to the widest audience – hence the relatively short duration of multiple “stories”.
It’s not to say they don’t sometimes have items covering significant issues, particularly in Kiwiland, but they are nearly always too short, have an “angle” rather than a neutral presentation, & are too “once over lightly”.
TV journalism in Kiwiland is nowadays mostly of rubbish quality, compared to, say, the 70s, 80s, & 90s, maybe some parts of the 2000s. ☹️
It has gotten to the point where we will have to support the journalism we want directly eg donation or subscription.
While also not coming off all Tory with grievances about our 'tax payer $' going towards TVNZ & RNZ
She got hooked on drugs and she lost the control of her home.
Stories like that make my guts churn.![angry angry](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/angry_smile.png?x46781)
The semi detached rural still leaves them with a connected neighbour.
I don't see any "good" solution – hiffing them from tenancies of last resort puts them on the street, with the kids, and that will make everyone more difficult to locate and help. Taking the kids away for being bad neighbours might be a bit much, too.
Putting them all together makes a slum, and that's before looking at different gang affiliations folks might have.
Leaving them there can torment the neighbours.
Damned if I have any solutions.
permaculture would say find the solutions at each site rather than trying to design generic ones that can be enforced from the top down.
Is the problem anti-social behaviour? Is it socio-economics? The effects of colonisation? Trauma? Patterns of thinking that are hard to change because of all the above plus drugs and alcohol and violence?
What do the people behaving badly actually need?
It comes down to loss of personal control or being controlled. The injustices of life, not being nurtured with love, economic pressure, violence, addictions and not having a purpose or the opportunity to reach your potential.
Semi detached rural is not suitable for children due to being unsafe. I needed to clarify semi detached rural. A property which has no neighbours too close.
So you mean a fully detached house on a large section?
Sounds idyllic, especially for kids.
This has nurtured many in the past. A smaller dwelling depends on where it is placed.
Has squash em in housing created some of the problems for people who need more space to sort their shit out?
dunno, but as soon as folks figure out they can go from an apartment to a detached country home if they act badly…
The detached country home is what is suitable. Just like how some individual health services are more expensive due to the need. It is as much a health need as a housing need.
I would not just leave a person there without addressing the issues which put them there.
Isn't that John Key's story?
lol that got a chuckle
"Sustaining tenancies, but not if they were the neighbours of the politicians or bureacrats who came up with this policy (whoever they are) ……….
Its utter cruelty towards the decent tennants, all of whom will be social disadvantaged. What a way to treat these people. Shameful.
And those anti social tenants should be kicked out. They need to know the consequences of their actions…….The what about their children arguement doesn't really stack up either. What these people are modelling to their kids is I can be a real a….hole to other people and get away with it.
Its naive to think that people who induge in nasty anti social behaviour will suddently change if we show them "kindness". These people have deeply entrenched problems that there are absolutely no quck fixes to. Moreover I would bet that there are no signs of these people wanting to change "I have been a real b…d to my neighbors, and I realize I feel bad about that. I will get counselling".
Meanwhile they get away with terrorizing vulnerable people, making their life miserable.
Whoever is responsible for this policy lacks empathy
100% agreed
I'll be looking at signing up on behalf of my Parents … currently in the process of outlining their situation to Thorn Law, the law firm concerned.
Over the past two years, I’ve speculated here & elsewhere on social media that it’s a widespread situation as Kianga Ora appears to almost exclusively allocate social housing to deeply dysfunctional (read ruthlessly violent & anti-social) people with “complex needs”. I guessed that, like my Parents (90 & 91 yo), they’d be elderly enduring enormous suffering throughout the Country … and so it turns out …
Absolute Fucking Scandal.
great stuff Swordfish. I wish you all the very best with the legal action.
It is an absolute fucking scandal.
I think the reality is there is some people we can't help and a significant part of that is they don't want help. Not the whole picture. Your parents neighbour doesn't sound like he has kids, but if he did, that would be an unsafe environment for those kids.
I say evict this neirbour. Its not as if the house is going to stay empty because there are only 2 people on waiting list for a state house and neither of them in Whangarei. Would be interested to hear any updates.
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Thanks for your moral support, Anker … really appreciate it.
He does indeed have kids … & they are pretty clearly turning into / aping their Parents … very sad to see. They were last seen around 10 weeks ago, there for just a couple of hours in the morning … from the moment they arrived just a constant stream of "Fucks" & "Fuck Offs" shouted outside & slamming front door repeatedly … exactly like both of their parents … really dysfunctional family. Can see quite clearly how it becomes intergenerational.
But a real shame … the son seems to be about 11, the daughter around 6 or 7.
God that is disturbing Swordfish (the kids). And those who say we have to keep these people there because of the kids, no, no, no.
If the Govt is serious about the problem of anti social people, then give them a state house, but with conditions. 2 or 3 at the most strikes and you are out. So clear expectations of how to treat the neigbourhood. No loud noise after 9pm, no abusive or threatening behaviour etc etc. And all the blahing on about what to do we these people. Well I don't care too much about them. I do about your parents and all the others who have put up with these sorts of neighbours. Perhaps if they don't behave they do get sent to a country complex with others of their ilk. It might be really bad for them, but its terrbile for decent tenants. These people can then get a get out of jail card with good behaviour………….I mean really its like basic parenting. If the kids don't behave, they get the "naughty seat".
I do believe there are some people who can't be rehabilitated. Someone mention sending in social workers, but I am not sure what they would do.
In solidarity Swordfish, I have just left a comment on The Daily Blog where Pat O'Dea has written a column "No more evictions"I suggestion he read your piece about your elderly parents and also challenged him to live in a State house for two weeks next to these anti social tenants (of course a challenge that is not possible, but I did hope he might put himself in the shoes of people whose lives are blighted by these tenants).
I also wished the tenants all the best with their legal action.
And yes of course these kids would be apeing their parents.
Social workers sent around to spell out the rules and offer a course on emotion regulation and respecting others. Totally up to the anti social people whether or not they take it, but they are out very quickly if their behaviour doesn't improve. Sad for their kids of course, but we can't solve every problem.
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Thanks, Anker.
Had a quick read of O'Dea … typifies the Woke & their fellow travellers … pre-determined abstract theoretical views on good vs bad demographics, divorced from reality … & hence paternalistic romanticisation of entire social groups … for all the Intersectional talk of Lived Experience, there is, in fact, zero interest in judging each individual case on its merits through empirical observation [unless it adheres to the pre-determined precepts of Critical Theory] …
… well, apart from supplementing his abstract views of eternally innocent & virtuous social housing tenants across the board with an assumption that his own experience is typical / universal … it seems he's had just a couple of relatively minor noise, behaviour issues from social housing neighbours over the years … and apparently has decided that this must be not just the norm but in fact the universal experience.
Kids of the Prick nextdoor to my Parents have largely lived elsewhere with their mother ….. (many major borderline-violent confrontations between he [tenant] & her [estranged former partner] over the last 4 years, Parents often woken by them) ….. an extra source of stress … but kids were there around 30-40% of the time through 2018 / 19 … then hardly there at all in 2020, then on and off this year. They never settled at night … often screaming & stomping tantrums at 2am / 3am / 4 am a few metres away from my Parents on other side of non-soundproof dividing-wall … and often transported there in early hours of morning !!! (like I say deeply dysfunctional family) so were another source of stress & sleep deprivation.
Although he was largely OK with his kids, there were more than a few exceptions where he inflicted violent intimidation on one or both … usually through the early hours of the morning … my Parents worried for their safety.
One of the key reasons the daughter hated being there … often screaming to her mother {dropping her off] that she didn’t want to go in.
'Predetermind abstract theoretical views about good versus bad divorced from reality". How well you put it.
I am a member of the Labour Party who have adopted this type of idealogy. What can be done?
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Cheers, Anker (& also Hetzer below).
Left a comment on O'Dea's Daily Blog post this morning … but hasn't been published yet (possibly never) … so I might as well stick it here … as you can see, I'm rapidly losing patience with these people:
Thanks Swordfish. I hope he publishes it, but he probably won't. At least he will have read it.
I have had a few comments to make on the post. The usual "well what would you do with these people". While I did make some suggestions, at one point I said "I'd evict them". That's all I said.
Somehow we think we have to solve these peoples unsolvable problems. One person suggested counselling and I almost said "you have to be f…g joking", but refrained.
I don't know of anyone in your parents situation, but it takes very little effort to empathize with the nightmare they and others are experiencing, how it could be fixed so easily and what an outrage it it is. I do feel very angry about it.
I am equally angry with Labour and Greens about the gender ideology bills, because I think gender ideology is just that an ideology and the party seems to be completely captured by it. You may not share my view of it and that is o.k.
As a member of the Labour Party (just)I am not sure what to do really
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Yeah, of course one The Standard's former authors along with her Green MP boss have been central to these campaigns.
Queer Theory zealots, hopelessly immersed in all the esoteric fantasies of 1960s French Postmodernist dogma associated in particular with Derrida & Foucault [albeit acquiring these ideas second-hand … unlikely they've actually read any of this from the original sources]. They're much more likely to have been influenced by the more recent application (& quite often mangling) of these theories by Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick & others.
It's probably the most Year Zero of the various branches of Critical Theory in terms of its attempts to destroy all social norms & more generally the foundations of liberal democratic society. A kind of Permanent Cultural Revolution with all the never-ending social mayhem that that entails.
Anything associated with the normal, the commonplace, the majority, anything that is widely-accepted or can be categorized – in fact any sort of stability whatsoever – is deemed inherently "oppressive" & hence must be disrupted, subverted, dismantled. It's particularly keen, of course, on destroying social binaries … esp around biological sex, gender, sexuality. Hence their Blank Slatism fantasies & so on.
There's a rational middle-ground between Sex Essentialists & Queer Theory/Gender activists.
With Gender activists, & more generally Woke Critical Theory cultists, we're talking about inflexible dogmatists who've deluded themselves they're some sort of intellectual-cultural elite that exclusively possesses morality & wisdom … whereas in reality they've developed a highly dubious moral compass & have zero understanding of complex reality, not least because most appear relatively divorced from day-to-day society.
It's no surprise that this sort of elitist little cult, prioritising esoteric whims over cold hard material reality, attracts those from more financially privileged backgrounds … high decile single-sex schools have so much to answer for … they tend to create these Walking-Talking Horror Stories.
Thanks Swordfish. You put that very well.
I am a left winger from way back, but gender ideology first drew my attention to cancel culture and the shut down of debate.
I am a second wave feminist and I know it is not possible to change your sex. I have enormous concerns about the affirmation only approach and the medical transition of children.
Its good to know of other people on the Standard who see what is really going on.
Very colorfully written swordfish.
I'm curious what you see as their desired outcome of this (the theorists) ie what they believe their end goal is.
It must be absolute misery for your poor parents Swordfish. Such human excrement should be kept well away from civil society. We all know the issues of gangs and drugs and that your parents are suffering the end result of that is awful
The urban planning things seems a cheap way to try and solve the housing crisis. It has to potential to pit neighbours against neighbours and to create a shitty landscape from an archetectural point of view.
There would be a correlation between neighbour friction and the size of a property.
Imi?? I thought it was a typo but no, it's state-sanctioned terminology. Moriori language must transpose imi for iwi. See section 2 here:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2020/0238/latest/LMS238062.html
An excellent succinct summary of our history! Note how the settler govt exercised native admin via recognising slavery as the traditional Maori prerogative. Such de facto creation of third-class citizenry seems quite innovative (section 3).
Particularly noteworthy are the consequences delineated in Section 5. Ownership produced by conquest as state policy integrated pakeha & maori trad political practice.
I see no evidence that the treaty signed by this govt includes an apology from the two offensive Taranaki tribes to the Moriori for that 1830s genocide. Put that alongside the apparent failure of the Waikato tribes to apologise for their earlier genocide in Taranaki, and various other maori genocides around the country in different eras. I suppose it's technically possible that apologies have been made without any subsequent media reportage to inform us of such occurrences. More likely, nobody feels apologies for genocide are necessary, since genocide is traditional.
Moriori ought to be honoured for pioneering peaceful coexistence in Aotearoa, long before Te Whiti got the idea. I doubt I'll live to see that, but rectifying historical injustice does actually need to be done properly. Tokenism is insufficient.
Yes, that’s something that has intrigued me. The Crown has – rightly – acknowledged its outrageous, oppressive, suppressive behaviours toward “rebellious” resisters & innocent Māori & offered it unreserved apologies in Treaty Settlements.
But I never see or hear anything about Māori warring on & enslaving other iwi/nations, & driving some iwi completely out of their traditional nga rohe, as occurred in – and following – the Nga Puhi-inspired Musket Wars.
One sees occasional multi-iwi disputes arising over settlement claims where more than one hapu or iwi claims for recompense for the same parcel of land. But I don’t know, where these claims are the result of iwi taua invasions & land stealing, whether the affected iwi sort out any muru/utu/compensation & expression & acceptance of apologies between themselves post the official Crown Settlement.
I agree, Dennis and Gezza. I have heard Maori accept the 'Right of Conquest' for pre Treaty of Waitangi events, but it seems that apologies and compensation apply only to post-treaty things.
This does seem a bit dodgy on pure moral grounds. Letter of the law rather than spirit of the law?
The case of the Seven Tenths Trust always struck me as very peculiar:
What is not mentioned is that they slaughtered all the peoples already living there. Just a decade before the ToW.
But according to the wookies – only white people are capable of wrong.
That is the power of the treaty, it seems, Maori 'conquer' hundreds of people pre-treaty, but Pakeha 'massacre' people post-treaty.
Could everyone on this thread please make their way over to this re-education centre…
I don't have any objection to telling the whole of NZ's history. Unless we can come to terms with our past and repudiate it's errors we will remain entangled with it's ghosts.
But the moment you see that history being selectively re-written, you know some other agenda is in play.
Just to clarify – I regard the invasion of the Waikato and Parihaka, etc, as despicable breaches of the Treaty, and agree with belated (if inadequate) compensation for the descendants of those wronged.
But I am a teacher of language, and I struggle to accept the wording which pretends that pre-treaty Maori never committed any offences themselves, and that offences happened only after the treaty was signed.
I also struggle to understand why sometimes in the late stages of the NZ wars in the South of the North Island there were as many Kupapa as British colonial troops repressing the local tribes.
To me there seems to be an obvious imbalance in terminology.
Ah yes – you touch on another verboten topic – that almost always alongside British colonial troops were Maori from other iwi playing an often vital role in crushing their own former enemies.
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Yep, if you want truly brutal genocidal violence … you'd need to head back to the Musket Wars .. three decades of horrendous massacres, at least 20k dead (vs about 2k in the New Zealand Wars), tens of thousands enslaved, some really brutal torture, cannibalism, massive upheaval, iwi massacred, others permanently driven from their nga rohe.
Bears zero relationship to the Woke's highly paternalistic 'Noble Savage' Romanticisation of pre-1840 Māori as some kind of peace-loving flower-power San Francisco Hippies.
The brutal inter-tribal warfare that dare not speak its name among polite Woke society.
And, no, that doesn’t remotely justify what happened after 1840 … but it’s important to highlight the bullshit double standards, the sheer hypocrisy & the Peter Pan fantasy world that sits right at the heart of Critical Theory / ID Politics and its on-going application in New Zealand.
Govts have used the 'we don't have the data'..excuse….here is the…data.
Mega Landlords: Over 22,100 homes owned by small group of very large investors | Stuff.co.nz
Good to see that graph. It provides the basis for class analysis of investors. Let's pretend there are still leftists who can do that. As a non-leftist, I'll provide this simulation to help them:
Class A: 10,254 own more than 50 dwellings
Class B: 11,944 own between 21 & 50
Class C: 96,107 own between 6 & 20
Class D: 264,366 own between 3 & 5 dwellings
Class E: 223,051 own 1 or 2 dwellings
So we immediately see that the legendary mum and dad investors are a minority of the investor class as a whole, ranked only 5th in the hierarchy. The five sub-classes are accompanied by business owners as capitalist vested interests in Aotearoa, and it would probably be pc to include iwi too.
Dennis, you might want to look at the figures referenced by Blazer again.
My reading of the graph in Blazer's reference is that 10, 254 houses are owned by owners of more than 50 houses (about 205 or fewer owners that works out as). Another 11944 owned by owners of 20-50 houses which makes between 239 and 597 owners.
According to you, investor owned houses would total between 2.3 and 4.6 million houses when there are 1.8 dwellings in NZ according to the census.
Read correctly, there are some 625,000 houses owned by investors and that leaves some 1.2 million owned by the occupant. The census says that 64% of NZ homes are owned by their occupants.
Well, owned by one of their occupants, at least.
Over half of NZers don't own the dwelling they live in (p34).
McFlock, I read p 34. How do we reconcile the two figures? One based on census figures of more than just 2018 btw and one based on your reference? Genuinely at a loss here……
Two different measures.
Census is how many houses had an owner-occupier.
The housing report had that measure earlier in the publication, but the p34 measure is how many people actually own the home they live in.
So lots of people rent out the spare room, have a boarder (or several) boarders.
But let it be known that we're a nation of renters, now. And this will only get more concentrated unless the housing market takes a dive.
Thanks. 🙂
Okay, I did take another look. Perhaps different interpretations of the graph are produced by the non-equivalence of investors & humans that Valocity used? When dwellings are co-owned the maths gets too murky for me!
Regardless, those five classes of ownership are wealth-generated, right? So the differential analysis does produce accurate relativity between classes.
The graph titled "Homes owned by investors by portfolio size" referred to the number of homes owned by investors who owned certain numbers of properties. For example, 10254 houses owned by investors each owning at least 50 houses, so at most 200 investors.
I don't doubt that mum and dad investors are over emphasised. The article states,"The analysis, which cross-referenced names on roughly 1.7 million publicly available property titles, shows investors with up to two properties only own just over a third of investment properties."
The study referenced by Blazer also said, as McFlock also stated from another source,"Investors are shown to now own more properties than either first home buyers or single homeowners.
Although the difference is slight – a difference of 15,638 homes – it’s a reversal of 2015 when first home buyers owned 78,086 more properties than investors."
Thanks for the link Blazer.
I look forward to the day that a multi-home owner is as common as a slave owner.
However, looking to a Parliament of landlords isn't where the solution lies.
Does anybody really think that the parliamentarians will change anything? Really?
We wonder why families can't get a roof over their head, drug addicts, aggressive renters of Kāinga Ora properties are not moved on? I doubt that our leaders will give them a roof over their heads.
It would take some extraordinary guts to end this, almost hero status really.
We are governed by the same type of people as the elite that earns 70 x a workers income and find they are under paid. Meanwhile all that rort is financed via debt (shall I mention 16 Billion dollars?). Good luck to us then.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/the-number-of-properties-owned-by-new-zealand-mps-revealed.html
Yep… and you would think that hundreds of thousands of the disenfranchised and homeless would be out on the streets protesting the obscene inequities portrayed by that data linked to by Blazer in 3 above rather than protesting so called freedom restrictions by public health orders or against government's timid efforts to combat climate change or cleaning up rivers. (not implying that the same cohort of people are involved of course)
After the barrage of business people and National and Act attacking MIQ, and wanting to be rid of it, they may have been wanting its demise prematurely. Covid Omicron taking off round the world in the last two days sounds very serious and hopefully Jacinda and her advisers will continue to be very cautious about further relaxation of the borders.
Jim Bolger's appearance on Q&A harks back to a time when National was mostly made up of people who were decent citizens to say the least. Looking back over the last few years to the sleazy, unlikable types National took on board, it would be hoped they can select better candidates and party members. No Mervs or Michelles.
They need to look at the selectors. RATs.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/11/27/sweden-trans-kids-suffered-injuries-as-a-result-of-puberty-blockers/
“They just pause puberty, give time to work things out”. Yeah right.
I've taken the time to read up on the puberty blockers recently – unmitigated child abuse.
By the medical establishment.
Agree. Children's bodies are being mutilated by an experiemental treatment that countries such as Sweedon and Finland are rolling back. 22,000 de-transitioners and counting.
The insanity just keeps on coming
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Kāinga Ora Scandal
Brief outline of my Parents' experience (though it doesn't even remotely encapsulate the full enormity … it's a multifacted nightmare that goes beyond the prolonged violent intimidation):
Kianga Ora Scandal: My Parents Situation (sub-zero-politics.blogspot.com)
Horrifying situation.
I'm believer that spelling matters and in this case the spelling of Te Reo matters. Is there a way that you can do a global correct to Kainga Ora all the way through?
Also somewhere there is 'entires' that perhaps is 'entries?
Sounds as though some suggestions for Kainga Ora would not go amiss.
Perhaps KO needs to sell the other side of this duplex unit where one side is in private ownership. Use the funds to invest in another building for social housing.
They could also look to see if there are other instances of one in private/one still in public ownership that are causing problems and work out a plan to sell these as well.
It is called managing the portfolio. I am sure that a private landlord who found that one of their units were becoming a mecca for troublemakers because of whatever they would be cashing in and reinvesting in another place.
Your parents' neighbouring tenant sounds as if there are mental health issues (perhaps drug or alcohol induced) that seem to be running rampant and not being dealt with. Nobody should be expected to put up with this.
That's damn rough, it's not right
I'm genuinely curious if you have had any response from your local MP?
COP26 so now we don’t need to take responsiblility for our CO2 reduction commitments ? and just feed off others doing better by buying credits. No wonder the nuclear free moment of our time is NOT that important. Would it not be more beneficial if we all achieved our reductions as a min. and those that over achieve to contribute even less CO2 ?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/11/study-finds-nz-could-buy-carbon-reduction-credits-more-cheaply-than-domestic-action.html
Have you seen where massive forest clearance has been going on in brazil for mining gold , the same brazil were going to by our credits from supposedly!!!
Yes and this area this area is referred to the lungs of earth and along with man made deforestation we had also forest fires doing their bit.🤯 I could say that their are too many vested interests and applying arbitrage to achieve a financial gain with no tangible benefit to the environment or climate. Just juggling the numbers !!!
https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/amazon-fires-satellite-images-map-of-rainforest-blazes-2019-8?r=US&IR=T
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above
Those links really speak to a complex picture – while Brazil may be at one stage of deforestation – other nations are seeing increases in forest cover. Overall the total is not changing all that much.
I respect worldindata but if you have a close look at some of those forest cover stats they look very dodgy. Almost all the Eastern European stats show huge increases in native forest cover. I really can't believe that Malaysia's has increased either. Haven't any way of verifying the figures unfortunately.
Good skeptical thinking there ! What I think is happening – and this comes from other sources I don't have the time to track back down at the moment – is that in Eastern Europe at least there has been a substantial reduction in farming. Especially as populations age and agriculture becomes more land efficient – the unused farms revert back to forest reasonably quickly.
I can't speak precisely to Malaysia, but it's actually a very developed and rapidly urbanising society – again as people escape poverty and move off the land – it reverts to forest as at least one possibility. This doesn't gainsay the horrible practise of palm oil plantations – but that's another issue.
That link to the deforestation story is really quite interesting and well worth some time reading. Brazil is indeed a mess and the erosion of the Amazon should be resisted – but the bigger picture isn't hopeless either.
Mongabay's data seems quite different. Australia's forest loss is particularly depressing – very noticeable west of the Divide in Qld.
Been gently raining here at Pookden Manor since about 1 pm. Southerly breeze so gentle it doesn’t even really exist. 😀
Are you there, mary? Wildlife clip from a sunnier day:
Just got back from 6 months in WA to our spot in Moreton Bay QLD. We're renting a tiny little unit about 15min drive from downtown Brisbane. But out the back is a 200 acre wilderness that's teeming with wildlife. So we just went for a walk and in a 2hr period we spotted:
Multitudes of ducks, herons, bitterns, water dragons, sea eagles, spoonbills, white herons, a flock of pelicans, and one snake.
The only downside is that if you sit down to enjoy a view, you immediately become the subject of a tug-of-war between ants size of small mice and mosquitos you could mistake for dragon-flies.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_water_dragon
They sounded intriguing 😀
Cheers Gezza. So serene and calming to watch.
Watching that scene, I remember that day well now, mary. It was an amazingly relaxing & fulfilling day. One of the best I’ve had just being at one with the natural world in my backyard, so to speak.
Being calm, moving very little, talking gently to the birds, waterbirds & eels.
Quite magic.
The Creator, whoever they were or are, did a fantastic job of creation.
I suspect that they all evolved brilliantly, Gezza.
Their (and our) DNA says they did precisely that, & therein lies the fantastic job that the creator did.
No one has yet explained:
Nor, of course, has anyone explained the origins of those origins..
The endless loop. The inevitable flaw in the Christian 8 Muslim apologetics debates. They argue that their Abrahamic God has to exist because everything in the universe has to have had an ultimate cause. To which the atheist response, naturally, is "So who or what caused God?" To which the apologists reply: "God is outside the universe" (or "God is both outside & inside the universe"). "He always was & always will be."
These things are easy to say but actually rather difficult to get your head around, so I don't bother. Our universe just looks designed to me. With layer upon layer of complexity. I suspect it had one or more designers. That's all.
From mu, right past nu and xi and onto omicron.
I suppose we should be grateful that we avoided the nu xi land variants down under.
With the multiple mutations of the spike protein naming the variant after the letter most suitable for a transformer character was apt. But surely they are now at risk of running out of letters.
Richard Harman, editor of the Politik website and former "Chief TVNZ Political Correspondent", told Jim Mora & listeners this morning how Judith Collins made history:
"She's the first major New Zealand political party leader to have a successful vote of no confidence passed in them, certainly since the Second World War and I would think stretching back before that."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018822361
So we ought to give her credit for this remarkable success. Put it on the cv, Jude! Maybe Swordfish will relish the research challenge of establishing how far back the actual precedent lies – presuming there even is one. If not, she really has made history!
Jude's greatest political achievement![laugh laugh](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/teeth_smile.png?x46781)
I see that Judith has backed Luxon because he is "highly intelligent'.
I am left with the question, "How would she know this?"