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.

PPPs are still a rort

On Thursday, infrastructure minister Chris Bishop was wanking in the House about the benefits of Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs). So how do they work out in practice? We all know Transmission Gully is a complete shitshow which ultimately had to be completely restructured after the contractor simply refused to complete the work. Meanwhile, in the UK, the first 25-year "build-own-operate" contracts for schools under their Private Finance Initiative are about to end. And of course its a disaster:

Stoke council bosses are locked in dispute over almost 3,000 school building issues just months before England’s biggest education private finance initiative (PFI) contract ends.

Local authority chiefs in Sheffield also fear legal action from trusts if they fail to ensure a PFI company meets contractual obligations to return schools back to state ownership in good condition.

Meanwhile, multi-million-pound court rows have also erupted in Lancashire over alleged defects in a number of schools built through similar deals, which are now coming to an end.

The core problem: maintenance spending costs money, which means lower profits, so PFI contractors didn't want to spend it, instead choosing to run the infrastructure into the ground. And while they have a clear legal requirement to make good at the end of the contract, they are basically taking a "fuck you, make me" approach in an effort to preserve their profits. And national wants to do this to our courthouses and defence bases, not to mention schools and hospitals.

But its not just them. Because it turns out that Labour also loves PPPs - anything to hide debt and make the books look good, while kicking the can down the road. Anything rather than live up to their name and properly tax the rich to pay for the infrastructure and services we need.

We shouldn't let them. PPPs are a rort, which result in the public getting screwed. And any politician who thinks otherwise is either stupid or on the take, and needs to be de-elected.

National's self-serving secrecy protects corruption

One of the many problems with National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law is that the entire process is designed to cut the public out of decision-making and prevent us from having a say. The bill was rammed through its first reading under urgency, its time for submissions was ludicrously short given its complexity, and we won't even get to see the list of projects the government wants fast-track until the committee-stage - by which time there is nothing we can legally do to oppose them. And when the list of those invited to apply is a who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies, some of which are run by government donors or relatives, that simply fails the political hygiene test.

The Official Information Act is meant to be a solution to this. And someone has in fact asked for the list of projects. But surprise, surprise, the government is refusing to release it. Their reasoning however is a little weird:

Bishop’s response went on to explain that because decisions on the bill are yet to be made, “releasing the list of applicants at this time would impact the orderly and effective conduct of executive government”, and “result in extensive lobbying, even campaigning, both for and against applications ahead of Cabinet consideration”. Bishop explicitly feared “attempts would be made to influence Cabinet Ministers”.

The problem here is that there is already "extensive lobbying". its just that its been done by corrupt companies desperate to have their projects fast-tracked (sometimes in secret dinners with corrupt Ministers). But Bishop doesn't have a problem with that. Instead, what he's worried about is "lobbying" by the public. Or, as it is normally called, public participation in government. Promoting that is one of the purposes of the OIA, not to mention an obligation of the public service. By shutting us out and cloaking its dirty dealings under a veil of secrecy, National is simply enabling its own corruption. And we should regard it and its law as permanently tainted by this.

The looting is the point

Last time National was in power, they looted the state, privatising public assets and signing hugely wasteful public-private partnership (PPP) contracts which saw foreign consortiums provide substandard infrastructure while gouging us for profits. You only have to look at the ongoing fiasco of Transmission Gully to see how it was a complete disaster. So of course National are going to do it all again:

The infrastructure minister wants more private sector financing, such as public-private partnerships (PPPs), to pay for major projects.

In a speech to Local government New Zealand on Thursday night, Chris Bishop said he wanted government grant funding to become a last resort for councils.

"My speech talks about some of the things we've been talking about as a government for six months, and we've actually campaigned on - so making greater use of tolls, public private partnerships, things like value capture as well," he told Morning Report on Friday.

So, basically National's promised new motorways are going to be for the rich and for businesses, not for actual people, in order to guarantee a privatisable revenue-stream. And they'll be paying foreigners inflated prices to build those roads, to keep debt off the government's books and so meet a completely artificial and self-imposed debt-target.

This is inherently less efficient than simply borrowing to build, because the private providers will be paying higher interest rates while demanding a huge, government-guaranteed profit. That's the clear lesson from the UK's disastrous Private Finance Initiative. The fact that National is persisting with this leads to the obvious conclusion that the purpose of the policy is in fact the looting, not the infrastructure. Like everything else they're doing, its about paying off donors and cronies with public money - corruption on a grand scale.

Secrecy undermines participation

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 really standard to release a whole lot of Government information, advice and briefings so that people can read it in advance of select committee submissions.

Well, maybe it should be. We're meant to be a democracy, after all - and that means the government both publicly justifying its decisions, and enabling us to participate in them. Enabling that is literally what the Official Information Act is for: "enabl[ing] more effective participation in the making and administration of laws and policies" is right there in the purpose clause. And its there precisely because of government secrecy and over-reach during its last bout of Muldoonism.

Purposefully delaying OIA responses so that everything can be released all at once may be more efficient. But if done with the intention, or even the foreseeable consequence, of delaying public participation by what the Minister has proudly said is the only opportunity we will have is utterly contrary to both the text and the spirit of the Act. The government knew there would be interest in this. They knew that this information would be needed for people to make effective submissions on the bill. And they should have planned for an early proactive release from the start precisely to enable that. If they didn't, they're incompetent. And if - as the article suggests - the Minister instructed them to delay, then he is guilty of a conspiracy against both the Act and our democracy. But once again: unlike overseas laws, our OIA has no teeth, and there are no criminal penalties for such behaviour (let alone ones with a penalty where conviction would result in a Minister losing their seat in Parliament, and thus their job). If we want a transparent and accountable government, putting such penalties in place needs to be a priority.

National's war on renters

When the National government came into office, it complained of a "war on landlords". It's response? Start a war on renters instead:

The changes include re-introducing 90-day "no cause" terminations for periodic tenancies, meaning landlords can end a periodic tenancy without giving any reason.

[...]

Landlords will now only need to give 42 days' notice for ending a tenancy, instead of 63 days, if they want to move themselves or a family member into the property, or if the tenancy agreement notes the property is usually used to house employees, and they want to move an employee into the property.

Landlords will now only need to give 42 days' notice for ending a tenancy, instead of 90 days, if the property is subject to an unconditional agreement for sale requiring vacant possession, according to the Government.

So they're going to make it easier for landlords to throw people out of their homes. And they have the gall to call this "pro-tenant".

So I guess if your landlord throws you out any time over this term, you know who to blame: Chris Bishop. And you should take your revenge on him and his party at the ballot box at the first opportunity.