Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, March 17th, 2021 - 71 comments
Over the past week National and the Greens have released housing policy designed to address the country’s current housing crisis. National’s are tired and either reflect what is already happening or reinforce their doctrinal view of the world. The Green’s proposals are more radical and reflect steps that Micky Savage and the First Labour Government took in 1935.
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 am, March 14th, 2021 - 49 comments
I believe, as our first Labour Government did, that everyone has the right “to a life” regardless of their perceived ,”value”.
In our country, with its excess of resources and capability, we have no excuse for poverty.
For leaving people behind.
Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, March 11th, 2021 - 50 comments
Expecting a bit much aren’t you? We haven’t had that since Muldoon. At least he had them. The kind of people now asking for a plan were those who complained about governments that “interfered with the sacred ‘free market’” and screamed about “central planning”, “picking winners”, “protectionism” etc. They prefer just getting cheap labour to give the illusion of economic growth. And build a cycleway!
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, February 23rd, 2021 - 77 comments
In recent news Standard and Poors has improved New Zealand’s credit rating because of its success in handling Covid, and a vast majority of kiwis support the Goverment increasing income support for those on low wages or not in paid work. The Government has the budget space and the majority’s backing to do something about poverty.
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, February 17th, 2021 - 107 comments
The first New Zealand study to look at the effects of food hardship on pre-schoolers’ nutrition has found that nearly half of families struggle to access healthy food in their child’s first year of life.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, February 7th, 2021 - 93 comments
In this series so far I’ve examined three of the four terms in the Kaya Identity, population, economic intensity, and energy intensity. It can be conclusively shown that none of these factors can be reduced sufficiently to reduce CO2 emissions to zero – or even close enough to be useful. Let’s return to each one […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, January 24th, 2021 - 85 comments
You would think that after the Trump years the media would be turning away from the reporting of “both sides” of an issue and in many cases they are. But there is a recent example of a hold out urging that extremist views should be given media attention.
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, January 1st, 2021 - 112 comments
Welcome to 2021. This is the year for the Labour Government to be brave. What should it seek to achieve this year?
Written By: - Date published: 7:55 am, December 17th, 2020 - 66 comments
The Government’s finances are in remarkably good shape. Who would have predicted that dealing properly with a global pandemic would have had better results for the economy than timidly dealing with it and trying to ensure that economic activity continued? But by international levels our Government debt is already low and maybe now is the time to spend on vital areas such as poverty, climate change and the housing crisis.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, December 2nd, 2020 - 73 comments
On two issues, pill testing at music festivals and tax changes to address the housing crisis, National yesterday indicated that it will do what conservative parties do and oppose any meaningful change.
Written By: - Date published: 4:50 pm, November 20th, 2020 - 114 comments
It’s not possible to resolve New Zealand’s housing and poverty crises from within a neoliberal frame. Change is going to have to be driven from outside of parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, November 17th, 2020 - 76 comments
Donald Trump will be back for another go at the Presidency in 2024. Progressives should underestimate the possibility of his winning. Unless the remaining centre-left generates strategies that are executed so well that people feel the difference good politics makes, the elements of populism arising again will stay ready like the elements of a bomb.
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, November 13th, 2020 - 145 comments
In Aotearoa New Zealand we are facing a new crisis. Not Covid, although the recent case of community spread is deeply concerning. The crisis is the value of houses.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, November 11th, 2020 - 36 comments
IF the discovery of a potential Covid vaccine looks like a new dawn, let’s not forget that this is the accelerating point of the K-shaped recovery New Zealand have been dreading. Our already rich are on the line heading upwards. They are getting richer because of a range of our Government policies.
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, October 29th, 2020 - 35 comments
We need to get the Labour government to focus on decreasing inequality and poverty in all its forms and effects. The new government needs to show that Labour has changed the country for good. Otherwise there’s no reason to vote for them in 2023.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, October 22nd, 2020 - 154 comments
Labour want to govern based in stability for all New Zealanders, but how does that work when your grand narrative has massive plot holes around ending poverty?
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, October 10th, 2020 - 301 comments
There are some issues to be ironed out, but this is the only thing I am seeing that attempts to resolve poverty in New Zealand rather than tinkering around the edges.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, September 7th, 2020 - 56 comments
The NZ Property Investors Federation has proposed to its members they should hold off on making flats warmer and drier just in case there is a change of government.
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, September 5th, 2020 - 74 comments
As the covid crisis deepens Labour appear to be committed to entrenching the underclass and giving a helping hand to the middle class.
Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, September 4th, 2020 - 62 comments
Neoliberalism has run its course and displayed its profound inability to address inequality issues. It makes the poor get ever poorer while the affluent top 10% ticks of society get bloated and increasingly insufferable on untaxed capital gains. In 2017 Jacinda Ardern set a goal of bringing all children out of poverty within six years. So how is that going? And what are the next steps?
Written By: - Date published: 3:11 pm, June 19th, 2020 - 8 comments
Is it time to completely rethink how we deal with unemployment? We face a tsunami of job losses not seen in generations. Two ideas — social insurance and a job guarantee — are gaining prominence as ways to change how we deal with the problem. One provides income protection for those who lose employment, the other aims for something bolder: the elimination of unemployment. All welcome; register here.
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, May 27th, 2020 - 79 comments
While Labour remain wedded to a neoliberal view of welfare as a necessary evil with deserving and undeserving poor, the Greens are standing up for the rights of all of us to live with dignity and have a meaningful standard of living.
Written By: - Date published: 2:58 pm, May 25th, 2020 - 217 comments
I thought we were “in this together” or some such?
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, May 6th, 2020 - 53 comments
The top ten things that the Covid pandemic has taught us as a country.
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, April 25th, 2020 - 20 comments
“Othering” has long been a staple of Governments that want to remain in power for the benefit of an Oligarchy, an “Elite”, a small ruling class, or the ones with, “the money”. Deflecting blame for economic and social issues on, an ethnicity, a class, the elderly, the poor, the young, the unemployed, young solo mothers, the disabled, immigrants, or any other convenient group that can be demonised. Very soon more of us may become the “others” we didn’t care about.
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 pm, April 21st, 2020 - 41 comments
More 1% Americans are heading our way, according to Bloomberg. The Texas company building underground bunkers is getting more enquiries. They’re not running from the virus but fear the aftermath when the breadlines turn.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, March 20th, 2020 - 71 comments
There’s a world where, apparently, people shake hands with other people all day. I don’t know that world. I couldn’t tell you the last time I shook some-one’s hand. And I suspect those who inhabit a world of hand-shakers have as little insight to my world as I do theirs. But in “one world”…
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, March 7th, 2020 - 43 comments
In Parliament this week Carmel Sepuloni outlined action being taken by the Government to implement the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group designed to improve the plight of beneficiaries.
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, December 18th, 2019 - 34 comments
When we hear a supposedly progressive economist talking about elderly people as decrepit, or rendering the elderly poor invisible, it’s time to revisit our moral compass.
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, November 30th, 2019 - 97 comments
It’s a weird moment for the Labour Party at Conference this weekend.
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, November 17th, 2019 - 30 comments
Nick Kelly on UK austerity and who should have paid for the financial crisis.
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