National's New Zealand

How bad are things under the Luxon regime? We already knew that we had the worst wage growth in the world, with wages 6.4% below 2021 levels - which shows the lie of National's "economic growth". But what does that mean in reality? The Press headline from today speaks for itself: "Police are dealing with a new type of shoplifter - ‘everyday people’ who just need to eat":

A year ago, Sergeant Melissa Shaw’s retail crime team was set up to curb retail theft in Christchurch.

Shaw expected to deal mainly with drug addicts who repeatedly steal to fund their next hit. And there have been those.

But then came the surprise: A growing cohort of thieves who were not drug addicts, not kleptomaniacs, not youths.

They were parents and elderly people with no criminal histories, without the money to keep up with rising living costs, who stole food and clothing for themselves and their families.

And that's where we are now: normal people having to steal to get buy, because National's "rockstar economy" doesn't provide for them, and instead funnels everything upwards into the pockets of Luxon and his mates.

We desperately need to get rid of this government. So in November, vote for regime change!

A vicious, corrupt and insane policy from a vicious, corrupt and insane regime

Albert Einstein reportedly said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And that's basically National's housing policy. Back in the 1990's, they sold state houses, raised rents, and handed out money to their landlord cronies via the accommodation supplement. The result was poverty, overcrowding, the resurgence of third-world diseases, and the creation of a permanent underclass. There was some relief from the Helen Clark-led labour government, which built state houses to replace some of what had been sold, and replaced market rents with income-related ones, but it didn't undo the damage. Then, in the 2010's, under the Key-led national government, Paula Bennet did it all over again. That time we got all the previous bad effects, plus a homelessness crisis, people living in cars, then WINZ putting them up in motels at enormous cost (and then trying saddle them with odious debt) to avoid the resulting bad headlines, and finally a bipartisan acknowledgement that it hadn't worked. The following Labour governments again managed to undo some (but nowhere near all) of the damage, started a building programme and so on. And now its 2026, the end of the first term of a national-led regime, and Chris Bishop is back, doing it all again, this time with the added insult of pretending state house tenants are "lotto winners":

"If you're in a state home and you compare how much income you have with someone in a private rental who's got exactly the same income as you, you're $110 a week better off," she said.

"These changes are about making the system fairer. At the moment, people in social housing effectively have won the lotto, they get so much more support than a family with just as lower income in a private rental. That's not fair, and our changes are about fixing it."

So her solution to that unfairness is to make things worse rather than make things better. To kick those on the bottom of the heap and steal from them in order to enrich her cronies. Because increased accommodation supplements don't help renters - they go directly to landlords, who immediately hike rents to capture the entire increase. So the only people who benefit from this policy is them. And the national MPs they kick back to with donations, of course. It is a vicious, corrupt policy from a vicious, corrupt government. And thinking it will lead to a different result from the previous times it has been imposed is pure insanity.

This regime is a failure

When running for election in 2023, National's key promise was simple: "we will lower the cost of living". They've repeated that mantra every day since. Last week in question time, they were gloating about "lowering inflation" in a desperate effort to bat away the regime's terrible record on unemployment and economic growth. So how's that working out for them? Badly:

Inflation has edged to a 15-month-high on the back of higher rents, rates, electricity, and food, touching the top of the Reserve Bank's target band but unlikely to prevent further rate cuts.

Stats NZ said the consumer price index rose 1.0 percent in the three months ended September, pushing the annual rose to 3.0 percent from 2.7 percent, the highest since June last year.

The 11.3 percent rise in electricity prices was the single biggest contributor to the annual increase.

"Annual electricity increases are at their highest since the late 1980s, when there were several major reforms in the electricity market," Stats NZ senior manager of prices Nicola Growden said.

In other news, rent is unaffordable, butter is unaffordable, meat has become unaffordable, while the regime tries to suppress wages to keep profits high for its donors and cronies. No wonder people are angry!

This regime is a failure on its own terms. They set themselves a simple target, and they blew it - ruining countless lives in the process. The sooner we kick them out on their arses, the better.

"Laser focused"

When the regime was elected, they claimed to have a laser focus on bringing down the cost of living. So how's that working out for them? Badly:

Food prices are rising much faster than wages, putting more pressure on household budgets and creating a squeeze that's feeling worse for some than the global financial crisis, one economist says.

Stats NZ data for August shows prices were 5 percent higher than a year earlier.

Depending on how wage growth is measured, incomes are growing by as little as half that.

[...]

Higher prices for the grocery food group, up 4.7 percent, contributed most to the annual increase in food prices.

That was largely down to the increase in milk, cheese and butter. Milk was up 16.3 percent to $4.72 per two litres, cheese up 26.2 percent to $12.89 for a kilogram block and butter was up 31.8 percent year-on-year to $8.58 per 500g.

Meat, fruit, and vegetables are also all up. And what's the government's answer? Nothing. Oh, they'll tinker around the edges and wish for a deep-pocketed competitor to enter the market, but they won't actually do anything. They won't make a KiwiKai to provide competition, or forcibly break up the oligopoly which gouges us. And the Prime Minister's response to basic food prices being so high is to blame "international markets", without once asking why kiwis, the people who subsidise food production and bear its environmental costs, are paying those prices, or why food producers are allowed to export in preference to feeding us first. Because asking those questions would be very bad for the people who fund this regime, and who profit by gouging us.

But if this regime doesn't have an answer, then voters can and should look for one at the ballot box. Price gouging does terrible things for your social licence, and its time we reminded our grocery oligopolies of that. Regulate them properly, force them to sell to us first at a fair price before they export anything, and make it clear that their primary purpose is to serve the New Zealand market, not foreigners. The problem with having a food industry which exports 90% of its output is that they don't have to care about us; so maybe we need to challenge the problem at its root, stop those exports, shrink the industry to something more manageable (and less environmentally destructive), rather than letting them impoverish us economically, socially, and environmentally for their own profit?

National's New Zealand

National came to power in part because it promised to reduce the cost of living of ordinary New Zealadners. But two years in, the reality is different. Stuff today reports that we are paying 80% more for food than the Australians are, despite (or perhaps because?) farmers telling us they're "feeding the world". And meanwhile, RNZ reports that people with jobs are forced to live in cars:

Lower Hutt vinyl layer Dylan Holdaway, 35, said he had been sleeping in his silver Toyota Wish for the past five months.

He told RNZ that living this way had led to him losing 25 kilograms and dealing with several infections.

[...]

He worked 30 hours a week, and said living in his car made it hard to maintain his appearance on the job.

This is National's New Zealand: a country where we are gouged by landlords, supermarkets, banks, and power companies; where ordinary people with jobs can't afford a place to sleep and are slowly starving to death because they can't afford food. Because National's low-wage, cartel-dominated economy doesn't provide the income for people to have even the basics anymore, and their gutted government doesn't provide the services to make up for that.

In 2016, similar stories shamed the Key government into actually doing something to ease homelessness. But this bunch are shameless. They have made things this way deliberately, grinding down working conditions, giving a green light to gougers, gutting Kainga Ora, and giving away the government revenue which could have helped solve this to landlords with gratuitous tax cuts. They are not going to fix this, because doing so would mean admitting they were wrong - and because they and their mates are profiting from the misery they are inflicting.

The only way this will change is if we change the regime. But that's not enough, because the next government needs to actually do something about it, rather than just trying to perpetuate the grossly unjust status quo. And that means restarting Kainga Ora's building program, to build the homes people need; forcibly breaking up the cartels and regulating the fuck out of the pieces to prevent price-gouging; regulating landlords to prevent them gouging for rent; restoring the benefit system; and taxing wealth to pay for it all. And if Labour won't promise that, then you should vote for someone else who will.

Willis says "let them eat butter"

Butter has become a flashpoint in the cost-of-living crisis, with the price of the baking staple doubling in the last 14 months, and people queuing for cheap blocks. Its got so bad that National - the party of rich farmers - has had to pretend to care, with Nicola Willis having a meeting with Fonterra's CEO in an effort to talk down the price. The result? everything is fine, apparently:

The Finance Minister does not believe New Zealanders are getting a "raw deal" on butter, but has accepted there is no getting away from how expensive it is right now.

We’re not getting a raw deal? Bullshit. We can see it every time we go to the supermarket. But Willis is paid $304,300 a year plus slush, so she can buy all the butter she wants. Which makes the above sound a lot like "let them eat butter".

So who’s to blame? Willis is desperate to deflect attention from Fonterra, so blames the supermarkets:

The meeting had reinforced Willis' interest in increasing supermarket competition to put downward pressure on the price of butter.

"All roads lead back to supermarket competition. I continue to believe that is the most powerful lever that the government has on this issue. We will never be able to control global dairy prices. What we can influence is the amount of competition in New Zealand's grocery sector and we have a lot of work underway to address that."

While the supermarket cartel is absolutely part of the problem, National's "work programme" is basically "hope a third party joins the oligopoly and gets in on the gouging". So they have no real solutions there. And they're certainly not going to do what is necessary: legislate to forcibly break up the cartel and forbid mergers in the sector or its underlying logistics to prevent such accumulation of market power.

And none of this should be letting Fonterra off the hook. Because while there's a global price, there's no reason we, the people who bear the environmental costs of the dairy industry's profiteering and who subsidise them billions of dollars a year in water and carbon, should pay it. And we have tools we can use to ensure we get some benefit from hosting this parasitic, polluting industry. For example, we could ban or restrict dairy exports to ensure they served the domestic market first. Or just directly regulate to require them to sell domestically at a low price. Because seeing butter exported overseas while it becomes unaffordable to kiwis is simply unacceptable.

Obviously, regulating Fonterra would be bad for farmers. But it would be far better for the rest of us. And why shouldn’t those subsidised rural parasites give something back to the community they leech off for once?

The rich-list is a social failure

RNZ has a piece this morning on the latest NBR rich list, reporting that the ultra-rich are doing great (despite the government-induced recession). The 119 individuals and families listed are now collectively worth more than $100 billion - 40% of Aotearoa's annual GDP.

Meanwhile, while they're revelling in their wealth, we have record homelessness, half a million kiwis are using food-banks every month, the government is driving children into poverty. And the Prime Minister - himself a wannabe rich-lister - thinks this is something we should be "celebrating".

Bullshit. The existence of such extremes of wealth and poverty in a country like ours is a failure, not a "success". We are a rich country and we have more than enough for everybody. And its hard to escape the conclusion that the reason so many people are so poor is precisely because we have allowed a clique of people who don't pay their fair share to use corruption, regulatory capture, wage theft, and (in some cases) outright fraud to steal the country's wealth and siphon it into their own pockets.

Its time we took it back. Its time we reclaimed our wealth, taxed the rich, and built a society where we all have enough. And if the rich don't like it, fuck 'em; we have more votes.

Fixing school lunches

The free school lunch program was one of Labour's few actual achievements in government. Decent food, made locally, providing local employment. So naturally, National had to get rid of it. Their replacement - run by Compass, a multinational which had already been thrown out of our hospitals for producing inedible slop - has been a disaster. Inedible food, which does not meet dietry requirements, and which is sometimes contaminated with plastic or causes severe injury. The only thing we haven't seen yet is a mass-poisoning, but that's probably only a matter of time. And now the primary subcontractor has gone bankrupt as a result of lowballing the bid, putting the whole scheme in doubt.

The good news is that the former providers are ready to step up and fix things. It would be a popular move: a Talbot Mills poll released today shows that 60% of people want the old system restored. A sensible government responsive to voters would recognise this, and do it. But for National, it would mean admitting that they made a mistake. And rather than do that, they'll likely just cancel the entire system out of spite, having set it up for failure in the first place. Because when faced with a choice between feeding kids, and admitting they fucked up, they’d rather let kids starve. It’s just the sort of monsters they are.

Priorities

Back in 2018 the then-Labour government legislated formal targets to reduce child poverty with the Child Poverty Reduction Act - and took actual steps to achieve them, with a $5.5 billion families package to boost incomes and a school lunches scheme to ensure kids didn't go hungry. While a lot of work needed to be done, it made a good start. And then National came along and gutted the targets, replacing them with more "achievable" ones. Why? Because they didn't want to spend the money required to met them:

Documents showed year-on-year progress was not on track and meeting the targets "would require investment in the region of $3 billion per year".

Officials presented Upston with two alternative targets for 2028 that they believed could be achieved.

However, Upston told RNZ the government "disagreed with the advice and this approach, as it would further entrench long-term welfare dependency and the number of children growing up in benefit-dependent homes".

Instead, the government spent $3 billion on landlord tax cuts, effectively deciding to give to the greedy, not to the needy (they also scrapped the survey tracking child poverty, to prevent any evidence of failure). Its a stark illustration of National's priorities, and who they favour in society.

As for child poverty, Upston thinks it will be solved by "growing the economy, improving health and education outcomes, and getting more households into work... rather than welfare payments and tax credit changes". In other words, the usual capitalist magical thinking that if you make rich people richer while shitting harder on the poor and gutting health and education, everything will magically get better. National applied such cruel "solutions" in both of their previous times in government, in 1991 and 2012, and their efforts are why we have a child poverty problem in the first place. Do they seriously expect us to believe it'll be third time lucky? Or are they just spewing bullshit to cover for the fact that they do not give a shit about anyone other than the ultra-rich?

The government of doing nothing

Last week, Labour chickenshitted out on a wealth tax, with Prime Minister (for now) Chris Hipkins ruling it out as long as he holds office (which sortof suggests a solution, doesn't it?) But taxing wealth to build a more equal Aotearoa wasn't the only thing they chickenshitted out on - they also refused to break up the rapacious supermarket duopoly which is robbing us blind. Why? Largely it seems because they'd get the blame if it went wrong, and so they'd rather let Foodstuffs and Progressive keep screwing us than do anything about it. And today, there's the icing on the cake: a consultants report advising that the government's current half-measures are ineffective and will condemn us to another 20 years of supermarket robbery:

The Government’s much-touted reforms of the supermarket industry are unlikely to result in a material improvement in competition, according to its own advisers.

Instead, without additional action, consumers can expect little to change for the better over the next 20 years, with a risk that the variety of products stocked by the supermarkets will continue to reduce and that supermarkets’ gross profit margins will continue to rise, ministers have been told.

Crushing the supermarket duopoly and limiting its excess profits is something that would have a huge effect on the cost of living, and on poverty. But Labour just won't do it, because they're chickenshits afraid of upsetting the status quo. "In it for you"? You be the judge...

Justice for robodebt

Between 2016 and 2020, the Australian government inflicted nearly $2 billion of imaginary "debts" on welfare recipients, courtesy of an illegal automated overpayment calculation system. The policy led to suicides as people struggled to pay debts they didn't owe. The scheme was scrapped in 2020, and the illegal "debts" were later forgiven and repaid. And today, a royal commission into the fiasco has recommended prosecuting its architects:

The architects of Robodebt will be referred for criminal and civil prosecution after a royal commission handed down its report into the unlawful scheme today.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes has branded the former coalition government's debt-raising scheme an "extraordinary saga" of "venality, incompetence and cowardice".

"The report paints a picture of how the Robodebt [scheme] ... was put together on an ill-conceived, embryonic idea," Commissioner Holmes wrote.

"It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings."

It also finds that former PM Scott Morrison (who was social services minister at the time robodebt was created) misled Cabinet by failing to provide all relevant information about the scheme and its lawfulness. To prevent this happening in future, it recommends repealing Australia's blanket exemption of cabinet documents from the Freedom of Information Act. Its still secret who should be prosecuted, and what for. But the onus is now on Australian federal agencies to follow the recommendation. The problem is that they have a track-record of perverting the course of justice to protect those in power. Hopefully that won't happen in this case.

A plan for fairness

Aotearoa has a poverty problem: far too many people with not enough. And we have a fairness problem, with research from IRD showing that the rich aren't paying half the tax rate of normal people. The solution to these two problems is obvious and complementary, but unthinkable under the NeoLiberal orthodoxy inflicted on us by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson and enthusiastically continued by the political duopoly. But yesterday, the Greens came out and said it: we should tax the rich more so we can end poverty.

Their actual proposal to do so seems well-constructed: a wealth tax which kicks in after $2 million of (net) assets for individuals, or $4 million for couples. That's high enough that its not just "person who owns their own home", even in Auckland - its basicly people with large property portfolios, or enough money that they don't need to work for the rest of their lives. Normal people with jobs who rent or pay a mortgage simply won't be affected. Neither will normally successful people, who own their own homes and have a bit stashed away for their retirement. Even if you think about the kiwi dream - house, bach, boat, BMW, and enough to comfortably not work if you don't want to - its just flirting with the couples threshold. At which stage most normal kiwis would say "fair enough" to paying a bit extra.

In short, the vast majority of us will never, ever, have to worry about this, even people who have done well for themselves. We're not talking about normal levels of wealth here. We're talking excessive wealth, people who have gone beyond what is needed for comfort, into hoarding. In numbers, we're talking about 0.7% of the population, about 35,000 people. The fact that John Key hates the idea shows it is perfectly targeted: he's one of the rich pricks who isn't paying their fair share.

Meanwhile, the flip-side of taxing the rich is to adjust thresholds and tax rates to lower taxes on the rest of us. Those on high salaries will face higher marginal rates - 45% from $180,000, which hits MPs and Ministers nicely - but normal people, even well-paid normal people, will pay less. And again, that seems fair enough. A progressive tax system means those who can afford to pay more, and those who can't pay less, but NeoLiberalism means we've lost sight of this principle, in favour of just giving the rich a free ride in the hope that we will get something from their tailings. That doesn't work, it never worked, but the rich laughed all the way to the bank while they robbed us.

And of course, there's ending poverty - because it turns out that taxing the rich properly frees up a hell of a lot of money which the government can put to use. The Greens want to increase benefits, fix working for families, restore the universal student allowance, and expand ACC to cover all sickness and disability - basicly, restore the social safety net that Douglas and Richardson stole from us. I think this is worthwhile, because fixing poverty fixes so many other things - but if YMMV on applications, it certainly gives an idea of what we can achieve just by making the rich pay their way. And it should end forever the NeoLiberal lie that we "can't afford" better things. As with everything government does, that's a matter of choice - and Labour has chosen to favour the rich over its own voters.

Poverty is a political choice. The Greens have shown we can choose differently. All we need to do is vote for it.

Erase this odious debt!

The Herald reports that WINZ debt has reached the staggering total of $2.4 billion, with the usual racism and sexism in who owes and how much they pay:

Anti-poverty groups say the poorest Kiwis are caught in a debt trap as the total amount of money owed to the Government balloons to $2.4 billion.

More than $250 million is also owed to Inland Revenue by families who were overpaid their Working For Families tax credit.

The top 10 per cent of people with debt are paying on average $26 a week out of their benefits - higher than the Winter Energy Payment support - and with disproportionately higher rates of repayment for women and Māori.

Māori women owing debt to the Ministry of Social Development have a balance on average 50 per cent higher than Pākehā women and more than twice as high as Pākehā men.

The total amount of money owed to the Government - which includes loans for essentials ranging from clothing to household appliances and bill payments - has ballooned to $2.4b as of March.

As the last paragraph shows, this debt is odious, essentially imposed by the government as a consequence of its own policy failures. In a properly functioning welfare system, people would have enough to lead lives of dignity, and would not need to borrow for essentials. But New Zealand gave up on having a properly functioning welfare system long ago, and instead immiserates the poor with debt, which has the added bonus of counting as an asset on the government's books, helping to meet its net debt targets and keep mortgage rates for rich people low. It is simply immoral, and the government should erase it.

We need to fund foodbanks, but they shouldn't exist

Former Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway has a piece in Stuff today pleading for continued government funding for foodbanks and food-rescue organisations, pointing out the high return on investment and the valuable work they've done during the pandemic:

Demand for food relief is at record levels. We’re all experiencing the pain of rising food prices. For many families, food costs have gone beyond what they can cope with. More and more working families are queuing up at foodbanks and free stores.

Many are doing it for the first time in their lives. Most believed they would never have to. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is focussed on the ‘here-and-now’ and on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues. That’s exactly what the food rescue sector is doing: making sure people have bread, butter and some fresh fruit and vegetables too.

A recent study initiated by the Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance showed, conservatively, that for every $1 invested in food rescue, $4.50 worth of social value is returned. That’s a great investment for anyone funding food rescue. The sector doesn’t want the Government to fund everything they do. There will always be a role for sponsors and donors.

But secure Government funding releases organisations to get on with their work. Right now, that's what they need to be doing – feeding the growing number of people going hungry in New Zealand.

All of that is true, and the government should be funding them in the short term. But in the long-term, these organisations simply shouldn't exist. They shouldn't need to exist. The government should be ensuring that everyone has a sufficient income to meet their needs and that no-one goes hungry or has to beg for food relief.

Obviously, that's a huge job, which won't happen overnight. But the government should be committing to doing it, and in doing so, committing to putting the foodbanks out of business. And if they refuse, well, we'll need to vote ourselves a government which will make that commitment.

Labour chooses to be cruel to beneficiaries

RNZ reports that WINZ is systematically racist and misogynist about debt, with Māori being forced deeper into debt, and women and Māori forced to repay at a higher rate than men and Pākehā. From past statistics, most of this "debt" is due to benefits being too low in the first place (and almost all of the rest is due to WINZ fucking up and overpaying people), so its prima facie odious. Meanwhile, high repayment rates grind the poor deeper into poverty. Hardly any of it will ever be paid back. The obvious solution is simply to write it off. But is our "kind", "centre-left" government going to do anything about it? Of course not:

Ultimately, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Auckland Action Against Poverty all wanted a debt amnesty to wipe the slate clean.

Sepuloni said an amnesty would require a law change and was not something being considered.

Bullshit. Just to pick a few examples: at any time, Sepuloni could amend regulation 206 of the Social Security Regulations 2018 to specify that some things (for example, conditional benefits and recoverable grants) are not "debts to the crown". Or she could amend the Ministerial Direction on Debt Recovery to change the rate and method of recovery or allow recovery to be indefinitely deferred. Or, she could jointly give an authorisation with the Minister of Finance under regulation 207(3) to simply write debt off.

Again, the Minister can do this at any time, with the flick of a pen. So when she pretends to be helpless, she is lying. The government can end this cruelty whenever they want. They choose not to. They choose to further immiserate the poor and destitute, out of festering NeoLiberalism. And we should hold them accountable for that choice.

Failure to deliver

Remember the Welfare Expert Advisory Group? When it reported back in 2019, it found that the welfare system was "no longer fit for purpose and needs fundamental change". You'd think a "centre-left" government would be eager to fix things, but you'd be wrong: Labour has been dragging its feet like a farmer responding to climate change:

In February 2019, WEAG's experts delivered their report calling for complete reform of the welfare system. It provided 42 key recommendations and 126 detailed recommendations.

However in the second annual review, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has found progress to be "slow, patchy and piecemeal" with 22 key recommendations minimally or partially implemented.

CPAG researchers and report co-authors Caitlin Neuwelt-Kearns and Professor Emeritus Innes Asher warn at the pace the Government is moving, it could take "decades" to implement the proposed welfare reforms.

As with KiwiBuild, its basicly a long litany of non-delivery. The cost of this foot-dragging? More people in poverty, more kids in hospital, more blighted lives. But why would Ministers care about that, when they're paid $217,000 a year, plus expenses and slush fund?

Government of kindness?

Remember John Campbell's "Feed the kids" campaign? Free school lunches are one of the most effective education policy interventions we can make, boosting attendance and improving learning outcomes. Currently the government funds them for the 25% of children living in the poorest areas of New Zealand. But poor kids whose schools aren't in South Auckland or Aranui or Highbury miss out. Newshub is pushing again for the programme to be expanded so that everyone gets fed. Jacinda Ardern's answer? No:

But despite overwhelming evidence free lunches work to keep students in school and learning, the Government won't commit to making it universal.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told The AM Show although she, in principle, supports universal free school lunches, it's "a matter of prioritisation".

"I don't have a problem with unlimited lunches. I think that would be great... But I have to prioritise, and it is quite costly to roll out and I have to ask the question 'is that the next step for us?'"

The Government hasn't costed what it would take to provide free lunches across Aotearoa, but Ardern says the current program costs "hundreds of millions".

The current cost is $220 million to feed 200,000 children. According to Wikipedia there are around 760,000 schoolkids in New Zealand. So, quadruple it, and we're talking around $850 million. This is serious government money, but to put it in context, its less than the cost of a single road in Auckland - or just one of the gold-plated anti-submarine warfare aircraft the government is buying to prop up the American weapons industry.

Decisions on spending at this level are fundamentally about priorities. And Jacinda Ardern, who promised to "bring kindness back", would rather have pollution-boosting roads and war-toys for the generals than well-fed, well-educated kids. I guess she just has a different definition of "kindness" to the rest of us.

An open door waiting to be pushed on

While it has made a lot of noise about inequality, Labour has resolutely avoided reversing the 1990 benefit cuts and improving living standards for the poorest in our society. Meanwhile, 70% of kiwis think they should:

A survey has found seven out of 10 New Zealanders believe the government should increase income support for those on low wages or not in paid work.

The UMR poll was commissioned by a group of more than 40 organisations, including unions, social service providers, and kaupapa Māori groups.

It found approval for increasing income support was largely consistent across salary groups, age ranges, renters and owners; and across the political spectrum.

There was a majority of support by voters for the four major parties, led by Greens' supporters at 89 percent in favour.

This is the sort of level of support that normally makes something non-controversial, except for the freaks (see also: strengthening gun laws after Christchurch, or keeping the borders closed during a pandemic). It represents a historic opportunity for Labour to reverse a huge injustice and make us a better society. But knowing Labour, they'll probably squander it, for fear of upsetting the 26% who disagree, who would never vote for them anyway.

Labour's "kindness" extends only to the rich

Yesterday, over fifty charitable and community groups released an open letter calling for the government to raise benefits before christmas, arguing that it would decrease poverty, reduce health costs, and lead to better outcomes for children. The "government of kindness"'s response? Yeah, nah:

Speaking at her post-cabinet press conference (skip to 27 mins in the video) yesterday, Jacinda Ardern said that she had considered it, but said “this is not going to be an issue that gets resolved within one week or one month or indeed one term”...

[...]

From Ardern’s perspective, making such changes would be “substantial”, and “would have a knock on effect on budgets into the future.” She agreed with the premise of a question around improving the lives of beneficiaries also having positive flow-on effects on matters like improved health outcomes, but reiterated that it was a change that couldn’t be made at this time, on top of existing boosts in support.

Meanwhile, Labour has ruled out a wealth tax, a capital gains tax, or any increase in taxation beyond their derisory re-imposition of a (low) top tax rate on people who earn more than backbench Labour MP's. The message is clear: their "kindness" extends only to rich people, who will be exempted from paying their fair share of the costs of the pandemic (or society in general). As for poor kids, they can keep on starving. Which once again invites the question: what is Labour for, exactly, if they're not going to ever deliver anything?

Unsurprising

In utterly unsurprising news, research has shown that if you give one group of people twice as much money as another, they're better off:

People on the 12-week Covid income relief payment are faring better than those on the benefit, new survey data shows.

The University of Auckland, Child Poverty Action Group, Auckland Action Against Poverty and FIRST Union are collaborating on the survey to compare the experiences of people receiving different types of income support.

The Covid income relief payment provides $490 a week for people who have lost full-time work because of the pandemic, whereas some people on the jobseeker benefit get just $250.

It also seems that the government's miserly $25 a week increase to core benefits has had little effect, because it is so utterly inadequate to meet the problem (the problem being that benefit levels were set by taking a starvation level budget, cutting it by 25%, then letting it be eroded by inflation for 30 years). The clear conclusion is that benefit levels need to increase massively - as recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. But will Labour MPs on $180,000 a year pay attention to this evidence when they have already ignored so much? Or is "kindness" something they want to talk about, but never actually practice?