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!
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
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Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
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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.
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.
.
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
I see that Judith has backed Luxon because he is "highly intelligent'.
I am left with the question, "How would she know this?"