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11:32 am, July 3rd, 2026 - 10 comments
Categories: Economy, food, housing, poverty, Social issues -
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In a land of milk and honey you would think that every resident of Aotearoa would have plenty to eat and somewhere to live as well as someone to love but this is not happening.
But there has been some jarring news recently confirming the Government’s complete indifference to those among us who struggle.
The first was from Q&A on Sunday where it was revealed that Ministry of Social Development managers were instructed they could face performance management if their staff approve too many emergency housing requests. The video is a must watch.
Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson was interviewed by Morning Report on Monday and said that this news was incredibly distressing.
“[Staff are] perversely incentivised to say no,” she said.
Minister Tama Potaka was interviewed and claimed that he was not aware there were these performance targets and that it was an operational matter.
Both he and the head of MSD Debbie Power keep claiming that everyone who qualifies for emergency housing will be provided a place in one.
This is cute. They must have forgotten that the policy was changed so that if a poor person contributed to their housing deprived situation by for instance not paying rent then they would be considered ineligible to seek emergency housing. Essentially being poor and not being able to pay rent prevents them from using emergency housing. Potaka’s and Powers statements ignore the fact that many poor people are deemed to be ineligible to apply essentially because of grinding poverty.
But clearly this is a political imperative to make the figures look as good as possible and displays a complete indifference to the plight this puts homeless people into.
Christopher Luxon claimed “You’d have to say, hand on heart, this is a better place to be than where we were when we started.”
Only if you reply on completely artificial data gathered by heavying public servants to not do their job and only if you had no idea of the actual state of the homelessness crisis could you say something like this.
Of course we should not be surprised. After all this is the Government that claimed that it had solved the homeless issue, essentially by throwing people out of motel units onto the street.
And motel units are not an ideal solution. But the last Government had an aggressive plan to expand state housing stock numbers, a plan that National has since quashed.
Christopher Luxon was asked about this at Monday’s post Cabinet Press Conference. He made the startling admission that he was not aware there was no night shelter in Auckland for people sleeping rough.
The second news was about the Government’s bastardised school lunch program. In a report by the Auditor General on the scheme it was determined that half of the lunches served as part of the programme last year didn’t meet nutritional standards.
From Lauren Crimp at Radio New Zealand:
Alarm bells are ringing over the coalition’s school lunch programme, with the Auditor-General warning the government has not been able to clearly show the scheme is delivering its aims.
A report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon finds the programme is saving money compared to Labour’s approach, but says its performance is not being properly monitored or tracked.
It also flags concerns about how the new system was set up, including weak back-up planning and last-minute changes even after contracts had been signed.
The findings were part of a final report from the Auditor-General’s investigation begun last year after concerns were raised about the programme – in the media and with the Office directly – over quality, timeliness, appropriateness of the food provided, how costs were determined and how providers were selected.
The report noted a number of concerns including these:
Of course David Seymour chose not to address the concerns but to attack the messenger.
Again from Radio New Zealand:
Seymour, in charge of the programme, said the auditor-general’s report was “half the story” because it assessed the current programme, but not Labour’s version of it.
“If you were going to be open and honest about it, you would ask how many problems existed before I got involved,” he said.
“I think the Auditor-General is facing some real credibility issues, and I think it’s a shame, because it’s a really important office in Parliament, but you just have to ask yourself, why would you evaluate the quality after I took over, but not before?”
This is such a weak attempt to divert attention. Saying that it is ok that half of meals are not up to standard is fine because they did not measure the quality of previous meals involves some impressive mental gymnastics.
But it is typical of this Government.
Time and time again Government Ministers spout with confidence official sounding statistics that makes you really wonder if you are in the same reality as them.
And beneath the figures hiding in plain sight is a level of cruelty to the poor that I have not seen for a long time.
Not batting an eyelid. At this point in time I no longer blame the politicians for their callous and sociopathic behaviour, just the people who vote for them, and the people who refuse to vote at all.
This is the trouble with meritocracy.
The rich believe they deserve their wealth, due to their personal qualities (eg- 'hard work', 'taking risks'), and this makes them winners. That luck, other people, or systems, have nothing to do with it. (And the wannabes go along with this). And anyone who questions it is suffering from envy, or tall poppy syndrome.
Therefore, going by this logic, the corollary is, poor people must deserve their lot (they are 'lazy'). That they are losers.
This is the mindset of the rich.
We have lost our culture of fairness IMHO.
Good points feijoa
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I don't think we have a meritocracy, far from it. Ability and talent? !! Wiki.
Plutocracy may be the word you are looking for.
Milk and honey – that old dirge. The milk is dried up and the honey has got varroa mite. Reality is so f..g depressing. However there are still good people here if you look in the right place.
NZ is the land of milk and honey, but you have to bring your own cows and bees
Not just the young.
Elderly getting kicked out of, what used to be called, council houses, is just one of the cruelties driven by the Coalition of Cockups.
To show the personal effects, families losing extra welfare payments because they have taken in homeless elderly relatives as boarders.
But who cares about more elderly and young children living on marmite and spaghetti?
Ah Matey – I'm 80! and I have never before witnessed the level of cruelty to the poor and most vulnerable as this sad lot have inflicted over the past 2 and a half years. Some of them, profess to be Christian. I would strongly recommend them to reread Matt 25: 31 – 46, and to think about what it tells us all. Treat your fellow humans – whoever they might be – with the respect that you would treat yourself.
The NACT1 coalition are poised, ready to implement a New Victorian New Zealand….this will fit perfectly with their general judgmental meanness and already burgeoning prison state complex….
And the people who see the people before them ?
A social problem? You're talking…Socialism? Anathema to the right wing incl NACT1
For an actual better New Zealand : Kick NACT1 out November '26 !
Thanks for this, and the previous one, Mickey.
There has to be sense of shock, as you convey, on the basic inhumanness of these kinds of planned, deliberate actions, the destructive impact on the people and the devastating impact on the whenua.
After all, apart from the people and the land, what else do we have, really? And how can human beings act oblivious of this?
What the hell happened to these people?
Did they get a good deal at the crossroads?