Labour leader Chris Hipkins believes there are better ways to bring down the cost of housing, electricity and groceries than new taxes.

But in at least three of those areas – electricity, banking and groceries – a third-term Labour-led government would not rule out taxes on excessive profits, should other measures fail to rein them in.

“Tax is not the only way you can tackle inequality,” Hipkins — whose grasp on the prime ministership is looking shakier with every poll — told Mata this week.

• LISTEN TO MATA: Chris Hipkins on taxation – Episode 18
• Other NZ election 2023 reports

“The policies that we are introducing and implementing as a government are actually I think making a meaningful difference on inequality.”

An IRD document released in April, the High-Wealth Individuals Research Project Report, found the wealthiest New Zealanders pay an effective tax rate about half that the rest of us do, largely through untaxed capital gains.

Despite this, support for the idea from his former revenue minister and it being a key plank of likely coalition partner the Greens’ platform, Hipkins has ruled out implementing any kind of wealth tax, should Labour lead the next government.

He has also ruled out a comprehensive capital gains tax, despite the recommendation from the Tax Working Group to target capital gains to ease the burden placed on wage and salary earners.

Housing
Currently, the bright-line test means residential property — aside from the family home in most instances, and a few other situations — attracts a capital gains tax if it is sold sooner than 10 years after purchase. National wants to lower this to two years.

Hipkins said other suggestions — such as a land tax, as proposed by The Opportunities Party — were not on the table.

“It’s not something we’re looking at at the moment,” Hipkins told Mata host Mihingarangi Forbes.

“The main form of land tax we have at the moment is local government rates, which are levied on a combination of land and asset value — whatever sits on top of that land — so we already have that at the moment. We’re not proposing to expand that further.

“The one area where I have seen proposals is around transport infrastructure — that’s what’s called ‘value capture’, which is effectively a form of land tax or land levy, based on where you’re building new roads and who’s capturing the value from those.

“We have left that open. The National Party are promising they’re effectively going to do it — we’ve left it open as an option, but we’re not proposing to go further than that.”

Asked why the average Kiwi had to pay about 20 percent of their income in tax (on average) while landowners making money that way did not, Hipkins said the gains should be “realised” before they were taxed.

“Levying people based on assets they own that they may never realise the gain from, it wouldn’t be an equitable way of taxing people.”

He gave the example of a family-owned farm which might be “worth millions”, but the present owners would not necessarily have the income to pay a land tax.

Ultimately, the key to making homes affordable for both buyers and renters was increasing supply, Hipkins said.

“The fundamental challenge around housing in New Zealand is we haven’t built enough houses over a long period of time — we’re talking decades — to keep up with population growth that we have. No matter how you fund it, it’s never going to be possible to turn that around overnight because building the volume of houses that we need to build takes time.

“We’ve really ramped up our house building programme and we’re seeing real results coming out of that now. My message is really, we can’t afford to turn back. We can’t afford to stop . . . we’ve got to keep it going.”

Labour originally promised 100,000 homes by 2028 under its KiwiBuild plan. Hipkins said so far it had only managed about 3000.

“It’s not hit the targets we had originally envisaged for KiwiBuild, but we’ve found other ways of actually delivering on the overall approach. For example, scaling up our state house build programme . . . actually in terms of targeting the demographic who are homeless and the most vulnerable, that’s actually going to reach that demographic faster than KiwiBuild would be able to reach them.”

He said about 13,000 new state homes had been built since 2017 with “more coming”, and the private sector had also become “very active” too. Stats NZ figures showed consents peaked at over 50,000 for the first time in 2022, and have  slightly slipped since then.

Electricity and banking
In the last financial year, the big four energy companies — Contact, Genesis, Meridian and Mercury — reported a combined $2.7 billion in profits.

The big banks have also reported near-record profits of late, as interest rates rise.

Asked if they could be subject to an excess profits tax, Hipkins said his preference would be to use regulatory measures and increased competition to keep prices in check.

“[The electricity] market is in a period of significant transition as we move away from burning fossil fuels to a much greater reliance on renewable energy, which will mean prices ultimately don’t grow as fast as they would if we were still going to be relying on fossil fuels.

“Some of that money will be money that’s reinvested, for example, to actually make sure we actually have the renewable electricity generation assets that we need to be able to meet that demand.”

That lines up closely with what the power retailers themselves have said, Contact Energy chief executive Mike Fuge saying there was an “incredible amount of investment that’s going in to the industry at the moment to decarbonise”.

Hipkins left the possibility of taxing excess profits in both industries on the table, however.

“I would never rule out … that if companies continue to make excessive profits, the government might do more in that area. But my first port of call would be more in the regulatory space to make sure they aren’t making those kind of big, unjustifiable profits in the first place.”

He placed the blame for rising electricity prices on the market reforms of the late 1990s, despite Labour being in power — either alone or in coalition — for about 15 of the past 23 years.

“The challenge is you can’t unscramble an egg — once that’s been done, it’s been done . . .   I want to see us focused on creating a renewable energy electricity market, which includes the ability for people to generate their own electricity — more solar and more initiatives like that . . .  that is actually going to be cheaper.”

As for the banks, which do not have any need to invest in overhauling the entire way they do business, Hipkins said there had been some “pretty robust conversations”.

“It is not an area where I’m not ruling out doing more things in the future, but my focus really is on making sure that that market is competitive, rather than necessarily introducing new forms of taxation.”

He blamed some of the profits the banks had made on the pandemic, and that did not mean “those profits are going to continue” in the post-pandemic environment.

Groceries
Food prices have been rising faster than inflation generally, between 9 and 12 percent annually over the past couple of years. Labour has promised to combat this by cutting GST off fruit and veges, a policy widely panned by economists and tax experts.

Even if retailers did pass the savings on to customers, fruit and veges would likely still be more expensive on average than they were a year ago.

The Commerce Commission in 2022 estimated the supermarkets were making about $430 million a year in excess profits.

Hipkins said the government had been doing more to help rein in grocery prices, such as appointing a grocery commissioner and breaking up the supermarket duopoly on wholesale supply chains.

“The work that we’re doing to change wholesale distribution supply chains – at the moment they’re locked up by two big companies – so that more competitors have access to that, that will actually make a difference in making the market more competitive, so that those kind of excess profits that we’ve seen cannot be generated in the first place.

“It won’t happen overnight, but I think we will see progress over the next year or two.”

Produced for RNZ and TVNZ by the Aotearoa Media Collective. Made with the support of Te Māngo Pāho. Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Opposition National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis was among three political leaders who made a surprising commitment at a debate last night to build 1000 state houses in Auckland each year.

Labour Party leader and caretaker prime minister Chris Hipkins and Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson also agreed to do so, with resounding “yes” responses to the direct question from co-convenors Sister Margaret Martin of the Sisters of Mercy Wiri and Nik Naidu of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub.

All three political leaders also pledged to have quarterly consultations with a new community alliance formed to address Auckland’s housing and homeless crisis and other social issues.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Interview with Te Ohu co-chair Nina Santos
• Labour, National and Greens commit to 1000 more state houses a year in Auckland
• National makes commitment to build 1,000 state houses
• Other NZ election 2023 reports

The “non-political partisan” public rally at the Lesieli Tonga Auditorium in Favona — which included about 1000 attendees representing 45 community and social issues groups — was hosted by the new alliance Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga.

Filipina lawyer and co-chair of the meeting Nina Santos, of the YWCA, declared: “If we don’t have a seat at the table, it’s because we’re on the menu.”

Later, in an interview with RNZ Morning Report today, Santos said: “It was so great to see [the launch of Te Ohu] after four years in the making”.

‘People power’
“It was so good to see our allies, our villages and our communities — our 45 organisations — show up last night to demonstrate people power

“Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga is a broad-based alliance, the first of its kind in Tāmaki Makauarau. The members include Māori groups, women’s groups, unions and faith-based organisations.

“They have all came together to address issues that the city is facing — housing is a basic human right.”

She chaired the evening with Father Henry Rogo from Fiji, of the Diocese of Polynesia in NZ.

Speakers telling heart-rending stories included Dinah Timu, of E Tū union, about “decent work”, and Tayyaba Khan, Darwit Arshak and Eugene Velasco, who relating their experiences as migrants, former refugees and asylum seekers.

The crowd was also treated to performances by Burundian drummers, Colombian dancers and Te Whānau O Pātiki Kapahaka at Te Kura O Pātiki Rosebank School, all members of the new Te Ohu collective.

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today, journalist Simon Wilson reported:

“Hipkins told the crowd of about 500 . . . that he grew up in a state house built by the Labour government in the 1950s. ‘And I’m very proud that we are building more state houses today than at any time since the 1950s,’ he said.

“’Labour has exceeded the 1000 commitment. We’ve built 12,000 social house units since 2017, and 7000 of them have been in Tāmaki Makaurau. But there is more work to be done.’

“He reminded the audience that the last National government had sold state houses, not built them.

“Davidson said that housing was ‘a human right and a core public good’. The Greens’ commitment was greater than that of the other parties: it wanted to build 35,000 more public houses in the next five years, and resource the construction sector and the government’s state housing provider Kāinga Ora to get it done.

“’We will also put a cap on rent increases and introduce a minimum income guarantee, to lift people out of poverty.’

“Willis told the audience there were 2468 people on the state house waiting list in Auckland when Labour took office in 2017, and now there are 8175.

“’Here’s the thing. If you don’t like the result you’re getting, you don’t keep doing the same thing. We don’t think social housing should just be provided by Kāinga Ora. We want the Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity and other community housing providers to be much more involved.’

“Members of that sector were at the meeting and one confirmed the community housing sector is already building a substantial proportion of new social housing.”

In 1988, our National Housing Commission declared, “New Zealand does not have the huge, insoluble problems of homelessness and substandard housing which confront many other nations.”

This was the final report of the then disestablished commission, which to that point had reported detailed data every five years to keep the country and policy-makers informed about what we had once considered the foundation of stable society — a home for New Zealanders to call their own.

I was born six years after that report, and in those years and across my lifetime, deliberate political choices — specifically, political choices by people sitting in Parliament — have shredded that once-guaranteed housing dignity and stability.

• READ MORE: Greens’ rental price control policy: Davidson rubbishes criticisms
• Green Party’s pledge to renters: What you need to know
• The Green Party housing policy

They traded it for a game of Monopoly, which, the pecuniary interests register tells us, also happens to disproportionately benefit around half of the “representatives” in there with interests in more than one property (notably, approximately just 2 percent of the general population are landlords).

This dire situation is the direct consequence of political decisions, and it is disproportionately hurting the 1.4 million renters in this country that our Parliament, by majority, and as an overwhelming majority of comfortable homeowners, continues to structurally disempower.

In spite of this, we have made some slow progress. In 2017, the Greens worked with Labour to introduce Healthy Homes Standards and a slate of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, removing no-cause evictions and allowing renters to take claims to the Tenancy Tribunal anonymously.

Some standards, we obviously agreed, were better than nothing. A set of rules means it’s clear how a game should be played, but those rules become pretty meaningless if there’s no consistent referee monitoring and enforcing them.

Compliance not tracked
Unfortunately, that’s what the Healthy Homes Standards have become. My parliamentary written questions last year showed the government isn’t tracking how many private rentals are compliant.

It doesn’t know how many landlords and property managers have decided to self-exclude their properties from compliance. It has no tabs on the cottage industry of companies that have cropped up to verify these standards, let alone the variance in their approaches.

This leaves the third of New Zealanders who rent left to shoulder the burden of enforcing these basic rules which are supposed to protect them.

It’s a funny thing that whenever the Greens mention renters, we’re immediately shouted down and told that the problem is, somehow, that landlords aren’t given enough free rein. That the solution is more commodification of basic human rights.

Ironically, this is exactly what the National Housing Commission warned against back in 1988, that shifting of responsibility from the state to the private sector would, “add little to the total housing supply while allowing private landlords and property speculators to make even higher charges for a non-expanding supply of housing… rais[ing] the purchase price of land and rented property”.

We now know, viscerally, how right they were. Whatever metric you choose, we have the most expensive housing in the world.

The Accommodation Supplement, once rationalised in the state-housing sell-off to help support lower income New Zealanders pushed into the private sector, is now paid out to the tune of $2 billion a year with evidence showing it primarily serves to just bid up rental prices and effectively subsidise private landlords.

Special tax preferential
We remain one of the only countries in the developed world that continues to provide special tax treatment and preference to properties, incentivising the flow of capital into unproductive property speculation, or what University of Auckland researchers called, “a politically condoned, finance-fuelled casino”.

In less than 40 years, political decisions have not only made housing one of the major drivers of poverty and inequality in this country, but one of the major determinants of both physical and mental health, not to mention education achievement and school attendance.

So, who pays the cost?

Most immediately, it’s the 1.4 million renting New Zealanders, who Statistics New Zealand tells us spend more of their income on older, smaller, mouldier, lower quality housing.

Renting is no longer a transient state — unless you’re talking about the literal transience which sees renters in this country maintaining their tenancies for, on average, just 16 months at a time.

Almost all of us will know families with children and friends in their 30s and 40s who are flatting. A quarter of retirees don’t own their own home.

This didn’t happen overnight. It happened within a generation of political decisions that sold our human right to housing to the highest bidder.

As depressing as that may be, it makes clear that the status quo is not an inevitability. It can and must change if we want any hope of a fairer society.

The good news is the Greens have unveiled our plan to fix it all.

Chlöe Swarbrick is the Green Party MP for Auckland Central. This article was originally published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

The Green Party made waves recently when it proposed to tax net wealth more than NZ$2 million for individuals and $4 million for couples. As part of a broad range of actions, the policy aims to “end poverty”.

Reactions ranged from endorsement to accusations it was fuelled by envy, but the debate signalled what could become a major election issue: the wealth gap and how to fix it.

The claim it amounts to an “envy tax” assumes all wealth has been fully earned and fully taxed in the first place. But we know that’s not the case.

• READ MORE: Proving the wealthiest New Zealanders pay low tax rates is a good start – now comes the hard part
• New Zealand’s tax system is under the spotlight (again). What needs to change to make it fair?
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A good portion of the wealth accumulated at the top is attributable to fortunate circumstances generating significant tax-free gains.

Inland Revenue’s recent survey of the wealthiest 311 New Zealand families revealed an average net worth of $276 million. At the same time, we know many households are struggling with the rising cost of living.

According to Stats NZ, around 155,000 households feel their incomes aren’t sufficient to meet everyday basic needs. Foodbanks report ever-rising numbers of families unable to feed themselves.

The major source of this lopsided wealth is the housing market. New Zealand has seen the biggest housing boom in the Western world. Property owners have ridden the wave to make large tax-free capital gains, while others languish in substandard emergency housing or are forced to live in garages and cars.

Far too much of our scarce labour, building materials, imported fixtures and land have been diverted to unproductive high-end housing, leaving too little to meet the real housing need. Because it isn’t taxed properly, investing in housing has been encouraged as a way to accumulate wealth.

Right now, there is enough money tied up in untaxed wealth to lift every single family in this country out of poverty.#nzpol pic.twitter.com/f3ODNOK9hH

— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) June 12, 2023

The trouble with a wealth tax
While the Greens’ wealth tax is a useful start to a wider discussion about inequality, it inevitably creates obstacles that in the end may be too difficult to overcome.

Probably the biggest hurdle is that this kind of tax can be incredibly complex and would provoke endless debate about what should be included.

The Greens’ proposal, for example, would capture business assets, shares, art above a certain value, and cars above $50,000. But what if you have two cars worth $49,000 each — why should they be excluded when one valued at $80,000 is included?

And how is debt factored into calculations of net wealth? House mortgages may be straightforward, but what about credit card debt, car finance or borrowing to finance overseas travel?

Not a capital gains tax
For all these reasons, it’s time to get away from debating notions of a confiscatory wealth tax and make the issue simply one of treating all income the same for tax purposes.

Instead of a complicated net wealth tax on everything, let’s start with the biggest culprit — housing. This would address the under-taxation of income from holding housing as an asset.

This is not the same as a capital gains tax — those days are over. Numerous tax working groups have failed over 30 years to make headway on this. Politically it is a dead duck.

Besides, the real problems — inequality and misallocation of resources — wouldn’t be touched by a capital gains tax. Such a tax can only apply to gains made on houses sold in the future, not the accumulated gains over many years, and it will always exempt the family home.

Tax specialists warn over intricacies of capital gains tax https://t.co/YqzhInWjBW

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) April 26, 2023

How a house tax works
Instead, let’s take the total value of all housing held by each individual, subtract registered first mortgages, and allow a $1 million exemption to reflect that everyone is entitled to a basic family home.

Then we treat this net equity as if it was in a term deposit generating a taxable interest return. When houses are held in trusts and companies, in most cases the income would be taxed at the trust or company rate with no exemption.

Calculated annually and pegged to the capital value of properties, this effective income would be taxed at the person’s marginal tax rate. It would affect those with second homes, multiple rentals, high-value properties — but without significantly affecting the great majority of homeowners who have much less than $1 million of net equity.

Thus a couple living in a $3 million house with a $1 million mortgage would fall under the threshold.

This approach would help put investment in housing, after a basic home, on the same footing as money in the bank or in shares. Better choices for the use of scarce housing resources should follow.

Landlords would no longer need expensive accountants to minimise taxable rental income. And it would reduce the blight of “ghost houses” and residential land-banking.

A circuit breaker
The simplicity of this income approach means the government can build on the existing tax system. It lives up to the mantra of a “broad base, low rate” tax system and affects only the very wealthy and those whose tax rates are highest.

Moreover, it is possible to implement quickly, using existing property valuations and registered mortgages, unlike a net wealth tax where the devil is in the contentious detail.

The effect should be positive for those struggling in the housing market, as more housing for sale or rent is opened up. Good landlords should welcome the greater simplicity.

In the longer term, the extra taxable income could produce revenue for redistribution and social investment. Critically, however, it would start to give the right price signals to reduce the over-investment in luxury housing and real estate held for capital gain.

The approach is essentially a circuit breaker that can simply and quickly address the accumulation of wealth by a small group of people.

Crucially, it has a sound economic rationale. By taking the first step and including luxury and investment housing returns that are currently under the radar, it reduces the advantages of holding housing rather than more productive investments.

Dr Susan St John, honorary associate professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A fortnight after the floods in Tāmaki Makaurau and as Aotearoa New Zealand braces for Cyclone Gabriel the reality is setting in for many.

Mother of four Kataraina Toka’s Mount Roskill home is yellow-stickered after being damaged by flooding on January 27.

For now, she is living in a two-bedroom hotel room in Onehunga.

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“We’re getting there. It’s hard, it sucks you know being cooped up in somewhere so small with four kids. But better than not having a roof over our heads at all I suppose.”

Toka is looking for a new rental home but like many others is struggling.

“If you think it was bad before, it’s worse now. It’s hard, especially when you know you’ve lost all your ID because somebody dropped their phone in the water or we’ve got no car to get around so it’s just making it to where we can.

“But we’re just grateful for the support that we’ve got.”

Displaced whānau
Māori health provider Waipareira Trust has been helping many whānau in West Tāmaki who have been displaced.

Management lead Jole Thomson said one family in particular stood out.

“Their house was one of the first ones to be red stickered — it was destroyed. Kuia, kaumātua, and they’ve got care and custody over their mokopuna who has special needs and house concerns.

“They’re getting kicked out, basically, of their emergency accommodation.”

Other whānau stayed at schools such as Mount Roskill’s Wesley Primary School which was turned into an evacuation centre when the floods hit.

But some tamariki haven’t been able to return to kura.

Wesley School principal Lou Reddy has noticed the absence of some of his students.

High-risk situation
“We’ve got six that we know are in that high-risk situation where they lost their car, lost their home, are in a temporary housing situation and we haven’t been able to get them here.

“The others, there’s 10 that we haven’t been able to get a hold of at all.”

Thomson said that was a common situation, with some whānau no longer having the resources they need.

“We’re working with a number of whānau, helping them pay for things like school uniforms and a lot of that we’re supporting, they don’t want help. I was watching people trying to dry school shoes so the kids could wear them to school.

“But they’d been destroyed, they had been in raw sewage.”

The Ark Project in Mt Roskill, which works to assist vulnerable families, was a massive part of the evacuation effort and organisers estimate it helped more than 5000 people with kai parcels.

Barely anything left
Co-ordinator Peter Leilua said each day they started off with plenty of supplies but by the end there was barely anything left.

The team did not have enough resources to keep providing for whānau, he said.

“That’s our biggest push to the government, Ark needs a lot of that support, because in our community and Wesley, Puketāpapa, Mount Roskill, we got hit the most.

Many families were being placed temporary accommodation some distance from their community.

“It’s not just around the corner. They’re placing them at Greenlane, Onehunga, some are out South or East and that’s just too far for them to travel,” Leilua said.

Damage from the flooding has extended beyond financial and material loss.

Thomson said whānau have had to throw away taonga or family treasures.

“The photo albums, the whānau heirlooms, the korowai that have been handed down for generations just absolutely destroyed and that’s heartbreaking for whānau.

“Ashes, you know whānau not knowing how to manage those sorts of things, the remains of their loved ones,” Thomson said.

While whānau such Kataraina Toka’s continue to try to rebuild, many know they’ve got a long journey ahead.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Well, no one saw that coming. For those in New Zealand relieved that Christmas was over because it means politics resumes, this week held the promise of a cabinet reshuffle, the possible unveiling of some meaty new policy and — if we were really lucky — the announcement of the date of this year’s general election.

We got the last of these (it will be on October 14). What we also got, however, was the announcement that in three weeks’ time one of the most popular — and powerful — prime ministers in recent New Zealand history will be stepping down.

It isn’t difficult to divine why Jacinda Ardern has reached her decision. As she herself put it:

I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have but also one of the more challenging. You cannot and should not do it unless you have a full tank plus a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges.

She has had more than her fair share of such challenges: a domestic terror attack in Christchurch, a major natural disaster at Whakaari-White Island, a global pandemic and, most recently, a cost-of-living crisis.

• READ MORE: From ‘pretty communist’ to ‘Jabcinda’ – what’s behind the vitriol directed at Jacinda Ardern?
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On top of that, of course, she has had to chart a way through the usual slate of policy issues that have bedevilled governments for decades in this country, including the cost of housing, child poverty, inequality and the climate crisis.

Clearly, the Ardern tank is empty.

But it isn’t just about the policy. Along with other women politicians, Ardern faces a constant barrage of online and in-person abuse — from anti-vaxxers, misogynists and sundry others who simply don’t like her.

As others with direct experience of this have written, the deterioration in civic discourse in New Zealand has been profound and disturbing, especially since the violent occupation of the parliamentary precinct in early 2022.

#BREAKING: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will not seek re-election and has revealed the date she will stand down https://t.co/UET5ZoszD1 #Newshub pic.twitter.com/fPAROdI5l2

— Newshub (@NewshubNZ) January 19, 2023

Ardern has spent the past two years right on the frontline of this sort of toxicity. This has taken a toll — on her, on her family, on those close to her — and has played a part in her decision.

A tale of two legacies
In time, however, what people will remember most about Ardern’s term in office is the manner of her response to serious crises. She has faced more than any other New Zealand prime minister in recent history and, in the main, has responded with calmness, dignity and clarity.

There are always competing points of view on these matters, of course. But her refusal to engage in the rhetoric of abuse or disparagement (her recent reference in Parliament to an opposition MP as an “arrogant prick” aside), which has become the stock-in-trade of too many elected representatives, has marked her out in a world in which abuse has become normalised in politics.

Critics may deride this as “mere performance”. But politics is — above all else — a matter of controlling the narrative. And for a long time Ardern and her team were very good at this.

That said, there is plenty she hasn’t achieved. She came to power promising transformation, but inequality and poverty remain weeping sores on the body politic.

Her Labour government has not been able to alleviate the chronic shortage of public housing that has existed for many years, and workforces in public health, education and construction face challenges no future government will relish.

No obvious successor
Attention now turns to Labour’s leadership and the party’s caucus vote this Sunday. A majority of 60 percent plus one more vote is required to secure the position, and Labour will be hoping this is what happens.

If not, the party’s constitution requires it to establish an electoral college comprising the caucus (which gets 40 percent of the total vote), the wider party membership (40 percent) and affiliate members (20 percent). This would be time-consuming, potentially divisive and a distraction.

Look for a clear-cut decision to be announced on Sunday.

The other big surprise has been Finance Minister and Ardern’s deputy Grant Robertson ruling himself out of the contest. Many people assumed he was the logical successor, but his decision opens the field wide.

Even including Ardern’s inner circle of David Parker, Chris Hipkins and Megan Woods, the bench is not that deep, and none of the candidates has anything like Ardern’s wattage. The shoes needing filling are on the large side of big.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese said she has “shown the world how to lead with intellect and strength”. https://t.co/Mkg8u82vxL

— Stuff (@NZStuff) January 19, 2023

Mixed news for National
Unsurprisingly, Ardern’s announcement has dominated the news cycle in New Zealand, leaving no room for consideration of another important event this week — the National Party’s first caucus of the year.

One might imagine that on hearing news of Ardern’s resignation there might have been jubilation in some sections of the party. Labour’s polling has been falling for some time now, while support for centre-right parties National and ACT has been climbing.

Ardern is still significantly more popular than National’s leader, Christopher Luxon, and he will likely be quietly pleased he won’t have to face Ardern on the campaign trail. She was good at that stuff; he is still learning.

National will be thinking, too, that some of the support for Labour that is tied to Ardern herself — including the support Labour received in 2020 from people who habitually vote for National — can now be peeled off and brought home.

Wider National heads will counsel caution, however. As the covid years have rolled by, Ardern has become an increasingly polarising figure.

By stepping aside now she gives her party plenty of time to instal a new leadership group that can draw a line under the past three years and focus on the future.

It is far too soon to tell, of course, if the country will buy a new narrative in which Ardern is not the key character. But she is giving Labour every chance of having a decent crack at it.

Leaving on her own terms
Are there broader lessons in all of this for international audiences? Depressingly, perhaps the key one concerns the price paid by elected representatives in these times of polarisation and the normalisation of abuse.

Around the world, women politicians in particular have borne the brunt of the toxicity and there are many who will see in Ardern’s departure a silencing of a woman’s voice.

On the upside, perhaps there are also things to be learned about the exercise of political leadership. Ardern has chosen the time and manner of her leaving — she has not lost the position because of internal ructions or because of an election loss.

Her reputation will be burnished as a result, and if anything it will generate even more political capital for her — although whether or not she chooses to distribute that currency on the international stage remains unclear. But you rather suspect she might at some point.

For now, though, she will be looking forward to walking her child to school and finally being able to marry her long-term partner. After a tumultuous and more-than-testing time in office, that may yet be reward enough.

Dr Richard Shaw is professor of politics, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Nearly 40 percent of Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand live in crowded homes — almost four times that of the general population, according to a new report.

The report by Statistics New Zealand was based on data from the 2018 Census, which showed 39 percent lived in a home that required additional bedrooms for the number of people living in it, which shows no progress has been made since 2013.

The data showed nearly 60 percent of households with Pacific people had more than five residents. But with more than 65 percent of Pacific people living in rented homes, just 4 percent of rented homes had five or more bedrooms.

An organisation supporting Pacific families said, while intergenerational living and big households are not new to the Pacific community, there was an urgent need to support people suffering from the negative impacts of overcrowded living.

The Fono’s spokesperson Frank Koloi said during the pandemic, large Pacific families were already straining from the pressures of looking after visiting relatives stranded in the lockdowns.

He said the unaffordability of homes and the rising cost of living is another blow to intergenerational households struggling to get by.

Koloi said there were a range of other issues typically seen in crowded homes.

‘Truancy in schools’
“From truancy in schools, family violence … the current outbreak of measles and rheumatic fever is still prominent within Pacific families in south Auckland,” he said.

“So there’s a real need to address the overcrowded homes in terms of resourcing these families.”

Koloi said the Fono was supporting these families with wrap-around services, including budgeting advice, supporting kids going back to school and helping people into higher paying jobs through upskilling.

Stats NZ’s wellbeing and housing statistics manager Sarah Drake said the current growing Pacific population was often unsupported, particularly in large urban areas like Auckland — where even unsuitable housing can be unaffordable to rent or own.

The data also showed more than half of people living in crowded homes had a problem with damp, cold, mould, or needed major repairs.

Stats NZ’s principal analyst of census insights, Rosemary Goodyear, said they would like to see more people from the Pacific community do the Census this year so that their circumstances and voices could be heard.

In 2018, just 35 percent of Pacific peoples lived in owner-occupied homes, compared with 64 percent of the total population.

The homelessness rate for Pacific peoples was 578 people per 10,000 — more than double that of the general population.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

A new $100 million apartment complex is coming to Manukau — Auckland’s heart of Pacific communities.

But you’ll have to be aged at least 55 to get in.

Kāinga Ora is expected to start construction of the 123 apartments in Osterley Way in March. The 16-storey tower will include 94 one-bedroom and 29 two-bedroom apartments.

• READ MORE: Other NZ housing crisis reports

The government said it was necessary to target targeting specific age groups to match an increasing demand from “older customers”.

“Kāinga Ora recognises our older customers have specific housing needs, which we are addressing through senior housing developments such as the proposed project in Manukau,” regional director for Counties Manukau Angela Pearce said.

Pearce said one in five of the agency’s homes in Counties-Manukau had someone over 65 living in it, while 670 of its homes in the area were occupied by sole tenants in the same age group.

“With an aging population, Kāinga Ora recognises the importance of dedicated senior housing where our older tenants can live well, feel safe and secure, both in their homes and the community.”

Two years on state house list
Maureen O’Meara, 75, spent two years on the state house waiting list and was renting a two-bedroom unit in Pakuranga for $420 a week until earlier this year.

“I had $17 left a week after paying the rent,” O’Meara said. “Being on a pension and paying market rent meant I didn’t have a lot of money left to live on.”

O’Meara managed to find somewhere more affordable in May after she was put in touch with Haumaru Housing, a joint venture between Auckland Council and the Selwyn Foundation.

But O’Meara said the Manukau development reflects an increasing number of people reaching retirement without a home.

“And I think there’s going to be a need for more places like it,” she said.

Age Concern Auckland chief executive Kevin Lamb said it’s important the development was close to public transport and community facilities.

“We think it’s high time older people had accommodation that is new and more appropriate for their needs.”

Big part of pension on housing
Recently-released research by Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission showed superannuitants still paying rent were more likely to be spending 40 percent or more of their pension on housing.

While long-term trends suggest more older New Zealanders are likely to still be renting in their retirement.

Te Ara Ahunga Ora director of policy Dr Suzy Morrissey said with declining home ownership rates there was a growing need for public housing and accommodation for those aged 55 and over.

“When NZ Super was introduced, it was with the underlying assumption that those accessing it would be mortgage-free homeowners,” she said.

“Today, the reality is very different. There are declining home ownership rates, more people needing to continue working longer because they still have mortgages to pay, are paying rent, or haven’t been able to save enough to retire.”

• Auckland is currently in the middle of the local body elections with a Pacific candidate, Fa’anānā Efeso Collins, one of the two top contenders for mayor of the super city.

Deception and political spin crossed new boundaries this week with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, under pressure to explain the housing catastrophe in Rotorua, making the absurd statement:

“Our long-term plan is to get them into sustainable, long-term safe housing. It’s why for instance we’ve worked so hard to now have built 10 percent of all the state houses in New Zealand.”

Meaningless, ludicrous and irrelevant.

• READ MORE: Christopher Luxon denies National government’s actions caused state housing supply issue
• TVNZ’s Sunday showed devastating scenes from Rotorua and the enduring power of TV

Why was she not challenged by journalists on this preposterous statement?

The government has been demolishing state houses almost as fast as it builds them so that the net increase in state houses over the last five years stands at a piddling 1100 per year for a waiting list of 26,664. The waiting list has increased five-fold since Labour came to power in 2017.

Labour is taking us backwards on state housing at a spectacular rate.

And neither is it the fault of the previous National government. Labour has kept the policy settings for state house building the same as applied under National — right down to maintaining the same tough criteria to enable a low-income tenant or family to get on the waiting list.

Largest Labour privatisation since 1980s
The awful reason Labour is demolishing state houses and selling the land is to provide funding for Kainga Ora. The government doesn’t want to borrow to build, which any sensible government would, so it is forcing Kainga Ora to sell land and properties to do this.

It’s the largest privatisation of state assets by Labour since the 1980s.

Where are the journalists to put some simple questions to the Prime Minister?

• Why has Labour allowed the state house waiting list to INCREASE FIVE FOLD (from 5,000 in late 2017 to over 26,000 in 2022) with no effective policy response?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to produce just 1,100 net new state houses per year for a state house waiting list of over 26,000? (When Labour came to power there were 63,209 state houses which has increased to just 68,765 by June this year).
• Why are the number of children living in grotty motels STILL INCREASING?
• Why is the number of children living in cars STILL INCREASING?
• Why are the number of children in tents STILL INCREASING?
• Why is Labour still ONLY FUNDING 1600 new IRRS places (for state house and social housing providers combined) each year for the more than 26,000 families on the state house waiting list?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to keep the proportion of state house at just 3.6% of total housing stock when it was 5.4 percent in 1990?
• Why has Labour not instigated an industrial-scale state house building programme such as the first Labour government did in the 1930s? (Labour then built 3500 state houses each year – equivalent to 10,000 today on a population basis).
• Why is the government planning to sell 55 to 60 percent of crown land in Auckland to private property developers when we have a housing catastrophe for low-income New Zealanders?

Where are the journalists to expose this prime ministerial spin?

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

Crisis is a word often used in politics and the media — the covid crisis, the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, and so on. The term usually refers to single events at odds with common ideas of what’s acceptable, fair or good.

But in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere, Indigenous policy can be portrayed as a different kind of crisis altogether.

Indeed, it can often just seem like one crisis after another, one policy failure after another: poor health, poor education, all kinds of poor statistics. A kind of permanent crisis.

• READ MORE: Indigenous recognition is more than a Voice to Government – it’s a matter of political equality
• Racism, exclusion and tokenism: how Māori and Pacific science graduates are still marginalised at university
• Can colonialism be reversed? The UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides some answers

Policy success, on the other hand, often doesn’t fit the crisis narrative: record low Māori unemployment, for instance, or the Māori economy being worth NZ$70 billion and forecast to grow 5 percent annually.

It may be that crisis makes better headlines. But we also need to ask why, and what the deeper implications might be for Indigenous peoples and policy in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.

Colonialism as crisis
Last month, I published a journal article titled “The crisis of policy failure or the moral crisis of an idea: colonial politics in contemporary Australia and New Zealand”. In it I argue that when public services don’t work well for Indigenous peoples, the explanation does not just come down to isolated examples of policy failure.

The solution is not that governments simply get better at making policy. Instead, colonialism itself is what I call “the moral crisis of an idea”.

Earlier this year, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that Indigenous policy usually fails because:

[Governments] perpetuated an ingrained way of thinking, passed down over two centuries and more, and it was the belief that we knew better than our Indigenous peoples. We don’t. We also thought we understood their problems better than they did. We don’t. They live them.

Morrison was describing a problem with the way the system ordinarily works. Yet a crisis is supposed to be something out of the ordinary, something that needs fixing. How, then, do we fix an idea?

Listening, reflection and justification
Colonialism presumes a moral hierarchy of human worth. It presumes Indigenous people shouldn’t have the same influence over public decision making as others (for example, ensuring a hospital or school works in their favour).

Addressing this problem is the point of the Māori Health Authority, established in New Zealand last month, and the Māori Education Strategy released in 2020.

The democratic theorist John Dryzek says there is a crisis of communication in modern democracy. This is because people understate the importance of listening, reflection and justification in public decision making.

Colonialism, however, doesn’t require listening, reflection or justification. Its essential idea is that some people just aren’t as entitled as others to a meaningful say in public policy.

Entrenching listening, reflection and justification in the workings of democratic politics would support different and non-colonial aspirations. This is something I have called “sharing the sovereign” in my 2021 book of the same name.

Sharing the sovereign
Sharing the sovereign means recognising many sites of decision-making authority. This is the point of the treaties being considered in Victoria, the Northern Territory and Queensland. It’s also the point of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Te Tiriti affirmed the Māori right to authority (rangatiratanga) over their own affairs. It also conferred on Māori the rights and privileges of British subjects, which continue to evolve as New Zealand citizenship. This was the right to influence the affairs of the new state — the right to be part of the new state in a meaningful way.

Successive Waitangi Tribunal reports show that crisis in Māori policy occurs when these two simple ideas of independent authority and meaningful participation in the state are absent.

In Australia, the Victorian Treaty Assembly says: “Treaty is a chance to address [the] future together as equals”. The idea of an Indigenous voice to Parliament, which the new Australian government is supporting, is also a step towards sharing the sovereign among all citizens.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, sharing the sovereign would mean the Crown is not, in the words of the first Māori judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Joe Williams, “Pakeha, English-speaking, and distinct from Māori”.

Political equality then becomes possible because the sovereign is not an ethnically exclusive entity. It’s not an all-powerful authority over which Indigenous people should not expect any real influence.

Colonialism under permanent scrutiny
Equality through inclusivity is fundamentally different from colonialism and its inherent moral crisis. Equality and inclusivity make different assumptions about what the state is and to whom it belongs.

However, normalising public institutions to work for Indigenous peoples as well as they work for anyone else is still a contested idea. In 2019, for example, the New Zealand cabinet instructed public servants on the questions they should consider when advising ministers on Treaty/Tiriti policy.

On one hand, cabinet affirmed Māori influence in the policy process. On the other, it didn’t consider the possibility that governments might sometimes stand aside entirely in the making of effective and fair public policy. So, cabinet didn’t require advisers to ask questions such as:

• Why is the government presuming to make this decision?
• And why does the decision not belong (partly or entirely) to the sphere of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination, sovereignty)?

Asking these kinds of questions involves sharing the sovereign. They presume listening, reflection and justification to put colonialism, as the moral crisis of an idea, under permanent scrutiny.

Dr Dominic O’Sullivan, is adjunct professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and professor of political science, Charles Sturt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A large number of New Zealanders are facing a perfect storm at retirement, with minimal savings and no house, raising the risk that thousands will enter old age in poverty.

According to the latest retirement expenditure guidelines from Massey University, a two-person retiree household living an urban “choices” lifestyle, which includes some luxuries, would need to have saved NZ$809,000.

In the provinces, a couple would need to have saved $511,000.

• READ MORE: How New Zealanders miss out on hundreds of thousands in retirement savings
• Fall in ageing Australians’ home-ownership rates looms as seismic shock for housing policy
• The edges of home ownership are becoming porous. It’s no longer a one-way street
• NZ’s fossil fuel investment ban for popular KiwiSaver funds is more political than ethical

New Zealanders have traditionally relied on owning a home to support themselves during their retirement years. But many of the New Zealanders now aged between 50 and 65 – a cohort of almost half a million people – will go into retirement as renters after skyrocketing house prices over the last three decades put home ownership out of reach.

At the same time, this generation were already working adults when the Labour government introduced KiwiSaver in 2007, and are less likely to have a significant savings cushion.

Last year, Treasury raised concerns that this mixed group of baby boomers and generation X will not be able to financially manage retirement on their own.

Declining home ownership
Home ownership in New Zealand has fallen to the lowest rate in 70 years, with just 65 percent of people living in houses they own, down from the peak of 74 percent in the 1990s.

According to the 2018 Census, around one in four people between 50 and 65 don’t own the home they live in.

Research by Kay Saville-Smith from the Centre for Research Evaluation and Social Assessment suggests that by 2053 almost half of over-65s would be renting. That would mean 640,000 over-65s renting, including 326,000 renters aged over 85.

This issue of declining home ownership disproportionately affects those who have remained on low incomes throughout their working life. This, in turn, has stark consequences for Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand.

Between 1986 and 2013 the proportion of Māori and Pacific peoples living in owner occupied housing fell at a faster rate than the overall population (down 20 percent and 34.8 percent, respectively).

Skyrocketing rents
Also, in the last five years nationwide rents have risen 28 percent across all property types and regions.

For increasing numbers of people, housing — whether through ownership or renting — has become unaffordable.

The rapidly increasing rental costs have also reduced the ability of people to save for their own home.

KiwiSaver came too late

In 2007, the Labour-led government set up KiwiSaver as a voluntary savings scheme to help New Zealanders save for their retirement and to lift New Zealand’s low national savings rate.

But New Zealanders aged 50 to 64 were already adults and mid-career when KiwiSaver was launched. In our low-wage economy, they are likely to have contributed only 3 percent of wages, in addition to the employer’s 3 percent.

While some will have used their KiwiSaver account plus the government subsidy to put a deposit on a home purchase, few will have saved a significant nest egg for retirement. The 2021 Financial Markets Authority KiwiSaver Report showed average balances of only $26,410.

Squeaking by on superannuation
There is some support for retirees. When a person reaches the qualifying age of 65 years, they receive New Zealand Superannuation, currently $437 per week after tax for a single person.

But superannuation is predicated on owning your home rather than renting. Home ownership means effectively living rent free, with only rates and maintenance as regular necessary expenses in addition to food, power and phone.

Those people renting are currently confronted by a median weekly rental for a small house or apartment of $390 per week. While they may also be able to access the accommodation supplement and temporary additional support to assist with costs, a new threat has emerged in the form of inflation.

Consumer price index inflation peaked at close to 6.35 percent in early 2022, its highest level in three decades.

As well as steady increases in the price of electricity, petrol prices increased by 10 percent over the past year, and annual food prices rose 6.85 percent in February year-on-year. Fruit and vegetables are the largest contributors to the price rise. Car use can be contained with less recreational outings, but electricity, fruit and vegetables are needed for health.

None of this is going unnoticed. Treasury has raised the alarm about the increase of old age poverty. Many in the 50-65 age group share those concerns, and are approaching retirement with rational trepidation.

Dr Claire Dale is a research fellow, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The day after New Zealand’s first lockdown was announced, I expressed to a senior colleague my concern for those around the country whose livelihoods would suffer as a result.

She agreed, but was confident that the spirit of “we’re all in it together” accompanying these drastic public health interventions would allow the government to lead the country towards a kinder, more equitable society.

“I think we might see a universal basic income,” she said hopefully.

• READ MORE: NZ’s first home buyers hoped for more from new housing policy
• Government announces plan to help first home buyers
• Bryan Bruce: NZ’s housing crisis – ask the right questions and we may get solutions

As it turns out, the government had little appetite for progressive welfare or tax reform.

Instead, working with the Reserve Bank, they have propped up the economy through a combination of measures that have drastically inflated the price of houses.

This has most likely protected some jobs, but it has also made work increasingly irrelevant as capital gains completely outstrip wages. The wealthy have been made even wealthier, while many can no longer afford a roof over their heads.

In the past year, the average New Zealander effectively lost $54.59 for every hour they turned up to work if they did not own a home.

According to Stats NZ, the median worker earned $26.44 per hour before tax in 2020. That comes to $21.49 per hour after tax if working a 40 hour week.

Median house prices
Meanwhile, in the year to end of February 2021, the median nationwide house price increased from $640,000 to $780,000: a difference of $140,000. If houses took weekends, public holidays and four weeks’ leave off each year – which of course they do not but it makes the calculation simpler – that makes an hourly rate equivalent to $76.08 per hour. Tax-free.

This is a direct result of the decision to support the economy through a combination of quantitative easing, a reduced Official Cash Rate and wage subsidies, instead of meaningfully increasing spending on things we need such as infrastructure and welfare.

The government handed out money to the banks, effectively at no cost, allowing them to lend more at increasingly attractive rates.

The government also bought bonds at the same time, devaluing deposits and making it pointless to keep money in the bank. This combination of easy credit and disincentivised saving caused a large amount of money to start sloshing around looking for somewhere to go.

The traditional concern with this approach to stimulus is that it will inflate the price of goods and services, increasing the cost of living.

In New Zealand, though, we like to buy houses. A tax system that drastically favours property ownership, combined with a cultural sensibility that houses are a safe bet, has seen much of this newly available money pumped straight into the housing market.

A feature
This is a feature, not a bug.

It represents a new, more interventionist version of trickle-down economics for the 2020s. Decried in 2011 by Labour MP Damien O’Connor as “the rich pissing on the poor”, politicians from the right have long argued that if the wealthy feel wealthier, their increased spending will benefit those less well off.

Generally used to advocate for reduced taxes on the rich, these ‘trickle down’ arguments refuse to die, no matter how comprehensively and repeatedly they are discredited.

This revival of trickle-down economics is a little different, as it is based on direct stimulus rather than a reduction in tax, but the effective mechanism is the same.

House price inflation is desirable, we are told, because homeowners feeling the resulting “wealth effect” will spend more on the goods and services provided by other New Zealanders. The win-win logic of this argument hides the fact that, fundamentally, someone is paying a heavy price.

Another way to think about it is that the government has effectively paid for covid-19 by levying a special tax on anyone who wants to live in New Zealand, but did not happen to own property during the summer of 2020/21, and handing that money to homeowners.

Paying the price
Many will pay this price throughout their lives. Some will be consigned to renting forever, handing over ever-increasing portions of their incomes to landlords seeking increased yield from their value-inflated properties.

Too many won’t even be able to do that, and sleeping on the street or in emergency accommodation. The relatively lucky few who do manage to buy a home will have mortgages hundreds of thousands of dollars larger than they otherwise would, spreading the cost of covid across their entire lifetimes.

Even as the beneficiaries of this covid levy, most homeowners are unable to simply stop working and enjoy this newfound wealth.

They may feel that they cannot realise their capital gain because it is tied up in their family home. What this windfall does provide, however, is choice: the option to release some of their newfound capital by downsizing into somewhere cheaper, or to stay put, taking advantage of the extra equity to fund lifestyle improvements like a new boat, a bach or a remodelled kitchen.

Unprecedented demand for watercraft this summer suggests that many are doing exactly this.

It can be tempting to view this growing inequity as just another “baby boomers vs millennials” issue. Certainly, it does represent a massive transfer of wealth from generally younger New Zealanders who do not currently own homes, to the largely older folk who were able to buy homes cheaply in the past.

This disparity is reflected in Westpac’s latest consumer confidence figures, which show that younger New Zealanders are far more likely to be worried about their financial situation compared with older cohorts.

Patronising advice about avoiding avocados and food delivery services to save for a home entirely misses this point. Nonetheless, it is important to note that many older New Zealanders also live in poverty while subject to similarly individualising narratives of self-control.

Social divide
Perhaps the more important question is how this rapidly accumulating wealth will be deployed to further entrench a growing social divide.

Parents with equity to spare are increasingly using it to help their children “get on the property ladder”. On an individual basis this is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

At a larger scale, though, the competitive advantage conferred by having generous, wealthy parents makes it even harder for those who do not have such privilege to obtain a home. Many are being left behind as a new landed gentry takes shape.

These political-economic arrangements favouring existing wealth over hard work have been a long time in the making, beginning well before most of the current crop of politicians arrived in parliament.

It is notable, though, that a government that promised to address the “housing crisis” has actively and knowingly pursued policies that have produced an unprecedented upward step-change in the market.

Perhaps most concerning is that the Prime Minister has expressed her intent that house price inflation should continue, just at a more “moderate” rate, because that’s what “people expect”.

It is exactly these expectations that are the problem: these issues will not be resolved while houses remain a speculative investment vehicle, rather than a home.

‘Tipping the balance’
Tuesday’s announcement of measures to “tip the balance” towards home buyers, rather than investors, might begin to signal a growing recognition that housing is more than an investment.

A substantial class of investors have certainly been made exceptionally wealthy by the covid-19 response, even as those who work for a living have seen their incomes stagnate.

But while this separation of ‘investors’ or ‘speculators’ from ‘homeowners’ might be politically convenient, it makes something of a false distinction.

Whether a house is owned as a home, or purely a source of income, any non-improvement appreciation in value comes at someone else’s expense.

Until New Zealand acknowledges this, little will change: whoever is in charge, and no matter how many new homes get built.

Covid-19 has shown that when politicians want to act, they certainly can. As many others have pointed out, this government promised “transformational change”. I’m not sure that taking money from those with the least, handing it to those with the most, is quite the kindness my colleague had in mind.

Dr Brendon Blue is a geographer in Te Kura Tātai Aro Whenua, the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. He mostly studies and teaches the politics of environmental science and restoration, but would have been better off owning a house instead. This article was first published on The Democracy Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.